H.R. 3231 breaks the INS into two organizations that concentrate on different missions - administering immigration benefits and enforcing immigration laws. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS), led by an expert in government benefits, will concentrate on improving immigration services and reducing adjudication backlogs for legal immigrants. Likewise, the Bureau of Immigration Enforcement (BIE), led by a law enforcement professional, will deny admission to aliens who should be kept out of the U.S., and apprehend and remove aliens along the border and in the interior who are deportable. Each bureau will have a distinct mission, will be able to craft its own policies, and will have its own budget and its own dedicated employees who cannot be shifted to the other agency.
H.R. 3231 also creates an Associate Attorney General in the Department of Justice who handles only immigration affairs. This will create more accountability for the actions taken by the two bureaus than currently exists in the INS. The Associate Attorney General will supervise the two bureaus and resolve conflicts arising between them. In addition, an Office of the Associate Attorney General is created under the control and primary responsibility of the Associate Attorney General. Created within the Associate Attorney General's Office is a Policy Advisor, General Counsel, Chief Financial Officer, Director of Shared Services, Office of the Ombudsman, Office of Professional Responsibility and Quality Review, and Office of Children's Affairs.
Finally, H.R. 3231 requires the application of internet-based technologies to track immigration applications as well as to eventually permit applicants to file applications on-line, thereby improving customer service and saving money.
The INS has been a beleaguered bureaucracy for decades. Congress has increased the INS' budget, hoping that additional resources were what was needed to solve the agency's shortcomings. The INS' budget increased from $1.4 billion in Fiscal Year1992 to $5.5 billion in FY 2002. Notwithstanding this budgetary expansion, the INS' performance has not improved. Most Members of Congress have grown increasingly frustrated with the INS' poor performance in both immigration services and enforcement.
The magnitude of the INS' problems is extraordinary - it had a backlog of 4.9 million applications and petitions at the end of fiscal year 2001, forcing aliens trying to play by the rules to wait in limbo for years. The Census Bureau estimates that at least 8 million undocumented aliens reside in the U.S. Over 300,000 criminal and deportable aliens ordered removed by immigration judges have absconded. Much of the INS' failure stems from the conflict between its enforcement and service missions. The INS is unable to adequately perform either of its missions. Rather, the agency appears to move from one crisis to the next, with no coherent strategy of how to accomplish both missions successfully.
The Immigration Act of 1990 established the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (CIR) to review and evaluate our immigration system. The CIR, chaired by the late Barbara Jordan, concluded that the INS suffered from mission overload. The Commission explained that the INS must give equal weight to more priorities than any one agency can handle. The Commission stated that "[i]mmigration law enforcement requires staffing, training, resources, and a work culture that differs from what is required for effective adjudication of benefits or labor standards regulation of U.S. businesses." Such a system is set up for failure and, with such failure, further loss of public confidence in the immigration system.
On the issue of structural and management reform, the CIR found that the current structure for the administration of the immigration law was problematic. In fact, the CIR found that "no one agency is likely to have the capacity to accomplish all of the goals of immigration policy equally well." Also, the CIR stated that the system compounded the problems of fragmentation, redundancy and delay. To resolve these problems, the CIR recommended the dismantling of the INS.
The INS has reorganized itself numerous times in just the last two decades. However, if one glances at the current organizational chart of the INS, it is clear how dysfunctional the agency's structure is, even after these numerous internal reorganizations over the years. In response to the CIR's recommendations, several INS restructuring proposals were offered by Members of Congress, think tanks, and policy experts. The Fiscal Year 1998 Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Conference Report required the Clinton Administration to review the recommendations of the CIR on restructuring, reorganizing and managing the immigration responsibilities of the INS. The INS rejected the CIR's recommendations and presented its own restructuring plan in April 1998. The proposal called for splitting INS' enforcement components from its service components - while leaving both within the INS. The proposal would have eliminated the current INS structure of over 30 district and 3 regional offices and create new Service and Enforcement areas. The plan was to have approximately 6 to 12 Immigrant Service Areas and 6 to 12 Enforcement Areas nation-wide, each with a separate chain of command reporting to an Executive Associate Commissioner at INS Headquarters. The Commissioner would maintain control over both branches. However, the INS under Commissioner Meissner never strongly pursued its own restructuring plan.
A handful of INS restructuring bills were introduced and considered during the 105th and 106th Congresses. The plans ranged from duplicating the CIR's recommendation to legislating the Meissner restructuring plan, from creating totally separate enforcement and service agencies to putting both agencies under the supervision of an Associate Attorney General. However, no bill moved beyond the Subcommittee level.
