2.5 Million Immigration Applications vs. Unhappy Processors
Immigration Contractor Trims Wages
Workers who help process millions of visa and citizenship applications for a federal immigration agency are getting pay reductions just as the agency is facing an enormous surge in those applications.
The workers whose wage rate will be cut are contract employees in document processing centers in St. Albans, Vt., and Laguna Niguel, Calif., that are part of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for deciding visa applications and citizenship petitions. Some 280 of approximately 1,000 contract workers in the two centers will receive lower wages after a new contractor, Stanley Inc. of Arlington, Va., takes over tomorrow.
“If you’re trying to get people motivated to deal with a huge backlog, the last thing you would do is slash pay,” said Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, who received many calls. “It just creates more turnover, more discontent and more demoralization.”
Stanley announced Sept. 24 that it had won a $225 million, three-year contract for clerical work at the two immigration centers.
The new contract is based on performance and does not specify how many workers Stanley should hire. But Stanley is required to pay according to federal regulations that classify jobs and set their hourly wages.
Eric Wolking, senior vice president at Stanley, said that none of the competing companies received information during the bidding about wage levels of the current employees. Stanley only became aware of the mismatch between its proposal and current wages when managers began interviewing the workers, he said.
- employees weekly income will drop tomorrow by 12 to 20 percent.
- starting Monday, a worker making $14.54 an hour, said, he will make $12.84 an hour and will no longer be able to work overtime. He will lose as much as $400 a month.
- federal employees were not affected by the contractor wage changes.
Bids for any government contract are supposed to be scrutinized by government oversight. Of course, government oversight has been sorely lacking for too long. Knowledge of the contract is the responsibility of the bidder and government monitors. To learn wage scales after the fact.
Eric Wolking, senior vice president at Stanley, said that none of the competing companies received information during the bidding about wage levels of the current employees. “When we submitted our bid, we did not know what they know about the wage scale,” said Mr. Wolking, referring to Citizenship and Immigration Services.
This is just one more example of contractor bidding breakdown that impacts Taxpayers. Not all Taxpayers are American, after all. Anyone who does business in the USA or receives a wage in the USA is subject to taxes. The majority of non-Americans pay those taxes. Sadly, some illegal workers must use someone else’s Social Security number or Taxpayer ID number. This inevitably includes identity theft.
The slower the Immigration Processors move, the longer some aliens must use stolen taxpayer ID numbers. The longer this happens, our own identities are vulnerable. Why do you think the headlines shout about compromised personal data from banks, credit companies, and the government itself? Some of those numbers are being used to steal money. Most of those numbers are sold to illegals who want to work in America.
Personally, I just want to collect my meager social security check and go hide in a hole somewhere. There is something very wrong with how this government does business. I’ll be lucky if I ever get a Social Security check at all …
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Today tuesday the 4th, the whole democracy now hr has Lou Dobbs on live..answering Amy Goodmans and Juan Gonzalez’s questions and they bust him BIG TIME with the truth. He gets pretty defensive. Its a video stream worth watching ..really ! you can find on democracynow.org. Or watch it on linktv or Freespeech TV if you get those stations. The website though has a video stream that one can even see on dial up. It appears Mr Dobbs is not a very good fact checker on the Realities of Immagration. It is good to see him called out - I guess 60 mins tried to do it awhile back. Dobbs has become such an exploiter. His audiance is frighteningly large.
We need to fund immagration services..pronto, not be on a conquest in Iraq ! And BK and others don’t worry , social security will be there. I collect it now, and feel awful to think that many fear it will not be there. IT WILL. We the people will insist on that much. Yes the Friedmanites would like to privitize it and the post office for that matter AND - THAT will never happen !
AS for the post.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:34 am
This private contracting of Governmental functions - must cease ! In the end, the only people that benefit are the share holders of these private companies..a sm. percent of the people. That wage for these workers is too too low. We need to rebuild our civil service sector, reward all college students who go to work in it , and get the dignity and professionalism back into working in the public sector. And all the howling about Immagration , Thanks for this post, it shows once again the country is trying to solve its most pressing issues on the cheap and who suffers.?..the workers, the infastructure of the country and WE the people. Most people do not mind taxes when they get good services back. Right now all we have is money spent and a subtraction from the general welfare of the country.