[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 50 (Wednesday, April 29, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3753-S3755]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               INS REFORM

  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I will discuss today the Senate 
Immigration Subcommittee's plans for a series of hearings on reform of 
the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
  At the beginning of this Congress, I outlined my agenda as the 
incoming chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration. During that 
discussion, I noted that the time had perhaps come to consider 
fundamental reform of the INS. In particular, I raised the question as 
to whether an agency charged with both policing our borders and 
providing services to those seeking to come here legally and become 
citizens could perform either mission well.
  Nothing I have observed since that time has persuaded me that these 
concerns were misplaced. To the contrary, the problems I have observed 
with the Service's functioning leave me persuaded that the current 
structure simply does not work. I also remain of the view that 
splitting responsibility for INS's different missions is an important 
part of the solution.
  In my view, Mr. President, we must take a hard look at all aspects of 
the current INS structure. Right now, for example, the distribution of 
policymaking authority between headquarters and field offices seems 
haphazard, at best. There also seems to be almost no mechanism for 
implementing priorities and holding workers responsible for failing to 
do so. INS's bureaucratic culture appears to tolerate and almost expect 
failure on too many occasions.
  I want to spend a few minutes setting forth some examples of these 
rather serious problems.
  Most people are, by now, familiar with the story of ``Citizenship 
U.S.A.,'' how what began as a laudable effort to reduce the backlog of 
legal immigrants waiting to become Americans ended up sacrificing the 
integrity of the naturalization process, leaving a bitter aftertaste to 
what should have been the joyous experience of becoming a citizen of 
this great country. In the

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course of that effort, thousands of criminal background checks were not 
completed, leading to the naturalization of people who had committed 
disqualifying crimes.
  As a result of the program's deficiencies, INS is already working to 
revoke the citizenship of 369 immigrants and is considering action on 
almost 6,000 other cases.
  Revocation of citizenship, however, is properly an onerous procedure, 
considerably more difficult than denying it in the first place to those 
the law says should not receive it.
  This particular episode has already received considerable attention, 
and I will not go through the details again.
  What has received less attention, however, and is in some ways even 
more worrisome, is what this episode revealed about serious 
deficiencies in all aspects of INS operations.
  To begin with, many of the flaws that produced improper 
naturalizations in Citizenship USA had been identified years before, 
but gone unaddressed.
  A 1994 report of the inspector general's office identified two major 
problems with INS's background check process.
  First, it found that the INS did not verify that fingerprints 
submitted with applications actually belonged to the applicant.
  Second, the INS failed to ensure that background checks were 
completed by the FBI.
  A General Accounting Office study conducted the same year confirmed 
these findings. Yet the problems went unaddressed for two years.
  In November of 1996, after several front page stories reported on 
improper naturalizations, the INS Commissioner finally ordered that no 
naturalizations go forward without a completed FBI background check and 
unless new, more careful procedures for processing background checks 
had been followed.
  In an audit completed five months after that directive was issued, 
however, Peat Marwick found that only 1 out of 23 INS offices was 
actually complying with this policy. 7 offices were only marginally 
compliant, and 15 were not complying with the new procedures at all. It 
was only a few months ago that KPMG and INS were finally able to say 
that the new procedures were being followed.
  Allegations of fraud in testing also predate Citizenship USA.
  Indictments were handed down against 20 defendants in California this 
past January. But investigations into these allegations have been 
ongoing for several years and the INS received complaints as early as 
1992 that should have alerted the agency to the potential for serious 
criminal fraud.
  Criminal cases may take considerable time to develop and I am not 
criticizing anyone for taking the time necessary before bringing these 
particular prosecutions.
  My point, however, is that INS took no separate action to close the 
serious loopholes these allegations pointed toward until this year, the 
day before I chaired a hearing to look into the issue.
  Mr. President, Peat Marwick also conducted a separate audit of all 
naturalizations done between August 1995 and September 1996. It 
concluded that we can be confident that naturalization was proper in 
only 8.6% of the 1 million cases naturalized during that period.
  The other 91.4% of cases either contained insufficient documentation 
to support a proper decision or (in 3.7% of the cases) involved an 
outright improper grant of citizenship.
  Thus, in addition to the 3.7% of cases improperly naturalized, we 
simply do not know whether almost 90% of those granted citizenship 
during that period met the requirements for naturalization.
  It may well be that the vast majority of cases with insufficient 
documentation were decided properly.
  But the American people deserve to know that citizenship is being 
conferred only on deserving people, just as the vast majority of legal 
immigrants who come here to play by the rules and make a contribution 
deserve to gain citizenship without a cloud of doubt hanging over its 
propriety.
  Unfortunately, these audits indicate that INS simply does not keep 
complete and accurate naturalization files and cannot even locate many 
files that should be in its possession.
  I have also heard numerous tales of fingerprints being taken and lost 
repeatedly, of inconsistent accounts being given about the status of 
people's files, and of an inability to get resolution on the simple 
question of a person's status.
  Under these circumstances, Mr. President, it comes as no surprise 
that the backlogs Citizenship USA was designed to address are now back 
with a vengeance. As many as 1.8 million people are caught up in the 
nation's naturalization backlog and in some places the wait for 
citizenship can last up to two years.
  Press reports suggest that INS officials have been attributing this 
slowdown to new procedures put in place in response to Congressional 
pressure. But when the subcommittee ranking member and I asked whether 
the new fingerprinting process might cause delays, the INS official in 
charge of developing them assured us that they would not.
  Unfortunately, naturalization is only one area where the INS has not 
performed either its enforcement or its service mission adequately.
  For example, INS does not seem able to figure out how to deport 
criminal aliens directly after they have finished serving their 
sentences, and hence claims it cannot detain all of them pending 
deportation.
  At the same time, INS seems to detain many people with strong asylum 
claims in the same cells as hardened criminals. Who is detained, who is 
not, and for how long seems to depend less on the person's particular 
equities as the district in which he or she is found.
  When I first raised the issue of fundamental INS restructuring and a 
split of its missions, I was not sure the idea would be seriously 
considered. But, as more problems have come to light, people 
increasingly seem agreed that reform is needed.
  The key issue is rapidly becoming not whether there will be a 
restructuring but what form it should take in order to solve INS 
problems.
  The latest adherent of this view is the Administration. A few weeks 
ago, I received a letter from Attorney General Janet Reno, Assistant to 
the President for Domestic Policy Bruce Reed and Director of Management 
and Budget Franklin Raines, laying out the Administration's proposals 
on the matter.
  This letter acknowledges INS problems and their seriousness. The 
Administration also recognizes that one major source of these problems 
is INS' dual role as enforcer of our immigration laws and provider of 
immigration and citizenship services.
  Whether the Administration's proposed remedy is adequate to the task, 
however, remains to be seen.
  The Administration proposes to retain the current INS and have it 
perform all its current functions. Its plan would then untangle INS' 
overlapping and confusing organizational structure, replacing it with 
two clear chains of command, one for enforcement and the other for 
service provision.
  I will study this proposal closely. But I also will look at 
alternatives.
  In particular, while separating lines of authority into enforcement 
and service is a good start, I am not convinced that it will suffice to 
allow officials to pursue each mission with sufficient enthusiasm and 
energy.
  I also worry that, by retaining the current agency, even with 
significant restructuring, we may end up retaining the bureaucratic 
culture of toleration for failure that we must end.
  Finally, I think everyone, including the Administration, understands 
that no reform plan could command the support necessary to carry the 
day without careful scrutiny of all relevant problems, the means the 
plan would use to address them, and the manner in which the plan would 
work in practice.
  These are issues I intend to address through the series of oversight 
hearings I will launch shortly after the next recess.
  Because I believe this is a serious issue, I do not think it is 
necessarily one that can be resolved this Congress.
  But I hope these hearings will help us formulate legislation this 
session that can serve as a starting point for further discussions. I 
look forward to working with all interested parties in this important 
endeavor.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BREAUX addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.

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  Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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