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Policy Change Brings 800 New Immigration Service Jobs To Region

A change in U.S. immigration policy last summer has translated into 800 new jobs for metro Kansas City.  The work will be both sides of state line and pay no less than $27,000 a year.

Much of the new work will be performed in Overland Park, where 500 jobs will be started, another 300 at an existing immigration processing center in Lee's Summit.

The uptick in case load comes from a Presidential order from President Obama that allows residency for some who arrived in the U.S. as young people.

Tim Counts speaks for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service on the new hires, saying, “They’ll come from wherever they choose to move from, and we fully expect many of these positions will be filled by local people, of course.”

Counts says pay will range from $27,000 to $41,000 a year, some higher, and certain contract work may pay less.

According to Counts, applicants will find information at www.usajobs.gov and will find search fields for key words such as locations such as Kansas or Missouri. He said they might enter the acronym for the agency, USCIS.

The job openings will not be posted all at once, said Counts, but may come up several hundred at a time.

The Overland Park office will be at 119th and Metcalf in Rosanna Square.

Regional Administrator of the General Services Administration, federal landlord Jason Klumb set the space at 100,000 square feet.

Some space had been vacated by the Internal Revenue Service upon its move to Kansas City, Missouri.

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