Earlier this month, Grassley urged the Justice Department to direct additional resources to the immigration offices in Iowa and specified the need for "both enforcement and service people, as well as support personnel." Grassley reiterated his request in a telephone call today with the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and secured the commitment for the new positions in Iowa.
"The INS needs to balance the new people for enforcement with new service personnel, as well. Today there's only one information officer in Iowa. As a result, the hundreds of people who follow the rules and wait in line to become U.S. citizens can't even make their way through the proper channels because of the heavy workload and backlog," Grassley said.
This year, Congress provided an additional $170 million to the INS specifically for naturalization and service purposes. "It's only fair that some of those resources should be directed to the need for assistance in Iowa," Grassley said.
Grassley is a member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration. He was instrumental in winning approval for INS offices to be located in Iowa as part of the comprehensive immigration reform bill passed in 1996. INS offices in Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Sioux City opened in early 1997.