After deep job cuts to federal agency in Kansas City, partial re-hiring set to resume
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told local members of Congress on Thursday that it plans to hire back about 250 workers in Lee’s Summit, months after enacting deep job cuts in the Kansas City region.
Congress was able to provide funding to supplement increases in workload to allow the National Benefits Center, a branch of USCIS that processes immigration applications, to start hiring again in Lee’s Summit.
It partially restores staffing at National Benefits Center after some 800 jobs were eliminated during the summer as USCIS grappled with severe revenue declines. USCIS usually doesn’t receive money directly from Congress; it generates its own revenue through immigration application fees.
The 800 jobs were contract positions provided by PAE, a private contractor that provides staffing for National Benefits Center. It was one of the largest mass layoffs in the Kansas City region as the coronavirus pandemic plunged the national economy into a recession.
USCIS said this summer when imposing job cuts that immigration activity slowed during the pandemic, leading to losses in agency revenue.
“With some congressional maneuvering in the appropriations process that provided additional funding and workloads returning closer to normal levels at the National Benefits Center, I’m very pleased to see the USCIS take this initial step to restore some of the more than 800 jobs that were cut earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic,” said U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat. “We’ve still got work to do, but this is a good step in the right direction, and we will keep pushing USCIS until federal support returns to pre-pandemic levels.”
Cleaver, along with others in the Kansas and Missouri congressional delegation, wrote a letter in November to Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which is over USCIS, urging the agency to re-hire workers after demand for immigration services started increasing later in the year and Congress made funding available for USCIS.
“In light of newly enacted additional sources of revenue and the Center’s workload, there is little reason to delay returning over 800 positions to the Kansas City region,” said a Nov. 18 letter to DHS signed by Cleaver, Sen. Roy Blunt, Sen. Jerry Moran and others from the region.
