U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

Senate OKs Leahy Amendment
To Halt Outsourcing
Of 100 St. Albans Immigration Jobs

 

[In a bipartisan vote of 49 to 47, the U.S. Senate Wednesday night approved a major amendment offered by Sen. Patrick Leahy to prevent the Bush Administration from outsourcing about 100 federal immigration jobs in St. Albans.  The Administration has been pushing forward with plans to privatize the positions of immigration information officer, contract representative and investigative assistant, in the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, of the Department of Homeland Security.  Leahy, joined by Sen. Joe Lieberman, has fought the outsourcing at each step, pointing out that these are anti-fraud, security related posts that are inherently governmental -- by the government’s own definition.  In addition to the approximately 100 positions in St. Albans, the Leahy Amendment, cosponsored by Sen. Jim Jeffords -- which was offered to the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill -- also would protect about 1000 other positions from outsourcing at other immigration offices across the nation.  The House passed the same amendment – also by a bipartisan vote – during the House’s consideration of the Homeland Security funding bill.  The bill next will go to House-Senate conference.  The Bush Administration has threatened a veto over the Leahy Amendment.  Following is Leahy’s full statement during Senate debate on the amendment Wednesday night:]

Mr. LEAHY.  Mr. President, I rise today to offer an amendment that would put an end to an ill-advised undertaking by the Department of Homeland Security to privatize government jobs over common sense and our obligations to do everything possible to keep Americans safe.  This amendment would prohibit DHS from spending money for the purpose of contracting out Immigration Information Officer, Contact Representative, or Investigative Assistant positions.  The House voted for this exact amendment earlier this year by a vote of 242-163, with 49 Republicans supporting it.  I trust that we will have a similar bipartisan majority in the Senate. 

Immigration Information Officers (“IIOs”) are responsible for screening applications for immigration benefits for fraud, and for performing criminal background checks on applicants.  There are 1,100 IIOs around the nation, working for the Citizenship and Immigration Services (“CIS”) branch of DHS.  The work they do in attempting to discover and prevent immigration fraud – and prevent dangerous people from abusing the immigration system – is clearly “inherently governmental,” making them an inappropriate target of a privatization effort.   

As our nation continues to face the threat of terrorism, CIS carries a heavy burden in its attempt to process immigration and naturalization applications while ensuring that terrorists – along with other fraudulent actors – do not abuse our immigration system.  Information Officers have played a vital role in meeting this burden.  Indeed, the agency’s own job description requires that IIOs have the “[s]kill to identify fraudulent documents in order to prevent persons from appealing for benefits for which they are not eligible,” a skill that is obviously all the more important in this era.  They are also required by DHS to have “[k]nowledge and skill in interviewing techniques and observation of applicants in order to determine if an applicant is misrepresenting the facts in order to appear eligible for a benefit.”  I am offering this amendment because I believe that weeding out potential fraud in our immigration system must remain a responsibility of government employees, especially when the perpetrator of the fraud may be a dangerous criminal or terrorist.

 In addition to their security-related work, these IIOs perform duties that are directly related to achieving President Bush’s goal, stated during his 2000 campaign and since, of providing more efficient services to lawful immigrants.  IIOs increase efficiency, by, as their job description states, exploring “all avenues of assistance available to the customer; determin[ing] the benefit most advantageous if more than one exists, and try[ing] to motivate the customer to file the appropriate application(s).”  IIOs also have extensive knowledge and use discretion in their positions – they are required to have “knowledge of the exclusion and deportation regulations” and “knowledge and familiarity with the immigration and nationality laws.”  As CIS continues its efforts to reduce the backlog faced by immigration applicants to six months, the last thing we should be doing is replacing knowledgeable immigration professionals with inexperienced contract workers.

 Should a private contractor win the work currently performed by IIOs, that contractor will be responsible for adjudicating immigration benefits and detecting fraud and criminal activity, requiring the contractor to make decisions that are both sensitive to national security and have a huge impact on the lives of millions of immigrants.  This would be a bad idea in any era, but it is particularly inappropriate now.   

I have a personal interest in this issue because nearly 100 fine Vermonters currently work as IIOs.  I know the fine work they do, and I know that my staff and indeed all of our staffs rely on them and their counterparts throughout the country when we are seeking to help our constituents.  I know that our nation will be better off if these fine men and women remain in their current positions. 

Thirty-five members of this body are already on record in opposition to contracting out the IIO positions.  We wrote to Secretary Ridge a year ago, seeking the cancellation of the A-76 process.  I have since joined with Senators Lieberman, Byrd, and Kennedy in obtaining documentation from DHS about its decision to launch the A-76 process to hire private contractors to perform the work currently done by IIOs.  The documents the Department has provided have proven illuminating.  They have shown that officials within CIS did not think there should be private sector competition for these jobs, and believed that the IIOs were performing inherently governmental work.  These officials took their concerns to the leadership at DHS, but their views were overruled and the competition proceeded.   

Grant Thornton and PEC Solutions, outside consultants hired by DHS, drafted memoranda and presentations to demonstrate that going forward with the job competition was unwise.  These views too were ignored.   

The decision to contract out these positions is all the more disturbing because it has the hallmarks of a decision made simply to meet a quota.  The Bush Administration set a goal of privatizing 15 percent of government jobs shortly after it took office.  When the original decision to submit the IIO positions to competition was made, they were still INS and Department of Justice employees.  According to a senior official at CIS, that original decision was made when the Office of Management and Budget informed DOJ that it had only hours to submit 1,200 positions that could be privatized.  Only James Ziglar, then the INS Commissioner, even knew that the IIO positions would be submitted to OMB. 

After the INS was transferred to DHS, the new department had to decide whether to continue with the competition.  DHS announced its decision to subject the jobs to competition in August 2003, and DHS documents suggest that the 15 percent goal remained a major factor in the decision, with the leader of the DHS privatization office referring to the need to meet OMB’s 15 percent goal as recently as October 2003.  This was true even though Congress prohibited agencies in February 2003 – 10 months earlier – from applying or enforcing any numerical goals or targets for subjecting employees to public-private competition, and even though the Administration grudgingly announced it would abide by the law forbidding this quota in July 2003. 

This amendment would also protect the jobs of investigative assistants.  These CIS employees work in the Fraud Detection Unit, searching a variety of private, governmental, and criminal databases to find information about applicants for immigration benefits.  These positions were created in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, to ensure that only qualified personnel would have access to highly sensitive databases.  Despite the nature of the position and the circumstances under which it was created, DHS has demonstrated interest in privatizing these positions as well.  This amendment would put a stop to that misguided effort as well. 

In conclusion, this amendment would protect Federal employees who are trying to weed out fraud in the immigration system, and assist lawful immigrants seeking benefits to which they are entitled.  It had overwhelming bipartisan support in the House, passing with nearly 50 Republican votes.  I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.