Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the excellent-ROI dept.

If there's one thing politicians of all stripes can agree on, it's this: The immigration system is broken. What's less obvious is the extent to which that's physically true. An online system that was supposed to automate the processing of green cards and other immigration benefits has struggled to function properly since at least 2009. Now Jerry Markon writes at the Washington Post that, the US government has spent more than $1 billion trying to replace its antiquated paper approach to managing immigration and a decade into the project, all that officials have to show for their effort is a single form that's now available for online applications and a single type of fee that immigrants pay electronically. The 94 other forms can be filed only with paper. The project called ELIS, run by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), was originally supposed to cost a half-billion dollars and be finished in 2013. Instead, it's now projected to reach up to $3.1 billion and be done nearly four years from now, putting in jeopardy efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration policies, handle immigrants already seeking citizenship and detect national security threats. "You're going on 11 years into this project, they only have one form, and we're still a paper-based agency,'' says Kenneth Palinkas, former president of the union that represents employees at the immigration agency. "It's a huge albatross around our necks.''

Government watchdogs have repeatedly blamed the mammoth problems on poor management by DHS, and in particular by the immigration agency. When the project began, DHS was only two years old, cobbled together after the Sept. 11 attacks from myriad other government agencies, and the department was still reeling. "There was virtually no oversight back then,'' says a former federal official. "DHS was like the Wild West on big acquisitions." "The biggest problem is that the holes that were in the system that allowed the terrorists to come in—for 9/11, the Times Square bomber, all of those people—came through USCIS" and the flaws in the system remain, says a USCIS manager who departed within the past year and requested anonymity for fear of retaliation that could affect future employment. "They don't have any real-time validation of any of the documents" from banks and higher education schools. The long-delayed website has burned through more than a billion dollars, mainly from refugees, asylum seekers and other foreigners who fund the system through application fees. It now faces an influx of more than 5 million petitioners under Obama's executive actions on immigration—if ELIS ever becomes capable of handling the relevant forms.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by tathra on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:18PM

    by tathra (3367) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:18PM (#261334)

    except its not the government who's responsible for this, its IBM. all "the government" did is sell the contract to build this system to IBM, IBM is the one who is billions of dollars over budget and way behind schedule. basically you're agreeing with my post below yours, that privatization needs to end.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=3, Interesting=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:30PM (#261370)

    With no deliverable = no cash or at a minimum a refund of the cash spent.

    Then a new bid sent out with IBM as an obvious 'can not compete'.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:56PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:56PM (#261474) Homepage Journal

    Read a decent article on the subject and you'll be informed that the reason IBM was unable to complete the contract on time is because the government had them in hurry up and wait mode most of the time and changed the requirements when they weren't.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 10 2015, @11:08PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @11:08PM (#261478)

      I'm sure that IBM instantly sued to protest this misallocation of funds.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:57AM

    by M. Baranczak (1673) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:57AM (#261549)
    You and the Buzzard are both wrong. Clusterfucks of this magnitude can only be created when government and giant corporations work together.