 |
|
|
|
||
|
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
|
|
April
9, 2002, 8:30 a.m. By John Fonte |
|
oes
American democracy value new immigrants as future fellow citizens or simply
as "customers?" Congress and the administration will soon decide.
Last November the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS), James Ziglar submitted the Justice Department's proposal to restructure
the agency.
A striking characteristic of the Ziglar proposal is that it is nearly devoid of the language of citizenship. Instead, it employs the rhetoric of consumerism and talks constantly about "customer service." Thus, the plan advocates putting "the customer first when developing policy and procedures."
But, "customers" and "citizens" are often incompatible concepts. A "customer" could include, for example, a pro-terrorist or anti-democratic intellectual seeking the legal protection of American citizenship for the purpose of undermining our democracy. Why should the desires and interests of individual "customers" (mostly non-citizens) trump the interests of American citizenry as a whole? Are we are representative democracy or a business corporation?
The Ziglar plan describes the "vital dual missions" of the INS as "service and enforcement." It proposes that the INS be divided into two units the "Bureau of Immigration Enforcement" and the "Bureau of Immigration Services."
The proposal is incomplete. The immigration agency has a third vital mission that has been ignored in the INS restructuring plan — citizenship. "Naturalization," after all, means that foreign citizens become American citizens. But the INS proposal refers only to "services," "customers," and "benefits," and never discusses "citizenship" or "civic responsibilities."
In a 40-page document there are 81 references to "services;" 24 references to "customers;" and only 4 references to "citizens;" all of which are placed within the context of "case work" and "services." There are no references to "citizenship;" the word never appears in the INS plan. There is no discussion of the importance for American democracy of the citizenship naturalization process or fostering a sense of civic obligation among new citizens.
Yet, immigration law explicitly emphasizes the mission of promoting the civic integration of immigrants into the mainstream of American life. Under, "Instruction in citizenship," the attorney general is "authorized to promote instruction and training in citizenship responsibilities of applicants for naturalization…" Other sections of the law state that the applicants for citizenship understand basic English and demonstrate "a knowledge and understanding…of the history, and of the principles and form of government of the United States."
Besides "knowledge and understanding," the law explicitly requires "an attachment to the fundamental principles of the Constitution of the United States." Moreover, new citizens take an oath renouncing previous political allegiances and promising to "support and defend" the Constitution "against all enemies foreign and domestic." All of this is found in the law for a reason — the national interest. Our interest as a nation calls for fostering civic attachment to their new land among new citizens — citizens who are loyal, especially now, when loyalty to American democracy is at a premium.
The INS plan correctly states that our government's civil servants should be "consistent, courteous, accurate, and timely" in dealing with all persons (citizens and non-citizens) having business with the agency. This civility requirement is long overdue. Too often in the past some INS personnel have treated immigrants with a lack of respect. The INS leadership should insist that agency personnel treat all persons in a dignified, equitable, and respectful manner.
Unfortunately, in their eagerness to make this valid point, the drafters of the INS proposal have almost totally obscured something more essential the vital civic mission of the agency. The commercial metaphor that those applying for American citizenship are essentially "customers" seeking a "service" is entirely inappropriate for the dignity and seriousness of our naturalization process. Naturalization is about preparing new citizens for self-government, for transferring their political loyalty from one country to another, not providing "customers" with a "product" called "American citizenship." Treating immigrants seeking American citizenship with real respect means seeing them as future fellow citizens, as "candidates for citizenship," a status of infinitely greater dignity than "customer."
It is precisely because we are a "nation of immigrants" made up of people from across the globe, and not a country based on race or ethnicity, that our naturalization process should emphasize citizenship. As they go through the naturalization process, our future fellow citizens should feel that they are making a serious moral commitment to American democracy. They should not feel as if they are picking up some papers from the customer service bureau of a Department of Motor Vehicles.
This week the House Judiciary Committee will present a bipartisan bill (HR 3231) to abolish the INS and overhaul the immigration service. The bill to create a new "Agency for Immigration Affairs" is named after Barbara Jordan, the Democratic Congresswoman from Texas, one of the Congress's most articulate supporters of the civic assimilation of immigrants into the mainstream of American life.
In an article in the New York Times on September 11, 1995 entitled, "The Americanization Ideal," Jordan embraced the term "Americanization," stating that although the word had been "stolen by racists and xenophobes" in the past, "it is our word and we are taking it back. Americanization means becoming part of the polity becoming on of us." Americanization does "not mean conformity," Jordan insisted, but commitment to our constitutional democracy. She forthrightly declared that "immigration imposes mutual obligations." Immigrants, "…who choose to come here must embrace the common core of American civic culture." And all citizens, for their part, she stated, must vigorously oppose discrimination against immigrants.
Will Congress emphasize American citizenship — its obligations and responsibilities, not simply its rights and benefits — in any restructured immigration agency? The Chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, Congressman George Gekas (R., Pa.) has proposed to do just that by creating a new "Office of Citizenship" within the new immigration agency that will promote the civic assimilation of immigrants along the lines that Barbara Jordan recommended on September 11, 1995. Gekas achieved his first small success when he persuaded the full Judiciary Committee to change the name of the proposed "Bureau of Immigration Services and Adjudications" to the "Bureau of Citizenship and Services."
Whether the substance of this citizenship initiative will find allies in the House, the Senate, and the administration is not yet clear, but this week's action by the House Judiciary Committee will start to answer the truly consequential question: Are new Americans: customers or citizens?
— Fonte is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute