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Summary
of Testimony
by Roy Beck
Executive Director, NumbersUSA.com
Delivered before the Immigration and Claims Subcommittee of the
U.S. House Judiciary Committee
May 15, 2001
American
citizens in communities across the nation are failing to receive
even the most rudimentary of service when they call on the Immigration
and Naturalization Service to deal with burgeoning numbers of illegal
immigrants.
In
preparation for this testimony, we communicated with citizens in
more than two dozen communities where immigration laws are violated
openly and without apparent consequence. The general mood is one
of a sense of abandonment by their federal government and of living
outside the rule of law, leaving the Americans to suffer in communities
deteriorating under the additional threats from crime, disease,
overcrowding and wage depression.
The
citizens and another two dozen people interviewed who are INS agents
or retired INS officials told remarkably similar stories of the
breakdown of the INS as a law enforcement agency: Refusal to respond
to local law enforcement agencies when they pick up illegal aliens;
elimination of most workplace-enforcement procedures; the ignoring
of open gatherings of large numbers of known illegal aliens; giving
illegal aliens the assurance that if they donít commit an aggravated
felony they have virtually no risk of being deported.
NumbersUSA.com
urges the committee to probe deeply among retired and current INS
agents for suggestions about how to turn the INS again into an agency
that serves the American people. As we have done that, we have heard
remarkably similar suggestions. Here are a few of the ones included
in the testimony:
1.
Interior enforcement must be re-instated. Putting more guards on
the border won't do much good unless people in other countries believe
they could be sent back if they succeed in getting past the Border
Patrol.
2.
INS needs sufficient funding to start randomly detaining and deporting
illegal aliens swiftly after apprehension to create credible fear
among the general illegal population.
3.
Invest in an identification system that will allow all agents to
process fingerprints before considering letting them go with an
order to appear at a hearing.
4.
Congress must stop undercutting the INS by giving illegal aliens
loopholes to avoid the 10-year exclusion rule and by granting amnesties.
5.
Little will improve in America's local communities unless the top
echelon and middle management of INS believe in enforcing immigration
laws. As in other parts of the Justice Department, people should
not be allowed to hold jobs in the INS if they believe they can
pick and choose which laws to enforce.
6.
INS should present Congress with a plan to begin pledging 100% response
to any community that asks for help in removing illegal immigrants,
and Congress should provide the necessary funding. Other than meeting
our refugee and asylum obligations, there should be no higher priority
within the INS.
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the Full Statement
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