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Bush administration's plan to restructure the Immigration and Naturalization
Service contains many welcome ingredients — but also a significant
flaw. A proposal released last month seeks to establish a separate
Bureau of Immigration Services. Yet the document outlining the plan
seems to forget that naturalization and citizenship are something
more than "services" which the government must deliver
to "customers."
Yet this is
the bland language spoken by the 40-page document that describes
the restructuring. John Fonte of the Hudson Institute has put it
through the ringer: He counts 81 references to "services"
and 24 to "customers" — but only 4 to "citizens"
and none to "citizenship."
Nobody should
regard the INS as a sister bureaucracy of the DMV, issuing citizenship
papers as if they were drivers licenses. So it's disheartening to
read a document that seems to discuss it in the pale terms of reinventing
government rather than the vigorous ones of American patriotism.
As Fonte writes: "Treating immigrants who hope to become American
citizens with real respect means seeing them as future fellow citizens
(i.e. as 'candidates for citizenship'), not as 'customers' waiting
for the delivery of a 'service' or 'product' called 'American citizenship.'
Every American knows — or should know — that being a 'candidate'
for citizenship — for full and equal membership — in our
democratic republic is a status of infinitely greater significance
and dignity than being a 'customer' or, to use some of the other
terms in this proposal, a 'client' or a 'stakeholder.'"
Instead of
settling for a Bureau of Immigration Services, let us demand a Bureau
of Americanization. Our country does not seek merely to serve immigrants,
but to assimilate them — and specifically to Americanize them.
It's time to recover this wonderful word that historically has been
prized by everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to Barbara Jordan. In the
aftermath of September 11, we should embrace it once more, and let
its spirit animate our immigration agencies.
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