Immigration Reform: Is Restructuring the Answer?

Abstract

Abstract : In its September 1997 final report, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform proposed that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) be abolished because one agency cannot both effectively enforce the immigration laws and fairly adjudicate immigration benefits. Finding that the INS, as an agency under the Department of Justice, has an enforcement bias harmful to benefits adjudication, the Commission recommended that all benefits adjudication be done by the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the Department of State and that a new Department of Justice agency be created for immigration law enforcement. On balance, the evidence shows that INS does emphasize enforcement at the expense of adjudication but that this stems more from its position in the Department of Justice than intrinsic mission conflict and that fraud is an ever present element of adjudication. As a particle matter. the two cannot be separated. Thus, the problem raised by the Commission may be better solved by turning INS into an independent agency rather than by dismemberment.