Questions for Secretary Napolitano: Citizenship and Immigration Services

Jena McNeill / April 29, 2009

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano is tentatively scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee about DHS immigration enforcement policies on May 6, 2009. Given Secretary Napolitano’s novel interpretations of federal law, the Heritage Foundation will be posting a series of questions (and suggested answers) for the Secretary. Past questions can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

What are the challenges currently facing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and what changes does the Obama Administration plan to make to tackle these problems?

Reforming U.S. immigration policy is one aspect of reform. However, until the agency tasked with processing incoming immigrants is reformed, little improvement will be made. As of now, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) could not handle a surge of legal immigrants, in part because it has a faulty budget model based on application fees. For USCIS to be responsive to immigration reform, its revenue structure should be changed to give the USCIS more flexibility. (more…)