The Immigration and Naturalization Service might undergo a little spring cleaning if the House of Representatives gets its way. Thursday, the House passed a bill to replace the INS with two new agencies to separately handle immigration and deportations. An overwhelming 405-9 House vote will now shift to the Senate for review.
Some hope efforts to rearrange the INS will turn around some of its current inefficiencies. “It [INS] carries out neither of its crucial missions effectively, enforcing our immigration laws or providing services to immigrants playing by the rules,” said Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in an April 25 Associated Press report. He described the INS as an “undesirable and unwanted stepchild.”
Sensenbrenner’s plan proposes one agency to enforce laws and prevent illegal aliens from entering the U.S. and another to ease the citizenship process.
Next week, the Senate will work on a version of the bill, sponsored by the subcommittee chairman, Sen. Edward Kennedy. Both would eliminate INS Commissioner James Ziglar’s position, according to the report. Both strive to ramp up border security.
“September 11 taught us that immigration and border security issues are too important to be ignored and mishandled,” Kennedy said to the Associated Press.
Though it is too soon to determine how this bill might affect the green industry’s Hispanic labor force and the H2B program, separating the enforcement and processing divisions might allow the government to more carefully inspect border crossings and employee records, pointed out Noel Goldman, president, Marcus Drake Consultants, a Washington, D.C.-based H2B recruiting firm.
“Overall, the INS was too bogged down, and they weren’t functioning efficiently,” he said. “By separating them, the enforcement division will be able to concentrate on these problems.”
On the other hand, it is possible that H2B paperwork will move through the department’s process more quickly, he offered. “If they are less involved with some of their peripheral duties, maybe they will concentrate more on expediting the processing accordingly.” However, given the complexity of the H2B paperwork, Goldman doubts the process will accelerate drastically.
Now more than ever, landscape contractors need to ensure their employees are legal, Goldman noted. “We’ve already experienced tightening with the consulates over seas, and they are much more critical of who they allow to obtain an H2B visa,” he said. “Combined with other border security problems since 9-11, [reorganizing the INS] will go along with the trend of tightening the crossing at the borders.”
Story compiled from an April 25 Associated Press report.
The author is Managing Editor – Special Projects for Lawn & Landscape magazine.