SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
Page 1 TOP OF DOC
67–344
2000
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INSPECTOR GENERAL'S INVESTIGATION OF CITIZENSHIP USA
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
IMMIGRATION AND CLAIMS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
SEPTEMBER 7, 2000
Serial No. 125
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
Page 2 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., Wisconsin
BILL McCOLLUM, Florida
GEORGE W. GEKAS, Pennsylvania
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
CHARLES T. CANADY, Florida
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
BOB BARR, Georgia
WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee
ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas
EDWARD A. PEASE, Indiana
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
JAMES E. ROGAN, California
LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
MARY BONO, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
Page 3 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan
BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
JERROLD NADLER, New York
ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia
MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina
ZOE LOFGREN, California
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
MAXINE WATERS, California
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
THOMAS E. MOONEY, SR., General Counsel-Chief of Staff
JULIAN EPSTEIN, Minority Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chairman
BILL McCOLLUM, Florida
Page 4 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
EDWARD A. PEASE, Indiana
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
CHARLES T. CANADY, Florida
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
ZOE LOFGREN, California
BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
GEORGE FISHMAN, Chief Counsel
JIM WILON, Counsel
LORA RIES, Counsel
CINDY BLACKSTON, Professional Staff
LEON BUCK, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
HEARING DATE
September 7, 2000
OPENING STATEMENT
Page 5 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Smith, Hon. Lamar S., a Representative in Congress From the State of Texas, and chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims
WITNESSES
Ashbaugh, Robert L., Deputy Inspector General, Department of Justice-
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Ashbaugh, Robert L., Deputy Inspector General, Department of Justice-
Jackson Lee, Hon. Sheila, a Representative in Congress From the State of Texas: Prepared statement
Smith, Hon. Lamar S., a Representative in Congress From the State of Texas, and chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims: Prepared statement
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INSPECTOR
GENERAL'S INVESTIGATION OF
CITIZENSHIP USA
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2000
House of Representatives,
Page 6 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 2226, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar S. Smith [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Lamar S. Smith, Edward A. Pease, Bob Goodlatte, Sheila Jackson Lee, Howard L. Berman, Zoe Lofgren, John Conyers, Jr. and Martin T. Meehan.
Staff present: George Fishman, chief counsel; Jim Wilon, counsel; Kelly Dixon, clerk; Leon Buck, minority counsel; and Nolan Rappaport, minority counsel.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN SMITH
Mr. SMITH. I welcome all members back from our August break and appreciate the interest in the subject at hand. I am going to recognize members for opening statements, and then we look forward to hearing from our only witness today, whom I will introduce momentarily.
The Inspector General's investigation of Citizenship USA was the most expensive in its history. The OIG released its report at the beginning of the August recess and requested a public hearing, which we are having at the earliest opportunity.
Page 7 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Streamlining the naturalization process and reducing waiting times are legitimate goals that I have strongly supported through congressional oversight and allocation of funds, but there is no excuse any time or anywhere for officials to use the people's government for partisan advantage. Millions of Americans pay for government services expecting that they will be provided impartially, for the good of all, and without putting them at risk.
To become a citizen, an alien must be a legal permanent resident for 5 years, pass an English and civics test, and demonstrate good moral character. Citizenship may be denied to aliens who have committed crimes, fraud, domestic violence, or failed to meet other legal obligations. The INS checks criminal backgrounds by submitting applicants' fingerprints to the FBI, which sends back criminal histories or rap sheets to the INS.
INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, in part because of a backlog of applications, initiated the Citizenship USA program, which ran from September 1995 to September 1996. Previously the INS granted citizenship to 300,000 to 400,000 aliens per year, but under CUSA that increased to 1.1 million cases, three times the previous pace. About two-thirds of the CUSA cases were granted during the second half of the program, from March to September 1996.
Beginning in May 1996, the media reported that the speed of CUSA was seriously degrading the integrity of the naturalization process. To achieve production goals, the INS management sacrificed the quality of adjudications. The recordkeeping system collapsed under the strain. Applicants who were ineligible because of criminal records, or because they fraudulently obtained green cards, were granted citizenship because the INS was moving too fast to check their records.
Page 8 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
INS employees alleged that CUSA was accelerated for political reasons. The White House and Vice President Gore's office were accused of pressuring the INS to naturalize aliens by September 1996 in hopes of getting their votes in the November 1996 elections.
In public statements, the INS tried to minimize CUSA's shortcomings, but after the election the Justice Department stepped in to conduct its own review. DOJ hired the accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick to conduct audits. The Justice Department Inspector General's Office also began an investigation of CUSA in April 1997.
KPMG did statistical analysis of the naturalization of ineligible criminals and released a report in December 1997. They determined that INS naturalized more than 180,000 aliens without doing fingerprint checks. In addition, more than 80,000 aliens had fingerprint checks that generated criminal records, but they were naturalized anyway.
Of the individuals with confirmed criminal records, DOJ selected 6,300 of the most serious cases for denaturalization. The INS tried to use an administrative procedure for denaturalization but was blocked by Federal court decisions. To date, INS has succeeded in denaturalizing only six criminal aliens.
KPMG also did a sample file review and reported in February 1998 that more than 90 percent of all CUSA cases were adjudicated improperly, including more than 70 percent with defective or nonexistent fingerprint checks. The study concluded that a bare minimum of 11,500 individuals, and perhaps many more, were naturalized despite their disqualifying criminal records.
In March 1999, the INS discovered an additional 70,000 CUSA cases that were adjudicated near the end of the program, when the rate of errors was highest. Had those cases been included in the KPMG audits, the numbers of naturalized criminals would have been higher.
Page 9 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The OIG's investigation of CUSA was obviously necessary. Section 7 of the OIG report documents high-level political influences on CUSA, motivated in part by the desire to naturalize potential voters before the election. Following this intervention the pace of naturalization doubled.
CUSA may have begun for legitimate reasons, but the OIG's conclusion that INS did not develop CUSA to further inappropriate political ends did not apply to high-level officials such as the Vice President and the President's advisors who, the OIG said, had mixed motives. The motives behind intervention by the White House and the Vice President were clearly improper. The OIG's conclusions drew distinctions, which many readers missed, between the motives of INS and those of other officials.
The negative effect of their intervention is difficult to quantify, but whether the effect was great or small, the attempt to speed up naturalization for partisan reasons still was wrong and unethical. Attempted robbery is a crime even if unsuccessful.
The OIG report's findings and conclusions should be used to ensure that the integrity of the INS' naturalization process is never again sacrificed to bureaucratic mismanagement and political expediency.
That concludes my opening statement, and I look to the ranking member of the full Judiciary Committee and ask Mr. Conyers if he has an opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Page 10 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS, AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND CLAIMS
The Inspector General's investigation of Citizenship USA was the most extensive in its history. The OIG released its report at the beginning of the August recess and requested a public hearing, which we are having today at the earliest opportunity.
Streamlining the naturalization process and reducing waiting times are legitimate goals that I have strongly supported through Congressional oversight and allocation of funds. But there is no excuse any time or anywhere for officials to use the people's government for partisan advantage. Millions of Americans pay for government services, expecting they will be provided impartially, for the good of all, and without putting them at risk.
To become a citizen, an alien must be a legal permanent resident for five years, pass an English and civics test, and demonstrate ''good moral character.'' Citizenship may be denied to aliens who have committed crimes, fraud, domestic violence, or failed to meet other legal obligations. The INS checks criminal backgrounds by submitting applicants' fingerprints to the FBI, which sends back criminal histories or ''rap sheets'' to the INS.
INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, in part because of a backlog of applications, initiated the Citizenship USA program, which ran from September 1995 to September 1996. Previously the INS granted citizenship to 300,000 or 400,000 aliens per year, but under CUSA that increased to 1,100,000 cases, three times the previous pace. About two-thirds of the CUSA cases were granted during the second half of the program, from March to September 1996.
Page 11 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Beginning in May 1996, the media reported that the speed of CUSA was seriously degrading the integrity of the naturalization process. To achieve ''production goals,'' the INS' management sacrificed the quality of adjudications. The record-keeping system collapsed under the strain. Applicants who were ineligible because of criminal records, or because they fraudulently obtained green cards, were granted citizenship because the INS was moving too fast to check their records.
Some INS employees alleged that CUSA was accelerated for political reasons. The White House and Vice President Gore's office were accused of pressuring the INS to naturalize aliens by September 1996 in hopes of getting their votes in the November 1996 elections.
In public statements, the INS tried to minimize CUSA's shortcomings, but after the election the Justice Department stepped in to conduct its own review. DOJ hired the accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick to conduct audits. The Justice Department Inspector General's Office also began an investigation of CUSA in April 1997.
KPMG did statistical analysis of the naturalization of ineligible criminals and released a report in December 1997. They determined that INS naturalized more than 180,000 aliens without doing fingerprint checks. In addition, more than 80,000 aliens had fingerprint checks that generated criminal records, but they were naturalized anyway.
Of the individuals with confirmed criminal records, DOJ selected 6,300 of the most serious cases for denaturalization. The INS tried to use an administrative procedure for denaturalization but was blocked by federal court decisions. To date, INS has succeeded in denaturalizing only 6 criminal aliens.
Page 12 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
KPMG also did a sample file review and reported in February 1998 that more than 90% of all CUSA cases were adjudicated improperly, including more than 70% with defective or nonexistent fingerprint checks. The study concluded that a bare minimum of 11,500 individuals, and perhaps many more, were naturalized despite their disqualifying criminal records.
In March 1999, the INS ''discovered'' an additional 70,000 CUSA cases that were adjudicated near the end of the program, when the rate of errors was highest. Had those cases been included in the KPMG audits, the numbers of naturalized criminals would have been even higher.
The OIG's investigation of CUSA was obviously necessary. Section 7 of the OIG report documents high-level political influences on CUSA, motivated in part by the desire to naturalize potential voters before the election. Following this intervention, the pace of naturalization doubled.
CUSA may have begun for legitimate reasons. But the OIG's conclusion that INS did not develop CUSA to ''further inappropriate political ends'' did not apply to high-level officials such as the Vice President and the President's advisors who, the OIG said, had ''mixed motives.'' The motives behind intervention by the White House and the Vice President were clearly improper. The OIG's conclusions drew distinctions, which many readers missed, between the motives of INS and those of other officials.
The negative effect of their intervention is difficult to quantify. But whether the effect was great or small, the attempt to speed up naturalization for partisan reasons still was wrong and unethical. Attempted robbery is a crime even if unsuccessful.
Page 13 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The OIG report's findings and conclusions should be used to ensure that the integrity of the INS' naturalization process is never again sacrificed to bureaucratic mismanagement and political expediency.
Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning to members of the committee and those in the witness room. I am delighted to be back to review this subject once again, and I have just been reminded that we had a measure that was before this subcommittee to reorganize the Immigration and Naturalization Service that sort of met a watery grave. It didn't go anywhere. I was wondering if that is something we might want to take into consideration since we are looking once again at this subject.
I would also like to identify myself as one who has criticized the Immigration and Naturalization Service on many fronts, and I guess I neglected to add this one, and I will. I will include it. There was a lot of overreaction and incorrect activity that was engaged in, but I think if we look carefully at the Inspector General's report, we might get a view that puts this in a little bit better perspective, and that is what I am hoping will happen here today at this hearing.
The Citizenship USA program, created in 1995, was started with the agreed-upon bipartisan commitment to reduce the naturalization backlogs which were as high as 3 years in some instances, and both Democrats and Republicans joined together on it. I was one of those that had given it great support and endorsement.
The accuracy, however, of the criminal history review process in INS wasn't as good as we would have hoped it would be, and so the result was the Justice Department's inspector general began an investigation to analyze this part of the CUSA initiative.
Page 14 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So we come to the hearing acknowledging that mistakes were made. One of the ones that were made that may come into discussion was the continuation of the presumptive policy that presumed an applicant had no criminal record if the FBI failed to return a history or rap sheet within 45 to 60 days.
Now, that policy began during the Reagan administration and was continued on, and the independent report referred to by the subcommittee chairman concluded that less than 1 percent of the 1 million individuals naturalized under the Citizenship USA program might have been naturalized incorrectly. That is an independent report.
So we in our oversight capacity want to find mistakes. I personally believe the INS perhaps has committed more serious problems that need revision than the one we are looking at today.
The immigration service has tried to identify and denaturalize persons who should not be citizens, and to its credit it has largely remedied the problems which arose.
Now the Citizenship USA program wasn't created out of a partisan game because it was a bipartisan—created in a bipartisan spirit to begin with, so I think that we ought to inquire into that, if it needs any further inquiry. I emphasize there were both Democrats and Republicans involved.
The Inspector General's report itself concludes that the involvement of the White House and the National Performance Review had little direct negative impact on the naturalization programs. The inspector general also found that the administration's interests in reinventing the INS naturalization process did not result in INS lowering the standards for citizenship. So, that is my contribution to the discussion about the measure before us.
Page 15 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I would like to end, if I can, Chairman Smith, with a question about calling this hearing at such a late stage in the session. They have been poured over, I think, pretty carefully in the past, and this, as I understand it, is the fourth hearing on Citizenship USA. Far be it for me to give any direction, more than a suggestion, about some of the things that I have pending before—well, not just me, but members of the subcommittee and members of the full committee, that have pending before your subcommittee the main one; and I had to look past the ranking member to see you to address this, is the attempt to repair the 1996 bill. It is a bipartisan bill that I do not believe had any hearings, a measure which has been endorsed by the Asian American caucuses, the Hispanic caucus, the congressional black caucus and almost every major immigration group and we have not had a hearing.
Now, I conclude this by not suggesting that we not hold this hearing and do hold the hearing that hasn't been held yet, but we could do both. I mean, I am happy to——
Mr. SMITH. Would the gentleman yield.
Mr. CONYERS. Of course.
Mr. SMITH. The gentleman's time has expired. I would like to respond directly to some of the points that the ranking member has made.
First, you referenced the late date of this hearing.
Page 16 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The Attorney General's office several times had to delay the actual release of this report, which was delayed until July 31, 2000. That was also the day that Congress left to go on its August recess. So as I mentioned in my opening statement, this is the first realistic possible day that we could have a hearing on such an important subject.
The Inspector General requested the hearing, and I would have had the hearing in any case because of the importance of this subject. As I mentioned in my opening statement, this is the most extensive investigation ever conducted by the Office of Inspector General, and I think it is particularly helpful to all Members of Congress. And so that, I hope, will respond to a couple of the points that you made.
I would like to recognize the gentleman from Indiana and on the way to recognizing him appreciate again his continuing presence at these hearings. He is the only individual on this subcommittee who, I believe, holds a hundred percent attendance record. The gentleman from Indiana is recognized.
Mr. PEASE. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do understand the sensitive nature of the material that is before us today. I do not have an opening statement, wanting to leave as much time as possible so we can hear from Mr. Ashbaugh and apologize for the committee in advance for the fact you having said such nice things that I will have to be leaving shortly. But I do appreciate the written testimony that we have received and the report that will come later.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Pease. I should alert all members of the subcommittee that we are expecting a vote at 11:00. I hope that we can finish with opening statements and Mr. Ashbaugh's statement before then.
Page 17 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The ranking member of the subcommittee, Ms. Jackson Lee, is recognized for her opening statement at this time.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the members of the Democrat committee, who are both dedicated and diligent in making sure that all important meetings and hearings they are very much accounted for, and I thank them for their commitment and service and I thank the ranking member of the full Judiciary Committee for sharing his time with this subcommittee. He has done it on many, many occasions, and I do appreciate it.
Mr. Chairman, let me thank you as well. We are 20 days, some have said 17 days, maybe we will have the pleasure of having a lot of fun in October, but it looks like we are toward the end of our tenure in doing and being able to put forward legislative initiatives. We have had the opportunity on several occasions in this committee to work together. And frankly I want to thank you for that. We may have some additional hearings, and I would hope that as we do so you would take my comments in the constructive way that they are offered.
I believe that this is an important oversight hearing and I will comment very briefly, Mr. Chairman, and I would ask that the entirety of my opening statement be submitted into the record.
Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me raise with you concerns and they somewhat track that of my ranking member. Certainly the fix 1996 is a crucial issue, and we have yet to hold a hearing. Also I note that this deals with the INS, and its potential failures. And we all hope that we will eventually have a government that really works, that is truly reinvented in a bipartisan way, and that we serve the people of the United States of America in whatever status they may be.
Page 18 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We have a restructuring bill that we are still looking to finalize. I know that it has made its way and is winding its way. That would go a long way, I believe, in promoting the position of the Democratic caucus and how it should be restructured. But oversight hearings, the purpose is to give us constructive information to fix problems; and we have not moved on the restructuring of the INS, which I think is important.
Secondarily, if we are talking about how we may have let in individuals who did not meet all of the citizenship criteria in the review process, I am concerned as well that we have not had hearings on fixing the INS created problem of late amnesty and correcting the NACARA problem and that is with Nicaraguans and Haitians. It is interesting that as the Elian Gonzalez case unfolded, how many Americans wanted to know how do we treat nonstatus children. And we have no policy, and certainly a hearing dealing with addressing the question of how we treat children who come in who are unaccompanied would be a worthy hearing to have.
The late amnesty problem is reaching a crisis perspective, and several of us have legislative initiatives and have yet to have an opportunity to be heard.
Lastly, as I conclude my statement to say one or two points about this hearing. We had a number of Liberians who had an extension. These are individuals who fled because of the turmoil in Liberia. They are coming upon a fast deadline where they will have to be immediately deported. Families will have to be destroyed or separated and we have no present relief. I would like to ask for a hearing regarding the status of Liberians, taxpayers that they are, individuals who came in, as I said, under the fleeing of oppression so they could have the opportunity to make their case.
Page 19 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
And I do thank Mr. Ashbaugh for your presence today. And if this hearing is to fix a problem, then I am all for it, Mr. Chairman. I think we should acknowledge on the record that the INS inspector general's report of the Department of Justice reaffirms that this effort was to, in fact, and did, in fact, comply with attempting to reduce the backlog and was not in any way attempting to boost a victory, Democratic victory in 1996. I think we should clear the record on that. I think we should understand that the Vice President's reinventing government effort was a positive effort; and it was directed toward fixing a problem as opposed to creating a problem. I do think that it is important to note that as the INS pushed this effort out into its field offices, it did not have enough staff persons, as noted nor were they trained effectively. So in many instances there is limited documentation or inappropriate documentation on the individuals that were ultimately granted citizen.
I think that this hearing should be hopefully, Mr. Chairman, a fix it hearing; but as I noted for the record—and I would be happy to yield to you to see if we have interest in some of these very important oversight questions and Liberian question, the late amnesty question, the NACARA question, even the question of how we deal with undocumented children, would be something that we could continue discussion on and really address some of the failings of not only the INS as an agency but of immigration policies in this country.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jackson Lee follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Page 20 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I will begin by thanking Robert L. Ashbaugh, the Acting Inspector General, for completing this remarkable investigation, which was begun three years ago by then-Inspector General Michael Bromwich. It is the largest investigation of its kind every undertaken by the Office of the Inspector General. You have done a fine job.
For some time now, concern has been expressed over the possibility that Citizenship USA was designed to maximize the number of persons who would be eligible to vote in the November 1996 election. You have put this concern to rest, for good, I hope. The evidence you uncovered during your investigation contradicts the contention that Citizenship USA was created for such narrow partisan gain. To the contrary, the facts show that the purpose of Citizenship USA was to reduce the backlog in naturalization applications.
The criticism of Citizenship USA should be directed instead at the way the INS implemented it. The IG report criticized the INS for having failed to follow normal naturalization procedures and having let numerous people with criminal histories become citizens. I am concerned about the pressure that the INS put on its employees to improve and speed up the naturalization process in one year's time. I also would like to applaud the Vice-President's initiative on Reinventing Government. I do think that we are seeing its effects throughout the government, as many agencies have been able to streamline their operations. I think that it was a good idea for the Vice-President's National Performance Review program to have been involved in trying to assist the INS in fixing its backlog problems. However, I am troubled by the findings of the Inspector General that INS officials ''failed to address known system weaknesses before implementing a program that they knew would tax that system as it had never been before.'' The report goes on to conclude that rather than fixing the system that had created the backlog in the first place, they simply crammed as many people through it as they could. To accomplish this, the agency hired rapidly and gave new hires responsible for adjudicating naturalization requests scant training and little supervision. The report also goes on to say that the agency failed to prevent fraud by outside entities responsible for language testing, and it failed to improve its inadequate system for checking an applicant's criminal history. I will be interested to hear from Mr. Ausbaugh about what his thoughts are about how he thinks the INS have improved their operations.
Page 21 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
It seems clear from reading the Executive Summary of his report that some of his recommendations have been acted upon by the INS. I do wonder Mr. Chairman why we are having this hearing. If we are having this hearing to take another opportunity to criticize the INS for their mismanagement and their backlogs. I say that we have been there and have done that. We have talked about this since my tenure began as Ranking Member of this subcommittee, and even before that. We have had oversight hearing after oversight hearing about these various problems, and we have marked-up several restructuring bills in our subcommittee. We have already been here.
If this is a time to beat up on the Administration two months before the Presidential election, then I really think we need to stay away from that and let the voters decide in November, but let's not waist any more of the taxpayer's money and time bringing up allegations that simply can not be proven.
This subcommittee would be much better served if we were to address the late amnesty issue for thousands of people, bring relief to people who have been in this country under NACARA, and finally, trying to prevent 20,000 Liberians from being deported at the end of the
We all agree that INS is an agency in need of reorganization. We have less than a month left in this Congress. Instead of having yet another hearing on INS operational difficulties, we should be working on the immigration issues that have not been resolved yet.
Thank you.
Page 22 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SMITH. I thank the ranking member for her comments, and yes, she knows that these are all issues that we can continue to discuss.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Berman, is recognized for an opening statement.
Mr. BERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. While I do not have a hundred percent attendance record at this hearing——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. You are here when it is important.
Mr. BERMAN. Not all of the time.
Mr. SMITH. The gentleman's presence is always appreciated.
Mr. BERMAN. I would like to provide some context. I am not at all embarrassed about the fact that I am one of the people that was pressuring INS to expedite the processing of naturalization applications during the fall of 1995, the winter of 1996, the spring, the summer, the fall of 1996.
The context of this was an unbelievable torrent of pleas, phone calls, and visits to my office from people who had been waiting and waiting and waiting interminably for a citizen swearing-in date. The context of this is that in the mid-1980's in a piece of legislation that I believe the chairman did not think well of, we created a legalization program. 1.8 million people were legalized over and above the regular immigration processes. 1.1 million people in a special agricultural worker program were legalized. Those people applied, were processed, were adjusted to permanent resident status and then spent 5 years in this country, in almost all cases, as law-abiding residents, working people, and many children. As early as 1992, 1993, we started seeing a growing backlog of naturalization cases that reached the point by 1996 of being 3 years between the time you were eligible to be a U.S. citizen and the time that you could actually become a U.S. citizen, an outrageous and unconscionable length of time not only for the right to vote but for a whole variety of other things. If you think, as I do, that it is not healthy for this country to have huge numbers of permanent resident aliens and citizenship is something that we want to promote for all kinds of tangible and intangible reasons, then this is a very, very negative situation.
Page 23 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Now, add to that in 1994 in California the voters passed an initiative which, among other things, essentially says that even if you are the child of legal residents, if your status hadn't been adjusted, you are going to be kicked out of the public schools. On top of that, in 1996 the leadership of this Congress pushed through, both in the immigration legislation and in the welfare legislation, provisions which took legal residents and made them ineligible for food stamps even if they were already here, not future immigrants, existing immigrants. This group of people who now have to wait 3 years to be naturalized, are ineligible for SSI, senior citizens, poor people, health care, almost every single means tested program, all AFDC programs, all of these were rendered ineligible for legal immigrants of this country. So we have a waiting period of 3 years, and you have huge new Draconian provisions all of which the leadership of this Congress was shamed into fixing in subsequent years. And in that context we are hearing from organizations and people who are desperate to get naturalized and to become American citizens under the rights that they are entitled to. A 3-year backlog in that situation was intolerable.
Now, the chairman made reference to mixed motives. I am not in the business of trying to analyze motives because if I were, I would say we are sitting here today very legitimately, because an inspector general has finished a report. We are pretty close to the first chance we have after that report is finished to let him come and testify. That is a very positive motive. But there is another motive too. We can once again drag our reference to politicize and discredit this process, to bash the administration, to give vent to some anti-immigrant feelings that might exist.
Mr. SMITH. The gentleman's time has expired. Without objection we will grant him an additional 2 minutes.
Page 24 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BERMAN. Thank you.
I can think of all kinds of improper motives that might be causing this hearing. But by and large the inspector general has finished a report. It is appropriate to have a hearing on that report. A naturalization backlog of 3 years has developed which keeps people who are eligible to become U.S. citizens from becoming U.S. citizens and threatens to cut them from programs for which all U.S. citizens are eligible, and it is improper for the political process, at the behest of its constituency, to be pressuring the bureaucracy to speed this process up. Were mistakes made, undoubtedly. Could it have been done better, yes. But the intolerable situation was that we allowed this situation to develop and actions to correct that situation are to be praised, not to be condemned.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Berman.
The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Lofgren, is recognized for an opening statement.
Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to make similar comments to my colleague from California, perhaps because the situation in California was so extreme and I will report—continues to be extreme. As a matter of fact, I recently went to a senior citizen center in downtown San Jose and met with hundreds of little old people who are still waiting for their naturalization, and they filed hoping they could be voters in the last Presidential election. Some of these people have had their fingerprints taken 6, 7 times. One little old lady had her fingerprints taken 10 times.
Page 25 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The INS is the most incompetent agency in the Federal Government, and these people are still waiting. These are not criminals. These are little old people who want to be full participants in the American system. They pay their taxes; they want to vote also. And they are still waiting. So I look forward to this report; but I also urged, and I still urge, the immigration service to get off the dime and process these applications in a timely manner.
I have never suggested nor am I aware of anyone else who has ever suggested that the proper procedures be violated. But if the proper procedures could be done in our lifetime, in half a decade, that would be a wonderful event to celebrate.
I do have qualms, I will say, about the timing of this hearing. Further, I think we need to explore this. I have concerns about the origin, not the witness here, but the origin of how all of this came to public light. And I will explain what I mean. All of us on the Judiciary Committee participated in the impeachment proceedings against the President. Volumes of material, boxes and boxes of stuff was lodged over in the Ford building and all of us were admonished—even though we didn't think it was appropriate, we think that there were things that were hidden from public view. All of us were admonished that there was a whole raft of stuff that was to be kept in executive session.
We were prohibited from discussing any of it, and we still are. All of our staff is prohibited from discussing it and now we have the chief investigator hired by the majority which appears to bring forward or at least raises a question in my mind whether he has plumbed that information for commercial value in violation of the obligations that he and every other staff member and every member of the committee still suffers under.
Page 26 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So I do believe that is something that we need to take a look at. The other committee that we serve on, Mr. Chairman, I do not mean the science committee, may need to take a look at because this is very troubling. There are many things I would like to say about the discussions that we had, but I am prohibited from doing that to this very day. I think that is a very serious problem and needs to be—I am not one who wants to investigate everything, I would rather get to the people's business. But it is very troubling when someone who has taken their oath as a lawyer to represent their clients and live within all of the rules at least raises these questions. I think it is very serious.
I do not want to reach a conclusion that happened. That would not be fair. I actually went out and got the book. They do not sell it in San Jose, but they do here. And it is very troubling to see that there is maybe a violation of the rules here. I think we need to refer this on the efficacy——
Mr. SMITH. Would the gentlewoman yield? If you have a chance to read it, there is a short chapter on Citizenship USA in that book that is very interesting, too. Is the gentlewoman finished with her opening statement?
Ms. LOFGREN. I do believe that the people who are waiting who filed in 1995 to become citizens in San Jose, some of them have died, and they deserve better than we have got.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Lofgren. I do not think that there is a single member of the subcommittee that doesn't agree that the waiting time is too long. I have said publicly that 6 months should be the outside limit.
Page 27 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Does the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Meehan, have an opening statement?
Mr. MEEHAN. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
We all know the saying ''beating a dead horse.'' Today, we beat an already beaten dead horse. I appreciate the fact that Mr. Ashbaugh is here to testify. I appreciate the hard work that the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General has done on this, but I think we all know what is going on here. We are into another election cycle and we are going to look at—and take another run at an issue that frankly we have been looking at for some time.
We have had a number of congressional hearings on Citizenship USA. I was aware of the chapter in the book, but I have not had a chance to look at it. Specifically there have been a number of hearings on the integrity of the naturalization process and at least one hearing dedicated exclusively to looking at the naturalization backlog. Now we are here today; and we are going to take another run at it in a very charged, political election season.
I do hope against hope that the IG's report puts to rest a matter that really should have been put to rest some time ago. In a nutshell, the creation and implementation of Citizenship USA was motivated by good intentions, namely to reduce the naturalization backlog. Members of both parties agreed that this was a worthy objective. Unfortunately, there were flaws in the naturalization process that predated Citizenship USA and even—it has been mentioned earlier by Mr. Conyers, predated this administration. Those flaws became extremely evident and produced very unfortunate consequences when INS, again with good intentions, attempted to accelerate the naturalization process.
Page 28 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
INS is correcting the problem and, I do not want to sit here and defend an agency which I think has a long way to go in terms of customer service and backlog processing, but I think it is fair to say that no one can deny that the INS has significantly improved or enhanced the integrity of the naturalization process over the last few years.
I do not expect Mr. Ashbaugh to read the IG report to but I do want to just read two quotes. ''Citizenship USA was neither created nor executed for reasons relating to increasing the number of persons who would be eligible to vote in the November 1996 election.''
Finally, ''We did not find that Citizenship USA, was developed, implemented or otherwise directed to further inappropriate political ends.'' So in spite of the fact that we are going to have a hearing here today and look at some old issues, I think today's hearings stands in marked contrast to inaction on a number of bills that are important to immigrants and frankly important to a lot of Americans.
No action on NACARA parity. No action on section 245(i) or updating the registry date, and even H–1B seems to me to be a distant memory. There are a lot of things that we could be doing. I appreciate the report, and we have had an opportunity to look at the press reports or parts of the report. I just think that as this session ends there are a lot of things that we could be doing to move legislation that is absolutely critical to immigrants and to all Americans. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Meehan.
Page 29 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We will now go to our witness today, Mr. Ashbaugh, Deputy Inspector General, Department of Justice. We welcome him; and, Mr. Ashbaugh, we didn't tell you this ahead of time, but you are not going to be constrained by our 5-minute rule. I realize that such an extensive report will take more time. We look forward to your testimony. Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT L. ASHBAUGH, DEPUTY INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. ASHBAUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Congresswoman Jackson Lee, Congressman Conyers, members of the subcommittee, I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss my office's review of the Immigration and Naturalization Service Citizenship USA, the CUSA program. I do not have a prepared written statement of the traditional kind. Instead what I provided for the members of the subcommittee was the complete excerpt of our executive summary and of the conclusions and recommendations that were made in the report because I think that is a better vehicle for what that very large report contains and discusses.
I do have a few brief oral remarks. As you know, our investigation was a massive undertaking that involved more than 18 hundred interviews and a review of 80,000 pages of documents. Of the many, many reviews that the OIG has undertaken of INS, this was the most ambitious and the most complex.
In our review we did an extensive analysis of the naturalization process, of the criminal history checks, of the adjudication interviews, of the testing for language and civics competency, and the use of A files; and we examined a host of subordinate facilities and operations and programs that were part of the constituent whole that was CUSA.
Page 30 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
A lot of attention has been devoted to the problems associated with the fingerprints, the deficiency in the fingerprint and the criminal history check and the flaws in the 60-day presumption. You all know that subject very well.
What this report contains that I think you will find to be new information has to do with the discussion of the A files, the adjudication process, the training and preparation that goes into it, the kinds of duties that are supposed to be associated with that evaluation as aliens present themselves to become citizens. The problems and the confusion associated with language and civics testing in INS, these are still problems; and this information has not been ventilated as well as the fingerprint deficiencies.
In addition to that, in order for us to find out whether or not Citizenship USA resulted in a devaluation in the way that INS adjudicated these applications, we had to go back into history in order to find out what the historical practice was to use as a benchmark against the practice that we found in CUSA. So I think a second lesson that we have learned and that the report contains that may be newer news than perhaps we think is that the deficiencies that were uncovered or laid bare and attributed to CUSA in fact had origins that went far deeper into the past. The problems associated with the naturalization process aren't simply CUSA problems. They are systemic and they are historic and that is another, if you will, headline I think that describes the report.
All of the different segments, the coordinate programs, the facilities, the different aspects of naturalization that we looked at, illustrate INS' difficulties in communicating with the field, its problems when attempting to devise and install prudent business practices and its acceptance of deficiencies, of known deficiencies as a fact of life and a way of business.
Page 31 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I am hopeful that anyone who reads our 700-page report will appreciate the depth of the analysis that it contains and the time it took to complete. In this regard, I would like to express my appreciation to you, Mr. Chairman, for your continuing interest and support and your great patience as we have labored to bring this to conclusion.
Briefly what we found and as I have mentioned already, we said INS' naturalization process was seriously flawed in every significant aspect well before CUSA began. Neglect, understaffing, ill-considered presumptions, inattention, all contributed to a devaluation of citizenship determinations by INS. Problems of which Commissioner Meissner and her senior managers were aware, by the summary of 1995, as they began CUSA included the inconsistent application of adjudication criteria, like the good moral character standard, and the English language standards, the widespread use of temporary files that necessarily meant that the adjudicators were not reviewing an applicant's immigrant history before making a determination about naturalization, and the inadequate criminal history checking procedures that had been thoroughly documented in earlier reports by both my office and GAO.
INS leadership took no serious steps before implementing CUSA to protect the naturalization process from further degradation. Instead they added highly unrealistic production quotas which overtaxed the system and led to further diminution of naturalization quality.
In addition, our investigation examined the effects of White House involvement with CUSA. We found that CUSA was neither created nor executed for reasons relating to increasing the number of persons who would be eligible to vote in November 1996. We did find that the brief involvement by the National Performance Review in February and March 1996 might have encouraged INS officials to press toward the goals that they had set, but they had already set these goals for the program.
Page 32 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We concluded that blame for CUSA's flawed practices as a whole and especially its rushed production schedule cannot fairly be laid at the feet of NPR or at the White House officials. That said, neither can we describe NPR's involvement in the CUSA program as constructive. This conclusion is based on our extensive efforts which traced the genesis both of CUSA and of its flaws back to sources or origins that are clearly independent of the White House or NPR involvement. The refusal by certain officials to be personally interviewed prevented us from exploring in greater detail their motives. They might have able to shed more light on whether and to what extent electoral concerns motivated the involvement of NPR into CUSA. However, and I think this is an important point to emphasize, no additional interview or testimony in our judgment was necessary to shed light on the impact that involvement actually had on INS or CUSA programs. We believe that we had a firm factual basis for our assessment of how INS officials acted and why CUSA went awry.
Finally, in our report, we detail the aspects of the naturalization process that continue unrepaired to this day. The most significant is the lack of adjudicative standards. INS has promised since 1997 to develop a manual to address these deficiencies, but that work has still not yet been done.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my oral remarks. I would be pleased to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ashbaugh follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF ROBERT L. ASHBAUGH, DEPUTY INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Page 33 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I. INTRODUCTION
This investigation by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) examined the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) ''Citizenship USA'' initiative of fiscal year 1996.
Beginning in 1993, the demand for naturalization began to increase at a staggering rate and application backlogs developed at INS offices throughout the country. By June 1995, INS was receiving applications for naturalization at a rate twice as high as it had the previous year. INS projected that without a serious effort to reduce this application backlog, by the summer of 1996 an eligible applicant would have to wait three years from the date of application to be naturalized as a U.S. citizen.
On August 31, 1995, INS Commissioner Doris M. Meissner announced ''Citizenship USA'' (CUSA), an initiative to reduce the backlog of pending naturalization applications to the point where an eligible applicant would be naturalized within six months of application. The goal of the initiative was to reach this level of processing ''currency'' within one year. The effort focused on the workload in the five districts in the country—dubbed ''Key Cities'' for CUSA—which then had the largest application backlogs: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago. To reach the CUSA goal, INS dramatically increased its naturalization workforce in the Key Cities, opened new offices dedicated to naturalization adjudication, and engaged new processing strategies in an effort to ''streamline'' the naturalization process.
Page 34 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
In the spring of 1996, however, just as CUSA moved into its most aggressive phase, media reports began to question the integrity of INS naturalization processing. Initially, INS' off-site testing program came under fire.
Beginning in 1991, a naturalization applicant was able to satisfy the English proficiency and knowledge of U.S. history and government requirements of naturalization by passing a test administered by certain private entities. This off-site testing program was expanded during CUSA. In April 1996, INS learned that ABC Television, following up on local media reports, was researching fraudulent testing practices by one of INS' largest off-site testing contractors. In June 1996, ABC aired a program that exposed many of the vulnerabilities of INS' outside testing program.
In May 1996, The Washington Times published an article about INS employees who criticized the acceleration of naturalization processing. The report quoted INS employees who questioned the motives of CUSA. The National Performance Review (NPR) of the Office of the Vice President had targeted CUSA for ''reinvention'' and NPR officials had traveled to the Key Cities to facilitate INS efforts at hiring new staff. This link between the naturalization initiative and the Vice President's Office during an election year fueled speculation and media stories that the rush to naturalize approximately one million applicants during fiscal year 1996 was an attempt to swell voting rolls with new citizens who were anticipated to vote for Democratic candidates, including President Clinton and Vice President Gore. In the wake of such reports, Members of Congress sought information from INS concerning various aspects of CUSA.
As Congress began to inquire, the media reports continued. Of particular concern were reports that some INS offices were naturalizing applicants so quickly that applicant criminal history reports—generated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after INS submitted applicant fingerprint cards for analysis—were arriving in INS offices only after the applicant had been sworn in as a United States citizen. These and other allegations of flaws in naturalization processing suggested that INS had sacrificed naturalization processing integrity in the name of processing applicants more quickly. In September 1996, the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight (the Subcommittee) held its first hearings concerning CUSA to explore the nature and extent of these processing flaws and the motives behind INS' accelerated naturalization initiative.
Page 35 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The portrait of naturalization processing that emerged from the September hearings did not allay congressional concerns. Although Executive Associate Commissioner T. Alexander Aleinikoff described the efforts INS had made to improve the off-site testing program, his testimony confirmed that off-site testing had lacked standards and not been monitored by INS. In addition, INS employees from Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas testified to the extraordinary rush imposed on naturalization adjudications during CUSA. That rush, according to these witnesses, meant that INS had naturalized people without ensuring that they were eligible. Some of the shortcuts to which these witnesses testified were that INS had not properly trained the new adjudicators hired for CUSA, had not conducted thorough applicant criminal history checks, had not provided applicants' permanent files to adjudicators for review before making decisions on naturalization applications, or, when those files had been available, had discouraged the thorough review of the file to determine whether the applicant had lawfully obtained the prerequisite permanent residency status.
The Subcommittee and other congressional subcommittees continued to investigate these allegations about CUSA and to seek information from INS, from the White House, and from the Office of the Vice President. Although Commissioner Meissner asserted that political motives had not influenced CUSA, documents provided to Congress suggested otherwise. In particular, e-mail messages to the Vice President and others from Douglas Farbrother, an NPR employee who was assigned to work on naturalization ''reinvention'' efforts in March 1996, connected CUSA's goals with the goal of naturalizing one million new citizens in time for the November 1996 election.
In the meantime, in response to congressional requests the Justice Management Division (JMD) of the Department of Justice engaged an outside accounting firm, KPMG Peat Marwick, to oversee a systematic review of CUSA naturalizations that INS would conduct using INS employees. The KPMG-supervised review first concentrated on determining whether each person naturalized during CUSA had a fingerprint check conducted by the FBI. Subsequent reviews would determine how many persons had naturalized during CUSA despite a disqualifying criminal history. The KPMG-supervised review continued over the course of the next two years, but even its preliminary results were troubling. In March 1997, JMD reported to Congress that of the 1,049,867 persons INS had then identified as having naturalized between August 31, 1995, and September 30, 1996,(see footnote 1) the fingerprint cards of 124,111 had been returned by the FBI as ''unclassifiable,'' meaning that the fingerprints submitted had not been suitable for comparison. For an additional 61,366 persons, the FBI had no record of having conducted any fingerprint check. This data, therefore, indicated that for 18 percent of those persons naturalized during CUSA, INS had not conducted a complete criminal history background check.
Page 36 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
This information was troubling to Congress not only because of what it reflected about criminal history checking procedures and thus the integrity of CUSA adjudications, but also because it suggested that INS had done little to improve its fingerprint processing procedures since 1994, when both the OIG and the General Accounting Office (GAO) had issued reports critical of those procedures and had recommended specific improvements that INS had agreed to undertake.
In late April 1997, then-Inspector General Michael Bromwich announced the investigation that is the subject of this report. It was to become the largest investigation of its kind ever undertaken by the OIG.
The OIG assembled the CUSA investigative team in July 1997. It included 19 agents, 3 analysts, 4 attorneys, and clerical staff working in each of the Key Cities and in Washington, D.C. The team analyzed documents and data from various sources including INS, congressional subcommittees, and the KPMG-supervised review. Those materials included policy memoranda, tapes of INS e-mail messages, applicant files, and the database created for the KPMG-supervised review team that identified the more than one million citizens naturalized during CUSA. Among the applicant files the team reviewed were those that the KPMG-supervised review team had identified as files of applicants who were naturalized despite a disqualifying criminal history. Ultimately, the team analyzed over 80,000 pages of documents.
In addition to this collection and analysis of documents, we conducted 1,829 interviews. We interviewed INS clerical employees, adjudicators, supervisors, training staff, computer analysts, and contractor employees. We interviewed the District Directors and other managers in the Key Cities. We interviewed personnel at the Vermont, Nebraska, Texas, and California Service Centers. We interviewed INS Headquarters staff in the Offices of Programs, Field Operations, Management, General Counsel, and Congressional Relations. We interviewed the managers at INS Headquarters who had responsibility for CUSA, including project manager David Rosenberg, Associate Commissioner Louis (Don) Crocetti, Executive Associate Commissioner William Slattery, Executive Associate Commissioner T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Deputy Commissioner Chris Sale, and Commissioner Doris Meissner.
Page 37 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Our interviews were not limited to INS employees.(see footnote 2) We interviewed managers and staff at the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning criminal history checking procedures. We interviewed Department of Justice managers, including Assistant Attorney General for Administration Stephen Colgate, former Associate Attorney General (now Solicitor General) Seth Waxman, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, and Attorney General Janet Reno.
To examine any collateral influences on CUSA, we interviewed NPR staff members Douglas Farbrother, Robert Stone, Laurie Lyons, and the NPR Chief and Senior Advisor to the Vice President, Elaine Kamarck.
We sought interviews with other officials at the White House and Office of the Vice President. Among those who agreed to be interviewed were former Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and former Deputy Assistant to the President Kevin O'Keefe. Presidential advisors Harold Ickes and Rahm Emanuel, among others, declined our requests for interviews. Vice President Gore declined our request for an interview, but submitted written answers to our questions.
In the end, the OIG found that the CUSA initiative was developed as Commissioner Meissner and others asserted to Congress, that is, as a backlog reduction initiative designed to decrease naturalization processing times. We did not find that CUSA was developed, implemented, or otherwise directed to further inappropriate political ends. We did find, however, that the integrity of naturalization adjudications, already vulnerable before CUSA, suffered badly as a result of INS' efforts to process naturalization applications more quickly. We summarize our findings below.
Page 38 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
II. SUMMARY OF OIG FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS
Our investigation was extremely broad and addressed the many defects in CUSA that had been identified in the congressional hearings. We examined how CUSA was designed and implemented, and to what extent collateral influences played a role in the formulation and execution of the program. To isolate the impact of CUSA on naturalization processing integrity, we also considered the state of naturalization processing in the years preceding the program.
Naturalization processing before CUSA already displayed significant weaknesses that compromised the quality of adjudications. The central standard governing the naturalization adjudication inquiry—whether the applicant was a person of ''good moral character''—was subject to varying interpretations in the Field. Administrative files or ''A-files,'' the mechanism by which INS maintained an applicant's immigrant history, were often unavailable to adjudicators and thus not subject to review. As had been documented in both the OIG and GAO reports of 1994, INS' criminal history checking procedures were poorly administered. All of these factors were known to Commissioner Meissner and her staff, and yet INS decided to launch CUSA and thus accelerate a processing system that already was in need of considerable repair.
When Commissioner Meissner and her staff decided in the summer of 1995 to launch CUSA, they clearly sought to reduce the massive naturalization backlogs and reach ''currency'' in processing.(see footnote 3) They were not acting out of partisan political motives. They represented to the public and to Congress that INS would reduce the naturalization backlog within one year, an ambitious goal under the best of circumstances. However, they failed to address known system weaknesses before implementing a program that they knew would tax that system as it never had been taxed before. Given the known weaknesses in the system and the lack of commitment to repair the deficiencies, the promise of backlog reduction within one year also meant a certain recklessness about the quality of the resulting adjudications.
Page 39 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
When it became clear, by early 1996, that CUSA was behind schedule—adjudicators had not been timely hired and offices were not yet open and productive—instead of adjusting the goal of the program INS adjusted its approach to getting the work done: additional pressure was added to swiftly increase production. On March 1, 1996, Headquarters issued a memorandum to the Field that specifically instructed that all applications for naturalization received by the end of that month had to be completed—either denied or approved and the applicant sworn in—by September 30, 1996.
The delays in the implementation of CUSA caused concern outside INS. Representatives of CBOs were concerned that naturalization applicants would not receive the service they had been promised, and some complained to INS and to political officials.
Commissioner Meissner attended a meeting at the White House on February 9, 1996, with Harold Ickes, Elaine Kamarck, and others on the subject of the progress of the CUSA program. At that meeting, Kamarck offered the assistance of the NPR to INS in reaching its backlog reduction objective. Later that month and in early March 1996, NPR staff members Robert Stone, Douglas Farbrother, and Laurie Lyons met with INS officials and traveled to the Key Cities. NPR offered its assistance in streamlining hiring procedures, finding other federal government sources for available personnel to work on the project, and securing suitable office space. NPR's work did not have a discernible effect on those procedures at that time, however, because most of the facilities procurement and hiring efforts were already underway.
The evidence shows that the greatest influence NPR had on CUSA was an indirect one. NPR staff member Douglas Farbrother, concerned after his Key City tours that CUSA was not moving quickly enough, met with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick and senior INS officials on March 24, 1996, to discuss CUSA. Farbrother's participation at the meeting was cut short by the Deputy Attorney General, who reacted with anger at Farbrother's approach to Department of Justice affairs and asked Farbrother to leave the meeting. However, Farbrother's concerns about CUSA's progress did cause the Deputy Attorney General to inquire of INS officials about their efforts to meet their CUSA objectives.
Page 40 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
As a result of the meeting with the Deputy Attorney General (DAG), INS redoubled its efforts and forcefully reiterated to the Field its commitment to achieve naturalization ''currency'' by the end of the fiscal year, then only six months away. INS Headquarters announced an ''Expanded Naturalization Initiative'' that authorized increased hiring and other resource expenditures provided that the District Directors of the Key Cities committed themselves to meeting the September 30 goal. INS Headquarters encouraged efforts to ''streamline'' the naturalization process, including methods of reducing the length of interviews. The length of time during which offices had been, at least by policy, expected to wait before adjudicating an application without the applicant's permanent file was reduced from six months to 30 days. Although we found no explicit instruction from INS Headquarters to ignore standards that had previously existed, neither did we find any instructions concerning how to ensure quality during this period of heightened production. Once INS had rededicated itself to the goal of CUSA, the principle of increased production was pursued at the expense of accuracy in the determination of applicant eligibility, and a process previously regarded as lacking safeguards became even more vulnerable.
The evidence shows no other direct or indirect impact of the involvement of NPR on the CUSA initiative. By May 1996, NPR officials were no longer involved in the program. That said, the evidence does suggest that the motives for the involvement of NPR were mixed. Elaine Kamarck, Robert Stone, Laurie Lyons, and the Vice President asserted that good government—in this case naturalization backlog reduction—was the reason for NPR's involvement in CUSA. Farbrother, as was illustrated by his e-mail messages provided to Congress, believed that the CUSA program had a deadline that was directly connected to the upcoming election. He told the OIG that eligible applicants had to be naturalized in time to register to vote in November 1996, when he presumed that such voters would support the Clinton/Gore ticket. He also told the OIG that he had learned from Elaine Kamarck that this was one motive for NPR's involvement. Kamarck, Stone, and Lyons do not corroborate Farbrother in this regard, but it is clear that the end result of CUSA's success—the naturalization of one million people by September 30, 1996—was appreciated by community-based organization (CBO) representatives and by some administration officials who agreed to be interviewed as a goal that could have electoral benefits.
Page 41 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Thus, there were some who hoped for a political benefit from INS' naturalization effort. We did not find evidence that officials of INS or the Department adopted this as a goal of CUSA or as a reason to press the goals of the initiative, and did find instances in which such a characterization by CBO representatives was expressly rejected. Nonetheless, many INS employees questioned the legitimacy of CUSA because they suspected it grew out of partisan purposes.
In sum, NPR's influence was one stimulus among several that recommitted INS to its production deadlines, and efforts to meet those deadlines undermined the quality of naturalization adjudications during fiscal year 1996. As to the many other allegations concerning INS' failure to safeguard naturalization integrity, our investigation confirmed the most serious: INS advanced its production goal despite the known risks that accelerated production would pose to its proper evaluation of applications for citizenship. Our specific findings regarding these processing errors, and our recommendations to improve the naturalization process, are described below.
III. FINDINGS CONCERNING NATURALIZATION PROCESSING DEFICIENCIES DURING CUSA
Our report first provides an overview of the CUSA program and addresses the specific allegations concerning its design and implementation. We then address the naturalization processing weaknesses according to three specific subject matter areas: interviews and adjudications (including issues regarding adjudicator training), file practice and policies, and criminal history checking procedures.
Page 42 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
A. Findings concerning CUSA's design and implementation
1. CUSA was developed to reduce the backlog in naturalization applications and was not designed to maximize the number of persons who would be eligible to vote in the November 1996 election.
Soon after she became Commissioner of INS in October 1993, Commissioner Meissner began to plan a major naturalization initiative for fiscal year 1995, a primary component of which would be to encourage eligible permanent residents to apply for citizenship. The promotion of naturalization for eligible applicants was something the Commissioner had often publicly supported.
During 1993 and 1994, however, INS had not kept pace with the increasing demand for naturalization. The pending caseload had quadrupled in three years, from 135,652 in 1992 to 481,580 in mid-1995. By March 1995, having learned from District Directors that they were overwhelmed by naturalization backlogs, Commissioner Meissner understood that encouraging applicants to apply for naturalization was incompatible with the increasing workload in the Field. Accordingly, her promotion of naturalization was transformed into a concentration on backlog reduction. That same month, Commissioner Meissner declared that of INS' work on applications for various benefits, addressing the naturalization backlog would be of the highest priority.
On August 31, 1995, Commissioner Meissner announced the CUSA initiative and its goal of reducing naturalization application processing time to six months by the following summer. Reaching that goal would mean that INS would have to process more than one million cases in fiscal year 1996. She also announced that the initiative would focus on five large districts that were then facing the largest backlogs—Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago.
Page 43 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
While it has been alleged that INS chose the five Key City Districts because of the anticipated voting behavior of the potential citizens in these geographical areas, we found no evidence to support this claim. INS officials asserted that it was the size of the backlog in the largest Key City Districts, and not any characteristics of the applicants, that influenced their choices. Witness interviews and the statistical evidence support their assertions.
Members of Congress also alleged that INS had actively solicited more than half of the total applicants naturalized during CUSA as a means to swell the voting rolls in anticipation of the 1996 election. The evidence shows that Headquarters in fact scaled back its emphasis on naturalization promotion during CUSA in comparison to what it had encouraged during the previous year, although this change in priorities away from naturalization promotion had not been clearly communicated to the Field. Accordingly, we found evidence that some promotional efforts lingered and those efforts could be characterized as ''soliciting'' applicants for naturalization during CUSA. However, we found no evidence to support the allegation that INS continued to solicit naturalization applications because of a desire to increase the number of potential voters in the 1996 election.
2. Having set the CUSA goal, INS made the timely completion of naturalization cases—or production—the guiding principle and pursued this principle at the expense of accuracy in the determination of eligibility for citizenship.
In publicizing CUSA, INS described the naturalization initiative as being about ''the three P's: people, process, and partnerships. The ''people'' referred to the number of new temporary employees INS intended to hire; the ''process'' was included in the CUSA slogan as a reminder that INS intended to make the process more efficient; and ''partnerships'' referred to the new ways in which INS would involve CBOs in the process. This three-part strategy was what INS used to reach the CUSA goal.
Page 44 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
In the implementation of each component of the CUSA strategy, however, INS single-mindedly concentrated on how each could serve to increase the rate at which INS processed naturalization applications. We found that INS paid little attention to the impact this increased rate of processing would have on the quality of adjudications. One example from each category will help illustrate this point.
First, the ''people'' of the CUSA plan'the hundreds of new adjudicators with no previous INS experience hired to interview applicants and determine their eligibility for citizenship—were superficially trained and unprepared for anything but the most routine adjudication of an ''approvable'' application, yet their assignments were not limited to such cases. In many instances, INS assigned the new adjudicators to work in environments without adequate supervision by experienced personnel. We found the most egregious instance of this inappropriate deployment of new hires in the Garden City, New York, CUSA office, where approximately 100 new, temporary adjudicators were assigned to work under the guidance of only six experienced employees.
As to ''process'' improvements implemented during CUSA, INS officials similarly focused on the importance of swiftly ''moving'' cases and not on the consequences of such acceleration. INS employed new methods before they had been validated and before involved personnel were appropriately trained. INS' implementation in February 1996 of a ''Direct Mail'' system for naturalization applications was one such example.
Direct Mail was a method by which applicants sent applications to the service centers rather than the district offices for initial processing. It had already been used for other INS benefit applications, and had been under consideration for naturalization applications for several years. The theory of Direct Mail was that it made processing more efficient by assigning the initial tasks to regional service centers that were accustomed to handling a large volume of paperwork, thus relieving district offices of clerical burdens.
Page 45 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
INS failed to adequately train its service center and contractor staff for the transition to Direct Mail. One consequence of this lack of training was illustrated by the Vermont Service Center's failure to properly process applicant fingerprint cards during the summer of 1996. This shortcoming further compromised New York District's ability to have a completed criminal history check for applicants who applied through Direct Mail, as described in our chapter on criminal history checking procedures.
The transition to Direct Mail during CUSA was also flawed because INS changed the fundamental design of Direct Mail at the eleventh hour. The historical concept of Direct Mail gave the service centers responsibility only for the initial receipt and processing of applications and did not include responsibility for ordering and maintaining A-files. At the urging of the site coordinator for the Los Angeles District, two months before Direct Mail began the design was changed to shift responsibility from the districts to the service centers for the finding, storing, and maintaining applicant files until the time that the naturalization interview was scheduled at district offices. The change was theoretically beneficial for Los Angeles—because the California Service Center was close to the District Office and already housed many of the necessary files—but not for other Key Districts. The design change meant a dramatic movement of files from districts to the service centers and back again, although the consequences of this file movement were not considered by those who advocated the transition to Direct Mail. As a result, files were often unavailable when adjudicators needed them for the naturalization interview.
Direct Mail's success also depended to a large extent on the reliability of INS' computer systems—systems on which the service centers and the districts had to rely, for example, for accurate data about naturalization cases, for file transfers, and for the scheduling of interviews and ceremonies. INS had recognized before CUSA that NACS, the automated system used for naturalization processing, was overloaded with data and was unreliable, and yet CUSA was not delayed until NACS could be overhauled. During Direct Mail, INS made repeated adjustments to NACS' faulty scheduling system because without the scheduling of interviews CUSA would grind to a halt. However, INS did not improve NACS' file-ordering functions or other failures that were less related to production (without the permanent file, adjudicators could proceed with a temporary file, as described below). NACS was further impaired by the huge demands CUSA processing placed on it, and essentially collapsed under the strain.
Page 46 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Finally, concerning the ''partnerships'' prong of the CUSA strategy, INS Headquarters encouraged the Field to work closely with CBOs by conducting interviews at sites in the community where CBO representatives would pre-screen applications and make applicants feel more at ease with the process. Although INS Headquarters recognized the need to establish criteria for CBOs working with INS and the need to issue guidance to the Field in managing its relationship with the CBOs, INS Headquarters failed to do so. As a result, districts developed their own community outreach procedures on an ad hoc basis, and some were more vigilant than others about processing integrity concerns.
We did not find, however, as was alleged during the summer of 1996, that INS formed partnerships with particular CBOs to increase the number of persons who applied for citizenship or to integrate partisan voter registration efforts. To the contrary, we found INS' approach to partnerships was disorganized and unplanned, thus permitting occasional abuses of the system, particularly in the Chicago and Los Angeles Districts.
3. INS Headquarters' adherence to the CUSA goal produced a production pressure in the Field that had an adverse impact on the quality of naturalization adjudications.
By the time of the March 1996 ''Expanded Naturalization Initiative,'' INS was behind schedule. Headquarters stepped up its emphasis on the importance of meeting production goals. The goal of backlog reduction was translated into numerical goals, goals often perceived as quotas in the Field. To achieve the numerical goals, the Field had to increase and maintain a high rate of interviewing in the summer of 1996 and had to increase either the size or the frequency of naturalization ceremonies. Steps taken to enhance production included extending the number of work hours in a day and the number of workdays in the week. Adjudicators throughout the Key Cities perceived that they were working under considerable pressure to quickly complete, and not necessarily thoroughly review, applications for naturalization.
Page 47 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We did not find that the pressure to work harder, to work longer hours, or to work more days, was by itself the cause of employee complaints about the production pace or its deleterious effects. We found that what was debilitating to adjudicators—and thus to the quality of their work—was this emphasis on working long hours combined with having to work without adequate adjudicative standards and guidance, without the requisite tools necessary to perform a thorough adjudication, and with supervisors who often emphasized the importance of increasing the number of cases completed. In such an environment, many adjudicators were led to believe that it was quantity, not quality, that mattered.
B. Findings concerning naturalization interviews and adjudications
1. Introduction
Many of the allegations made by Members of Congress directly implicated the integrity of the naturalization interview, including concerns that adjudicators were not properly trained to perform their duties, that they lacked sufficient time to conduct the interview properly, that they were pressured or directed to limit their inquiries, and that the standards by which applicants were judged became more lenient during CUSA. We found that these allegations were supported by the evidence. We found that many of these problems pre-existed CUSA, and although there was no evidence that INS deliberately repealed pre-existing safeguards or purposefully sought to lower the bar for citizenship, INS' poor planning of CUSA strategies and the rush to produce further diluted the quality of naturalization administration, and did so in predictable ways.
Page 48 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We note at the outset that it is impossible to precisely quantify the number of CUSA adjudications that were affected by these or other problems detailed in our report. We cannot establish how many applicants who were approved for naturalization would have been found ineligible had appropriate procedures been followed. The KPMG-supervised review identified some of these cases, but even in that review the only cases that could be considered as having been wrongly adjudicated were those for which there was evidence available after the fact that the adjudicator had made the wrong decision (for example, the existence of a disqualifying criminal history or the absence of the requisite number of years as a permanent resident). No amount of after-the-fact study can determine what might have been revealed to a better-trained adjudicator with adequate supervision and the appropriate tools to conduct the review and determination. If such an interview is never conducted, the potentially disqualifying information is never revealed.
We further note that the number of applicants naturalized during CUSA who were in fact ineligible for citizenship was not the most important question informing our inquiry. Indeed, it may have been that the huge applicant pool was full of persons who were qualified for citizenship and did not pose an actual threat despite INS' vulnerable procedures. The more important inquiry was what safeguards existed so that the benefit of U.S. citizenship is conferred equitably, consistently, according to a properly administered set of laws, and with enough integrity to minimize the risk of conferring it on ineligible applicants. As a result of that inquiry we found that necessary protective measures that did exist were improperly administered, while others were never established.
Before we detail our findings concerning naturalization adjudications during CUSA, we provide a brief explanation of the naturalization interview process.
Page 49 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
All applicants for naturalization must be interviewed under oath before they are approved for citizenship. The interviewing officer, a District Adjudications Officer (DAO), makes the determination of eligibility.
The interview typically consisted of two prongs, a testing prong and an evaluation of the applicant's other qualifications for citizenship. Before and during CUSA,(see footnote 4) the applicant could satisfy the reading and writing portion of the English proficiency and Civics knowledge requirements either by passing a test administered at the interview or by presenting a certificate from an authorized outside organization attesting to his or her proficiency. Otherwise, DAOs tested the applicant's ability to speak, read, and write English, and tested his or her knowledge of the history and government of the United States. If the applicant presented a valid certificate from an outside testing entity, then the DAO at interview only verified the applicant's oral language skills. If the applicant was unable to satisfy the English or Civics requirements, the case would be continued and the applicant would be rescheduled for one additional opportunity to demonstrate his or her proficiency or knowledge.
DAOs reviewed the applicant's written responses to questions on the naturalization application (the Form N–400) in order to determine whether he or she met the other eligibility criteria for citizenship. The N–400 included questions designed to elicit information that would inform the DAO's determination of whether the applicant was a person of ''good moral character'' (such as whether the applicant had ever been arrested for a criminal offense), a central requirement of naturalization eligibility, and whether he or she was ''attached to the principles of the Constitution.'' If the applicant's responses triggered concern that he or she did not satisfy the prerequisites for citizenship, the adjudicator could either deny the application or continue the case for additional review or for the presentation of additional documentation.
Page 50 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
If the application was approved, the applicant was told (or later notified by mail) of the naturalization ceremony date. If the applicant applied in a jurisdiction where the federal court maintained the responsibility for administering the naturalization oath, the ceremony would usually be scheduled approximately two months later. Otherwise, applicants could be sworn in by INS officials. Between the time of the approval and the ceremony, the applicant had to remain eligible for naturalization. Information bearing on eligibility received by INS between the date of the interview and the date of the ceremony could lead to a reconsideration of the case.
2. CUSA training was not implemented in a manner consistent with its design limitations, and CUSA adjudicators were not prepared to properly perform their functions.
Because of the short-term goal for CUSA and the brief period of employment anticipated for temporary adjudicators, INS devised a special training that was much shorter than the customary training for adjudicators that lasted 12 to 16 weeks. Its basic premise was that the training could be reduced to approximately one week of classroom instruction and one week of on-the-job training by extracting from the traditional officer training curriculum those portions relevant to adjudication of the naturalization application.
This abbreviated training was not intended to prepare new adjudicators to assume a full-fledged adjudicative role. Instead, the training was based on two assumptions: (1) that cases would be screened in advance so that the new adjudicators would only be presented with simple, straightforward cases and (2) that adjudicators would function in a ''primary-secondary'' environment that would allow them to immediately pass on to experienced DAOs cases that had not been recognized as complex during the screening.
Page 51 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Headquarters, however, did not direct the Field to implement a pre-screening or a primary/secondary environment or even advise the Field that the training had been premised on these assumptions. As a result, none of the Key City Districts screened the cases before they were received by the new adjudicators and only one office, the El Monte office in the Los Angeles District, implemented a primary/secondary environment.
In every district, many of the CUSA adjudicators and supervisors interviewed by the OIG criticized the training for temporary adjudicators. They told the OIG that the training did not provide adjudicators with enough information about the law or the overall immigration process to evaluate applicants properly, and did not train them to understand the contents of an A-file or to understand a rap sheet.
The weaknesses of the training were exacerbated in some districts by the failure to provide adequate supervision in the Field. Headquarters left the decision concerning how many supervisors to assign to any given location to the Field, and some districts, notably the San Francisco and the Miami Districts, adopted local procedures in an attempt to support the new hires with access to experienced personnel. In others, like in the New York District as noted above, local officials staffed the largest naturalization site in the country—the Garden City office—with more than 100 temporary officers and only 6 permanent employees, 5 of whom worked as supervisors.
3. INS failed to provide adjudicative guidance to the Field despite having recognized the need to do so before CUSA. The failure to provide guidance tended to preclude adjudicators from finding additional grounds on which to disqualify applicants and, thus, contributed to making CUSA a naturalization program weighted in favor of approvals.
Page 52 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
a. Failure to provide guidance concerning the evaluation of ''good moral character'' The Immigration and Nationality Act requires that an applicant be of ''good moral character'' in order to be approved for citizenship. Federal regulations provide a list of elements that preclude a finding of ''good moral character,'' many of which pertain to an applicant's criminal record. The questions on the N–400 focus on eliciting information about these precluding characteristics. However, the regulations also specifically state that the absence of a precluding factor does not necessarily mean that the applicant is, in fact, of ''good moral character.'' Although the law provided DAOs with guidance concerning the boundaries beyond which an officer could not find that an applicant was of ''good moral character,'' within those boundaries the evaluation of the applicant's character was left to the discretion of the officer.
INS recognized before CUSA that the ''good moral character'' standard was applied inconsistently in the Field and yet did not clarify it before implementing CUSA. In the absence of standards, INS had left the determination of whether, when, and to what extent to explore issues not completely fleshed out in the answers to the N–400 to the subjective judgments of individual adjudicators. The broader the exploration, the more likely the adjudicator would discover potentially disqualifying issues if they existed. This determination had always represented a kind of balancing test between the perceived likelihood of obtaining relevant information against the investment of time involved.
During CUSA, time was at a premium. Many supervisors discouraged adjudicators from making any inquiries beyond the questions specified in the N–400 when determining whether the applicant was a person of ''good moral character.'' Such inquiries were neither specifically sanctioned nor specifically prohibited in the laws governing naturalization. Moreover, they took time. The problem with narrowing the inquiry to the boundaries of the N–400, however, was that it made the interview less likely to uncover potentially disqualifying information if there was any to be found. Thus, this discouragement contributed to the adjudicators' sense that approvals were favored over the thorough exploration of an applicant's eligibility.
Page 53 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
b. Failure to provide guidance concerning the testing of English and Civics Well before CUSA began, INS was aware that its language and government testing components of the naturalization interview were poorly and disparately administered. INS had not developed an objective standard or effective test for determining whether an applicant spoke English at the requisite minimum level. INS recognized the need to improve in these areas and had planned to develop both a standard and a test for spoken English, and a revised regulation to improve the administration of outside testing.
However, these new standards and improvements were not targeted for implementation in time to affect CUSA cases. In the meantime, DAOs continued to apply the same ambiguous standards to the increasing number of cases. By the end of CUSA, on September 10, 1996, EAC Aleinikoff testified before the Subcommittee that ''lack of standardization among INS offices [had], for some time, led to inconsistent standards'' in the testing of English and Civics. INS had taken no meaningful steps to insulate CUSA adjudications from the adverse affects of the weaknesses it had identified before the program began.
Absent an objective standard for determining the minimum level of spoken English required of an applicant, DAOs relied on the general guidance that governed their determination before CUSA—whether the applicant spoke ordinary English, or English at an ''elementary'' or third-grade level. This guideline was not further defined. New adjudicators during CUSA attempted to formulate some understanding of minimum proficiency at a time when they were under pressure to avoid unnecessary continuances and to complete cases. When no real standard existed, however, management pressure to reduce the number of continuances reinforced interpretations in favor of approval. We found that there was a widespread agreement among the adjudicators we interviewed that INS did not properly enforce the English-language requirement of naturalization.
Page 54 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We also found that the manner in which the Civics test was administered at the naturalization interview during CUSA varied from district to district and even among adjudicators in the same district.
Finally in regard to English and Civics testing, we found that fraud by outside testing entities had not been adequately addressed during CUSA. This failure represented a continuation of a problem that began with the inception of the outside testing program in 1991. Despite periodic reports from the Field that it was encountering evidence of fraud by testing organizations, INS had not instituted a national monitoring system. Additionally, although the Field had advised Headquarters that it needed stronger guidelines and standards in order to conduct local oversight, Headquarters had not responded. Over time, the Field developed the view that Headquarters was not interested in oversight of the testing entities and therefore the Field did not devote its resources to that purpose. Despite the perception of fraud in outside testing, INS plans for 1996 called for the expansion of the program.
INS officials undertook preliminary steps in fiscal year 1996 to address fraud, but their timing was more closely linked to increasing pressures from the media and Congress rather than an urgency to ensure the integrity of the program before its planned expansion. In any event, these efforts were too little and too late to have any beneficial impact on the integrity of the testing program during CUSA. Many adjudicators reported to the OIG that they regularly encountered applicants who presented passing certificates but who could not speak even simple English, from which they inferred fraud in the outside testing program.
c. Failure to provide guidance concerning the adjudication of applications of those suspected of obtaining permanent residency through fraud INS officials we interviewed often characterized their approach to CUSA as ''business as usual'' only on a much larger scale. Thus, any failure to provide its adjudicative corps guidance in the determination of naturalization eligibility did not pose a ''new'' risk, just a more prevalent one because so many more applications would be adjudicated without such guidance. We identified one way, however, in which INS officials knew that naturalization applications received during CUSA might pose a higher risk of ineligibility than those received during previous years: more than one million persons became eligible for naturalization on December 1, 1995, who had obtained their permanent residency through an INS program widely regarded as having been rife with fraud.
Page 55 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The Legalization program of the late 1980s had included provisions under which ''Special Agricultural Workers'' (SAWs) could obtain residency (first temporary, then permanent) in the United States by demonstrating that they had worked in certain agricultural jobs during specified time periods. The applicants proved their qualifications by providing documentation to INS attesting to their work history. There was wide consensus within INS that the use of fraudulent documents had been prevalent in the SAW program. Although estimates varied (at one Headquarters meeting, there was an estimate that 70 percent of all SAW cases had involved fraud), no one denied its existence. For that reason, before CUSA began the Chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, Barbara Jordan, had recommended that INS pay special attention to applications for citizenship by SAW applicants. In addition, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Alan Simpson, had received assurance from INS that it would respond appropriately to evidence of previous immigration fraud by all applicants for naturalization.
Despite these warnings and promises, however, evidence of fraud was not adequately explored and, in some instances, was completely disregarded. New adjudicators were not trained to recognize or explore potential issues of fraud by SAW applicants and no guidance was sent to the Field to ensure that experienced examiners were alert to the importance of this issue. Even worse, many adjudicators believed that they were prohibited from reviewing documents in an applicant's file that pertained to the SAW application or believed that if evidence of SAW fraud somehow emerged they could not consider it in the determination of citizenship.(see footnote 5)
4. INS Headquarters encouraged the Field to adopt ''Alternative Examination Methods'' as a means of increasing production but failed to consider their impact on the quality of the naturalization adjudication.
Page 56 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Throughout CUSA, INS Headquarters encouraged the Field to ''streamline'' the naturalization interview. As a result of the ''Expanded Naturalization Initiative'' of March 1996, the Office of Programs (Examinations) issued its ''Naturalization Process Changes'' memorandum on May 1, 1996, that further encouraged such streamlining. The Naturalization Process Changes memorandum recommended that the Field consider innovative examination strategies, noting that ''interviewing pace'' needed to be ''recalibrated to take advantage of the time-saving strategies.'' The El Monte interview, anticipated to be pared down to five minutes, was lauded as a CUSA model, even though at the time the memorandum was distributed the site had only been open for business for less than one month and the impact of its approach on the quality of naturalization adjudications had not been reviewed. Even without validation, although the testing of Civics and written English proficiency had been eliminated from the El Monte interview,(see footnote 6) the notion that a thorough review of the applicant's immigration history, evaluation of his or her spoken English, consideration of all of the answers provided in the N–400, and determination of ''good moral character'' could be reduced to a 5-minute exchange between the applicant and a superficially trained, inexperienced DAO showed INS Headquarters' disregard for the importance of the naturalization interview.
''Off-site'' processing, where DAOs would go to a location in the community to interview applicants whose applications had been ''pre-screened'' by a CBO, was also encouraged as a time-saving strategy. The Naturalization Process Changes memorandum held out the Chicago District's off-site processing as the model to emulate, and yet Central Regional officials had reviewed Chicago's program the previous year and sharply criticized it as reducing the naturalization interview to the point of meaninglessness, and as a program without safeguards to ensure that representatives of the CBOs did not place inappropriate pressure on INS staff. Nonetheless, the Chicago off-site processing program was successful at completing many thousands of cases and at pleasing the participating CBOs, and thus it earned high marks at INS Headquarters as an effective CUSA strategy with none of its impact on the quality of those adjudications.
Page 57 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
C. A-file policy and practice
We found that INS did not properly administer its file practices during CUSA.
The A-file is the repository of all immigration-related documentation regarding the applicant. The permanent file contains the applicant's immigration history, and only by reviewing it could an adjudicator ensure that the applicant had obtained his or her residency status lawfully and as represented on the N–400. Although INS' automated systems reflected information such as when, where, and how the applicant had obtained residency status, only the applicant's file could reveal the actual information submitted in order to obtain the previous benefit. Review of such information was crucial if INS was to be vigilant for fraud in obtaining any previous immigration benefit. Nevertheless, even before CUSA began, INS was relying to a significant degree on temporary files, which typically contained only the naturalization application and a printout from the INS Central Index System showing the applicant's immigration status.
Pursuant to a policy established in 1980, adjudicators could use a temporary file if there had been diligent efforts for six months to obtain the permanent file. Unfortunately, no standards defining the meaning of diligence were promulgated and the seriousness of the effort to locate the file varied from district to district. In Los Angeles, the nation's largest district, for example, there was essentially no requirement to search for the A-file before using a temporary file. Moreover, none of the Key Districts before CUSA required that the efforts to locate the file be made before the interview, the time when the file was most relevant.(see footnote 7)
Page 58 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
During CUSA it became even less likely than before that adjudicators would have the permanent file in time for the interview. First, INS failed to adequately and timely shore up its records staff, despite the obvious burdens that would be placed on them by massive data-entry projects and new interview sites. We offer one illustration concerning the work of the Naturalization Data Entry Center (NDEC) as an example of the consequences of inadequate records-related planning during CUSA.
At the very beginning of CUSA, the Los Angeles District mounted a major effort at the building housing the California Service Center to data-enter naturalization applications that had been submitted but never entered into the system. Under INS' automated procedures, immediately after data-entry, the computer requests the applicant's permanent file from the district office records room that has the file. The NDEC project, completed during several weeks in August and September 1995, resulted in a sudden request to the Los Angeles District records room for 170,000 A-files, a number that equaled more than one normal year's worth of file requests. This request was made to a records staff that had not increased in size and that continued to have responsibilities for other INS programs. As a predictable result, the records staff was immediately backlogged and was even less able than it had previously been to produce permanent files for applicant interviews.
The NDEC project also data-entered approximately 50,000 applications from the Miami District that had not been entered into INS' system. Project planners, however, had failed to consider that INS' computer system automatically requests that files be sent to the location of the ''requestor,'' or the person entering the application data. This meant that A-files relating to Miami applications that would ultimately be adjudicated in the Miami District were ''ordered'' by the automated system to be sent to the Los Angeles District. As a consequence of insufficient coordination between the NDEC staff, CUSA planners, and district records rooms, the applications were being shipped back to Miami, while the corresponding permanent files for these cases were moving in the opposite direction to Los Angeles.
Page 59 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
In addition to the problems engendered by this huge, one-time data-entry effort, INS' file practices exhibited broader systemic problems. New sites were located in different buildings separate from each district's main records room and therefore a file had to travel farther, and through more intermediaries, to arrive at the interview site. This contributed to the decreased likelihood of A-file usage during CUSA. For example, an A-file requested from outside the district by the CUSA satellite office in San Jose would first arrive at the San Francisco District Office, then be sent to the records room of the San Jose Sub-office, and finally to the CUSA site itself. The result was predictable—a greater dependency on temporary files in San Jose.
The implementation of Direct Mail for the naturalization application also increased reliance on temporary files, as we discussed above. The increased file migration required by new CUSA sites and the transition to Direct Mail had a predictably adverse impact on A-file availability, particularly during a time of dramatically heightened production.
In addition to the adverse but inadvertent impact that resulted from planning weaknesses, we found processing changes that reduced the emphasis on the importance of using the A-file. First, the site that was regarded as the premier example of ''naturalization streamlining,'' the El Monte office in the Los Angeles District, had a design that permitted only a cursory review of whatever file was available as the interview was taking place. Second, on May 1, 1996, the Benefits Division (Office of Examinations) modified the longstanding requirement that a 6-month diligent search for the A-file was a prerequisite for reliance on a temporary file by reducing search time to just 30 days. Ironically, the potentially negative impact of the policy change was mitigated by the fact that in most of the Key City Districts the instruction was either ignored, unknown, or deemed irrelevant because temporary file use was already so common. In the one district, Miami, that did change its practices in response to the new policy despite managers' disagreement with it, the result was that more cases were adjudicated with temporary files.
Page 60 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The vulnerability of relying on temporary files is often not readily apparent. The information in the file may not be facially disqualifying but may raise issues that lead to evidence that the applicant is not eligible. In some instances, however, the information in the file may be quite explicit. INS' response to the possibility of fraud by SAW applicants illustrates both aspects. Although INS assured Congress that it would investigate whenever evidence of SAW (or other) fraud was discovered during interview and deny citizenship whenever that evidence was substantiated, such investigation was generally dependent upon the presence of an A-file. Without it, suspicions of fraud were unlikely to arise and even less likely to be fully explored.
D. Criminal history checking procedures
1. Introduction
When the initial statistics from the KPMG-supervised review of CUSA cases became available in early 1997, Commissioner Meissner acknowledged that INS' primary policy regarding fingerprint checks, the ''presumptive policy,'' had been flawed. The policy, established in 1982, permitted INS offices to presume that an applicant had no criminal record if no rap sheet was returned to INS after a designated amount of time had passed (the ''presumptive period'') since the fingerprint card had been sent to the FBI for analysis. At the same time that INS officials conceded the flaws in the presumptive policy, they continued to maintain that they had made every effort to safeguard the system—indeed, to improve it.
We examined the INS fingerprint checking process in detail. We found that although the presumptive policy was inherently flawed, the myriad problems with INS' criminal history checking procedures could not be attributed only to having adopted an ill-conceived policy many years before CUSA. INS had been repeatedly warned about systemic weaknesses, including but not limited to the presumptive policy, and failed to respond to them before launching CUSA. The volume of cases, the new processing strategies like Direct Mail, and the accelerated rate of production during CUSA all exacerbated these problems. The one innovation INS implemented in the name of improving fingerprint processing—the opening of a centralized Fingerprint Clearance Coordination Center in June 1996—was poorly planned, poorly timed, insufficiently staffed, and inadequately explained to the Field. Instead of improving INS' fingerprint processing during CUSA, it served to weaken procedures that were already deficient.
Page 61 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We also reviewed INS' ''bio-check'' procedures. The bio-check is a comparison of applicant biographic data to data available at the FBI and CIA to determine whether the applicant is the subject of any intelligence, counter-intelligence, organized crime, or terrorism investigations. In addition to investigative data, this check could reveal an applicant's criminal history from a foreign country or outstanding domestic or international arrest warrants. We found that INS bio-check procedures suffered from the same kinds of deficiencies that marred INS' processing of naturalization applicants' fingerprint cards and resulting criminal histories. As sometimes happened in INS' processing of fingerprint cards, staff ignorance of appropriate bio-check procedures also resulted in the destruction of relevant material returned from the FBI.
In searching for explanations for how INS could so poorly administer, and for so long, the few methods in place for checking naturalization applicants' backgrounds, we identified several factors. First, INS regarded the pool of naturalization applicants as a group of persons at very low risk for a disqualifying criminal history. Second, INS approached criminal history checks with an attitude that the cost of obtaining a definitive criminal history check for every applicant outweighed their value, given the presumed low risk of a criminal history. Finally, thorough criminal history checking procedures, like other procedural safeguards such as applicant file review, were overshadowed by the priority of completing more than a million cases in one year, and thus these checks suffered from the mismanagement that affected other areas of naturalization processing.
We also examined INS' response to congressional inquiries about criminal history checking procedures. We found that INS answers to congressional inquiries concerning criminal history checking procedures during CUSA were replete with mistakes that could have been avoided had INS officials paid sufficient attention to the information then available from the Field.
Page 62 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Our report addresses INS criminal history checking procedures in considerable detail. For a full understanding of the risks taken by INS in regard to applicant criminal histories, we refer the reader to those sections of the report. What we offer here is only a synopsis of the broader findings we made as a result of our investigation.
2. INS' failure to administer fingerprint checking policy and procedures pre-dated CUSA
INS had no definitive policy statement or articulation of the rules regarding fingerprint card processing before or during CUSA. Accordingly, there was no definitive source to turn to for a description of the presumptive period or the proper procedures to be followed if the FBI rejected a fingerprint card.
According to Headquarters officials' testimony before Congress, the presumptive period was 60 days. Although all districts understood that they could adjudicate cases in the absence of a response from the FBI, they did not uniformly know that the waiting period was this long. The policy in Miami, for example, was to wait 45 days. The understanding of the length of the presumptive period varied within New York, Chicago, and Los Angele