Pencil and Paper Power Immigration Courts

On April 12, a disastrous hardware failure crippled U.S. immigration courts when the system that maintains the courts’ dockets crashed. The system is still not fully functional after six weeks. Immigrants and their family members calling the courts’ hotline for information on pending cases are greeted by a message citing “system issues” as the reason that no updates can be provided. The immigration courts, already inundated with more cases than they can handle, are falling further and further behind.

Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges and an immigration judge for 27 years, blames “antiquated technology” for the backlog and the system failure. Judge Marks can’t deny, however, that it is very “antiquated technology” indeed – good old pencils and paper – that kept the courts open and functional while the hardware issues were being sorted out.

In today’s modern, fast-paced, and technologically-advanced world, we try to plan ahead for technological malfunctions. We save our work often, we back up to flash drives and external hard drives, we email work to ourselves. As many ways as there are to back up work, there are just as many ways for your hard work to be lost, and operations to grind to a screeching halt.

The savior in this scenario is the pencil – the humble, unassuming, pencil. It is the pencil that allows operations in the nation’s immigration courts to continue. When the pencil’s simple, sturdy hardware breaks, the solution is only a pencil sharpener away.

Get your next technological malfunction disaster survival kit from Pencils.com! We recommend a pencil or two, a pencil sharpener, and something fun to write on.

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