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Washington, D.C. (October 3, 2019) - Video and transcript are now available from the Center for Immigration Studies' recent Immigration Newsmaker conversation with USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli at the National Press Club. Cuccinelli, who leads the agency’s 19,000 employees and contractors, stressed the Trump administration’s “hard-charging approach” to immigration.
View the stream of the full event here.
View the transcript here.
Highlights:
Asylum
The percentage of asylum seekers who pass credible fear interviews use to be almost a hundred percent. It has come down to 80%, which is still very high. But “when these cases are heard on the merits, it’s about 10, 12, 15 percent” of the 80 percent…”and so you have this massive amount that is just clogging the pipeline that’s never going to get approved and is swamping the system. And look, let’s face it. The strategy on the part of the people coming illegally is a collective strategy. It is to swamp the border and to swamp the Border Patrol, and ICE, and our resources at the border.”
Detention
If you don’t make a claim of credible fear you will be returned; if you do make a claim you will be detained. “ – which is, by the way, what the law says. The only thing the law speaks of is detaining people through the course of their hearing. It doesn’t say anywhere that you can or should let people go – nowhere in American law. That just became a habit, and as much as Congress – some congressional reps were coming down to the border during the height of the crisis and complaining about overcrowding – and there was overcrowding – but whose responsibility is that? The Border Patrol works with what they have. Well, who gives them what they have? Congress.”
Fraud
Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) is tasked with dealing with fraud at USCIS. We have expanded their numbers and their capabilities. “They aren’t the only ones…every officer is expected to play a role in vetting this…We are also shifting over to electronic filing which will give us the ability to do data analysis that we just can’t do now with a(n) overwhelmingly paper system…it will dramatically expand our capacity to detect suspected fraud…I am also working on positioning USCIS to be the source of many, many more prosecutions for fraud.”
Temporary Agricultural Workers
“In the H-2A…there are transportation cost requirements and there are housing requirements for bringing in foreign workers. That almost – that automatically builds in costs added to the use of foreign workers versus U.S. workers. I like that. I like that. I want it to cost more to use non-American workers because if you are willing to pay that amount, that’s actually the truest test, to me, that in fact that particular market we really do need temporary foreign workers. Otherwise, why wouldn’t you just pay less and get someone who can stay here year-round?”
A Fee-funded Agency
“Unlike the rest of government, we [USCIS] are fee funded. We operate much as a business does. With the exception of 4 percent of our budget, we run a balanced budget…One of the good things Congress did a long time ago is say the immigrants have to fund our immigration system [Immigration and Nationality Act, Sections 286(m) and (n)]. That was a great policy decision, and we have stuck to that.”
“It’s public that we’re reviewing our fee structure, and particularly with the humanitarian burden we are bearing in our agency for which we are not compensated…no one is charged for like all the humanitarian work that we do – again, so that the immigrant community that is seeking to come to this country or seeking to change status in this country is carrying the costs of this whole system.That does mean that, as burdens go up, we’ve got to raise prices.”
H-1B Workers Replacing U.S. Workers
“We start all these discussions with the assumption of the law not changing, which is a sad place to start a discussion. I mean, the right way to decide policy is for Congress and the president to decide policy. That’s the way the government was set up. What we – in the alternative, we talk about what amount to workarounds to that. Of course, they have to be within the boundaries of the law, but I really wish – and I’m hopeful – that we’ll see some cleanup work done here because it is very messy, and it is concerning.”
“You know, I have a high regard – as does the president – for protecting U.S. workers, and the H-1B program has been controversial in this regard, and not just because of Disney and those sorts of situations, but the potential to not have the same financial obligations for H-1B employees that a company might have for a U.S. citizen employee doing the same work. And, you know, that’s the reverse of how it should be.”
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