Insider interview: What to do about the INS

Q. Why is it important to split the INS's enforcement and administrative functions?

A. Well, the agency has for many years been unable to meet its dual mandate of enforcing the immigration laws effectively while providing service to people in a decent and humane and timely manner. It's been really the broad-based consensus of many, from the left and from the right, that this schizophrenic mission is at the heart of the agency's problems, and that by separating out enforcement from service... you can have an agency which can really meet the dual mandate. The agency has for the last many years been getting an increase in funding, so its budget has basically exploded, but that money has very much been directed into enforcement and specifically into the Border Patrol, mainly at the southern border. And one could argue that those policies haven't been particularly effective either.

We've seen service really been shortchanged, and peoples' waiting times growing longer, and the services growing shabbier and the treatment of people growing worse. It's an unacceptable status quo.

Q. Before the incident last week involving the visas for the September 11 pilots, what was your impression of the job the INS was doing? Is this something you could have seen coming?

A. Oh yeah. One would have hoped that someone in this agency would have thought to pull the 19 hijackers' files. So it is obviously a huge public relations blunder. But at the heart of what happened, which is that there is a six-month delay in a notice going out for a person who is studying... that is not new news. That's an experience that immigrants face every single day, where there are long delays in their visas getting approved, where they're often operating without knowing what their status is, where they're separated from their family members because the INS has lost files, where asylum seekers languish in detention because they can't get the approval notice release to let them go. The examples go on and on, where service just hasn't been able to keep up with the demands, and the overlap between service and enforcement, I think, is probably the lesson that's most important coming out of the debacle of March 11. It's classic, because you see that what is a routine extension of a visa or conversion of a visa in fact has some major enforcement and, in this case, security implications.

We worry, quite frankly, about the idea of separating enforcement so far from service that they're under completely different heads, because I think there might be more instances of where, in the carrying out of a service function, enforcement isn't given the attention that it needs -- and vice versa: In the carrying out of an enforcement function, you're in fact not providing decent service to people who are coming to build America, not to tear it down.

Q. Do you think that the congressional plans to split the INS and the Justice Department investigations will effect any kind of positive change there?

A. I think that there will be change. It can only get better, right? Legislation is likely to move in the House of Representatives that is, as I understand it, going to enjoy strong bipartisan support since [Rep.] John Conyers [D-Mich.] and [Rep. James] Sensenbrenner [R-Wis.] have gotten together on it. So that's the lead Democrat and Republican from the Judiciary Committee.

As I understand it, it's a reasonably thoughtful piece of legislation that would get at separating service from enforcement, and it has an associate attorney general at the top. I don't know the details of the legislation, so I can't say that we endorse it. But everything that I've been told about it, is that it's headed in the right direction.

Now on the Senate side, you're likely to see Sen. [Edward] Kennedy [D-Mass.] and Sen. [Sam] Brownback [R-Kan.] introduce a similar piece of legislation. It'll be somewhat similar to Conyers and Sensenbrenner, but it'll probably be even more similar to what Kennedy had introduced with Spencer Abraham in the last Congress. Again, I think [they're] moving in generally the right direction, where you separate the service and enforcement functions but you have them coordinated at the top, so we don't have the debacle of March 11.

So if you've got strong bipartisan bills in both chambers, and you've got the administration admitting that it needs change, because they're certainly not defending the status quo, I think that there's a strong likelihood that we could have legislation actually move this year -- and possibly be enacted.

Now, there's not a lot of legislative days and it's an election year, and it's always easier said than done. But I do think there is a momentum that has not existed before, quite frankly. In previous times the complaints about how people are treated badly or complaints about the border bungles have never hit the public consciousness the way the visa extension debacle of several days ago has. That's really rocked people on their heels, and has left people scratching their heads and wondering, "My God, are we really safe?" And with that question at the forefront of everyone's mind, and legislators moving a bill, I think we stand a good chance of seeing real change.

Q. It has been reported that in the case of the Pakistani crewmen -- who have since disappeared -- that the INS inspectors failed to follow official protocol, including getting a senior-level administrator to sign off on the waiver that allowed the men to enter the country. Why is this? Are the INS inspectors comparable to the under-trained and lax airport security screeners?

A. Oh no. I'm not an expert on INS personnel or HR policies, so I can only tell you from my experience that the inspectors are very well-trained folks. They often, though, aren't given access to the enforcement level training in some cases, or access to sensitive information. So there's something about the designation of inspectors that doesn't give them as much as they need, quite frankly, in being able to do their job better.

I don't think it's fair though to compare them to an airport screener, because it's apples and oranges. INS inspectors are trained people looking at visas and other entry documents, and so they are very well-trained to that extent. But what's missing is this sort of enforcement boost that they really need, particularly after a September 11.

Interesting that you raise that because there's pending in the Senate, it's already passed the House, a bipartisan bill called the Enhanced Border and Visa Security bill. And this is a piece of legislation that I believe gets at the issue of INS inspectors not having the training and the pay-grade and the level that they need to be able to access the sensitive enforcement-based information, as well as a very thoughtful piece of legislation that adds layers of security to our immigration system before people even enter the U.S. And it's a piece of legislation that quite frankly hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention, much to my frustration and the frustration of many, but I think [the Pakistani crewmen incident] would not have taken place had this bill been passed by the Senate and then signed by the president.

Q. INS Commissioner James W. Ziglar has admitted blame for the visa incident. Nonetheless, he defended his agency and blamed old technology as part of the problem. Do you agree this is the problem?

A. James Ziglar is in a whole lot better position to judge what went wrong in approving those visas than I am. I do think that old technology has hampered the INS because it's old technology and a weak infrastructure coupled with growing legislative mandates of what the INS is supposed to accomplish with very limited resources going to those specific programs.

I can give you an example of that. In 1997, Congress passed a very complicated piece of legislation that gave people from Nicaragua and Cuba green cards. And then it gave people from El Salvador and Guatemala and a bunch of Eastern European countries a really complicated and lengthy process to go through to be interviewed, to maybe get a green card. And this was a program that has affected hundreds of thousands of people, and there wasn't a dime following this mandate. So I wouldn't be surprised if there are old computers in the INS because they, quite frankly, don't have the resources to meet their ever-growing demand.