WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. government agency could struggle to process millions of undocumented immigrants who may apply for legal protection under President Barack Obama's recent announcements on immigration, a Senate committee was told on Wednesday.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles immigrant visa and naturalization petitions, could be overwhelmed by the surge in workload later this year even if it hires an additional 1,000 workers as planned, Luke Bellocchi, a former deputy ombudsman to the agency, said in prepared testimony.
Bellocchi said USCIS is expected to receive 4.5 million addition applications in the coming months.
As the key agency charged with Obama's November order to lift the threat of deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants, USCIS is at the heart of a congressional battle over whether Obama's policies should be carried out.
Congressional Republicans say Obama has overstepped his constitutional bounds and are trying to pass legislation to block funding for his immigration policies but Democrats in the Senate on Tuesday derailed the Republican effort. As the legislative battle continues, funding for the entire Department of Homeland Security, of which USCIS is a part, runs out at the end of February.
Bellocchi, who is also a former assistant commissioner for customs and border protection at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that Obama's orders would unleash an unprecedented increase in applications submitted at any one time to USCIS. Some applications would start coming in later this month and others in the spring, he said.
"The administration has informed this committee that it plans to hire 1,000 new workers" to process the applications, Bellocchi said, but "questions immediately surface whether this number will be sufficient without creating extreme backlogs."
He said new workers would have to process and adjudicate 4,500 applications each during the six-month target period.
"Including weekends, that would mean 25 to 27 applications per day for 1,000 adjudicators," Bellocchi, who is now an immigration attorney in the private sector, told the committee.
USCIS has roughly 13,000 full-time officers and 5,000 contractors and they handle most applications on paper, Bellocchi said.
The Senate hearing was called by committee Chairman Ron Johnson, a Republican, to answer questions about the logistical, financial and national security implications of Obama's immigration orders.
Obama and Democrats are demanding Congress pass a Department of Homeland Security funding bill devoid of immigration restrictions, citing heightened terrorist threats.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Bill Trott)
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