The 4 Major Changes in Department Issuance

The United States has changed a great deal since the terroristic events of September 11th shocked the world, and brought a new conception of how wars between nations are meant to be, though, if it all. With global terror networks on the rise, the classic shock-and-awe paradigm of American bombardment of enemy forces has not completely eradicated cells of dangerous extremists. Worse yet, the actions of our armed forces may in some cases only serve to drive more new participants in the global initiative against terror to the side of al-Qaeda and other militant factions.

In fact, the country has changed right down to the department, which oversees the production of lawful permanent resident status documentation. Over time, the agency that has processed the Green Card1. The Office of Superintendent of Immigration was created in 1891, and was then affiliated with the Treasury Department. Shortly thereafter, the Office of Superintendent of Immigration was renamed the Bureau of Immigration, an up-tick in status. Officers of the Superintendent/the Bureau did on-site admissions and denials of permanent resident status to each prospective lawful permanent resident on site, of which the biggest and most famous office was likely that of Ellis Island.

2. After merging with the Department of Labor and Commerce a few years prior, the Bureau of Immigration gained naturalization services and became the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization in 1906. This meant that immigration officers would have the right to confer right of citizenship as well as permanent resident status.

3. Following the combination of immigration and naturalization services in 1906, the two would come to be split into separate bureaus and placed in the Department of Labor, the third department in the relatively short federal immigration service history, in 1913, only to be reunited as the INS, or the Immigration and Naturalization Service. From additional responsibilities added prior to the new merger, border patrol also became part of immigration officiation.

4. The Immigration and Naturalization Service would, seven years later, become a part of the Department of Justice, the fourth department in little more than 50 years. For more than 60 years after that new assignment, however, it would come to be the main force in the United States of assessing whether or not someone was a lawful permanent resident. In 2003, to address the concerns raised by the security breaches of the aforementioned attack on America, the Department of Homeland Security was created, in the process disbanding the INS and separating its powers into three separate bureaus, one of which is U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security are still in business today, and the former is responsible for processing all cases of determining permanent resident status. Often, it works hand in hand with the Department of State (which issues visas) and the Department of Labor to determine if an applicant can legally live and work in the United States as a lawful permanent resident.

NEXT: The Origins of the Term Green Card