EDITORIAL: Streamlining can help cut immigration case backlog

We have long insisted that a contributing factor in the high number of foreign residents living here illegally is the lack of confidence in a legal immigration process that is too long and cumbersome, too expensive and too uncertain. Improve the process and improve faith in the system, and it likely will improve participation and reduce clandestine entry.

Apparently, our Homeland Security Department is taking steps in that direction. DHS, which oversees our immigration and border protection agencies, has announced several steps to streamline the process and improve service.

We welcome the efforts.

One of the primary changes includes expediting the refugee process and giving priority to families arriving together. In many cases the families will be interviewed and evaluated together rather than individually. This not only will speed up the process by reducing paperwork and the number of hearings, but it should help keep families together. Hundreds of children who have been separated from their families in recent years remain in limbo as DHS offices has lost track of parents and other relatives.

The changes also will expand on the use of remote conferencing that was implemented during the Trump administration. In addition to video-based hearings with immigration judges, the technology also will be used for initial interviews with visa applicants and the administration of citizenship oaths. It also has been suggested that Immigration and Citizenship Services employees could be authorized to administer those oaths instead of relying on federal judges, although immigration advocates a judge is more appropriate for such an important life-changing event.

The agency also is promoting greater use of online filing of immigration documents in order to reduce paperwork and processing times.

These improvements also should reduce costs at an agency whose latest effort to raise application fees by 20% was blocked in federal court. CIS’ plans for enhanced performance including using those savings to waive fees for more immigrants who have valid cases but can’t afford the application fees.

Advocates have expressed concerns that some of these changes, especially prioritizing some groups over others, will create further delays for some immigrants who already have been waiting years for their applications to be processed. Wait times for citizenship applications during the Trump years reportedly grew by four months over the last year of the Obama administration.

It is hoped, however, that the improvements can help shorten processing times for all applicants, and any effort to achieve that goal should be considered. We have long likened immigrants’ decision to bypass the legal application system to a person waiting at a traffic light that just won’t change. At some point the driver decides to just go through the red light — defying the law, but seeing no other reasonable alternative.

All of these efforts might not work, but we welcome the willingness to at least try to improve a system that has been broken far too severely, and for far too long.