Excitement About Work Permit Order May Be Premature
Recently there have been serious rumors spreading that the Obama Administration plans on making strong moves towards immigration reform based on a new federal contract proposal that suggests the purchase of enough materials to produce as many as 34 million work permits and residency cards over the next five years. Further implications from this suggest that the Obama Administration is preparing for an increase in work permit applications from illegal immigrants living in the United States. The new contract for at least 5 million cards a year would give the White House enough flexibility to issue more permits seeing as this is 2 million more than the current status quo on annual work permits.
Obama announced earlier this year that if Congress didn’t pass immigration legislation, he would act on his own. Unfortunately after postponing any action not once but twice, Obama announced that he would hold off on all executive actions regarding immigration until after November’s midterm elections. This is expected seeing as the President has no actual legal authority in unilaterally offering illegal immigrations green cards or any other permanent residency status. However, the President does have the right to authorize protection from deportation on a case-by-case basis.
The mistake here is that the estimates of supplies requested by the USCIS led many to believe that President Obama planned to allow more than 30 million immigrants to enter the United States in the near future. What people chose to ignore is that rather the government was merely seeking a vendor who could supply that number of card blanks (for both newly issued cards and replacements of existing cards) over a span of several years. The spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Bob Dane, had this to say:
“There aren’t enough federal employees from here to Pluto to do adequate background checks on 34 million.” He added, “It’s another petulant display of contempt of Congress.”
The USCIS bid request was not issued by President Obama via executive order, nor did it make any mention of social security cards. The numbers frequently cited in references to this bid state the maximum materials that a successful bidder must have the potential to manufacture, but those estimates in no way reflect the actual number of documents USCIS expects to issue.
Regardless of the nature of these pressing news, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Leon Rodriguez publicly stated earlier this week that his agency was ready for whatever immigration changes Obama may announce.
If you have any questions, please contact the team here at Buda Law Group and get a free consultation regarding any of your immigration needs.
Thank You,
John B. Buda, Esq.
www.budalawgroup.net office: 310-452-1872 john.buda@budalawgroup.net 3301 Ocean Park Blvd. Suite 205 Santa Monica, CA 90405