Leahy: DHS To Add 300 Jobs In Vermont 

St. Albans U.S. Citizenship And Immigration Service’s Center
To Add 200 New Federal Positions  

. . .Leahy Also Announces $6 M. For Lake Champlain Cleanup Efforts

BURLINGTON (Friday, Sept. 28) – Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Friday announced that some 300 new federal jobs are coming to Vermont from the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) division. 

Leahy met Thursday with USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez, who informed Leahy that Vermont would receive the new positions, part of nearly 1500 new posts being created by USCIS in federal Fiscal Year 2008.  In addition to about 200 new jobs for the USCIS Center in St. Albans, another 100 jobs will be distributed to other DHS immigration service offices in Vermont, including the Vermont Fraud Detection Immigration Officers operation and the Office of Security and Integrity’s Personnel Security Division in Burlington.  Leahy helped establish the Vermont Service Center 25 years ago and has shepherded its growth since then.  He chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and is a senior member of the Appropriations Committee. 

The Vermont Service Center in St. Albans processes and adjudicates applications for citizenship, immigration status and immigration-related employment.  The new positions will help reduce application and ruling backlogs.   

“Vermonters have built a solid work record, earning confidence in what we can do with bigger challenges,” said Leahy.  “These new jobs will ease strains in the immigration system and on workers in Vermont who have been facing a rising workload.  This is a good day for Vermont’s economy and a vote of confidence in Vermont’s workforce.” 

Leahy Friday also announced that the University of Vermont will receive $6 million over the next six years for UVM’s efforts to combine high tech and scientific solutions to clean up Lake Champlain.  The grant is part of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program, which funds innovative research at academic institutions around the country.  Leahy by now has secured nearly $100 million for the cleanup and preservation of Lake Champlain.

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Letter from USCIS Director Gonzalez