Foreigners Come to U.S. to Survive, INS Chief Says

Illegal immigrants are coming to the United States in extraordinary numbers, not because they want to take advantage of a generous social welfare system but “to stay alive,” the nation’s new immigration chief said Friday.

Countless thousands--from places such as El Salvador and Guatemala--are fleeing economic disaster and political unrest, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner said. “They’re coming to survive.”

Meissner, in her first meeting with reporters since assuming her job Oct. 18, expressed compassion for the struggles of illegal immigrants but also said that she wants more stringent enforcement of immigration laws and development of more effective legal tools for combatting the problem.

The most experienced immigration expert to head the agency in many years, Meissner attempted to place the current uproar over both legal and illegal immigration in the country--particularly in California--in a historical and cultural context. She said that a harsh economic climate, racial and ethnic differences and “fear of the stranger” have combined to produce the outcry over immigration.

It has led many state and local politicians in California, as well as some federal officials, to call for tougher laws, beefed-up border patrols to ferret out illegal immigrants and even limits on legal immigration.

Meissner’s combination of sympathy for the plight of immigrants and her insistence on hewing to the lessons of history on the subject contrasts with many of her predecessors, who tended to view the issue more as a simple matter of law and order.

The 51-year-old Meissner came to the INS after seven years as director of the immigration policy project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and four years at INS in high positions, including acting commissioner.

In attempting to explain the nation’s unease over immigration, Meissner drew a comparison with attitudes a decade ago, saying: “You didn’t see this in the ‘80s when California was growing and when this cheap labor . . . really contributed very significantly to California’s boom. Now you have an accumulation of people who look very different and a lack of jobs and a tremendous shock in the economy.

“It’s not so much immigration-related as it is the end of the Cold War, the decline of the defense sector so that so much of what California’s economy depended on now has to shrink,” Meissner said. “It becomes manifest in the immigrant and in this anti-foreign feeling. I think it’s quite predictable but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.”

But at the same time, Meissner praised the “mind set” that has led to efforts to block entry of illegal immigrants into the United States. Specifically, she pointed to last month’s so-called El Paso blockade in which the INS was able to reduce illegal immigration to one-tenth the normal rate by concentrating more manpower on the Texas-Mexico border.

While acknowledging that “what works in El Paso doesn’t necessarily work in Chula Vista” for reasons of terrain, weather and other factors, Meissner said that the principle of concentrating resources at the border rather than pursuing illegal immigrants after they enter the United States “is something we’re going to work very hard to do” in the San Diego area.

She noted that 50 new Border Patrol agents will be sent to the San Diego area after they complete an 18-week training course that begins in December. They represent the first of 450 newly approved agents.

On other subjects, Meissner said:

* The time is ripe for a broad societal debate on whether sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants are the best way to enforce immigration laws in the workplace. She contended that Congress knew full well when it adopted laws in 1986 providing for fines and other penalties against employers that it was taking only “a first step.” Lack of a verification procedure has been an “incredible weakness” in such laws, she said.

* The INS will require at least a year to reduce the number of current asylum applications to the point where applicants get a decision within six months. Today only one-third of applicants are interviewed, while the others obtain work permits and blend into U.S. society. After dealing with current applications, the INS then will turn to the backlog of 300,000.

* Government should conduct an aggressive public education campaign to encourage foreigners with resident status to become naturalized citizens.

* An announcement is expected next month on establishing a citizens’ review panel to monitor complaints of civil rights or other abuses by the Border Patrol.

* There will be no more sting operations like one in San Diego last summer that enticed illegal immigrants to come to the INS office for a “work permit.” They then were arrested and deported. The unprecedented operation drew protests from immigration attorneys and caused concern among some INS officials, who feared that it would undercut the agency’s credibility.

Noting that the United States is “in a period of historically high immigration,” Meissner said that immigrants account for proportionately less of the U.S. population now--7% to 8%--than they did in the decade from 1900 to 1910, the historic high, when they accounted for 14% to 15%.

“Things like immigration are very wonderful--in retrospect,” she said. “When it happened 100 years ago and it all worked out and we’re glad there are these connections to other countries--lovely. But it’s never been wonderful and easy when it’s happening. It’s extraordinarily difficult.”

In the 1890-1910 period, Meissner said, “people killed each other over these kinds of antipathies and in many more ugly ways than we’re seeing today,” in part because immigration was entangled with the burgeoning labor movement and strikes, the growth of unions and union-busting tactics, she said.

Current immigration is “very difficult for two reasons, Meissner said. Most immigrants are Latinos and Asians who are visibly different from their largely European predecessors, she noted.

“But frankly in the last century, the Irish were as threatening and different from the majority population because they were Catholic and poorer and rural. It’s in the nature of people to be frightened. It’s the fear of the stranger.”