Washington: The Obama administration has announced that it is going to use cutting-edge technologies to revamp the entire US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), so that paperwork and backlog are reduced and to bring in more transparency into the system.
US President Barack Obama told a select bi-partisan group of Congressmen that such a system would be in place in the next 90 days, in which the USCIS will launch a vastly improved website.
This is likely to help thousands of Indian-Americans every year who apply for permanent residency or Green Card, or approach USCIS for various immigration issues, but have to experience an agonising wait.
Such a website, he said will, for the first time ever, allows applicants to get updates on their status of their applications via e-mail and text message and online, Obama said in his remarks before a group of Congressmen whom he had invited to discuss immigration system.
"Anybody who's dealt with families who are trying to deal with -- navigate the immigration system, this is going to save them huge amounts of time standing in line, waiting around, making phone calls, being put on hold," Obama said.
It is an example of some things that we can do administratively even as we are working through difficult issues surrounding comprehensive immigration, he said.
Acknowledging that a comprehensive immigration reform might take time because of the issues involved, Obama said his administration has taken several interim measures.
"The FBI has cleared much of the backlog of immigration background checks that was really holding up the legal immigration process. DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is already in the process of cracking down on unscrupulous employers, and, in collaboration with the Department of Labor, working to protect those workers from exploitation," he said.
The department has also been making good progress in speeding up the processing of citizenship petitions, which has been far too slow for far too long, he said.
Referring the nearly 12 million undocumented workers in the US, who are not paying taxes and are living in the shadows, Obama said this group have to deal with in a practical, common-sense way.
"I think the American people are ready for us to do so. But it's going to require some heavy lifting, it's going to require a victory of practicality and common sense and good policymaking over short-term politics. That's what I'm committed to doing as President," Obama said.