A new bureau for fanning fears
By O. Ricardo
Pimentel
Republiccolumnist
Nov. 26, 2002
The Homeland Security Department is a done deal.
Now we have to make sure that whatever humanitarian impulses still exist within our immigration policies are not undone.
Into this new department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service will be divided into two renamed bureaus - one dealing with citizenship and immigration affairs and the other with border security.
Immigration advocates have been proposing a similar division for a while. They noticed that the INS' functions too often worked at cross purposes. So, you might think these immigration advocates would be happy.
They aren't, and they shouldn't be.
One reason is that both bureaus will still be under a single-agency umbrella that has the word "COPS" written all over it.
Think about this a moment. Homeland Security Department.
Security. Immigrants.
Homeland. Immigrants.
Immigrants in this reorganization will have been clearly and unequivocally labeled as threats to our security and to our homeland.
Immigrant advocates - the National Council of La Raza, for instance - fear that policy flowing from this new agency will substantively reflect that fearful view no matter how the immigration functions are divided in the new department.
A groundless fear? Please note that Michael Garcia, the gentleman President Bush appointed on Monday to head the INS while it devolves into the Homeland Security Department, is described by the attorney general as "one of America's top terrorism prosecutors."
The National Immigration Forum says that the reorganization raises the specter of less emphasis for services and less coordination between the two functions.
Yes, Sept. 11 demonstrated the need to get a better handle on who comes in and who gets to stay in this country.
By and large, however, immigrants are not the terrorist boogeymen that the rhetoric from the anti-immigrant fringe would have us believe.
Two words: Sacco and Vanzetti.
They were the Italian-Americans convicted and executed for killing a paymaster and guard during a $15,000 robbery in 1920.
Both were anarchists, 1920s-speak for terrorists. There was virtually no evidence against them at trial. That's OK. They were anarchists.
Similarly, in the Sept. 11 hijackers we see evidence that immigrants pose threats to our security. These hijackers, were, however, only 19 among millions of immigrants in this country, legal or otherwise.
Back in the 1920s, it was wrong to equate all immigrants with anarchists. It's just as wrong now to automatically equate immigrants with terrorism. There wasn't a single Mexican immigrant among those terrorists, though there were several among the dead in the twin towers.
The best model for INS division was in legislation proposed a while back by Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan.
This bill would have created an Immigration Affairs Agency, divided into service and enforcement functions, each run by a deputy director.
It would also have created an office to protect the rights of immigrant children. (Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced better legislation in this regard.)
OK, but the Homeland Security Department is indeed a done deal. We can insist, however, that the service portion cling to such venerable notions as less red tape, less torturous backlog and liberal immigration policies for the sake of family reunification, asylum and refugee relief.
Perhaps any division under any umbrella is better than no division at all. Our mania about security at the moment does not inspire confidence, however. All of sudden, such things as expanded domestic spying are suddenly accepted.
Let's not fool ourselves. Creating a new overarching bureaucracy will not ensure absolute security. And neither will feeding unreasonable fears about immigrants.
Better to make sure we don't codify that fear in the form of a new Homeland Security Department.
Reach Pimentel at ricardo.pimentel@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8210. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
