Share
Trump, Stephen Miller Aim to Close International Immigration Offices
L. Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told staff in an email March 12, 2019 that the agency hopes to close all of its overseas offices.
The Trump administration is preparing to shutter all international offices of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a move that could slow the processing of family visa applications, foreign adoptions and citizenship petitions from members of the military stationed abroad.... the agency would move to close its international field offices in coming months....
The shift will ripple to offices in New Delhi, Port-au-Prince in Haiti, Rome and numerous other foreign cities where the agency has offices that handle emergencies, smooth backlogs in immigration petitions and provide direct information in foreign languages.
USCIS international offices also investigate fraud, aid asylees and refugees, and provide public information in local foreign languages.
....another Trump administration effort to discourage foreigners from attempting to come to the United States.... “It is a pullback from the international presence of USCIS,” said León Rodríguez, a USCIS director during the Obama administration. “It’s in keeping with this isolationist bent that this administration has had more broadly.”
We wrote about Cissna TWO YEARS AGO. Cissna is one of the leading critics of existing immigration and humanitarian programs. He is Trump’s director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services which handles applications for visas, refugee status and citizenship.
From 2015 until earlier this year, Cissna worked for Grassley on immigration issues. While there, he drafted dozens of letters under the senator’s name to Homeland Security officials, helping Grassley, an Iowa Republican, to intensify his oversight of immigration and creating a blueprint for dismantling President Obama’s initiatives...
Cissna was unusually prolific.... the agency found the letters to be especially hostile. “They became these very detailed, almost derogatory letters with knowledge about agencies that an ordinary Hill staffer wouldn’t know about,” said a former Homeland Security official. The Grassley letters written during Cissna’s tenure “exhibit an overall anti-immigrant view,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell who reviewed them at ProPublica’s request. “They seem to think that immigrants are only causing harm to the United States as opposed to giving it a more nuanced view..."
Be Smart about Cissna. He is an expert on and one of the strongest opponents of immigration and humitarian efforts and his impact will be terrible. Actively Dissent.
Sources:
http://smartdissent.com/article/be-smart-about-lee-cissna-set-dismantle-immigration