Funding for Immigration in the President's 2005 Budget

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims.

"Chairman Hostettler, Ranking Member Jackson Lee, Members of the Subcommittee. 

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you to comment on the President’s FY2005 Budget request for the immigration functions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

The facts about the President’s request are well known to you, especially since you have already heard from Government witnesses about them at an earlier hearing. In outline form, the President proposes to increase funding for the Department’s two “enforcement” bureaus—Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—by $538 million. At the same time, funding for the services/benefits part of DHS—Citizenship and Immigrant Services (CIS)1—would increase by $58 million. Even this increase, however, is deceptive in that in terms of appropriated funding, adjudications suffer an $11 million cut and overall funding for the Bureau is cut by $85 million. As Ms. Jackson Lee noted in her Statement of February 25, “…for every additional dollar the Administration is requesting for the benefits bureau, it is requesting 9 dollars for the enforcement bureaus.” [...]"