Skeptical Panel Hears INS Chief Vow Reform

Defending her agency against congressional threats of breakup, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner Tuesday promised “fundamental reform” that would split law enforcement and immigrant-service functions but keep both under her control.

Members of the appropriations panel that controls her purse strings reacted coolly to Meissner’s plan, attacking the beleaguered agency on multiple fronts, from citizenship fraud to automation, from border checkpoints to control of visas.

“I think you’re trying to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic,” Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) said of Meissner’s top-to-bottom restructuring plan, which would eliminate current district and regional offices. “For 15 years I’ve sat here and listened to commissioner after commissioner reorganize the INS, each one well-intentioned. All of which have not only failed but exacerbated the problem.”

Critics from both ends of the political spectrum for years have suggested eliminating the INS, saying that its dual role of keeping illegal immigrants out of the country and helping legal immigrants who live here creates a schizophrenic agency rife with problems. The notion got a boost last fall when the bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform recommended abolishing the agency, transferring many of its responsibilities to the State and Labor departments and creating a new border-control division within the Justice Department.

The INS in recent years has been tarnished by major scandals, including controversy over the naturalization of thousands of immigrants without criminal background checks during a 1995-96 program called Citizenship USA.

Any reorganization plan would require congressional action. Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice, state and the judiciary, plans to introduce a breakup bill next month.

“There’s no way you can fix this agency,” he told Meissner bluntly.

Despite harsh words from Rogers and other Republicans--but also from Democrat Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia--Meissner insisted that Clinton administration officials, including Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, had considered all options and decided that restructuring is better than dismantling the INS.

Harold Ezell, former INS chief for the Western states and a member of the reform panel that urged the agency’s demise, questioned the intent of Meissner’s proposal. “The INS,” he said in Los Angeles, “like every bureaucracy, is trying to protect its fiefdom.”

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Los Angeles contributed to this story.