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• Permanently authorize and make mandatory E-Verify; and • End parole abuse by legislating specific parole standards.

USCIS should make it clear that where no court jurisdiction exists, it will not honor court decisions that seek to undermine regulatory and subregulatory efforts. Finally, USCIS still requires access to all relevant national security and law enforcement databases in the same vein as any other agency in the intelligence space. This is a key concept that should be addressed as USCIS is returned to functioning primarily as a vetting agency.

Budget

USCIS is primarily fee-funded, operating on revenue derived by those who are seeking immigration benefits, work permits, and naturalization. The total agency budget requested for fiscal year (FY) 2023, including both fees and a small appropriation, is slightly less than $6 billion.’ The bulk of funds are derived from application fees through the Immigrant Examinations Fee Account. As a general principle, adjudication of applications and petitions should be paid by applicants, not American taxpayers. It is critical that any changes in the budget, even in the wake of a realigned agency combined with ICE and CBP, should retain a fee-funded model.

Given the Obama and Biden Administrations’ lack of will, fees should be increased agencywide to keep in step with inflation and the true cost of the adjudications. The incoming Administration should immediately submit a fee rule that reflects such an increase. Aside from an increase in all fees, the rule should drastically limit the availability for fee waivers and should implement a fee for asylum applications. Additionally, Congress should allow for a 10 percent acrossthe-board increase in all fees for all fee rules to account for the fact that new fee rules always lag behind budget requirements.

USCIS should strive to increase opportunities for premium processing, a benefit by which applicants can expedite their processing times. While this places time burdens on adjudicators, it provides an opportunity for a significant influx of money into the agency, which is not currently available. While simply raising fees to the necessary levels to make the agency run efficiently would be preferable, without the need for expanded premium processing, this short-term measure should be utilized, particularly if longer-term fee rules are unsuccessful.

At least until USCIS is caught up on all case backlogs, all applicants rejected for any benefit or status adjudication should be required to leave the U.S. immediately. Ordinary process can resume once all case backlogs have been adjudicated.

Finally, USCIS should pause the intake of applications in a benefit category when backlogs in that category become excessive. Once USCIS adjudicators can decrease that caseload to a manageable number, application intake should resume.