Restructuring the INS Immigration Function

Moderator: Kathleen Newland, Senior Associate, International Migration Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Panelists: T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Senior Associate, Demetrios Papademetriou, Senior Associate, Deborah Waller Meyers, Associate - all part of the International Migration Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Mr. Aleinikoff, Mr. Papademetriou, and Ms. Waller Meyers presented the International Migration Policy Program's recommendations to restructure the INS. The text of the executive summary follows. To order the full publication, visit the publication page.

The immigration function is complex and cuts across a number of critical policy issues, from the social security, welfare, and human resources areas, to education and economic competitiveness, law enforcement, and foreign policy. Currently, about 10 percent of the U.S. population is foreign-born (twice the rate of the 1950s) and immigration accounts for about two-fifths of U.S. population and labor market growth. At current immigration rates, about two-thirds of U.S. population growth in the next fifty years will be attributable to immigrants, their children, and their grandchildren.

However, despite the issue's salience, the INS has relatively low stature and there exists no formal structure for coherent immigration policy development within the Executive Branch. Despite repeated efforts at modifying and reshuffling the immigration function over the last century, the degree to which the problems and challenges remain the same is startling. Previous studies have focused on INS's multiple missions (particularly the tension between service and enforcement), the overlap of INS functions with those of other agencies, and INS management. Options have included raising the profile for immigration policy development, folding all border management functions into a single agency, consolidating most immigration-related functions from other agencies into the INS, and improving management structures.

We undertook this study well aware of previous studies and the reorganizations they inspired. We neither started from scratch, nor do we simply suggest changes at the margins. We recognize that there are some major problems and major gaps that demand major changes.

We have consolidated into five main areas many of the problems we heard in meetings with representatives of the Administration, the Congress, interest groups, and others who have studied these issues. These are:

• Lack of Policy Coherence
• Inadequate Attention to Customer Service
• Unequal Priority and Attention to Service and Enforcement Missions
• "Mission Overload"
• Lack of Adequate Accountability

Solutions to these problems must begin with the organizing principle that the immigration function should be located in an agency whose primary mission is fully consistent with the function's core purposes. The present placement of the immigration function fails this simple test, in part because of the function's complex and cross-cutting nature. More than any single other reason, and there are many, this is the explanation for the imbalance in the conduct of our immigration responsibilities.

Proposals for reform of the immigration function should embody the following three elements:

• A Centralized, High-Level Location for Immigration Policy Development
• Improved Service Delivery Separation of Service
• Enforcement

We outline two reform options which offer the best prospect of overcoming the long-recognized weaknesses in the performance of the immigration function.

Our preferred option is the creation of a new, independent, "Cabinet-level" agency for migration and citizenship affairs. Under this proposal, various functions currently scattered among several federal departments would be consolidated into a single agency. Consolidation would follow a simple principle: if the function (or part of it) falls within the central mission of the agency in which it is located, it should stay there; if it does not, it should move to the new agency. Thus, the new agency would incorporate the current functions of the INS; labor certification from the Labor Department; the visa, passport, refugee, and migration functions of the State Department; and the functions of the Office of Refugee Resettlement from the Department of Health and Human Services. Importantly, service and enforcement functions would be separated within the new agency. At the local level, separate immigrant service areas and enforcement sectors would be established.

The new agency would elevate immigration to a level commensurate with its importance. It would be able to develop comprehensive and coherent migration and citizenship policies, would be held accountable for policies and performance, would establish a single system of records, would serve as a catalyst for cultural change within the immigration bureaucracy, and would attract experienced managers and analysts. These steps would lead to greater accountability and better service for both immigrants and citizens, as the system benefits from greater policy coherence, improved mission clarity, and an infusion of new managerial talent.

Our second-best option would elevate the immigration function within the Department of Justice through a new position of Associate Attorney General for Immigration. The office, which is at a higher level than that of the current INS Commissioner, would be charged with the formulation of immigration policy. It also would supervise immigration enforcement and service functions, which would be folded directly into the Department. As in the first proposal, these functions would operate through separate chains of command. An Associate Attorney General for Immigration would be well placed to call upon and coordinate with other agencies who have immigration-related functions, chairing an inter-agency group on migration issues. Implementation of this option would provide important opportunities for an influx of new managers and analysts. It would also improve both service and enforcement at the local level by having more focused missions, paying equal attention to both functions, and increasing the pay of officers to that comparable of other agencies in the Justice Department.

We conclude that other options are not up to the task. Simply separating service and enforcement functions within the existing INS could be an important step, but it would not improve policy development and coordination and might not sufficiently close the agency's credibility gap. Nor are we persuaded by the proposal of the Commission on Immigration Reform to dismantle the INS and disperse its functions to other agencies. Such a move would transfer core immigrations functions to agencies that do not view immigration issues as fundamental to their missions. Moreover, rather than improve policymaking, it would be likely to hinder coherent policy development.