Source: http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_research5ede
Source: Immigration Report
The notoriously inept and inefficient Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) ceased to exist on January 25. After public outrage over highly publicized foul-ups and deadly incompetence, last year Congress abolished the agency and voted to roll its functions into the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
While this is a major victory for homeland security and sensible immigration enforcement, the test now will be whether the new DHS can succeed where its predecessor failed. INS long ago lost sight of its primary mission: to stop illegal immigration and enforce America’s immigration laws. Here’s how DHS can avoid repeating those mistakes.
1. Don’t ignore illegal aliens. INS is famous for “prioritizing” enforcement out of existence. As a general rule, when local police arrest illegal aliens and try to turn them over to INS, INS habitually refused to pick them up. As a result, most illegal aliens know they can safely ignore U.S. immigration laws.
2. Treat the American public as your customer. Starting with former Commissioner Doris Meissner, INS has embraced a customer service attitude toward prospective immigrants—rather than toward the American people. Treating immigrants and applicants for benefits as the customer has led to slipshod procedures, a rubber-stamp culture, and serious breaches of national security. INS’s replacement should realize that it’s the American people who are the government’s customers, and that for safety’s sake, these customers want processing to be more secure and thorough, not merely faster.
3. Convenience shouldn’t trump security. INS dropped the foreign student tracking system when it was first proposed because colleges found it inconvenient. INS stopped requiring aliens to register their addresses annually because it was inconvenient. INS encouraged hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to use the Section 245(i) loophole to become legal because it was more convenient. Enforcing immigration law may not be “convenient,” but it’s essential to homeland security and a credible immigration system.
4. Work with local authorities. INS complained that it couldn’t handle illegal immigration by itself—and then refused to let anyone help. Since 1996, INS has had the ability to deputize local police officers to help enforce immigration laws (after proper training). Several state and local governments have tried to get such an arrangement out of INS, which consistently stonewalled them. With fewer than 2,000 agents to monitor the entire interior of the United States, it’s critical that federal immigration authorities enlist the assistance of tens of thousands of local police departments who are in the best position to spot illegal or suspicious behavior in their own communities.
5. Treat any means for illegal immigration as a means for terrorism. DC sniper John Malvo was an illegal alien whom INS chose not to deport when they had him in custody. New York City subway bomber Gazi Abu Mezer was an illegal alien whom the INS trusted to leave the country just because he had been asked to. Ramzi Yousef, of the first World Trade Center attack, was another illegal alien released due to lack of detention space. Yes, the vast majority of illegal aliens are not terrorists. But any time we stop enforcing the laws against illegal immigration, we give terrorists yet another golden opportunity to operate under the radar.
6. Don’t deceive Congress and the American public. In 1995, INS officials in Miami released criminal aliens and illegal aliens in order to clear detention space and present a more orderly facility to a visiting Congressional task force. In 1996, INS Commissioner Meissner misled Congress by testifying that immigration numbers were dropping, when in fact they were not; this resulted in legislators dropping a bill to reform legal immigration. Although INS was called on the carpet later in congressional hearings, the damage was done. Whatever the truth is, Congress and the public are entitled to know.
7. Make sure the leaders are as committed as the employees are. Most rank and file INS staff are committed to keeping America safe and upholding immigration law, but INS higher-ups have often had other priorities. In the 1990s, INS launched “the Phoenix Plan” for enforcing employer sanctions; if the agency finds illegal aliens on a payroll, it tells the employer so the aliens can be fired before the INS shows up. The business stays clean, but the illegal aliens get away. In 1994, Commissioner Meissner thought she’d save time and money by simply not forwarding applicants’ fingerprints to the FBI to check for criminal records (a policy later reversed when it was made public). When local Border Patrol Chief (and now congressman) Silvestre Reyes lined up his officers along the border to deter illegal immigration, he had to do so without headquarters’ blessing. Only after the public wildly supported the initiative was INS pressured into supporting Reyes and duplicating his idea elsewhere.
8. Don’t farm your job out to others. One of the biggest disasters in recent INS history was the “Citizenship USA” program, a rush-job naturalization effort in 1995-96 mostly farmed out to private contractors. The public later learned that cheating was rampant and security nonexistent. Before it was stopped, the program naturalized around 50,000 criminal aliens. More recently, two of the September 11 hijackers received visa approvals from the contractor INS used to process applications—six months after they had died attacking the World Trade Center. We don’t delegate military defense to private militias; let’s stop delegating immigration law to private companies.
9. Fix the computers, already. The INS is rife with notorious computer failures. Its many systems don’t interface, they don’t work or are out of date, or they simply aren’t used. U.S. visas are now electronically scannable, but most ports of entry don’t have the scanners, or, for that matter, the computers to check INS’s existing databases. As a result, a recent INS study found that it intercepts no more than 16 percent of travelers attempting illegal entry at the ports of entry, letting in between 2.95 and 5.45 million illegal immigrants annually. In 2001, a Department of Justice Inspector General audit found that INS completely wasted $31 million in setting up just one new system that didn’t work.
10. Demand an immigration system that is controllable. INS sat back passively as immigration went from a manageable 400,000 in the 1970s to over one million in 2001. Applications are backlogged, security checks are given short shrift, deportable criminal aliens are released into society, naturalization is slowed down. The INS has, in effect, broken down under the weight of an unmanageable number of immigrants. A final word of advice to its replacement: Don’t just ask for more resources, which hasn’t worked anyway. Ask Congress to give us a more reasonable immigration system that can be managed effectively.
02/2003
No comments:
Post a Comment