INS chief resigns

Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar plans to leave the agency by the end of the year to pursue a career in the private sector. Ziglar announced his resignation in an Aug. 15 letter to President Bush and subsequent message to INS employees. He said his plans to leave the agency had been in the making since early July. Ziglar, who took the agency's helm in August 2001, just a month before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said he would stay at the INS long enough to see it through the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security. "I have done my best to continue making progress toward the goals of restructuring the agency and reducing backlogs while responding to the call to arms in the war on terrorism," Ziglar wrote in his letter to President Bush. "I believe that the record will indicate that we have made substantial progress toward those goals." In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ziglar has had to defend his agency, which faced strong criticism from President Bush and Congress after an INS contractor sent letters to a Venice, Fla., flight school in March confirming the agency's approval of student visas for terrorists Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi. The agency's inspector general blamed INS employees for the error. Ziglar had no immigration experience before coming to the agency last year, but his strong management skills from his years as managing director of Paine Webber Inc., put him at the top of the administration's list of possible nominees. Before Sept. 11, Ziglar was on track to overhaul the troubled agency, which processes more than 6 million applications for immigration benefits each year, to make it more efficient. Now INS is one of 22 agencies the Bush administration plans to fold into the new Cabinet-level department. In his message to employees, Ziglar said that a move to the new department would bring about the changes needed to improve the nation's border security. "Restructuring will now be achieved through the merger of the INS into the new department and border security will now receive the priority status it deserves," Ziglar wrote. "Knowing these goals will be successfully accomplished as a part of larger and stronger agency, it is an appropriate time for me to return to private life." Ziglar said he would stay with the agency no later than Dec. 31.