Skeptics Wary of Impending INS Split

It took a national calamity, but it now seems inevitable that the Immigration and Naturalization Service--long the target of derision, even contempt, from the borderlands to the corridors of Congress--will be replaced.

An overwhelming House vote on Thursday probably ensures that the INS will be eliminated, its duties shifted to new bureaus in the Justice Department.

Concluded Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), architect of the House plan: “We must practice tough love and abolish the INS.”

Yet the question lingers: What will emerge in its place?

The Senate also has a plan to do away with the INS. Both proposals would split the agency’s two core missions--serving the immigrant population, while watching borders and enforcing immigration laws--between a pair of new bureaus, each with its own budget. Under both plans, the title of INS commissioner would be changed, although a single official would remain at the helm of immigration policy.

Beyond that, the plans offer varying prescriptions with sketchy details. Nitty-gritty decisions about where to open enforcement and service offices or how personnel might be redeployed probably will be made down the line.

Such changes, lawmakers predict, will pay off in a newly efficient immigration bureaucracy, one that can do a better job of keeping out terrorists and other criminals while also reducing illegal immigration and improving the INS’ woeful service record.

For all the political momentum, some wonder: Is this a well-reasoned response to a long-recognized dilemma? Or a flailing act of frustration and political expediency? Will redrawing the organizational chart solve the seemingly intractable problems in U.S. immigration policy?

“It could make things somewhat better--or considerably worse,” said former INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, whose Clinton administration reign included one of several internal agency reorganizations in recent years. “It by no means is going to solve all the problems in the immigration area.”

On the near horizon, some skeptics already perceive the glimmer of folly.

“You have got one inefficient, unproductive INS now,” said Rep. Melvin L. Watt (D-N.C.), one of the few opponents of the House measure to split up the service. “It seems to me that what you are going to end up with is two inefficient agencies.”

Reorganization Won’t Cure All Agency Ills

Critics are quick to note what the breakup of the INS, in and of itself, is not likely to achieve.

It does not alter U.S. immigration policy, which continues to struggle with competing aims of facilitating legitimate arrivals and closing the door to those barred from entry--a struggle that has become even more difficult since Sept. 11.

It does not modernize the service’s inefficient technology or transform its hodgepodge of uncoordinated information systems and lax internal discipline.

It does not address the powerful pressures behind unlawful immigration. Nor does the INS’ demise mean that the agency’s heirs suddenly will be magnets for talented managers.

Rather, the architects of reform are placing enormous faith in the notion that improvements can arise from a more efficient chain of command, and what they view as a more logical division of work responsibilities.

Few argue seriously that the INS alone could have averted the attacks of Sept. 11, which were carried out by 19 Middle Eastern men who had entered the country on legal visas.

Yet the Sept. 11 strikes transformed immigration from a back-burner discussion centering on possible amnesty for illegal immigrants from Mexico into a high-stakes debate about national security. And the INS’ sluggish response only reinforced its image as a lumbering behemoth lurching from one crisis to the next.

In the charged aftermath of Sept. 11, the INS acknowledged that it had no idea where to find multitudes of foreign students and other short-term visitors--not to mention 300,000 people already ordered deported, many with criminal records. The illegal immigrant population, meantime, is believed to have surged past 8 million--approximately the population of Georgia.

Lawmakers pounced on an agency that, by one estimate, generates six times as many complaints to congressional staffs as the Internal Revenue Service. The disastrous mailing of visa approvals to a pair of dead hijackers last month sealed the service’s fate.

“The INS is going into the wastebasket of history,” declared Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.). “We need to shred it, gather the shreds, burn them, gather the ashes and distribute them among the four corners of this world so this agency . . . can never . . . endanger our security and be a disgrace to this country.”

Congressional and White House efforts to retool the INS share a common diagnosis: Many of the agency’s woes can be traced to its two very different missions.

Traditionally, the enforcement side, especially the politically popular Border Patrol, has attracted the bulk of agency funding. Some doubt that long-entrenched pattern will change in the new configuration--and there is fear of a stealth agenda to slash service budgets.

Backlogs and mismanagement have left legitimate applicants waiting in line for years. The queue now exceeds 5 million pending applications and petitions--a fourfold increase since 1994. As one step to addressing such frustrations, the congressional plans would create an ombudsman’s office to monitor and improve the service side of the equation.

Yet while enthusiasts of an INS breakup maintain that it would usher in a more user-friendly era, some immigration experts say there are dangers in separating the enforcement and service functions. The two areas inevitably overlap, such as when adjudicators processing claims for citizenship or permanent resident status find evidence of fraud or other criminal activity.

“We need very close linkages between immigration enforcement and benefits,” said David Martin, former INS general counsel, now a law professor at the University of Virginia. “The problems of the agency have not primarily been problems of organization.”

The projected INS abolition, Martin noted, does not resolve a fundamental policy conundrum: “Sometimes the American people want enforcement,” he said, “but at other times we wonder, ‘Why is the INS hassling my friend?’ ”

That the INS is suffering from “mission overload” while terminally at cross-purposes with itself seems beyond dispute. Border Patrol agents track down illegal immigrants but also scramble to rescue those trapped in desert and mountain terrain.

INS investigators in places such as Los Angeles and New York seek out certain illegal immigrants--while virtually ignoring many others who live largely without fear of detection.

In February, INS inspectors at Los Angeles International Airport were appalled to receive a memo from management directing them “not to respond” to concerns from airlines about illegal immigrants boarding planes.

“With all respect, . . . our management’s approach to the problem is to tell us what we cannot do to stop this illegal entry,” one officer wrote in a widely distributed e-mail response. “God help the American public.”

Policies Differ Around the Country

Congressional reformers are also hoping that the overhaul will shift power to Washington from regional immigration offices, where influential district directors issue broad policy proclamations sometimes at variance with national guidelines.

For instance, decisions regarding detention of people facing deportation may vary greatly from one district to another. Likewise, emphasis on citizenship services and assisting immigrants with adjudication matters may be different from city to city.

“The culture and the focus of the INS have to change, whether it’s one agency or many,” said Carl Shusterman, a lawyer in Los Angeles who formerly worked as an INS attorney. “Benefits need to be expedited and not begrudged. . . .”

On Capitol Hill, much of the debate will center on how much power is vested in the chief of the realigned agency. Critics of the House legislation say the job description of the proposed boss--a new associate attorney general who would oversee the bureaus--sounds too much like a caretaker, thus opening the door to further snafus in communication and lack of coordination.

“We need the dean or the principal--not the guidance counselor,” said Larry Gonzalez, Washington director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

All agree that potential improvements in the INS and border security go beyond the fine points of competing reorganization charts. A separate congressional bill would tighten visa procedures, bolster inspections at borders and ports of entry, and institute a system to track all foreign students and visitors from entry until departure.

Others argue that current high immigration levels--with about 1 million new arrivals each year, along with many more short-term visitors--overwhelm the system. Historically, Congress has heaped new tasks upon the INS without sufficient funding or political backing.

“They’re unwilling to face the fact that INS is broken because immigration policy is broken--not because bureaucrats have the wrong titles on their business cards,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Reform, a group that favors fewer immigrants.

Inside the INS, the painful buildup toward the dissolution of the agency has been as uplifting as hearing the executioner’s footsteps.

“You can imagine how incredibly demoralized the agency is, how difficult this is in terms of people staying focused on their work and moving ahead,” said former commissioner Meissner, adding: “The single most important thing, I would argue, is to get this settled one way or another.”

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McDonnell reported from Los Angeles and Peterson from Washington.