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The Trucker News Services

10/21/2014

In its first public response after Breitbart News reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is quietly preparing the capacity to issue more than double its baseline number of green cards and employment permits, a USCIS spokesman said such preparation is routine and that a spike in immigration applications could arise for any number of reasons.

Solicitations of this nature are frequent practice for all USCIS contracts and allow the agency to be prepared for fluctuations in the number of immigration applications received, which can arise for any number of reasons, Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for USCIS said in a statement.

At issue is a solicitation for materials to print as many as 34,000,000 IDs over the next five years. The request for proposals says vendors must be capable of handling a surge of five million IDs in one year to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements.

Republicans have denounced the draft proposal, saying it shows the Obama administration is already beginning to implement a broad executive amnesty that President Obama has said he is planning for after the midterm elections.

The USCIS statement includes two examples of previous USCIS contracts that included options to increase capacity, one for security support services, the other for records operations support services.

It's not unheard of for federal agencies to plan for contingencies, but the request specifically explains that the surge is related to potential changes in immigration policy.

The Contractor shall demonstrate the capability to support potential 'surge' in PRC and EAD card demand for up to 9M cards during the initial period of performance to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements, the document says.

A year ago, such a plan might have been attributed to a forthcoming immigration bill. Now, following the summer's border crisis, the chances of such a new law are extremely low, giving additional credence to the possibility the move is in preparation for an executive amnesty by Obama.

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USCIS responds to reports over 'surge' in immigrant IDs