Thank you for this opportunity to speak. The Immigration Legal Services staff of Catholic Charities here in San Jose and in Gilroy assist over 3,000 persons per year with INS-related matters. Since our mission is to serve the poor and marginalized, we do not deal with persons who can afford the private bar, but rather with the working poor. My remarks, therefore, reflect the concerns of this segment of our community.

First, let me say that we enjoy a good working relationship with the INS staff here in San Jose, as well as with the Asylum officers and the Immigration Court in San Francisco. We believe they respect the integrity and professional quality of our work with immigrants over the past 22 years. We commend INS' recent attempts to become more customer-friendly and to provide outreach services to rural areas. We recognize that INS could use additional staff here, and we support attempts to have San Jose become its own INS office, rather than a sub-office of the San Francisco District.

That said, I offer 3 points for your consideration.
1. I believe that the INS creates its own backlogs.
2. I believe that Congress has needlessly compounded the INS' problems by passage of certain legislation that needs to be amended or revoked.
3. I believe that throwing money and extra staff at a dysfunctional system will not necessarily improve that system.

To illustrate these points, allow me to describe the situation of 2 Catholic Charities clients.
1. Robert is a young man in his twenties. Catholic Charities helped Robert's U.S. Citizen father to file the necessary paperwork for Robert to adjust his status. He then received his Employment Authorization Document (EAD) here at San Jose INS and got a good job. On his vacation from work, Robert flew to Texas to visit some relatives. At the airport in Texas, Robert was stopped by INS personnel who demanded to see his documentation. He showed them his EAD. The INS checked the card and told Robert, "This isn' real!" Robert protested, but to no avail. The INS deported him to Mexico Desperate, and knowing that he had every right to be in the US, Robert swam across the border. He was caught by the Border Patrol and deported a second time. Robert then went to the US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, where someone eventually listened to his story. Meanwhile, Robert's US Citizen father, frantic, came back to Catholic Charities to ask for our help. We provided duplicate copies of all his INS paperwork from our files and sent them to the Consulate. Finally, Robert was permitted to return to San Jose. Why did all this happen? Back in San Jose, the INS records somehow hadn't shown the EAD. Later, it did show up in the computer. Meanwhile, of course, Robert lost his job in San Jose because of absence due to his deportations. What was his crime: visiting relatives in Texas? Funny, but the INS has never stopped me to check my work authorization when I've visited Texas…

2. Maria's story also begins in San Jose, where her Legal Permanent Resident husband submitted an I-130 on her behalf. Maria had entered the US without inspection (EWI), but she was grandfathered under section 245(i) and was, therefore, expecting to adjust her status here in the US. Unfortunately, while that process was still pending her mother fell critically ill. She felt she had no choice but to return to Peru to be at her mother's bedside. Once Maria left the US, it triggered the 10-yr bar to re-entry. But her visa is now current! If she were in the US, she would immediately get her employment authorization by filing for adjustment of status. But since she is in Peru she is not eligible for adjustment of status and must go through consular processing instead. OK, this is where it gets interesting. Maria's file is in Laguna Niguel, and that file says she will be adjusting status in San Jose. She can't do that now, so we must get the INS to forward her file to the National Visa Center in New Hampshire for consular processing. Wouldn't it be simple if we (Catholic Charities) could send a letter to the INS requesting that the file be forwarded? No, instead we must submit a form I-824. The INS receipt of that form advises that it will take the INS roughly 8 months to complete the file transfer; in fact, the procedure now is taking over 15 months! Meanwhile, of course, Maria is stuck in Peru with her US Citizen child, while her legal permanent resident husband is here in the US, missing them terribly—not to mention having to support the living in Peru while he is still pay their rent here in Silicon Valley! There's yet another twist: during this long saga, Maria's husband becomes a US Citizen. Now he returns to Catholic Charities to file an Immediate Relative petition for his wife, since that processing should take only 6 months for Laguna Niguel to send to the National Visa Center. More paperwork for Catholic Charities, and for the INS! As the beneficiary of an Immediate Relative petition from a US Citizen, Maria should be permitted to come into the US immediately (though I use the term loosely: "immediately" in the INS dictionary currently means a 9-12 month wait). But alas, it will not be that straightforward for Maria! She is going to have to submit a waiver of the 10-yr bar when she goes for processing at the Consulate in Peru. Now, these waivers cannot be approved by a Consular Officer; only the Attorney General (INS) can approve the waiver. So, guess what? Maria's waiver case must be forwarded by the US Consulate in Peru to the INS, where such cases currently take over a year to be processed. Maria and her child are still in Peru. Maybe some day this story will have a happy ending.

Back to my 3 original points:
1. The INS creates its own backlogs.
Robert was detained and deported by the INS in a Texas airport – he neve left the country – he had the right to travel within the US. An INS compute mistake, or data entry error, or whatever, caused the chain of events that resulted in 2 deportations, duplicate paperwork being filed by Catholic Charities, extra appointments at the US consulate, extreme stress for this family, and worst of all, one lost job.

Maria's case is even more disturbing. She does what every one of us would do in her situation: she goes home to be with a dying parent. She is not thinking of the 10-yr bar to re-entry instituted by the 1996 legislation, because she was grandfathered in and expects to adjust status here in San Jose. But her file is at Laguna Niguel and 15 months will elapse before the file can be transferred to the NVC! (Ultimately that file won't even mean anything, because of the new file submitted once the husband became a US Citizen. Will it disappear into a black hole? Will the INS ever know that it is irrelevant now?) Yet another year will elapse for this family simply because INS hasn't stationed an officer at the Peruvian Consulate who could adjudicate her waiver—or delegated its waive approval authority to the Consular Officer. The end result: a US Citizen deprived of his wife and child for only-God-knows-how-long. And all of it seems so unnecessary.

I could tell you hundreds of such stories. Is it any wonder that the clients call their Congresspersons for intervention—creating, in the process, much more work for the Congresspersons and for the INS? Or that our clients sometimes think Catholic Charities isn't doing its job correctly because their case is taking so long? Why in the world would a government agency in the most advanced country in the world require such redundant paperwork and mix up so many cases?

2. I believe that Congress has seriously compounded the INS' problems by passage of certain legislation that needs to be amended or revoked.
Several of the more recent immigration laws have made an already difficult system worse. The need to adjudicate new asylum applications within 6 months, for example, has caused older asylum applications to be shelved while those prospective asylees live in limbo for 8 or 10 years or longer without any permanent status. The congressional pressure to "fix" the naturalizati n backlogs caused INS to move staff, leaving adjustment of status backlogs to rise dramatically. Refugees now wait 2 years! Asylees wait 4 years! Expedited removal; the elimination of section 245(i); cancellation of removal; the egregious 3 and 10-year bars to re-entry, which have created a classic Catch 22 (you can't adjust inside the country, but as soon as you leave the country you trigger a 10 year bar to re-entry) — all of these ae nightmares affecting real people caught in the system.

3. I believe that throwing money and extra staff at a dysfunctional system will not necessarily improve that system.
The INS bureaucracy is cumbersome, outmoded, and internally inconsistent. Adding staff may help alleviate waiting times in certain categories, and ease the pressure felt by local INS staff, but it does nothing to fix the fundamental structural dysfunctions. As a young nun I was taught, for example, to handle a piece of paper once, or twice at most, before finalizing whatever action was required. I hesitate to imagine how many times every INS form is handled, inputted, filed, boxed, transferred, warehoused, FOIA'd, etc. before being finally adjudicated! A simple example: the wait for issuance of a work permit in San Jose INS can be many months! Why? It should be instantaneous, as it is at the asylum office.

In San Jose, our clients are faced with one of the longest backlogs in the country for obtaining an adjustment of status interview: 31 months. And for many people those 31 months come after waiting several years for a priority date to become current. So the wait can literally exceed 5 8 years, and then when the interview finally occurs, the INS says it doesn't yet have clearances from the FBI or CIA. Meanwhile, life is on hold for these families.

In conclusion
Trying to be more customer friendly is wonderful; believe me, we do appreciate it. But until the INS addresses its structural problems, its paperwork flow problems, its delegation of authority problems, its "just-in-time" inventory problems (so that fingerprint clearances wou d arrive when needed, for example), its unreasonably long time-frames for simple requests like transferring a file or changing an address, nothing substantive will change for our clients.

Thank you.

Statement of Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren

Statement of Rep. Anna Eshoo

Statement of Jennifer Dineen-Ocon

Statement of Linus Torvalds

Statement of Jim Beall

Statement of Warren Leiden

Statement of Sunil Vatave

Statement of Deborah Kessler

Statement of Sister Marilyn Lacey

Statement of Heidi Wilson

Statement of John Barey

Statement of Jacob and Yetta Bromley

Statement of Debra Jaramillo-Coker

Statement of George Windsor Jones

Statement of Le Kim Ngo