White House Report on Modernizing Immigration System
The White House has come out with a new report entitled “Modernizing and Streamlining Our Legal Immigration System for the 21st Century.” It’s a full 48 pages, counting the appendices.
Broadly speaking, the report recommends “modernizing our system for efficiency and accessibility,” “streamlining our legal immigration system,” and “strengthening our humanitarian system.”
The modernizing suggestions seem like no brainers. Here are just two:
- Create a cross-agency digital services team to support the implementation of the modernized immigrant visa project, which is aimed at improving the visa applicant experience and increasing efficiencies in the adjudication process through digitization
- Convene a communications task force to create clearer, plain-language instructions
In terms of “streamlining,” things get a into territory that’s less straightforward. I’m not sure that these suggestions are about streamlining at all but rather policy choices the correctness of which are subject to debate. Case in point:
- Improve integrity and increase the minimum investment for immigrant investor visas
Finally, in terms of our humanitarian system, one suggestion highlighted an area of concern that was new to me (and certainly seems like the right thing to do):
- Allow certain family members of Filipino veterans, who are currently in the family immigration backlogs, to seek parole so they can care for these aging veterans
I have to note that Wired magazine covers the “modernizing” prong in a beautifully titled article: How Better Tech Can Make the Immigration Process Suck Less. A lofty goal, indeed.
-KitJ