USCIS seeks vendor to make the cards.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: In what may be an indication to one of the largest immigration reforms set to take place in the US in decades, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to seek a vendor to produce as many as 34 million blank work permits and ‘green cards’.
According to a report in Breitbart, the paperwork is being ordered as the White House prepares to issue an executive order after the November 4 midterm elections.
According to a draft solicitation published online, the government agency will look for a company that can produce a minimum four million cards per year for five years, and 9 million in the early stages, according to the Daily Mail.
Republicans have decried the plan as an ‘amnesty’ for millions of illegal immigrants, including hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border this year.
A draft RFP – a Request For Proposal – is typically published in advance so government contractors can prepare to submit their bids when the final version is published. The draft came complete with photos of what the finished cards will look like.
A USCIS official told MailOnline on Monday that the draft was published ‘in case the president makes the move we think he will,’ but added that the agency’s Document Management Division (DMD) is by no means committed to buying the materials.
A second official at the agency said the proposal was drafted as a contingency in case immigration reform legislation passes in Congress, not in anticipation of action from the White House.
Either way, the online draft explains that ‘DMD requires card consumables for the production of USCIS’ Permanent Resident Card (PRC) and Employment Authorization Document (EAD) cards.’
And a successful bid, the draft solicitation says, will be able to support a ‘potential “surge” in PRC and EAD card demand for up to 9 million cards during the initial period of performance to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements.’
Former State Department foreign service officer Jessica Vaughan, now an immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart that the RFP ‘seems to indicate that the president is contemplating an enormous executive action that is even more expansive than the plan that Congress rejected in the ‘Gang of Eight’ bill.’
‘The guaranteed minimum for each ordering period is 4,000,000 cards,’ according to the draft RFP. ‘The estimated maximum for the entire contract is 34,000,000 cards.’
The company that ultimately wins the contract will also be required to store the blank cards until the government needs them.