|
 he
INS is considering raising its fees again, and the mass-immigration
crowd is crying foul.
The Associated Press recently reported that the Service is looking
at new fee increases to help cover rising costs and cope with growing
backlogs. The fee for green-card applications might go up to $330,
citizenship to $345. This comes on the heels of a new program to
charge $1,000 for expedited processing of many temporary work visas.
The usual suspects have been outraged at these developments: newspaper
editorial pages, the immigration lawyers, the "Catholic Legal Immigration
Network." And they're right — the INS isn't a 7-11 where you
buy a green card along with your beef jerky and doughnuts.
But what the high-immigration Left doesn't understand is that this
situation is unavoidable under our current approach to immigration.
They want to keep admitting a million people a year (or more), but
also want efficient service and respectful treatment for all these
newcomers.
This is a circle that can't be squared. The INS, after decades of
neglect and mockery, simply can't modernize in the midst of ever-increasing
responsibilities. The fee hikes are simply an attempt at triage
by an agency told to hurry into the 21st century while being overwhelmed
with applications whose processing is required to be self-funded
by fees.
One solution might be simply to throw more money at the INS. This
is exactly what the Bush administration has proposed. Its FY 2002
budget request for the agency contains a 10 percent increase to
more than $5.5 billion, and envisions spending $500 million over
five years to bring waiting times down to no more than six months
for all immigration applications and "to make customer satisfaction
a priority."
This additional funding is desperately needed. The General Accounting
Office reported in May that the receipt of new applications (green
cards, citizenship, temporary workers, etc.) has increased 50 percent
over the past six years and the backlog of unresolved applications
has quadrupled to nearly four million. The number of citizenship
applications filed in the 1990s was about 6.9 million, triple the
level of the 1980s; "temporary" admissions nearly doubled in the
1990s to more than 30 million; and the number of (very labor-intensive)
applications for asylum in the 1990s was nearly one million, more
than double the level of the 1980s.
Some government agencies might be able to handle such a crush of
new work, especially when provided with increased resources. But
the INS is not just any agency. The name of INS headquarters in
Washington says it all — Memorials remind us of Washington,
Jefferson, and Lincoln, the airport is named after Reagan, the performing
arts center after Kennedy, and the INS building is named after…Chester
A. Arthur.
The INS's status as the Rodney Dangerfield of federal agencies isn't
limited to symbolism. The abysmally out-of-date and fragmented state
of the agency's computer systems stems from a decision in the 1970s
not to automate the files so as to preserve low-level clerical
jobs. A real government agency would not have been allowed to paint
itself into such a corner. As then-Commissioner Doris Meissner told
Government Executive magazine in a 1999 interview, "You don't
overcome a history like that in four to five years."
No solution to this mess will be easy. Hiking fees to increase available
funds is a short-term bureaucratic response. The Bush administration
has more ambitious plans to reorganize the agency altogether, splitting
the service and enforcement functions into two separate chains of
command within the agency. The administration presumably chose its
nominee for INS commissioner on the basis of his ability to manage
such an overhaul; James Ziglar, currently Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper
of the Senate, has no experience with immigration but has a long
career in finance, including as former managing director of Paine
Webber's municipal securities group. (He is also a GOP contributor
who sang in the same church choir as Trent Lott during high school.)
But more money, management savvy, and institutional reorganization
won't be enough. The only way to give the INS the breathing room
it needs to modernize is to reduce its workload. Some demands upon
the service can't be reduced — tourists will, and should, keep
coming; legal immigrants will, and should, keep applying for citizenship.
But the admission of new immigrants and "temporary" workers is an
area where the INS's load can be lightened dramatically.
Some will respond with the flat-earth perspective that immigration
is an undiluted good, we all benefit, entrepreneurship, family values,
ethnic restaurants, nation-of-immigrants, diversity-is-our-strength,
who-will-clean-my-pool? — all issues extensively examined elsewhere
(such as at the Center
for Immigration Studies website).
But whatever the costs and benefits of immigration, no one can argue
with a straight face that we are doing a good job of processing
newcomers into our country. Cutting legal immigration back —
to the spouses and minor children of American citizens, plus a handful
of genuine Einsteins and authentic refugees — and ratcheting
down the admission of "temporary" workers would provide the essential
breathing room needed if administration plans for INS reorganization
and improvements in service are to succeed. Any such legislation
to cut back immigration levels could be written to expire after,
say, seven years, to reassure critics that this is not a back-door
way to permanently reduce immigration.
On the other hand, after such a pause, the American people might
conclude that reducing immigration doesn't seem to have made things
worse, and may even have made them better. Perhaps that is what
the proponents of mass immigration fear the most.
|
