Clarification from the agency

All groups of qualified individuals in the civil service

Before applying for this position, please read the entire announcement and follow the instructions in the How to Apply section.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security comprised of approximately 19,000 Federal employees, and additional contractor employees, working in approximately 250 Headquarters and field offices around the world. We are responsible for the administration of immigration and naturalization adjudication functions and establishing immigration services policies and priorities. 

Functions include adjudication of:

• Immigrant and nonimmigrant visa petitions
• Citizenship applications and naturalization petitions
• Asylum and refugee applications
• A variety of other immigration applications and petitions

Within the Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate (RAIO), a District Director of  the Asylum Division assists the Chief and Deputy Chief of the Asylum Division in  administering a fair, effective, and efficient process for adjudicating affirmative asylum applications to determine whether applicants physically present in the United States who are unable or unwilling to return to their home country merit asylum status based on past or future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The District Director ensures that affirmative asylum applicants illegally in the United States who are found ineligible for asylum are properly charged, placed in removal proceedings, and scheduled for hearings before an Immigration Judge. The District Director supports the Chief and Deputy Chief on matters related to the oversight of the Asylum Division’s screening processes, including the credible fear and reasonable fear processes, according to appropriate standards and procedures. The District Director assists the Chief and Deputy Chief in coordinating with other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) components and the Department of Justice (DOJ) as necessary to enable the effective and efficient implementation of such screening processes. In conjunction with law enforcement partners, the District Director supports the investigation and apprehension, as appropriate, of individuals engaged in fraud, smuggling, as well as of individuals posing a public safety or national security risk.

The District Director assists the Chief and Deputy Chief in planning and coordination and ensures consistent administration of the Asylum Division’s programs in accordance with USCIS and DHS-wide requirements. The District Director must effectively present and carry out the policies established by headquarters, bridging the gap between headquarters and the field, so that national direction and strategy can be implemented locally with consistency, quality, and timeliness. This position will be the face of USCIS in overseeing a significant portion of the nation’s asylum-related immigration operations.

The District Director directs the work of a designated portion of the Asylum Division by setting its priorities and organizational goals. The District Director plans, coordinates, and ensures consistent administration of immigration benefits programs in accordance with USCIS-wide requirements. The District Director develops policies, procedures, and guidelines to ensure that USCIS' operational programs are in conformance with applicable laws, regulations, and directives. The District Director assesses and implements immigration policy, executive orders, and overarching USCIS goals that are strategically aligned to the mission of the organization. The District Director creates and ensures stability in the organizational structure in order to accomplish the assigned workload.

The District Director is accountable for ensuring success in meeting production goals and overall program objectives, such as ensuring case decisions are compliant with all relevant statutes, regulations, case law, and policy, within the designated area, taking steps to detect and disrupt fraud, and appropriately handle cases that involve national security. The District Director is responsible for advocating, obtaining, and ensuring that the necessary resources (personnel/facilities/equipment and budget) are available to accomplish the workload. The District Director makes necessary adjustments to resource allocation across the area of responsibility when changes in workload or priorities are introduced.

Conditions of employment

• You must be a U.S. Citizen or U.S. National to apply for this position
• Obtain/Maintain a Security Clearance (i.e. Secret, Top Secret)
• First time Senior Executive Service (SES) appointees are subject to a one-year probationary period
• Applications exceeding the page limits will be disqualified
• Financial Disclosure Required
• You must pass a drug screening
• Political appointees may require OPM approval prior to on-boarding

Qualifications

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) must authorize employment offers made to current or former political appointees. If you are currently, or have been within the last 5 years, a political Schedule A, Schedule C, Non-career SES or Presidential Appointee employee in the Executive Branch, you must disclose this information to the Human Resources Office.

As a basic requirement for entry into the SES, applicants must provide evidence of progressively responsible leadership experience that is indicative of senior executive level managerial capability. This experience should be sufficiently broad in scope and at a major management level in a large or complex organization. The ideal candidate will have experience supervising a large number of employees through subordinate supervisors and have experience hiring, developing and evaluating employees.

Your application should demonstrate that you the knowledge, skills and abilities to successfully fulfill responsibilities inherent in SES positions such as:

• Leading the work of an organizational unit
• Ensuring the success of one or more specific major programs or projects
• Monitoring progress toward strategic organizational goals, evaluating organizational performance and taking action to improve performance
• Supervising the work of employees, developing policy and other executive functions

To meet the minimum qualification requirements for this position, your application must show evidence that you possess the five (5) Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs) listed below. Typically, experience of this nature is gained at the GS-15 or equivalent level in the federal service or its equivalent in the private sector.

If your experience does not include these basic qualifications, you will not be determined qualified for this position.

**Noncompetitive status- if you are a current or reinstatement eligible Career SES or a graduate of an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) approved SES Candidate Development Program (CDP) and your ECQs have been certified by OPM's Qualifications Review Board (QRB)-you are not required to address the ECQs. Current and reinstatement eligible SES must include with your application a copy of your most recent SF-50, Notification of Personnel Action, documenting your SES Career Appointment. CDP graduates must include a copy of your OPM CDP graduation certificate or other proof that your ECQs have been QRB certified.**

The application process used to recruit for this position is the RESUME-BASED METHOD.

All applicants must submit a five (5) page resume. Your resume should clearly reflect evidence of the ECQs. Please do not submit separate narratives addressing the ECQs. Any information in excess of five (5) pages WILL NOT be considered. A sample five (5) page resume that incorporates ECQs can be viewed at this link http://www.opm.gov/ses/references/GuidetoSESQuals_2012.pdf

EXECUTIVE CORE QUALIFICATIONS

ECQ 1 - LEADING CHANGE: This core qualification involves the ability to bring about strategic change, both within and outside the organization, to meet organizational goals. Inherent to this Executive Core Qualification (ECQ) is the ability to establish an organizational vision and to implement it in a continuously changing environment.

ECQ 2 - LEADING PEOPLE: This core qualification involves the ability to lead people toward meeting the organization's vision, mission, and goals. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to provide an inclusive workplace that fosters the development of others, facilitates cooperation and teamwork, and supports constructive resolution of conflicts.

ECQ 3 - RESULTS DRIVEN: This core qualification involves the ability to meet organizational goals and customer expectations. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to make decisions that produce high quality results by applying technical knowledge, analyzing problems, and calculating risks.

ECQ 4 - BUSINESS ACUMEN: This core qualification involves the ability to manage human, financial, and information resources strategically.

ECQ 5 - BUILDING COALITIONS: This core qualification involves the ability to build coalitions internally and with other Federal agencies, state and local governments, nonprofit and private sector organizations, foreign governments or international organizations to achieve common goals.

Additional information on the Executive Core Qualifications is available at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-service/executive-core-qualifications/

MANDATORY TECHNICAL QUALIFICATION (MTQs)

All applicants must submit a written narrative explaining how they meet the one (1) mandatory technical qualification not to exceed one (1) page total. Please give examples and explain how often you used your skills, the complexity of the knowledge possessed and the sensitivity of the issues you handled, etc. Any information in excess of one (1) page per WILL NOT be considered.

MTQ 1. Expertise in managing multi-faceted refugee, asylum, or other immigration benefit adjudications programs that require coordination across multiple organizations.

How you will be evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

To ensure compliance with an applicable preliminary nationwide injunction, which may be supplemented, modified, or vacated, depending on the course of ongoing litigation, the Federal Government will take no action to implement or enforce the COVID-19 vaccination requirement pursuant to Executive Order 14043 on Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees. Therefore, to the extent a Federal job announcement includes the requirement that applicants must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 pursuant to E.O. 14043, that requirement does not currently apply. Federal agencies may request information regarding the vaccination status of selected applicants for the purposes of implementing other workplace safety protocols, such as protocols related to masking, physical distancing, testing, travel, and quarantine.

Guidance from the Task Force is available at: Protecting the Federal Workforce.

Our evaluation will be based on the information you provide. Verification of performance, suitability and security information from reference checks will be taken into consideration when making offers of employment.

You will be evaluated on the quality and extent of your total accomplishments, experience and education. Your application will be evaluated by a rating and ranking panel, and highly qualified candidates may undergo an interview and a reference check. The USCIS Executive Resources Board (ERB) will review results and make recommendations on final selections to the appointing authority. Unless you have already been certified by a Qualifications Review Board (QRB) in the past, your ECQs must be certified by a QRB after selection and before appointment can occur.