Washington, DC – Today, the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee held a hearing to review the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services' (U.S.C.I.S.) Fiscal Year 2023 budget request. The opening statement given by U.S. Representative Chuck Fleischmann, the Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee, is below.
"Thank you, Madam Chairwoman Roybal Allard. I really appreciate all your efforts and hard work as the Chair of this Subcommittee, and I sincerely look forward to working with you and partnering with you as we begin our work on the FY 23 process."
"Welcome, Director Jaddou. I thank you for joining us today."
"As we examine the U.S.C.I.S. budget request, I am deeply concerned about some of the most recent border security and immigration actions by this Administration and what they portend for the future. U.S.C.I.S. officers have a front-row seat to the border crisis that has been unfolding over the last 18 months. We have a record number of migrants crossing our borders illicitly, many of whom claim fear of persecution or torture should they return to their home countries."
"I do not doubt there are many well-founded claims, but there are false ones, too. It is well documented that migrants are coached on what to say by the cartels to maximize their chance of staying in this country. The job of U.S.C.I.S. officers is to make hard calls and separate legitimate from illegitimate claims – and that is no easy task. With the Title 42 public health authority being lifted next month, I fear the surge that follows will completely overwhelm our border security and immigration capabilities. Managing the chaos from this unforced error will be a full-time job."
"As we turn to the U.S.C.I.S. budget request, once again, we see that the Administration proposes a nearly $500 million increase in appropriated dollars to address the growing number of applications waiting for a response. Backlogs are not a new development; rather, they have existed for quite some time and grow daily."
"The fundamental problem with supplementing the agency's budget with appropriated dollars is that U.S.C.I.S. is designed to be a fee-funded agency and was never intended to be reliant on taxpayer funds except for a few programs like E-Verify. We should be very cautious about shifting the burden of these immigration services away from the individual fee payers. The remedy, in the event of a deficit, is simple - exercise the authority provided for in the law and set the fees at a level that will ensure recovery of the full costs for providing all such services."
"U.S.C.I.S'. budget proposal calls for $375 million for roughly 2,000 more asylum officers, in part to implement the Administration's ill-advised Asylum Officer rule. Under the guise of expediting asylum claims, the Administration proposes to have U.S.C.I.S. Officers do the work of immigration judges and adjudicate these claims. This non-adversarial process is fundamentally flawed and will result in additional layers of appeals, lengthier adjudication timelines, and ultimately an increased backlog."
"In the middle of the border crisis, the president's budget proposes to hire nearly seven times more asylum officers to manage this policy-driven crisis than Border Patrol agents, who work to prevent it in the first place."
"I look forward to hearing how you intend to address the current backlog and the potential surge stemming from the removal of Title 42 authority, and I thank you for coming before us today."
"Madam Chairwoman, I yield back, and I thank you."
Original source can be found here.
