About 1,000 Kansas City workers learn of potential layoffs ahead of holiday weekend
About 1,000 employees in the Kansas City area working for the National Benefits Center, an agency under the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, received notice on Friday that their jobs face elimination in what would be one of the largest mass layoffs of the year for the region.
National Benefits Center has offices in Lee’s Summit and Overland Park.
After the layoffs, which would become effective May 29, 181 employees would remain at NBC offices in the Kansas City area. Meanwhile, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is seeking emergency funding from Congress, saying that it is going to run out of money this summer.
The potential layoffs were confirmed by a spokesperson for PAE, a private contractor that provides staffing for NBC. NBC processes a variety of paperwork for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, including for international adoptions.
The USCIS is a fee-funded agency that’s been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement, PAE said that while the pandemic has forced cost-cutting broadly, the cost to keep the NBC offices running amount to a fraction — 0.007%, or $140 million — of what Congress spent on the $2 trillion CARES Act stimulus bill.
“Without it, more than a thousand Kansans and Missourians will lose their jobs by the end of this month, and people who waited years to adopt a child or become an American will be unable to do so,” said Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for PAE. “At a time when the country is reopening and people are beginning to work again, Washington needs to provide the same chance for NBC employees and the families who depend on them.”
In a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act letter obtained by The Star, the Virginia-based company explained that it received notice from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that it was significantly reducing the scope of its contract with PAE, effective May 30. The positions are anticipated to be eliminated by May 29.
In a statement, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed it reduced the scope of its contract for NBC but provided no further details.
The USCIS has seen a reduction in revenue collections and forecast a 61% drop in application and petition receipts through the rest of the 2020 fiscal year, meaning the department will exhaust its funding by this summer.
On May 15, the USCIS notified Congress of its projected shortfall and submitted a proposal for $1.2 billion to fund the department for two years. USCIS pledged to repay the emergency funding by adding a 10% surcharge on application fees.
“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, USCIS has seen a dramatic decrease in revenue and is seeking a one-time emergency request for funding to ensure we can carry out our mission of administering our nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity, and protecting the American people,” a USCIS spokesperson said in a statement to The Star. “Importantly, this funding proposal protects American taxpayers by not adding to the deficit and requiring USCIS to pay the money back to the U.S. Treasury. Without congressional intervention, USCIS will have to take drastic actions to keep the agency afloat.”
Information from U.S. Reps. Emanual Cleaver, D-Missouri, and Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, was not immediately available.
The looming NBC layoffs come as unemployment is shooting up across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In Kansas, unemployment reached a record high of 11.2% in April, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Missouri, unemployment reached 9.7%, the state’s highest rate in more than a decade.
In Missouri, the largest WARN Act filing from a single company reported so far was a holding company for various chain restaurant locations, including Bonefish Grill, Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba’s Italian Grill, with 935 workers affected by reduced hours from the closure of dining rooms during government stay-at-home orders. The company plans to recall workers as dining rooms open, a spokesperson said.
This story has been updated to clarify the nature of the WARN Act for restaurant employees in the last paragraph.
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 5:40 PM.
