A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just 1 is online
*One billion dollars, ten years, one form digitized. In May of 2014 The Financial Times reported: “There are an estimated 4.4 million people on waiting lists to qualify for family-based or employment visas to enter the U.S., with waiting times ranging on average from five years to 20 years.” VL
By Jerry Markon, The Washington Post
Heaving under mountains of paperwork, the government has spent more than $1 billion trying to replace its antiquated approach to managing immigration with a system of digitized records, online applications and a full suite of nearly 100 electronic forms.
A decade in, all that officials have to show for the 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.
[pullquote]Only three of the agency’s scores of immigration forms have been digitized — and two of these were taken offline after they debuted because nearly all of the software and hardware from the original system had to be junked.[/pullquote]This project, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 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, according to documents and interviews with former and current federal officials.
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[Photo by U.S. Pacific FleetFlickr]
