This is from today's Washington Post.
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In 1999 my husband and I moved to New York from Europe. He is Czech, and in 2000 we submitted a green card application to what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
This should have been routine. I am an American citizen, and my spouse has a right to reside here with me as long as he is not a common criminal or a terrorist. After three years, my husband's green card application had still not been approved. During this time, his grandmother became ill and died, but he was unable to visit her. Had he done so, he might never have been allowed to return to the United States.
Our venture through the bureaucracy of what is now known as the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) and the FBI, which, since November 2001 has been conducting background checks on all potential immigrants, has been so bizarre that it raises questions about whether these agencies are up to the simplest of tasks, much less protecting the country against foreign terrorists.
The number of people suffering ordeals similar to ours is enormous and grows every day. Lawyers, immigration officers and other insiders have told me that the immigration services were thrown into chaos by the reorganization following the creation of the Department of Homeland Security after Sept. 11, 2001. Many officers in both the BCIS and the FBI have been given new duties. Many lines of communication -- between headquarters and district offices, for example, and between congressional offices and district offices -- have been rerouted so that information about particular cases is now harder than ever to obtain. Phone numbers have been changed, personnel moved and immigration and FBI officers overwhelmed with complaints and new paperwork and other distractions -- none of which are likely to make us any safer.
The piles of unattended green-card applications at the FBI and the BCIS suggest that the "streamlining" of immigration services that the administration predicted would follow the establishment of the DHS has not taken place. BCIS officers themselves complained to me about the turmoil they confront daily. This may partly explain, though it does not excuse, their legendary unhelpfulness, which borders on, and often exceeds, the boundaries of etiquette. This does not sound like "streamlining" to me.
At times, I feared I would be calling the BCIS customer information line from my grave, and they still wouldn't tell me what was going on with our green-card application.
I wrote to both New York senators, as well as to the secretary of homeland security at the time, Tom Ridge, and to acting BCIS commissioner Eduardo Aguirre. None ever acknowledged my letters. When I called Sen. Hillary Clinton's office six months later, I was told that she receives so many complaints about the BCIS that her assistants are unable to keep up with the correspondence. Thus another heap of paper grows in her office, this one a child of the heaps of unattended applications at the BCIS and the FBI. I asked what sort of legislative remedies the senator or anyone else had proposed to address this dire situation, but no one in Clinton's office could provide an answer.
In desperation, I finally appealed to a close relative who holds a senior position in the State Department. One month later my husband's green card was approved.
But most of the people suffering because of this situation have no political voice in this country. This probably explains why so many bureaucrats and lawmakers don't take the issue seriously.
Many immigrants take low-paying jobs Americans refuse. They drive our taxis, build our houses, weed our gardens, serve our fast-food breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Without them, the service industries, the backbone of America's economy right now, would collapse. They deserve better than this, and so do we.
Helen Epstein teaches and writes on health subjects.
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In 1999 my husband and I moved to New York from Europe. He is Czech, and in 2000 we submitted a green card application to what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
This should have been routine. I am an American citizen, and my spouse has a right to reside here with me as long as he is not a common criminal or a terrorist. After three years, my husband's green card application had still not been approved. During this time, his grandmother became ill and died, but he was unable to visit her. Had he done so, he might never have been allowed to return to the United States.
Our venture through the bureaucracy of what is now known as the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) and the FBI, which, since November 2001 has been conducting background checks on all potential immigrants, has been so bizarre that it raises questions about whether these agencies are up to the simplest of tasks, much less protecting the country against foreign terrorists.
The number of people suffering ordeals similar to ours is enormous and grows every day. Lawyers, immigration officers and other insiders have told me that the immigration services were thrown into chaos by the reorganization following the creation of the Department of Homeland Security after Sept. 11, 2001. Many officers in both the BCIS and the FBI have been given new duties. Many lines of communication -- between headquarters and district offices, for example, and between congressional offices and district offices -- have been rerouted so that information about particular cases is now harder than ever to obtain. Phone numbers have been changed, personnel moved and immigration and FBI officers overwhelmed with complaints and new paperwork and other distractions -- none of which are likely to make us any safer.
The piles of unattended green-card applications at the FBI and the BCIS suggest that the "streamlining" of immigration services that the administration predicted would follow the establishment of the DHS has not taken place. BCIS officers themselves complained to me about the turmoil they confront daily. This may partly explain, though it does not excuse, their legendary unhelpfulness, which borders on, and often exceeds, the boundaries of etiquette. This does not sound like "streamlining" to me.
At times, I feared I would be calling the BCIS customer information line from my grave, and they still wouldn't tell me what was going on with our green-card application.
I wrote to both New York senators, as well as to the secretary of homeland security at the time, Tom Ridge, and to acting BCIS commissioner Eduardo Aguirre. None ever acknowledged my letters. When I called Sen. Hillary Clinton's office six months later, I was told that she receives so many complaints about the BCIS that her assistants are unable to keep up with the correspondence. Thus another heap of paper grows in her office, this one a child of the heaps of unattended applications at the BCIS and the FBI. I asked what sort of legislative remedies the senator or anyone else had proposed to address this dire situation, but no one in Clinton's office could provide an answer.
In desperation, I finally appealed to a close relative who holds a senior position in the State Department. One month later my husband's green card was approved.
But most of the people suffering because of this situation have no political voice in this country. This probably explains why so many bureaucrats and lawmakers don't take the issue seriously.
Many immigrants take low-paying jobs Americans refuse. They drive our taxis, build our houses, weed our gardens, serve our fast-food breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Without them, the service industries, the backbone of America's economy right now, would collapse. They deserve better than this, and so do we.
Helen Epstein teaches and writes on health subjects.