re: "Transfer Visa Functions to DHS? Who's Listening to Whom?"

Our dear colleague TSB weighed-in the other day on the suggestion of transferring all visa functions to DHS.

"there is a long history of legislation and policy on the question of whether passport and visa functions would be better served if retained with State or transferred to DHS, and so far the decision has been to keep them with State. "

TSB cited and mined some excellent source material (Congressional Research Service report from 2004, which was updated in 2011), including:

"staffing approximately 250 diplomatic and consular posts around the world would stretch DHS beyond its capacity. 

Those who supported retained immigrant adjudications and services in DOJ and visa issuances in DOS point to the specializations that each department brings to the functions. They asserted that the "dual check" system in which both INS and Consular Affairs make their own determinations on whether an alien ultimately enters the United States provides greater security. "

(Note:  Before DHS was established following the 9/11 attacks, the non-DOS part of the visa process resided in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which was part of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Attorney General.)

And concluded:

"This is far from a done deal, no matter what the Listening Survey reports or what State's reorganization contractor reads in its word clouds. To transfer those functions to DHS the Administration would have to overcome significant bureaucratic and financial barriers, plus, it would just be a bad idea for all the same reasons that Congress already found in the years after 9/11. But that doesn't mean it won't happen all the same."

For reasons most DOS folks will be loath to hear, the Department doesn't have a store of good will banked with the new Administration.  It just doesn't.  CAA just hopes they won't cut off the country's nose to spite the State Department's face.