Another barrier to immigration reform

If immigration reform is going to work, then the U.S. government must have a sophisticated computer system to keep track of everyone and to avoid the massive backlog currently in evidence. It’s depressing to read in the Washington Post, therefore, that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials themselves say their computer system is totally inadequate even for the current workload.

A report released Dec. 20 by Homeland Security Inspector General Richard L. Skinner cited a long list of setbacks and concurred with internal USCIS reviews that the bureau "lacks the processing capacity, systems integration and project management resources needed to manage a potential increase in workloads."

A project to replace the nationwide computer network has been halted because the agency lacks $72 million to complete it. A staff reorganization was frozen because of deficiencies "that hinder day-to-day IT operations," according to the report.

This is one of many reasons it will be tempting for Democrats to avoid the issue. Immigration policy is so broken, and has been so neglected, that only a politically risky, Herculean effort can really begin to fix it.