Lori Scialabba is the standing director of the US Citizenship and Immigration services.
The website to learn about this department is https://www.uscis.gov. The page looks very boring, BUT the USCIS is one of the most relevant services of this year so far.
The USCIS has been up and running since March 1, 2003 after the Immigration and Naturalization Service was broken up by a federal bill in 2002. It was created to legally handle all immigration to the United States.
What do they do?
- Deem eligibility for citizenship, take in all requests for citizenship, and handle the Oath ceremonies that each person applying for citizenship has to take.
- They make it possible to reunite families to allow close family members to come work here in the US.
- The USCIS handles work permits here too that might eventually lead to citizenship.
- and MY FAVORITE (!!!), they give protection and humanitarian programs to people living in war-torn areas or places where they had to flee to avoid death or torture by their home countries.
- They allow adoptions to happen! Think of all the kids who now have a home... ahhh.
- They help new citizens with "civic integration" to help their transition into American culture as easy as possible.
- Their website also says "Genealogy" but I think that with Trump in office, they're more focused on righting his wrongs at the moment than figuring out if your great-great-great-great grandfather was on the Mayflower.
The USCIS helps to reduce market failures because they insure that there is competition in the workforce, adding over 400 thousand legal immigrants each year. They also try to make sure that as many immigrants that come into the US are legal and are contributing to the system through working and paying taxes so that they are able to benefit from our governmental system as well. .
With Trump passing new immigration laws, the USCIS is more important than ever. They now have to place restrictions on immigrants from certain countries from coming into the United States. This travel ban is likely to have a huge impact on the tourism sector of the US economy as well because even countries that aren't banned are not travelling to the United States. There's even a push from some Canadians to boycott US travel until Trump is out of office, stating, "The Grand Canyon will still be there," (Harpez).
Bibliography
Harpez, Beth. "Tourism Industry Debating Impact of Trump Travel Ban." The Denver Post. N.p., 09 Feb. 2017. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.
"Obama Citizen & Immigration Services: Citizenship Is Means to Combat Terrorism at Home." The Washington Standard. N.p., 05 Aug. 2015. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.
"US Legal Immigration — Image of the Day." Future Economics. N.p., 11 June 2016. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.