Statement For the Record of the Hearing Titled “Oversight of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services”

Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC writes to express our strong concern over many of the activities of the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), in particular, the slowdown of processing of adjustment of status applications and naturalization applications; the shift in activities related to immigration enforcement and the misuse of funding resulting in its budget shortfall.

Taken collectively, USCIS’s delays in processing green card and naturalization applications and its effort to instead focus on immigration enforcement through denials, referrals to ICE and denaturalization are part of a plan by this administration rooted in white nationalism that seeks to reduce and slow the number of people of color who immigrate to the U.S., acquire status or naturalize. These changes are not coincidental but rather part of a cohesive set of policy changes that include but are not limited to the Muslim, African and refugee and eventual full immigration ban, devastation of our asylum legal system, mass incarceration and the brutal separation of children from their parents families at our border, immigration raids and mass prosecution of immigrants that we are witnessing throughout our immigration system.