Interesting interview with new USCIS director - September 4, 2025

[OldUser 10,409]

Here's interesting talk with new USCIS director

 

 

Subjects touched: 

 

- DV lottery (wants to be eliminated)

- Fraud scrutiny to be increased

- Citizenship test (wishes to make more difficult)

- Wants to see more merit based immigration

- Wants to tighten family based category (didn't say directly eliminating siblings, but mentioned it indirectly)

- DACA - no concrete plans

- TPS (wants to revisit who got it)

- Work permits and SSNs (acknowledged they disabled auto issuance of SSN cards in some scenarios, frustrated by number of SSN types)

 

Recommend watching to understand where we're heading with immigration.

[JeanneAdil 7,241]

Everyone should listen to this as he talks about so many issues we deal with 

1 is funding-saying it should not be federally funded as it is not responsibily for others to pay for our benefit /maybe i shouldn't pay school taxes as i have no kids in school

2 is family migration

3 is vetting

4 future naturalization possible changes

5. fraud issues

and so much more 

now lets see if he can get movement in Congress as that's the real problem / they don't seem to want to deal with illegal and/or legal immigration

 

[OldUser 10,409]

2 hours ago, JeanneAdil said:

1 is funding-saying it should not be federally funded as it is not responsibily for others to pay for our benefit /maybe i shouldn't pay school taxes as i have no kids in school

There is a good side to this approach - USCIS is not affected as much during federal shutdowns.

Edited Friday at 04:47 PM by OldUser

[JeanneAdil 7,241]

7 hours ago, OldUser said:

There is a good side to this approach - USCIS is not affected as much during federal shutdowns.

It is if a US office is located inside a federal building 

 

a government shutdown significantly affects U.S. immigration by halting non-essential functions like Department of Labor (DOL) PERM processing and pausing E-Verify services, though fee-funded services such as USCIS petitions and Department of State visa issuance generally continue with possible delays. Immigration courts will postpone non-detained cases, while border security and essential law enforcement functions like Customs and Border Protection and ICE enforcement remain operational. 

[OldUser 10,409]

5 minutes ago, JeanneAdil said:

It is if a US office is located inside a federal building 

 

a government shutdown significantly affects U.S. immigration by halting non-essential functions like Department of Labor (DOL) PERM processing and pausing E-Verify services, though fee-funded services such as USCIS petitions and Department of State visa issuance generally continue with possible delays. Immigration courts will postpone non-detained cases, while border security and essential law enforcement functions like Customs and Border Protection and ICE enforcement remain operational. 

Where you getting these quotes? Generative AI?

 

Immigration courts are not USCIS.

Department of state is not USCIS.

CBP is not USCIS.

ICE is not USCIS.

 

The quote above doesn't make much sense.

 

USCIS continues processing cases during shutdowns. Sure, they may be affected to an extent, but not directly and not as much as other agencies.

 

 

Edited Friday at 11:04 PM by OldUser

[S2N 427]

The thing is, as much as USCIS might like to try to be more than this, they’re functionally a paper pushing organization within the immigration system that has limited discretion in what they can actually do on their own.  What their director wants has limited actual impact on anything other than the administrative levers he can pull because so much of immigration is decided by other parts of the government. Those can impact the timing and process for people in the system, but there’s little substantial policy impact for the system.
 

Most of USCIS’ functions are ministerial or are collecting information to be provided by them to other agencies that actually have power. In all honesty they’re in need of a total overhaul and it’d make the most sense to transfer them and ICE back to DOJ into a unified immigration agency with direct quasi-judicial oversight by BIA. That way the entire domestic side would be all under one roof and you might have an agency that can tackle stuff in a timely and consistent manner.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I read the transcript of this and wasn’t exactly pleased by it, but I’m skeptical there’s much USCIS can do without congressional intervention. They’re an almost powerless agency outside of being the first line customer service people that we all get frustrated with. There’s only so much their director can do.

Edited 20 hours ago by S2N