Given the nationwide tension behind immigration reform, many people may not agree with this statement, but it is time for budget cuts within the U.S. Immigration Services sector.
On June 22, the AP broke what should be a significant story to very little attention; most media outlets simply reprinted the brief report. “CSC gets $25M gov’t records task order,” read the headline. The $25 million order allows CSC to perform scanning, indexing, and records management for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Good for them right? Well not really. Further investigation shows that CSC — Computer Sciences Corporation — has a long history of “winning” government contracts. Yet the disastrous state of the immigration system suggests that we’re not getting what we pay for.
According to the company timeline, starting in May of 1961 with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory contract, CSC has won billions in government contracts, including services for every U.S. Armed Forces division, NASA, the IRS, and major airports; Medi-Cal and Medicare claims processing; and even processing claims when natural disasters strike. In cases where CSC has not won the contracts, CSC often buys the companies that do, like DynCorp, which they acquired in March of 2003.
Through DynCorp, CSC was able to profit from a $50 million contract to support law enforcement functions in Iraq and a $200 million contract extension from the U.S. Postal services. With every awarded contract, CSC’s goal is eerily similar: to modernize the respected agencies technology capabilities with innovative concepts such as outsourcing so they can focus on their tasks. So what, this is America and we reward innovation, right? And what does it have to do with immigration reform?
What happened to rewarding competition? CSC has long had been profiting from contracts with divisions of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USCIS.
