A hostile turn
Citizenship and Immigration Services sends bad message by scrubbing mission statement.
The United States has long taken pride in being a nation of immigrants. Our immigrant heritage has uniquely defined us and made us a better country. The Trump administration has never been comfortable with this simple truth and now has built its xenophobia into the mission statement of the agency that oversees immigration and naturalization efforts.
The mission statement of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had proclaimed: “USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”
But on Thursday, the mission statement was changed.
“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”
L. Francis Cissna, the agency’s director, was particularly irked by the word “customers” in the old mission statement.
“Use of the term leads to the erroneous belief that applicants and petitioners, rather than the American people, are whom we ultimately serve,” Cissna said in an email to agency employees explaining the mission statement change.
That’s absurd. The previous mission statement makes clear that the agency serves current U.S. citizens and residents as well as potential immigrants and those who want to become citizens.
It is a truism that, other than Native Americans and AfricanAmericans brought here in bondage, Americans descend from immigrants. Our nation often has struggled to welcome immigrants, but those once shunned, and their descendants, are responsible for much of this nation’s success.
Just as previous immigrants made the United States better, the immigrants of today and tomorrow can do the same. The proof lies just outside our doors.
One of every four Harris County residents was born in another country. Across Texas, 1 in 6 residents came here from another nation. Texas leaders rightfully boast of our economic and cultural success. That success comes in large part because one of every 10 foreign-born U.S. residents chooses to make Texas home.
A badly worded mission statement will never change the truth that we are a nation of immigrants. But the misguided immigration policies of the administration that underlie the mission statement are a threat to the future of our nation.
It’s crucial that USCIS employees continue to treat immigration and citizenship applicants with the respect they deserve. Those employees also must ensure the proper enforcement of our immigration and naturalization laws. Despite Cissna’s beliefs, those two approaches are not mutually exclusive.
The agency’s true mission is to help this nation fulfill an essence that goes back to our founding.
“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respected stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment,” George Washington said.
Now that’s a mission statement.