Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com
Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2001

"The system is broken, this bill is an idea to fix it," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. "I'm not saying it is the only idea to fix it, but we'd better fix it."

According to Sensenbrenner, INS currently has a backlog of 4.9 million applications for various immigration services provided by the agency. Worse, he says, is that the agency has issued deportation orders for 250,000 illegal aliens that it is unable to locate.

In defense of the agency, the congressman says the INS has at times been treated as less important by the Justice Department.

"A lot of the problems that the INS is facing have come about as the result of years and perhaps decades of treating the INS as, you know, those folks over there who stamp passports and issue green cards," he acknowledged. "We've got to do more than that."

The plan proposed by Sensenbrenner and Rep. George Gekas, R-Pa., would completely restructure the agency, renaming it the "Agency for Immigration Affairs (AIA). That new agency would be the direct responsibility of an associate attorney general for immigration affairs.

Gekas says this move would pull together all of the immigration-related functions currently scattered through five divisions of the Justice Department.

"Instead of some people in the Criminal Division, some in the Civil Division, and some in the Civil Rights Division handling immigration and reporting to different assistant attorney generals," he said, "it makes sense to put them in this new immigration agency and have them reporting to one (person)."

Sensenbrenner says creating the new associate attorney general for immigration affairs position would accomplish another practical goal.

"There has got to be accountability, and there has got to be more efficiency," he said.

To address efficiency problems, the "Immigration Reform and Accountability Act of 2001" creates two distinct entities within the AIA. The Bureau of Immigration Services and Adjudications would be responsible for all services dealing with legal immigration. Sensenbrenner says this agency should be headed by someone with extensive customer service experience.

"I want people to have a positive experience with the U.S. government when they are playing by the rules and coming to America to work legally or to reunite with family members," he stressed.

The second division of the new AIA would be the Bureau of Immigration Enforcement.

Gekas and Sensenbrenner say the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by foreign citizens have made it even more obvious that the U.S. needs a team of dedicated law enforcement experts whose sole focus is to secure the country's borders and deal with criminal and illegal aliens.

Another proposal has been introduced by the House Immigration Reform Caucus, chaired by Rep. Thomas Tancredo, R-Colo. That plan would combine the functions of the INS, U.S. Customs Service, and Drug Enforcement Administration into a single Border Control Agency.

Sensenbrenner says such a move would require action by more than one "committee of jurisdiction" in Congress, almost guaranteeing the proposal's failure.

Tancredo opposes the division of INS for some of the same reasons as Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies. He says the two distinct functions of the current agency require intermingled access to each other's information.

"It is better that you keep both the administrative and enforcement functions of the INS within the same agency," Krikorian said. "They are intimately related functions, even though they are distinct."

To address those concerns, the Sensenbrenner-Gekas plan includes an "Office of Shared Services" that will oversee such needs. The proposal specifically mandates, for example, that all computerized records from the Services and Adjudications Bureau and the Enforcement Bureau be maintained on the same, shared computer network.

"This bill provides for the reality that the two separate immigration agencies will still need access to some of the same items," Gekas said.

The proposal's sponsors have not tabulated the exact cost of the split, but Sensenbrenner stresses that "Congress has never been stingy" when it comes to funding the mission of the INS. The budget for the agency has more than tripled, from $1.5 billion to $4.5 billion, since 1993.

He says he has already discussed the plan with President Bush.

"I told the president before September 11th, when he was talking about (potential) changes in the immigration law ... that without reorganization of the Immigration Service, whatever we do isn't going to work," Sensenbrenner said.

"And I would point out to you that the president came out in favor of restructuring the Immigration service during the campaign," he added.

Gekas agrees that the prospects are good for administration support.

"My recollection is that from the very first days of the Bush administration, there were signals being given by the White House and by the president himself, that he favors a reorganization of what is now the Immigration and Naturalization Service," he said.

(CNSNews.com Staff Writer John Rossomando contributed to this report.)

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