When Deception Boomerangs

It was a classic case of the wolf in sheep’s clothing--or of using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Last week a “sting” operation run by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service office in San Diego caught 42 illegal immigrants.

The operation, approved by INS headquarters in Washington, involved mailing 600 letters to immigrants who had been ruled deportable. The letters offered a temporary work permit under the “Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1993,” a nonexistent law. Only 60 people responded by going to INS offices (18 turned out to be not deportable).

Similar sting operations have been used in the past in various investigations, and the INS ploy would be wholly defensible if the agency were just another arm of law enforcement. But it isn’t.

The operation hurts the INS’ reputation as an agency whose job is not just to deport illegal immigrants but also to assist legal immigrants. That is not as sharp a distinction as it might seem, because many of the legal immigrants whom the INS must assist were once illegal. They began to legalize their status under the amnesty provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The INS spent a lot of time--and tax money--trying to build trust in immigrant communities after IRCA passed. A measure of that trust may well have been squandered for a mere 42 arrests. Not very efficient government, by any measure.

Such inefficiency is the inevitable byproduct of any approach to illegal immigration that strictly, and therefore simplistically, defines it as a police problem. A more creative approach to immigration law enforcement would break the INS into two components--a police agency to help protect U.S. borders and an immigration agency to help newcomers assimilate as quickly as possible.

Until Congress becomes more precise in its thinking about immigration, the INS will work as haphazardly as it does now and all will continue to suffer. Among those being hurt are not just the illegal immigrants unlucky enough to be caught but also hard-working INS employees who are feared by the very people they need to help--not to mention the taxpayers who are shortchanged by an overwhelmed agency trying to enforce misconceived policy.