Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 11, 1993                   TAG: 9309110286
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID CROSLAND
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IMMIGRATION

President Clinton appointed a new INS commissioner at a Rose Garden ceremony where he seemed to tie the outcome of all domestic programs onto controlling immigration. Janet Reno becomes at least the third attorney general in the past few years to announce a reorganization and management study of INS, which may suggest to the public that the employees of INS are inept and ill-managed.

We learn that some of the people arrested for bombing the World Trade Center are foreign nationals. The FBI arrested yet another group, most of whom are foreign nationals, charged with a conspiracy to blow up the Holland Tunnel and kill various officials. David Koresh seems to have attracted his share of foreign nationals. The media have discovered Chinese being smuggled by ship into San Francisco and New York. ``60 Minutes'' did an expose on people claiming asylum in New York at JFK Airport, and the INS district director for New York said that these people are allowed to go free because INS does not have money to lock them up. Part of the administration's plan calls for dramatically curtailing review of asylum claims.

Sen. Alan Simpson and Rep. Romano Mazzoli, who in the past have based their concern about immigration on numbers, have abandoned the numbers game and are looking at immigration through the eyes of a slightly hysterical press. I suggest that we stop our headlong flight toward enacting legislation based on xenophobia and look at the figures. The number of Chinese who have been arrested in the much-heralded smuggling operations number 2,400 during a period of two years! There is nothing to suggest that hundreds of thousands of people are going to get on ships and come to the United States from China. Most Chinese are terribly poor, and very few have an income in excess of $1,000 per year.

The INS counted 216,000 asylum claims pending by nationality as of Oct. 1, 1992. Of that number, 135,900 were filed by nationals from Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. Nicaragua has 21,500 cases, Guatemala 69,400 and El Salvador 45,000. Cases from Guatemalans and Salvadorans have accumulated, in part because those foreign nationals have been granted temporary protective status or have been the subject of a class-action suit.

Each year, 21 million people enter the United States on non-immigrant visas. INS statistics reflect that 98 percent leave when they are supposed to. This leaves 2 percent, or roughly 400,000 people, not accounted for. Perhaps some of those leave through our less than adequate exit immigration system. However, assuming that roughly 400,000 people do not leave each year, then during a period of 10 years, 4 million people would have been added to the population. The number of accumulated pending cases for asylum during the last few years amounts to about one-half of the annual number of overstays. One might argue that the proposed enforcement effort emphasis is being misplaced.

My experience is that the people who work at INS are essentially the same as other federal employees. The difference is that INS is dealing with people and situations involving strong human emotions, which make for microcosms of immigration issues. Sometimes sympathetic circumstances are created by the way the system treats foreign nationals.

Maybe our immigration problems are not the fault of INS but the result of a patchwork quilt of laws that reflect our historical fears and pressures. We live in an open society. Part of our strength is the sharing of the democratic process with foreign nationals who visit. Most leave when they are supposed to. Most comply with the system. Some do not. We should not dramatically change the asylum process because of the sins of a few, nor should we blame INS employees for a system reflecting our open society and created by an elected, representative Congress.

Illegal immigration is primarily an economic problem and not a law-enforcement one. Let us not act precipitously, through our misplaced fear, to deny those with real fear of persecution opportunities for unbiased review of their claims.

\ David Crosland, a Washington lawyer, was general counsel of the INS.

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