Al Gore's voter mill

National Review, March 24, 1997 by Thomas McArdle

What was strongly suspected on Capitol Hill during last year's campaign for President is now confirmed by congressional investigation: the Clinton Administration, in particular the Office of the Vice President, engineered a frantic effort to swear in as citizens as many aliens as it could before Election Day. And internal Administration memos that have now become public leave no doubt about the underlying purpose: securing as many new Democratic votes as possible.

To say that other concerns -- like making sure violent criminals weren't awarded the highest privilege America has to offer -- were deemed to be of secondary importance within the White House is gross understatement. Over 180,000 immigrants were awarded citizenship and given the right to vote without their criminal records' being checked. Undoubtedly, thousands of them were convicted felons. Indeed, more than 71,000 aliens whose histories were checked had arrest records -- almost 11,000 of them for felonies -- but were made citizens anyway. The Justice Department is now checking how many of those were convicted for felonies, in which case an attempt may be made to revoke their citizenship --but that won't be easy: it happened only twenty times in 1995, after months of bureaucratic work.

The involvement of Vice President Gore's staff in this operation, which is very clear from their own memoranda, may make Gore wish he could trade in his troubles for President Clinton's Lincoln Bedroom frolics by the time the 2000 campaign arrives.

The National Performance Review was the agency set up supposedly to allow the Vice President to "re-invent government." How odd that the Immigration and Naturalization Service should become the top candidate for an efficiency overhaul. One March 1996 memo to President Clinton from Doug Farbrother, a top NPR staffer, notes that Clinton "asked us to expedite the naturalization of nearly a million legal aliens who have applied to become citizens." The memo adds that the Immigration and Naturalization Service "warns that if we are too aggressive at removing the roadblocks to success, we might be publicly criticized for running a pro-Democrat voter mill and even risk having Congress stop us."

The first of several "controversial actions" on which the memo then gives the pros and cons for the President's consideration comes under the heading, "Lower the standards for citizenship" -- a heading dropped from revised versions of the memo. It says, "The basic standards are in law -- years of residency, basic knowledge of English and Civics, and good moral character -- and we wouldn't change those. But INS adjudicators have broad latitude to interpret those standards and decide who meets them. INS management has already begun training new adjudicators, and 're-educating' the older ones, to be more liberal."

The Farbrother memo's "quick solution" was "to delegate to the senior INS managers in . . . five cities broad authority to waive headquarters rules." That happened, and much more.

The director of the Fresno INS office, for instance, in a letter to a San Francisco labor-union president, wrote that "the INS has been told to naturalize everyone who filed [for citizenship] prior to April 1, 1996, in time for them to register to vote in the November election."

In order to "get the results the Vice President wants," Farbrother asked INS Deputy Commissioner Chris Sale to sign or have INS Commissioner Doris Meissner sign an order to "waive INS rules and regulations" for the agency's district directors. Sale then gave "full authority to waive, suspend, or deviate from [Department of Justice] and INS non-statutory policies, regulations, and procedures" as long as laws were not broken.

On March 26, Mrs. Meissner increased Citizenship USA funding by 20 per cent, giving district directors "full authority over these funds" as well as "full authority to determine the most appropriate, expedient methods" in hiring new employees. At the same time, production goals were increased 40 per cent, to 814,000, for April -September 1996.

Two days later, however, Farbrother still wasn't satisfied; he complained in a memo to Gore that "unless we blast INS headquarters loose from their grip on the frontline managers, we are going to have way too many people still waiting for citizenship in November. I can't make Doris Meissner delegate broad authority to her field managers. Can you?"

On March 29, Farbrother asked if he could replace Sale: "Rather than having me appear to be working against Doris, put me to work for her. Move Chris Sale into another job (like Deputy Director for Programs at the NPR) and make me the INS Deputy Commissioner. From there, I could do more, faster."

In the same memo, Farbrother again touches on how the Administration can cover its political tracks: "To blunt any charge that we are running a citizenship/Clinton voter mill, I am working with the FBI to find a way to tighten up the ridiculously loose fingerprint check system . . . A breakthrough here will look good to the anti-alien lobby."