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INS Reform Put On Backburner

J M Shenoy

From Silicon Valley to Jackson Heights, New York, lawyers for Indian Americans are disappointed with Congress and its inability to make the Immigration and Naturalization Service more effective.

Jeane Butterfield is among those who cannot hide their disappointment. Butterfield, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says Congress has let down immigrants. And immigrants and their attorneys seem to agree.

Nearly a year after the demand for a major overhauling of the INS began and many Congressmen on both sides of the aisle suggested that the INS be made more effective or subjected to sweeping changes, nothing much seems to have happened.

The INS says it has speeded up processing citizenship applications but critics point out that it now has a bigger backlist of green card applicants.

Since election year is around, politicians are scared to act fast on immigration issues, many lawyers say. Legislators also failed to act on practically every other major immigration issue before Congress this year, chief among them being the matter of providing more visas for high-tech workers and restoring welfare benefits to legal immigrants.

"This Congress has been an abysmal failure with regards to immigration policy," said Representative Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus immigration task force.

The association and other immigrant advocacy groups blame Republicans, as does the White House. The administration pressed unsuccessfully to include the benefits restoration in the year-end budget package approved last month by Congress and signed by President Clinton.

While immigration lawyers blamed both political parties for dragging their feet on immigration-related issues, the White House wagged its finger at the Republicans.

"The Republicans are not interested in issues affecting immigrants," said White House deputy chief of staff Maria Echaveste, the administration's point person on immigration policy.

The Republicans have accused the administration of blocking legitimate INS reform and questions the White House's drive to grant amnesty to hundreds of thousands of foreigners living illegally in the United States. They suspect that the White House is trying to pander to immigrant interest in an election year.

But those who are serious about reforming the INS are not giving up.

The authors of a House INS bill -- Lamar Smith of Texas and Hal Rogers of Kentucky, and Texas Democrat Silvestre Reyes -- say they will push for swift consideration of their legislation in the early months of the new millennium.

The House bill would abolish the INS and institute separate agencies, headed by different managers, to enforce immigration laws and handle benefits such as citizenship.

But the Clinton administration has other ideas about reforming the INS. It wants to keep the INS intact, with separate work forces and chains of command for enforcement and services.

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