Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

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SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D-NY): Well, thank you. And first, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for having these hearings which are very important.

And appreciate Secretary Chertoff being here.

First, I'd like to start off with some questions on border security. As a New Yorker, as an American, I have an unshakable commitment to securing our country from those who want to harm us. However, when it comes to border security, as you know, Mr. Secretary, I've some time differed with DHS on the best way to achieve the goal.

First, I want to thank the department for their little-noticed but important regulation that said that they were going to comply with the law that Senator Leahy and others put into effect to delay the passports until 2009. And I just want to say that I appreciate Secretary Chertoff, your efforts to work with New York state to develop and enhanced driver's license that can be used instead of passports to cross land borders in Canada. I think the enhanced licenses, building on real ID, something I've always supported, is a very good alternative that gives us both security but makes commerce easier. If they're done right, they can assure both.

And I want to tell you, I've spoken to Governor Paterson. I know we had had meetings that I had set up between you and Governor Spitzer, which myself, Senator Clinton, Congressmen Reynolds and Slaughter attended. And now we have Governor Paterson, and I know he fully supports the development of enhanced licenses. I understand the process going well from your department and from New York state's point of view. New York has submitted a business plan for your department's approval. The goal is rolling out the new licenses statewide by the late summer and focusing on the border areas first -- Buffalo, Watertown, Plattsburgh, places that really have the need.

So to move forward, New York's going to need a timely response to their proposed plan. When can you commit to giving a response to New York's business plan for enhanced driver's licenses?

SEC. CHERTOFF: I can't give you a precise date. We will do it promptly, because, you know, we acknowledge we approved the state of Washington, and they've actually begun the process of issuing them. They've issued 6,500.

SEN. SCHUMER: Right.

SEC. CHERTOFF: So we'll do it as fast as we can.

SEN. SCHUMER: Do you think within the next month we can get an answer?

SEC. CHERTOFF: I --

SEN. SCHUMER: Our goal is to get this going before 2009.

SEC. CHERTOFF: I believe the answer to that is yes. I'm going to have to verify that.

SEN. SCHUMER: Okay. If you could verify, but I'll take it as a tentative yes which I appreciate.

SEC. CHERTOFF: I'd certainly like to do it in the next month.

SEN. SCHUMER: Right.

SEC. CHERTOFF: There's no reason we shouldn't be able to.

SEN. SCHUMER: Okay. Now, if you have concerns with New York's plan, will you commit to working cooperatively and productively with New York to resolve concerns rather than sending us back to square one?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Oh, no, absolutely. We want this. We think this is a good thing. There's a unity of interest here.

SEN. SCHUMER: Okay. And will you commit to just doing whatever you can so that we can start issuing the licenses, as we hoped, by the end of the summer?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Absolutely.

SEN. SCHUMER: Great, okay. And do you agree with me that enhanced driver licenses, if done right, will be just as secure for border crossings as passport crossings?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Absolutely, for land border.

SEN. SCHUMER: This is a very good interchange. We don't have so many of those these days. (Laughs.) So wouldn't it make more sense right now for DHS to focus limited resources on driver's licenses? It provides better security and efficiency as opposed to a new rule that requires birth certificates at the border, which, in the past, you had even said was not the best way to go about doing this.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Here's the problem. The problem is that I believe that next June, not every state's going to want to do the license. I think by next June we can easily be in a position to meet the requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. The problem I have is that I've got to deal with the period of time between now and next June. And as I said in the opening statement, just a couple of weeks ago we found a guy coming through Buffalo trying to make an oral declaration, discovered that that wasn't going to work anymore, got pulled into secondary, and we discovered he was masquerading as an American citizen. He had been rejected coming into the country in Mexico. He had been previously removed.

So I'm trying to plug a gap now, in the interim between where we sit and June 2009. But I very much want to see us in June 2009 with a enhanced driver's license. For any state that will do it, we'd be happy to do.

SEN. SCHUMER: Right. And New York does; Washington does.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Right.

SEN. SCHUMER: I mean, the worry here is this summer, when the traffic over the borders increases. You have all kinds of vacationers. We in New York State expect a lot of Canadians coming, given the values of the dollar, to help our tourist season. And we're worried that if they think it's going to be very onerous -- so far it hasn't been.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Right.

SEN. SCHUMER: And when they say they don't have a birth certificate, you just give them a warning.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Well, the Canadians are -- I mean, we've had to get their attention, too. But the Canadians are now putting money into their budget for increased distribution of Nexus cards, which I know you know is also acceptable.

SEN. SCHUMER: That's fine. Yup.

SEC. CHERTOFF: So I -- we're working through the process. But we are -- we do have to deal with an existing gap.

SEN. SCHUMER: I would just urge you to focus fully on drivers' licenses. The birth certificates, in my judgment, is going to be a dead end.

Anyway, let me go to something else, which is citizenship backlogs, which I know the chairman and Senator Kennedy have asked questions about. I just have a few more because, as you know, we received a letter from CIS which explained the status of naturalization applications pending with CIS.

The letter states, quote, "Historically, there have been increased filings in advance of fee increases, presidential elections, immigration debates, and new legislation." Now, given that DHS is aware of trends in application filings, how is DHS credible in saying it couldn't have anticipated a major surge in applications in 2007, where we saw a fee increase, the start of a presidential campaign, and a national immigration debate all at once?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Well, I would say if you go back historically, there was in 1999 -- which was the last major increase -- there was a bump-up of about 30 percent. It was the magnitude. The bump-up here was over 100 percent. So that was one. I think the magnitude startled everybody.

But the larger problem is this: In order to deal with the mass of people, you need to hire adjudicators and people to deal with the work.

SEN. SCHUMER: Yes.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Until you get the fee increased, you can't hire them, because you can't hire people if you don't pay them. And then once we got the fee increase, we began to hire, but they still have to be trained.

So inevitably, there is a -- some lag that occurs until you get the money in the pipeline that you --

SEN. SCHUMER: Let me interrupt you here for a minute, because my time is running out.

I understand the training. I would like to see even a sort of program where, out of the general fund, people could be hired in anticipation of the fees coming in, because we can't wait. But let's just talk about the training.

Last year, as you know, I pushed CIS -- I pushed to have CIS get authority to re-hire retired workers, because they don't have to be trained -- they've been doing this for years and, often, decades, very well -- to help address the backlog. That was in December.

I regret to say it's now April, and not one has been hired. We called in the former head of CIS, who had very poor -- he's no longer there. He resigned the same day we talked to him, although he didn't tell us that he was resigning. But he had very poor answers in terms of contacting people. There are 700 people that they've identified. They sent them a letter; there was no follow-up.

These people are invaluable, because some of them would want to get back to work. Now we've made it so that they don't get their pensions cut off or anything by coming back and working, till you can train the new workers. Can you give us some assurances about the retired workers and going all out to hire them as quickly as possible, particularly when have the presidential election coming up soon?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Let me find out. Let me find out about that. I wasn't aware there was a problem re-hiring them. I know that our estimates about the number of people we can process have gotten better. We've had a higher and higher projection, as time has gone on.

Again, as I said earlier, I would like to process as many people as we can, consistent with, obviously, the security. So I'll find out about that.

SEN. SCHUMER: Could you get back to me?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Yeah.

SEN. SCHUMER: Because to not hire one retiree, when I know there are many who want to come work, and they don't need the re-hiring -- that's the -- at least the most immediate answer. And I think the Department's sort of twiddling its thumbs.

SEC. CHERTOFF: I'll find out the answer.

SEN. SCHUMER: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

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