USCIS Director Visits Chaldean Community Foundation

By Cal Abbo

Ur Jaddou touring the CCF.

Ur Jaddou, the director of the United States Customs and Immigration Services, toured the Chaldean Community Foundation and learned about its variety of services.

Overall, Jaddou was impressed with the CCF’s efforts and its ability to help so many people in so many different ways. She met with the team that processes immigration, the Breaking Barriers program, the students who are soon to be citizens, and many more departments.

Jaddou’s visit is special to the CCF because of her position as well as her heritage. Her father is Chaldean and her mother is Mexican. She was raised in San Diego, close to the Chaldean community there as well as the U.S.-Mexico border. These experiences in tandem informed and inspired her successful career in immigration services, which she wrote about for the Chaldean News in November of last year.

Jaddou said there isn’t a moment in her work that she doesn’t think about her Chaldean heritage. “My parents were naturalized immigrants and now I’m leading the agency that naturalized them,” she said. “It’s so personal.”

Like many Chaldeans in San Diego, Jaddou has family in Detroit and would visit often when she was younger. “It’s amazing to see all that has happened since,” she said. “Instead of closing the door on the new generation of Chaldeans, the community is actively helping.” Jaddou also noted that 20% of those who get help from the CCF are non-Chaldean.

“It’s an incredible model that and it should be replicated throughout the country,” she said.

After Jaddou spoke to the classroom full of students, one had a question for her. The student brought up that many immigration cases can take years to complete, especially with the logistical terror caused by COVID-19. Jaddou promised the agency was working hard on the case backlog, but acknowledged they need more staff and funding to process everything they have.

This issue specifically has come up many times. During the pandemic, when the agency was out of the office, immigrants had their cases stored in a secured government vault. Now, in order to process those cases, they have to be retrieved and brought to the agency, which Jaddou explained is a complex and difficult process. In total, there are more than 8 million cases pending.

This month, the Biden administration proposed thousands of new jobs for USCIS. It wants the agency to hire as many as 4,600 new employees to help with the backlog. “The goal is to keep hiring enough so when we have these new demands on these resources, we do have the capability to expand without affecting things that are already on our plate,” Jaddou told the news service Government Executive earlier this month.

Just as well, the agency needs to address its funding structure, she said. Right now, the agency is funded mostly by fees from the immigrants themselves, but that it needs more financial independence in order to operate properly.