Speech #1050129934

Mr. President. Peat Marwick also conducted a separate audit of all naturalizations done between August 1995 and September 1996. It concluded that we can be confident that naturalization was proper in only 8.6% of the 1 million cases naturalized during that period. The other 91.4% of cases either contained insufficient documentation to support a proper decision or (in 3.7% of the cases) involved an outright improper grant of citizenship. Thus. in addition to the 3.7% of cases improperly naturalized. we simply do not know whether almost 90% of those granted citizenship during that period met the requirements for naturalization. It may well be that the vast majority of cases with insufficient documentation were decided properly. But the American people deserve to know that citizenship is being conferred only on deserving people. just as the vast majority of legal immigrants who come here to play by the rules and make a contribution deserve to gain citizenship without a cloud of doubt hanging over its propriety. Unfortunately. these audits indicate that INS simply does not keep complete and accurate naturalization files and cannot even locate many files that should be in its possession. I have also heard numerous tales of fingerprints being taken and lost repeatedly. of inconsistent accounts being given about the status of peoples files. and of an inability to get resolution on the simple question of a persons status. Under these circumstances. Mr. President. it comes as no surprise that the backlogs Citizenship U.S.A. was designed to address are now back with a vengeance. As many as 1.8 million people are caught up in the nations naturalization backlog and in some places the wait for citizenship can last up to two years. Press reports suggest that INS officials have been attributing this slowdown to new procedures put in place in response to Congressional pressure. But when the subcommittee ranking member and I asked whether the new fingerprinting process might cause delays. the INS official in charge of developing them assured us that they would not. Unfortunately. naturalization is only one area where the INS has not performed either its enforcement or its service mission adequately. For example. INS does not seem able to figure out how to deport criminal aliens directly after they have finished serving their sentences. and hence claims it cannot detain all of them pending deportation. At the same time. INS seems to detain many people with strong asylum claims in the same cells as hardened criminals. Who is detained. who is not. and for how long seems to depend less on the persons particular equities as the district in which he or she is found. When I first raised the issue of fundamental INS restructuring and a split of its missions.