U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to seek a vendor to produce as many as 34 million blank work permits and ‘green cards’ – the paperwork that authorizes illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States – as the White House prepares to issue an executive order after the Nov. 4 midterm elections.
According to a draft solicitation published online, the government agency will look for a company that can produce a minimum 4 million cards per year for five years, and 9 million in the early stages.
President Barack Obama has pledged that he will make a move on immigration reform this year. His original timetable called for a decision by the end of the summer.
Republicans have decried the plan as an ‘amnesty’ for millions of illegal immigrants, including hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border this year.
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‘#Not1More’: An immigration activist heckled President Barack Obama on Sunday as he spoke during a campaign event for Democratic Maryland gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown
A draft RFP – a Request For Proposal – is typically published in advance so government contractors can prepare to submit their bids when the final version is published.
The draft came complete with photos of what the finished cards will look like.
Breitbart.com first reported on the planned solicitation.
Obama’s high numbers of illegal immigration ‘removals’ – what used to be called ‘deportation’ – has earned him the nickname ‘deportation president,’ but most of those ejected border-crossers never get to the interior of the U.S.
Still, activists have protested his policies, including some who heckle his speeches. One yelled at him Sunday in the middle of a campaign stump speech supporting Democratic Maryland gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown.
A USCIS official told MailOnline on Monday that the draft was published ‘in case the president makes the move we think he will,’ but added that the agency’s Document Management Division (DMD) is by no means committed to buying the materials.
A second official at the agency said the proposal was drafted as a contingency in case immigration reform legislation passes in Congress, not in anticipation of action from the White House.
Either way, the online draft explains that ‘DMD requires card consumables for the production of USCIS’ Permanent Resident Card (PRC) and Employment Authorization Document (EAD) cards.’
‘These cards and related consumables, when assembled, become highly specialized and secure identification documents.’
And a successful bid, the draft solicitation says, will be able to support a ‘potential “surge” in PRC and EAD card demand for up to 9M (9 million) cards during the initial period of performance to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements.’
Advocates for Mexican and Central American immigrants have lambasted Obama for deporting illegal aliens even though the numbers are down sharply. This Sept. 8 protest in front of the White House featured a crying young boy (left) whose father was deported
Former State Department foreign service officer Jessica Vaughan, now an immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart that the RFP ‘seems to indicate that the president is contemplating an enormous executive action that is even more expansive than the plan that Congress rejected in the ‘Gang of Eight’ bill.’
That legislation, which passed in the U.S. Senate last year only to be stalled in the House of Representatives, was a broad reboot of American immigration policy that won support from a handful of Republicans.
In included a provision to provide a pathway to citizenship for so-called ‘dreamers’ – people living in the country illegally who were brought to Americans as children before June 15, 2007.
Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which he ultimately enacted without congressional support, uses the EAD cards as part of its implementation.
USCIS says it processed 862,000 EADs overall between January and June of this year.
But ‘the guaranteed minimum for each ordering period is 4,000,000 cards,’ according to the draft RFP.
‘The estimated maximum for the entire contract is 34,000,000 cards.’
The company that ultimately wins the contract will also be required to store the blank cards until the government needs them.
USCIS draft solicitation uploaded by MailOnline
