The Senate Hearings on Immigration resumed last week Wednesday after a month's break with the testimony from the current Immigration Director, Diana Locke. The Senate Select Committee wanted to hear from her what changes have been implemented at the department to ensure that there can be no more systematic abuses - the kind which pertained during the Audit Period of 2011 to 2013.
Well, they called her back today for a second session, and they questioned for an additional 3 hours about what Immigration looks like today. It was mostly housekeeping, but some of it was very important. That's because the hope is that the changes will prevent visa foils from being stolen like they were in December 2012. There is a new scanning protocol to create a searchable archive of all new passport applications that come to the department. This will make it harder for files to mysteriously disappear, like the infamous Won Hong Kim application.
Here's how the Immigration Director described them:
Diana Locke - Director of Immigration
"Each of the stations have been issued with - within the last year - have been issued with safes. So, all the stickers are currently stored in safes. I think that there is a small portion that is released on a daily basis by each of the port commanders for use, and those are collected back in the evenings. And they are stored again in the safe. So, each of the stations have been outfitted with safes. As I indicated earlier, there is a system where the visas must be reported to the finance officer. She is required to do the checks, and I think those have been done, because, as far as I am aware, she has not released any stickers unless a report has been filed, and reconciled. The same occurs with the missions overseas. They're supposed to send us monthly reports. They are not very consistent, but they do come, and they must come if the stickers are to be replenished."
Hon. Aldo Salazar - Chairman, Senate Select Committee
"I don't want to cast any aspersions, but I think based on what I have seen, for myself, I am convinced that there was some significant level of participation in what was happening, by actual immigration personnel. Can you speak to whether anything was done in relation to the people who were there at the time? Or, is that something that you will not be able to do?"
Diana Locke
"I don't have details. I do know that there were a couple of officers that may have appeared in front of the Commission, but I have no information on that. The department has begun to scan the completed passport applications. I think that effort started, I was told, in mid-2013. We have found that it has not been as accurate as we would have hoped, but we continue - now, we continue to ensure that we scan. In scanning those records, we keep them in a database where if that applicant comes back, and they need to present us with any documents to renew a passport, we're in a position to search that database to see what was presented, if anything has changed. And so, we're making efforts to do that for all new applications that come to the department. It's a little bit of an inconvenience for the public because sometimes, we ask for them to bring back certain documents for us, so that we can have that record, but it's for their own safety."
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