Mr. Speaker. today I am introducing legislation to establish a new United States Immigration Court. The title of the bill is the "United States Immigration Court Act of 1998." This bill would remove the immigration adjudication functions from the Justice Department and invest them in a new Article I court. The court would be composed of a trial division and an appellate division whose decisions would be appealable to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The system for adjudicating immigration matters has matured tremendously over the last 15 years. Special inquiry judges have become true immigration judges. The Board of Immigration Appeals has been greatly expanded. and the whole Executive Office for Immigration Review has been separated from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Yet much of this system. including the Board of Immigration Appeals. does not exist in statute. And while separated from the INS. aliens still take their cases before judges who are employed by the same department as the trial attorneys who are prosecuting them. It is time to take the next logical step and create a comprehensive adjudicatory system in statute.
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immigration Naturalization Immigration