If USCIS Can't Count H1Bs, How Is It Going to Run an Amnesty?

By David North on April 8, 2014

In the Third World it takes days, maybe weeks, to count ballots – witness the Afghan elections – something advanced democracies can do in a matter of hours for nationwide contests.

This is not to put down Afghan election officials who, after all, have not had much practice.

But it does remind me that sometimes U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) seems like a Third World institution.

The opening-and-closing day for the filing of H-1B petitions was on April 1, just as election days in most of the world are one-day-only affairs. A few hours after the polls close in the First World the voters know who won, and how many votes were cast for each candidate, with some minor variables usually worked out later.

But USCIS, according to Computerworld, a full week after the H-1B filing day was still "unable to give a final tally because it was still counting" the petitions. USCIS could only say that more than 85,000 applications had been received (that's the statutory ceiling).

Now, counting ballots is a bit more complex than counting H-1B applications. With the ballots you have to figure out how many votes each candidate received. And usually there are several offices at stake.

With H-1B applications, all you have to do is to enumerate them. Further, there are only two precincts, if you will – the USCIS regional service centers in California and Vermont – not the thousands involved in national elections.

If USCIS is not capable of meeting the meager challenge of simply counting the number of documents it gets in a single day – in this case something on the order of 100,000 or so – how can it possibly manage decision-making for millions of illegal aliens, many with questionable documentation?

That would be its challenge were we to experience a massive amnesty, as proposed by the administration and passed by the Senate.

Maybe USCIS should seek technical assistance from those Afghan election officials.