Quick Note: The Funny Side of the DHS Shutdown

A new U.S. citizen displays her official naturalization certificate

The Department of Homeland Security is scheduled to close-down this evening.  This morning, in a last minute desperation vote, the House cleared the way for a stop-gap measure to keep the DHS open and funded for three weeks while Congress continues to work on the spending impasse. 

Final passage of the extension is uncertain, however, after Democrats announced their opposition to it being only a three-week extension and far-right Republicans expressed their opposition to the removal of wording designed to undo the president's executive actions granting work permits to millions of U.S. immigrants. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has called a recess as he seeks to round up enough votes to pass the extension bill.  

The House originally passed a funding bill for the DHS in January, a bill that included wording reversing the President's recent executive action on immigration.  When the Senate took up that bill, Democrats filibustered it, saying they would only support the bill if the immigration prohibitions were removed.

Senate Republicans, with the bitter taste of their own medicine in their coffee cups, capitulated and agreed to remove the immigration prohibitions, sending their clean bill to the House earlier this week.  Speaker Boehner, after first trying bombast, this morning stopped his temper tantrum long enough to allow the House to consider the Senate's bill, which brings us to the on-going House recess and vote scramble.

For now, the clock continues to run, the shutdown edges closer and Republicans continue to beat their drum about the evil, tyrant president living in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue who won't let them run the country the way they want to.  Even if the three-week extension passes, on March 19 we will probably be having the same conversation over DHS funding, immigration reform and executive action that we are having today...just another crisis in a long list of Republican engendered crises.

But you know what should really make us laugh? The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, while part of the DHS, is not really part of the DHS budget.  USCIS is 95 percent funded through applicant fees. Only 5 percent of their budget is allocated through federal spending, and that 5 percent is allotted to E-Verify, a federal program that validates already issued work permits.  So, if Republicans in Congress are eventually successful in forcing a shutdown of the DHS in their snit over President Obama's executive actions on immigration, the only section of the DHS that will be left open, fully funded and fully staffed will be the exact section of the DHS in charge of carrying out the president's actions: the USCIS' office that processes citizenship and immigration applications and work permits.

Smooth move, Republicans! Very smooth.