Political Science

Upon reading your post, THE DEPARTMENTS FIVE RESPONSIBILITIES of 8 June 2009 and many of the replies posted below it, I have gathered the following thoughts to address what seems to be a big area of contention.  In your own words one goal is to help provide  employers with the most up-to-date and effective resources to maintain a legal workforce (DHS Leadership Journal, June 8 2009, Retrieved 4Jan 2010 from.
From the same source come complaints regarding a lag in responsible handling  of legal and high-skilled immigrant requests. 

One possible solution is to alleviate some of the high volume of requests the department has to handle from low-skilled immigrant candidates by lessening the demand for low skilled work within the United States.  Already in place in counties and municipalities across the country are work-force agencies and job-placement agencies that local and state welfare agencies use in their own assessment of potential and continuing clients.  These agencies do a big business helping to place those on Temporary Assistance from the government in appropraite jobs.  Much of the time these agencies must show that a client has made certain measurable attempts at gainful employment so that the client can continue receiving temporary government assistance.  A marriage or situational pairing of employer requests for immigrant workers and local citizens needing assistance and jobs seems a low-cost, little-new-bureaocracy attempt at solving or lessening this problem.  The access to a legal workforce the department is providing is not a pool of legal immigrants in this case but a pool of job-seeking citizens.  The logic seems common-sensical, if there are citizens searching for work and employers searching for reliable employees then the two groups could solve each others problem.  The local welfare departments are allowed access to DHS lists of employers needing employees and the task of presenting the employers with a line of employable citizens falls to the local agencies.  There should be no decries from local agencies as their goal is to employ the citizens and this gives them one more method to achieve this goal.  If businesses can more efficiently find employees than fewer requests should be directed to your department and allow more man-hours to be available for other duties.  It is acknowledged that reems of paper can be written about the pool of candidates available on the welfare roles but that discussion is not relevant here.  We have a large legal workforce already petitioning a government agency for help and DHS has a large volume of requests for employees. 

Change is always difficult and one way to lessen the whiplash associated with it in this case is to first make lists available to both sides.  Lists detailing who needs workers and who needs work.  Allow local agencies to attempt to reconcile the two.  This should allow local agencies to weed out workers who dont want work and initiate protocols to motivate them or stop their assistance and allow employers to initiate procedures for soliciting and screening workers for the tasks they need completed.

Thank you, Madame Secretary, for your consideration and please contact me with any questions.   
Per revision request 4jan09
Explanation of memo.

When it comes to immigration, we need to facilitate legal immigration while we crack down on those who violate our nations laws. A few weeks ago, we issued new guidance to our agents in the field to focus our efforts on apprehending criminal illegal aliens and prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. At the same time, we are committed to providing employers with the most up-to-date and effective resources to maintain a legal workforce. This new focus is drawing widespread praise--from law enforcement to the business community--because it addresses the root cause of illegal immigration.

The above is an excerpt from the secretarys post.

She is expanding the enforcing our immigration laws piece of her 5 point plan.

I have basically argued that to help enforce our immigration laws, DHS can marry requests for legal immigrant workers with existing job seeking citizens who are seeking government assistance through local welfare agencies.  This will free up DHS man-hours to effictively deal with high-skill requests for immigration and shorten the process time for green cards to be issued.  Indirectly, this could also help lower the demand for workers and help stem the tide of illegal immigration, but this was not discussed due to the 1 page restriction.

Cited in the essay is the secretarys words and many posts by anonymous posters who were upset about how hard it is for upstanding immigrants to get legal citizenship.  This is what I noticed as a huge outcry on the site and is what prompted the direction of the essay.