America is no longer a “nation of immigrants.”
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services scrubbed that phrase from its mission statement late Thursday and now refers to itself as administering “the nation’s lawful immigration system.”
The agency that controls the nation’s citizenships, green cards and visas also updated its statement to say it’s tasked with “safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”
In a letter to employees, USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna said the sweeping changes create a “straightforward statement (that) clearly defines the agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system and the commitment we have to the American people.”
Cissna — who was appointed under the Trump administration — told staff in an email that the revision was made to “guide us in the years ahead,” the Washington Examiner reported.
USCIS’s original mission 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.”
Cissna said the word “customers” was also nixed as “a reminder we are always working for the American people,” according to his letter.
“We answer to the American people who look to us to ensure people who are eligible for immigration benefits receive them and those who are not eligible — either because they don’t qualify or because they attempt to qualify by fraud — don’t receive them, and those who would do us harm are not granted immigration benefits,” he said.
León Rodríguez, who led USCIS from 2014 to 2017, called the mission statement update a “particularly sad turn of history.”
“We should not forget that under the discarded mission statement, the integrity and national security functions of USCIS grew — dramatically so — showing that we could be both a welcoming nation and a safe one,” Rodríguez told the Times. “We should stop to reflect about the many opportunities that America will lose because of the attitudes reflected in this statement, and ask ourselves whether this is really the country we want to be.”