Asking an Agency to Do Too Much : Controlling immigration through better government

Congress is to be applauded for a candid new report on the troubled U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. It acknowledges that at least part of the reason this country can’t control its borders, or keep better track of foreigners here, is “debilitating inefficiencies” in the INS, an arm of the Justice Department. That is a painful conclusion but one that must be acknowledged if the federal government is to make the structural changes needed to bring immigration under control.

The very title of the 39-page report, issued Wednesday by the House Committee on Government Operations, is sadly revealing: “The INS: Overwhelmed and Unprepared for the Future.” It details problems that keep that agency, whose employees are largely honest and hard-working people, from doing a better job. They include insufficient training, inadequate supervision, poor financial management and inconsistent discipline of problem employees in the U.S. Border Patrol.

Taking note of the renewed debate over illegal immigration, and new calls for immigration reform, the committee warns that “legislative reform will be meaningless if the (INS) lacks the skills and resources necessary to implement new laws.” It also notes that INS problems persist despite an annual budget of more than $1.5 billion, up 150% since 1981. As a result, it recommends a fundamental change in the federal border- and immigration-enforcement structure: Merge the Border Patrol with the U.S. Customs Service in a new border management agency, leaving the rest of the INS to focus on assisting immigrants already here.

That provocative proposal, or something similar to it, is expected to be made soon by Vice President Al Gore’s project to “reinvent government.” But it has been advanced in the past by other government efficiency experts and has just as often been opposed by Congress, largely at the behest of government employee unions and key committee chairmen unwilling to lose part of their fiefdoms. We hope this report signals a change in attitude.

In the emotional debate over illegal immigration, it is all too easy for politicians to point the finger at others--immigrants, people smugglers, foreign governments, agribusiness--as causing the problem. It takes honesty, and even a little courage, to admit that part of the problem lies inside the government.

The sad fact is the INS has almost always been a stepchild of the Justice Department. It lacks the prestige of the FBI and the glamour of the Drug Enforcement Administration and has no powerful constituency outside government. Only in recent years, with the growing public realization that immigration--both legal and illegal--is a major policy challenge for the country, has the important work of the INS come to be appreciated. And so only now are we realizing how neglected it has been. One need only ponder the awesome challenges that the INS, or its successor agencies, will face in the 21st Century--when demographers estimate most of the U.S. population growth will come from immigration rather than births--to realize that there is probably no better test for “reinventing government” than remaking the agency that regulates immigration.