The end of an era is near. The Immigration and Naturalization Service as we now know it will very soon be gone forever.
Yesterday, in a textbook example of the fascinatingly confounded process of government, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32 to 2 to break the INS into two parts. The revamped agency would be comprised of a bureau of Immigration Enforcement and a bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, both of which would be managed by a newly appointed associate attorney general.
Reform is certainly needed, given the agency’s past ineffectiveness, and in light of its more recent, more publicized gaffes ? issuing student visas to two dead plane hijackers isn?t exactly the action of a well-run immigration organization. Anyone who values reform will appreciate the effort, especially given the overwhelming bi-partisan support to initiate this legislation.
However, the House plan leaves the beleaguered institution within the purview of the Justice Department. Leaving INS buried in a labyrinthian bureaucracy without forceful accountability is the wrong idea, keeping in mind the quagmire the agency has found itself of
A better plan would be to make what is now INS into a totally separate organization with an appointed director, answering directly to the president. As with the House plan, INS would be broken in half — an enforcement arm, and a service arm. But the agency as a whole would have singular streamlined system.
Shockingly, this savvy idea came from Edward Kennedy, the formerly oft-inebriated and currently well-behaved member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kennedy is preparing his own bipartisan legislation for the Senate. With a director who answers directly to the president, it may be possible to stop foreign citizens bent on terrorism from entering the country, or at least stop them from entering the country with government approval.
In another move making me doubt the policies of our president (and thus my vote for him), the Bush administration has proposed reforming INS from within, leaving it intact but “fundamentally chang[ing] the way the agency does business.” So says INS commissioner James Ziglar.
INS is supposed to both keep illegal immigrants out and allow properly documented foreign citizens in; at this time, the evidence is overwhelming that the job is not being done. Leaving the system as it is without a change from the outside would be a mistake the entire nation would pay for sometime in the future.
At the very least, American citizens should be assured that death via terrorism is not coming for them because of gross negligence on the part of the agency in charge of patrolling the our borders.
Given the new importance homeland security has taken within the Bush administration, one would hope serious reform is high on the priority list. For the sake of all Americans, I hope Sen. Kennedy?s proposal is passed and President Bush has enough good sense to sign it.
James P. Kent ([email protected]) is a senior majoring economics and business management.
