Speech #1050096842

Mr. President. today I am pleased to introduce the Naturalization Reform Act of 1997. This bill addresses some of the serious failings in the Immigration and Naturalization Services conduct of the naturalization process that have come to light during the past 2 years. This legislation does not attempt a comprehensive reform of the naturalization process. a topic that likely should be a subject of serious consideration but regarding which much additional work is needed. Rather. it includes a few targeted measures designed to address critical issues that have emerged. particularly concerning the granting of citizenship to criminal aliens and the INS conduct of criminal background checks. Given that these issues have been the subject of extensive oversight in both Houses of Congress. it is important that we work together on this. In that vein. I have developed this legislation with my counterpart on the House side. Representative LAMAR SMITH. the chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee. Today. he is introducing identical legislation in the House. Let me state at the outset that citizenship is the most precious gift and honor that our Nation can bestow. I have spoken many times beforeboth in the Immigration Subcommittee and elsewhereabout my own grandparents experience of immigrating to America. Their citizenship papers give me a particular pride. and I know what citizenship papers mean to my own family and for millions of others across America. The vast majority of citizenship applicants are lawabiding legal immigrants who have every right and desire to become fullfledged American citizens. Nonetheless. serious concerns about the naturalization process have been raised this session. particularly concerning the Immigration and Naturalization Services provision of citizenship papers to some undeserving criminal aliens. Some initial reports did overestimate the number of aliens who were improperly naturalized in 1995 and 1996 despite being statutorily ineligible for naturalization based on criminal convictions. Regardless of the number. however. it Is still a concern to me that any obviously ineligible criminal aliens were naturalized. Moreover. it remains of grave concern that the INS was naturalizing large numbers of applicants without having completed their criminal background checks. which have been central to the way the INS conducts its inquiry into an applicants good moral character. Even if an applicant did not have a conviction making that applicant statutorily ineligible. one would think that the good moral character determination might very well have turned out differently if the INS had had information concerning an applicants arrests or other criminal background information. The mere fact that the INS was moving forward in this manner in itself raises concerns about how the INS is carrying out its statutory responsibilities. Many of these problems are not new. and it is disappointing that they have gone unresolved for so long. Reports from the Justice Department and from the General Accounting Office over the past 10 years have repeatedly found significant faults with the fingerprint check process. which the INS uses to conduct its criminal background checks. For instance. a 1988 Department of Justice audit found that. in 47 percent of naturalization files reviewed at random. there was no record that a fingerprint check had been requested or no record of when fingerprints were mailed to the FBI. In a 1989 report. the Department of Justice audit staff discovered an almost complete absence of evidence that background checks and fingerprint checks were conducted in naturalization cases. A 1994 report of the inspector generals office found that the INS did not verify that fingerprints submitted with an application actually belonged to the applicant. that report also documented that the Service failed to ensure that fingerprint checks were completed by the FBI. A 1994 GAO report disclosed similar findings. Despite such observations and disclosures. the INS continued to permit applicants to submit their own fingerprints without verifying whether the prints belonged to the applicant. and fingerprint cards submitted to the FBI often contained incomplete or inaccurate information. The INS also continued to permit naturalizations to go forward after 60 days following the submission of fingerprints to the FBI. regardless of whether a definitive response had been received from the FBI on the fingerprint check. In 1996. weaknesses in the criminal history validation process received renewed attention in the midst of the Presidents Citizenship USA program. a roughly 1year effort to speed the pace of naturalizations significantly. Those weaknesses were exacerbated as pressure grew to increase naturalizations. As a result of various severe problems that came to light. a number of investigations. audits. and reviews into the naturalization process are now taking place. The Department of Justices Justice Management Division. in conjunction with KPMG Peat Marwick and with some participation from the General Accounting Office. has been conducting an ongoing review of the roughly 1.4 million cases of aliens naturalized under Citizenship USA. Preliminary results indicate that INS failed to complete criminal background checks on some 180.000 immigrants who were naturalized between August 1995 and September 1996. and that more than 71.500 applicants who did undergo background checks had criminal records and were naturalized anyway. It is true that a much smaller number had convictions for offenses for which there is a statutory bar to naturalization. As I have noted. however. it remains of great concern that such a large number were processed improperly. regardless of what the particular results were. In response to weaknesses Identified by those reviews. on November 29 of last year. the INS finally announced major changes to its criminal background verification procedures in an effort to respond to some of the serious and ongoing problems in that area. The Service did so through a policy memo announcing new "Naturalization Quality Procedures." That memo went outor was supposed to go outfrom the Commissioner to all INS regional. district. and local offices. That specific and detailed memo. which was to be effective immediately. provided that no naturalizations were to go forward without a response on the fingerprint check from the FBI and unless the new policies and procedures were in place. Unfortunately. we learned this year that the administrations policy failed to go into effect as mandated by the Commissioner. On April 17.