Immigration Contractor Demotivates Employees To Do the Right Thing
Mike Cutler

Contract employees who help process millions of visa and citizenship applications for a federal immigration agency are having their salaries slashed, even as a surge in new applications rises precipitously. The workers whose wages will be cut are contract employees in document processing centers in St. Albans, Vt., and Laguna Niguel, Calif. They are part of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for deciding visa applications.

The processing of applications for immigration benefits represents a potential area of vulnerability to our nation and our citizens. These employees handle the so-called file room of immigration services; unfortunately, if you want to place a spy into an organization, you are best served by putting that spy into the file room.

Our government has become addicted to hiring outside contractors to do the jobs that dedicated civil servants used to perform. This may enable contractors who win those lucrative contracts to make money but it means that rather than employing government workers who are working the way up the ladder, or at least building equity in the government pension system, you wind up with workers who are simply looking for a paycheck.

The work performed by the support personnel at USCIS is not a temporary job. As long as aliens immigrate to the United States and seek various immigration benefits including naturalization, there will be a demand for the jobs done by these employees. Privatization may seem like a good idea to some, but for reasons of national security, it makes better sense to employ a dedicated workforce of government employees.

Now that a new company, Stanley, Inc., has been awarded the contract to do the support work for USCIS, Stanley will have to hire employees to replace those who had been previously employed by the old contractor. They may pick up some of the previous employees as their employees, but it would appear that they won the contract by underbidding their competitors. This means that now those who are part of the system that performs critical backroom paperwork and other functions will suffer a pay cut of some $400 per month.

The first question is, "How do you attract and motivate people who will be doing this important work?" This is a question that is apparently being asked by Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont. Senator Sanders is right on target with that question.

Another question that I would want to have an answer to is, "What impact will this salary cut have not only on morale but on integrity?" In considering this question you should also consider that a portion of the workforce will be given a "bonus" if they can boost productivity. I put the word bonus in quotes because the amount of the bonus is the amount of money that was taken out of their salaries in the first place!

I am all for getting the "most bang for the buck." Certainly as a taxpayer I want our government's employees, and contract employees, to be as productive as possible. However, how do you measure productivity? I am willing to bet that the measure of productivity will be how fast the job gets done, not how accurately the job gets done.

The situation at USCIS is anything but funny. This represents a threat to national security. Just over one year ago, Senators Charles Grassley of Iowa and Sue Collins of Maine requested that the GAO conduct an investigation into the allegation that in 2005 USCIS had "lost" 111,000 immigration alien files relating to aliens seeking various immigration benefits including some 30,000 who sought to naturalize. The GAO issued a report confirming that this had, in fact, happened.

Some of their press release reads as follows:

“WASHINGTON – Senators Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins today released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that says 111,000 alien files (A-files) were missing in 14 United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) offices. The report also says that as many as 30,000 immigrants’ applications to become U.S. citizens were processed despite the missing files…

“Senators Grassley and Collins requested the report after the Immigration and Naturalization Service granted U.S. citizenship to a suspected terrorist, without checking his A-file, which had been lost. His citizenship application was therefore approved despite indications in his A-file about ties to a terrorist organization…

“We should remember that some of the September 11th hijackers had come into the country with legal visas but were allowed to get ‘lost in the system’ before they surfaced again to unleash their attack. It is unthinkable that since then, our immigration system still allows a person with known terrorist ties to become a citizen simply because they can’t find the person’s file,” said Senator Collins. “It is imperative to homeland security as well as the immigration and citizenship process, that the government do a better job of tracking all those who are allowed to enter our country and perform thorough and complete background checks before they are allowed to become citizens…

“USCIS manages more than 55 million A-files. The GAO study found that USCIS may not have used A-files in processing 30,000 naturalization applications out of the 715,000 processed in 2005. DHS, which includes USCIS, agreed with the GAO’s recommendations to require A-file users to record whether an A-file was used to process a naturalization application and to correct any identified deficiencies in file tracking compliance.”

The purpose of the 911 Commission was purportedly to learn from the mistakes of our government in order to protect our nation and our citizens from future terrorist attacks. Yet their recommendations are clearly being ignored. By making it clear to these private employees that they will be rewarded for moving the system as fast as possible with no incentive to seek to uncover fraud or other such factors, few if any employees will "waste time" concerned about such critically important issues.

Additionally, I worry about human nature. People who are under extreme financial pressure may be more likely to become corrupted. Consider what United States citizenship would be worth to a criminal or especially to a spy or a terrorist. Also realize that once an employee has accepted a bribe, such employee will be forever fearful of disclosure by the person who provided them with the bribe in the first place. Once such an employee has been "bought”, that employee will forever be the property of the person who bribed him (her) in the first place.

“The goal is to try to get this work done as efficiently as possible,” said Shawn Saucier, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services. He said the wage dispute was between the contractor and the employees and did not involve the agency.

I want to know what Mr. Saucier spiked his coffee with! His statement reflects a serious disconnect: he is disconnected from reality and he is also convinced that since USCIS does not directly employ the contract workers at Stanley, Inc., any issue involving those workers is not the concern of USCIS! What I want to know is… who is going to make those employees of Stanley accountable? USCIS seems to believe that they are not involved because those workers are paid for and employed by a private company. I could imagine the management at Stanley similarly is saying that it is up to USCIS to provide leadership and motivation!

What all of us should be asking is "Who is in charge here?"

I have done a bit of mathematical computation and figured out that if Stanley, Inc., employs 1,020 employees to do the work for USCIS; and if Stanley, Inc., receives $225 million dollars for the life of the three year contract, then Stanley, Inc., is being paid $73,529.41 per year for each employee. Of course there are benefits that Stanley, Inc., must pay for each employee and each employee may not be earning the same paycheck, but it would certainly seem that in the long run it would be better for the federal government simply to hire employees and make certain that there is no ambiguity as to who is in charge. I am willing to bet that each employee would receive more money than the current contract arrangement calls for. Higher quality employees might therefore be attracted, and the higher salaries might translate into better morale and performance, and a decreased likelihood that employees might be prone to compromise. Perhaps the government might save some money by eliminating the "middleman" (Stanley, Inc.).

Although many people equate the immigration crisis with our nation' porous borders, in reality, it is only one of many critical areas of concern, as evidenced above. Spies and terrorists certainly understand this basic principle; it is time our nation' "leaders" came to the same understanding.

We the People need to make our concerns known to those who allege to represent us in Washington.

Democracy is not a spectator sport!

Lead, follow or get out of the way!

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=1385776

I applied for a job in the local USCIS office through a contractor over a year ago (through Perot). After months of multiple applications, phone calls and interviews I was finally rejected because I had no pay stubs from my time in India (I was doing a small job for honorarium only in a non-profit). In the middle of the process I found out the pay was only $9.30 an hour, that is only a little above minimum wage and I could not have afforded to live off that salary anyway, so I'm glad I didn't get the job! i c couldn't believe that such a thorough and long security and background check process lead to a job that practically qualified me for food stamps! Don't they know that unsatisfied employees are going to cause problems!!

It costs them a lot less to hire contractors. I was a contract worker for a company - they had to pay me and my agency, but it beat the cost of a higher salary plus benefits for them.

This is just too sad. There are so many people trying to make ends meet and the hope of benefits for their families push themselves to provide more stability for their families. This is just too sad for everyone affected. I can not feel anger to those trapped in this cycle.
-jamie
5/18 NOA1 I130
1/22/08 noc touches, no RFEs, no congressional answers.
tomorrow starts day 250 since priority date. (What have i done wrong??)

Where is the security in all this, with hiring contractors? Most of them are come & go.

Out of curiousity, I searched what open positions USCIS was offering, and the lowest paid one I could find was IMMIGRATION INFORMATION OFFICER with SALARY RANGE: 29,726.00 - 53,012.00 USD per year. Which I don't think is that bad.

Afterall, what does an Information Officer do besides tell us "I don't know" when you call USCIS line or do an infopass.

Yes that's not bad at all, whole lot more than I'm making now as an Office Assistant in the County!

As you said not too hard either, just tell people I DON"T KNOW. I think I'll check that job out!