A former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official warned at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that President Obama’s executive actions on immigration may be too much for the agency to handle.
Politico reports that Luke Bellocchi, who served as a USCIS deputy ombudsman, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he expects the millions of new applications following the president’s deferred-deportation order will inundate the agency. Even with the expected hiring of 1,000 new employees to process the paperwork, he said it is “hard to imagine” that will be enough.
“This is the problem with trying to push through so many applications all at once without having proper resources,” said Bellocchi.
The fight over funding and resources at the the Department of Homeland Security and the USCIS is in full swing after Senate Democrats blocked a vote on a spending bill that would fully fund the department except for measures to implement the president’s executive actions. The House passed its version of the bill last month.