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U.S. immigration agency no longer says U.S. is "nation of immigrants"

The times they are a-changing

The United States is no longer a “nation of immigrants.”

At least, not in the eyes of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The government agency, which handles the granting of citizenship, altered its mission statement Thursday to drop a line about “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants.”

On Wednesday, the agency’s mission statement read, “USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”

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But by Thursday, the agency’s promises to welcome and help would-be citizens navigate the immigration system had vanished from its mission statement. Instead, the statement focuses on protecting current Americans.

“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system,” the new mission statement reads, “safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”

USCIS didn’t immediately reply to a VICE News request for comment, but according to an internal agency email obtained by the Intercept, Director L. Francis Cissna was particularly intent on eliminating the word “customers.”

“What we do at USCIS is so important to our nation, so meaningful to the applicants and petitioners, and the nature of the work is often so complicated, that we should never allow our work to be regarded as a mere production line or even described in business or commercial terms,” Cissna wrote. He added, “Use of the term leads to the erroneous belief that applicants and petitioners, rather than the American people, are whom [sic] we ultimately serve.”

A unnamed senior U.S. immigration official told the Intercept the new wording signifies a bigger change, saying, “While it doesn’t expressly say it, it means that they aren’t customers, but aliens.” That’s well in line with the Trump administration’s well-documented opposition to immigration. And it tracks with the agency’s own recent restructuring — back in May, USCIS hired Julie Kircher, the former executive director of the radial anti-immigration group the Federation for American Immigration Reform, to serve as ombudsman and work with immigrants hoping to obtain citizenship. The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled FAIR a hate group for its “virulent and false attacks on nonwhite immigrants.”