The head of the US federal agency that grants citizenship and immigration benefits on Friday said that he had a message for anyone who considers his new mission statement anti-immigrant: “A thousand times no.”
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Lee Francis Cissna told the Associated Press he cut a reference to the US being a “nation of immigrants” from the agency’s mission statement, because a “bureaucratic” document was the wrong platform to say so.
He said the country is indisputably a nation of immigrants.
The agency’s mission statement is “not something where you put eternal professions of American values. That sort of thing belongs chiseled in the wall of a monument, not in some bureaucratic mission statement,” he said.
Cissna said he was surprised by criticism after announcing the change on Thursday to his 18,000 employees. The White House had no involvement, he added.
“This was all inside my head,” Cissna said.
Cissna, who became director on Oct. 1 last year after 12 years in various positions at the parent US Department of Homeland Security, said he proposed a complete rewrite of the mission statement with senior agency leaders and union officials at a meeting that month.
It was widely discussed in the agency over several months.
The old statement read: “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.”
The new statement reads: “US 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.”
Cissna said it was important to add “protecting Americans,” because that is why the department was created in 2003 after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
“What I hope will happen is that people will better understand what it is we do and who it is we truly serve, namely the American people,” he said. “I think that was lost for a little while.”
He also told employees to stop calling applicants “customers.”
In his message to them on Thursday, he wrote: “Use of the term leads to the erroneous belief that applicants and petitioners, rather than the American people, are whom we ultimately serve. All applicants and petitioners should, of course, always be treated with the greatest respect and courtesy, but we can’t forget that we serve the American people.”
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