According to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) critics, the agency is failing badly at its central tasks. The most common diagnosis of this failure concludes that the INS has been granted an excess of discretionary authority. Thus, the way to alleviate the situation is to remove some of this authority, possibly by eliminating the INS altogether and assigning its functions to other government agencies. This article argues that the diagnosis is mistaken; the proper response is not to decrease the discretionary authority of the INS, as many of its critics have suggested, but rather to increase its autonomy and power.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Ascencio Commission . (1990). Unauthorized migration: An economic development response (Report of the U.S. Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
2.
Brehm, J. , & Gates, S. (1997). Working, shirking, and sabotage: Bureaucratic response to a democratic public. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
3.
Clarke, J. M. , & McCool, D. C. (1996). Staking out the terrain: Power and performance among the national resource agencies. Albany: State University of New York Press.
4.
Commission on Immigration Reform . (1997). Becoming an American: Immigration and immigrant policy. A report to Congress: Executive summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
5.
DiIulio, J. J. (Ed.). (1994). Deregulating the public service: Can government be improved?Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
6.
Fenno, R. (1966). The power of the purse. Boston: Little, Brown.
7.
Fesler, J. W. , & Kettl, D. (1996). The politics of the administrative process. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.
8.
Hargrove, E. C. (1994). Prisoners of myth: The leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
9.
Hargrove, E. C. , & Glidewell, J. C. (Eds.). (1990). Impossible jobs in public management. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
10.
Harrison, E. G. (1944, June). Immigration and Naturalization Service. Monthly Review, p.1.
11.
House Committee on Government Operations . (1993, August 4). The Immigration and Naturalization Service: Overwhelmed and unprepared for the future. 103d Cong., House Rep. No. 103-216.
12.
House Subcommittee on Immigration . (1999). Alternate proposals to restructure the Immigration and Naturalization Service. 105th Cong., 2nd session.
13.
Kosova, W. (1992, April 13). The INS mess. The New Republic, p.21.
14.
Lee, B. J. (1992). The Immigration and Naturalization Service: In search of the necessary efficiency. Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, 6, pp. 519-544.
15.
McNary, G. (1991, August 25). No authority, no accountability: Don’t abolish the INS: Make it an independent agency. Interpreter Releases, pp. 1281-1289.
16.
Meier, K. J. (1979). Politics and the bureaucracy: Policymaking in the fourth branch of government. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
17.
Mohr, L. H. (1979). Francis Perkins, that woman in FDR’s cabinet. Croton-on-Hudson, NY: North River Press.
18.
Morris, M. (1985). Immigration—The beleaguered bureaucracy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
19.
Papademetrious, D. , Aleinikoff, T. A., & Meyers, D. W. (1998, April 24). The INS needs complete makeover. Los Angeles Times, p.9.
20.
Peters, B. G. (1996). Future of governing: Four emerging models. Lawrence: University of Kansas.
21.
Rosenberg, C. (1997, August 14). INS ends fingerprint service shops. The Miami Herald, p. B2.
22.
Rourke, F. E. (1969). Bureaucracy, politics, and public policy. Boston: Little, Brown.
23.
Senate Committee on the Judiciary . (1998, July 29). INS reform: The enforcement side (testimony of Doris Meissner, Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service).
24.
Smithers, R. (1998, February 6). Asylum seekers testify on abuse by jail guards. The New York Times, p.A1.
25.
Sutherland, D. W. (1996). Abolish the INS: How the federal bureaucracy dooms immigration reform. Washington, DC: Center for Equal Opportunity.
26.
Tarpen, N. C. (1945, May). Immigration and Naturalization Service. Monthly Review, p. 138.
27.
Wilson, J. Q. (1989). Bureaucracy. New York: Basic Books.
