Barney Frank's immigration-reform redux

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 27, 2002 | by James R. Edwards, Jr.

Liberal Democratic Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) wants to let foreign criminals stay in this country -- and, incredibly, the House Judiciary Committee is about to give him a chance to do it. Frank's bill, HR 1452, goes by the misnomer, the Family Reunification Act. Any time a politician claims something is "for the children" or, in the case of immigration, for "family reunification," you'd better be on your guard.

HR 1452 has 32 cosponsors, mostly far-left Democrats. Frank introduced the legislation more than a year ago and, like more than 3,000 other bills in this Congress, it was referred to the requisite committee and subcommittee where it has sat idle.

The ignored bill appeared all of a sudden on the agenda of the full House Judiciary Committee, despite the fact there have been no subcommittee hearings on the legislation. No input has been sought from the Department of Justice or the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). No subcommittee markup has resulted in any amendments to the bill.

Yet, the full committee likely will act on the proposal soon. It could be sent to the House floor, on to the Senate and, perhaps, to the president's desk in short order. All this is taking place rather quietly.

So what does HR 1452 aim to do? In short, it erases the much-needed reforms Congress made in its landmark 1996 immigration-reform law.

Before that, aliens who committed serious crimes, from dealing drugs to committing murder to undertaking robberies, would serve time in prison and then face deportation. But -- minor problem -- the criminal immigrants never showed up for their deportation hearings, the INS couldn't find them (and quickly gave up) or, once ordered deported, the aliens never left the country.

In 1996, Congress required INS to take the criminal immigrants into custody at the end of their sentences. The law curbed the discretionary release of criminal aliens. It limited the easy "get-out-of-jail-free" procedure known as Section 212(c) relief. And it applied the new procedures to aggravated felonies committed before the 1996 law.

The 1996 law plugged a major loophole. The INS is removing criminal aliens at a record pace, the Center for Immigration Studies reported last year. "During fiscal years 1993-2000 the number of INS removals (deportations plus exclusions) more than quadrupled, from 42,469 to 181,572, while removals related to criminal offenses grew two-and-a-half times from 27,827 to 69,093.... By contrast, in fiscal 1984 the agency removed only about a thousand aliens on criminal grounds."

Of course, INS has not carried out the law completely or as Congress intended. The General Accounting Office in 1999 reported that INS lacked records in its database on 36 percent of deportable criminal aliens, of whom 27 percent later were found to be deportable because of their crimes. And the Clinton INS regulations implementing the law were written to cause the most hardship and fan the liberal-interest-group backlash against the much-needed 1996 reforms.

Now comes Frank with legislation to undo those reforms. The professional advocates for open borders are salivating at this, a crucial plank in their "Fix '96" political campaign.

Specifically, the bill would release many immigrant felons from INS custody. It would let criminal immigrants go free while waiting for a decision on their deportation. It would let thousands of the already-removed criminal aliens back into the country so they could seek the easier cancellation of their former deportation. And the government would have more discretion to let these criminals off the hook.

Now it doesn't take a genius to see that, just as before the law was changed, when criminal immigrants routinely disappeared and never left the country, the Frank bill would re-create the same problem. Criminal aliens who face removal would have too great an incentive to fade into the woodwork. The commonsense solution keeps them off the streets and gets them out of the country.

The House Judiciary Committee should subject HR 1452 to the laugh test. It must not pass, because coddling criminal immigrants is anything but pro-family -- it's pro-criminal, anti-American and anything but a laughing matter.

JAMES R. EDWARDS JR., COAUTHOR OF THE CONGRESSIONAL POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION REFORM, WRITES ON IMMIGRATION ISSUES AND IS AN ADJUNCT FELLOW WITH THE HUDSON INSTITUTE.