INS Chief Proposes Sweeping Changes : Immigration: The overhaul could mean more agents along the Mexican border and improved services for incoming foreigners.

The new chief of the Immigration and Naturalization Service has proposed sweeping changes to the agency that could result in more enforcement agents along the U.S.-Mexican border, more consistent sanctions against violators of immigration laws and better services for immigrants and their families.

The planned overhaul--which Commissioner Gene McNary reportedly wants in place by the end of the year--would be the most comprehensive restructuring of the INS since it was decentralized in 1955, observers say.

Proponents hope that the changes will help reduce lengthy delays for foreign nationals and relatives seeking citizenship, political asylum and permission to work in the United States. Backlogs for a wide range of immigration benefits have long been particularly pronounced in Southern California, which increasingly is the preferred destination for immigrants, both legal and illegal.

“I think there’s a potential here for alleviating some of the real, profound problems that have long existed in (the region),” said Warren Leiden, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

Agency officials stress that the plans are preliminary and will require the approval of the U.S. Justice Department and the federal Office of Management and Budget, along with a Congressional review. McNary will also have to overcome some tough opposition from officials within the agency, including Western Regional Commissioner Ben Davidian, who are leery of his desire to centralize power.

Davidian contends that a reorganization now could hurt the progress of the INS amnesty program, under which 3 million foreigners, half of them now in California, are attempting to become permanent legal U.S. residents.

Although McNary and other top immigration officials declined to comment on the reforms, The Times obtained copies of several internal memorandums, letters and other documents outlining the plan.

Privately, McNary has expressed concern that the central INS office in Washington has lost its agenda-setting role in recent years as several regional political appointees--notable Harold Ezell, the provocative former Western regional commissioner--carved out highly visible mini-empires.

McNary, a former Missouri county executive with a reputation as a deft manager, is scheduled to make his first official public appearance in Los Angeles today. He took office last fall with a congressional mandate to return stability to a labyrinthine agency that several much-publicized studies found to be inefficient, inconsistent and riddled with fiscal irregularities.

The service’s shortcomings have become more pronounced--and more public--in recent years as illegal immigration has blossomed into a national concern and the service has expanded rapidly from a Justice Department backwater into a $1-billion-a-year bureaucracy with more than 15,000 employees worldwide.

The INS, which had its origins as a small bureau of the Treasury Department almost a century ago, has a dual role: Its agents arrest almost 1 million or more undocumented foreigners each year while, at the same time, officers annually admit millions of new immigrants, naturalized citizens and foreign visitors into the United States.

Inconsistent policies from region to region have long plagued the service. For example. a survey by the Urban Institute and the RAND Corp., two public policy research groups, found that the average fines assessed by the INS against employers of illegal aliens varied wildly, from less than $1,000 in San Antonio to about $4,500 in Los Angeles to more than $11,000 in New York and $45,000 in Chicago.

In McNary’s plan, the four regional INS offices--in Laguna Niguel, Dallas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and Burlington, Vt.--will become mostly administrative bodies, losing most of their enforcement power, including the initiation of investigations, the gathering of intelligence and the monitoring of smuggling activities.

Under the revised setup, the service’s 34 districts and 21 Border Patrol sectors nationwide will report directly to Washington, bypassing the regional commissioners. In Washington, a chief of staff and executive commissioner will help implement McNary’s agenda.

The anticipated redesign, McNary explained, will ultimately result in a bureaucratic structure such as those of other U.S. Department of Justice entities, notably the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

McNary said he does not anticipate cutbacks in personnel; in fact, expansions are likely, particularly in “seriously understaffed” areas. However, he added that transfers, relocations and shifts in duty are also being considered.

Among the most provocative aspects of McNary’s blueprint are his intentions to narrow and focus the role of the Border Patrol, the service’s 4,000-employee armed enforcement branch. Agents are principally charged with arresting illegal immigrants along the nation’s frontiers, particularly the porous, almost-2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

McNary, seeking to concentrate officers in their primary mission along the border zone from San Diego to Brownsville, Tex., would largely strip the patrol of its roles in anti-smuggling investigations and enforcing laws barring the hiring of undocumented workers. Separate INS branches would handle such tasks.

The new commissioner is also proposing reducing staff or shutting down some inland Border Patrol posts--notably those in Livermore, Dallas and Portland--and the redeployment along the border of officers now assigned to inland stations.

Western Regional Commissioner Davidian, who is based in Laguna Niguel and oversees California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam, has argued that regional offices are better equipped to understand local issues than a far-removed central office in Washington.

McNary already has wrested control of budget, personnel and purchasing. In addition, policy statements to the press must be cleared through Washington, a cumbersome procedure that has been criticized as a “gag order” but one the commissioner says ensures that the agency speaks “with one voice.”