Thursday, March 17, 2016

Mind-boggling incompetence at DHS sends permanent residency green cards to people who didn’t apply for them

By Thomas Lifson

The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General John Roth has issued a report that, in any private sector company, would have people fired, but in government will probably only see budgets increased. You see, the people in charge of keeping out terrorists who have proclaimed their intention to infiltrate us and destroy us with weapons of mass destruction have been sending permanent residency cards out to the wrong addresses. Even to people who have filed change-of-address forms. And the inauguration of a new computer system to handle the process in 2012 made the problem worse. 
 
Joe Davidson of the Washington Post’s Federal Insider column, is appropriately outraged:
...when the government sends cards to the wrong address, it’s a big problem for those who should have them but don’t and for government officials who wince at the thought of the cards in the wrong hands.
Now comes word that since U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) installed its Electronic Immigration System (ELIS) in 2012, the number of cards going to the wrong places has only increased.
By how much, no one seems to know.
In this age of terror, this can be more serious than an employee working without proper papers.
And officials are not exactly on top of the problem:
…officials acknowledge there is “no accurate means of identifying the exact number of potentially hundreds of cards sent to incorrect addresses for cases processed in ELIS.”
As seems to be the case repeatedly in government lately, the blame goes to the computer systems, as if they are beyond the control of chief information officers.

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