September
11
A Year Later
Advocates oppose proposal for INS
By JOE FEUERHERD
Washington
Opponents of the Bush Administration proposal to place the
Immigration and Naturalization Service within the proposed Department of
Homeland Security argue that an overburdened bureaucracy designed to combat
terror would be ill-equipped to deal with day-to-day immigration issues.
They also worry about the message that would be sent should the
government equate immigration with terrorism. Testifying in June before a House
subcommittee, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops migration and refugee policy
services director Kevin Appleby said placing the INS within the Homeland
Security agency “would send a stark and clear message to the world that
the United States views foreign-born persons, generally speaking, with
suspicion and fear and not as neighbors who bring skills, culture and
faith to benefit our communities, towns and cities.” Further, said
Appleby, “placement of all INS functions into the new Homeland Security
Department also could prove detrimental to the civil rights of persons who
‘look or sound’ foreign.”
Specifically, Appleby questioned whether the INS’s Office of
Children’s Services should be placed within the Homeland Security agency.
“The proposed Department of Homeland Security would be poorly equipped to
assume custodial care of unaccompanied children, lacking specific child welfare
expertise or experience in handling children.”
Appleby and other advocates were persuasive. The homeland security
bill approved by the House in late July moved the enforcement and border
protection functions of the INS to the Homeland Security Department, while
immigrant service functions would remain at the Department of Justice. Care for
refugee children would fall under the more child-friendly Department of Health
and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Most everybody, it seems, is pleased. Said House Judiciary
Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.: “These reforms will end
the INS’s mission overload and ensure that immigration services will
receive the resources necessary to treat legal immigrants with the
professionalism that they deserve.”
The Senate is expected to take up legislation, approved by its
Governmental Affairs Committee, to establish a Homeland Security Department
when it resumes legislative work this month.
National Catholic Reporter, September 6,
2002
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