Citing Clinton Administration "dishonesty," Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee Wednesday dropped attempts to devise a compromise on restructuring the troubled Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The panel voted instead to approve a bill that is certain to spark a battle royal in the full Judiciary Committee.
Democrats vowed to sandbag the legislation, and committee sources said these lawmakers would hit the bill with a barrage of as many as 100 amendments when it reaches the full committee.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims approved the bill (H.R. 3918) on a partisan 5-4 roll call vote.
The bill is identical to a bill (H.R. 2528) introduced last year with some bipartisan support. That bill was amended and approved by the same subcommittee last November, as Republicans, Democrats and Clinton Administration officials tried to reach a compromise on how best to reorganize the much-maligned agency. But those efforts broke down, with each side blaming the other, before the full Judiciary Committee could take up the issue, prompting Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the immigration panel, to reintroduce the original bill.
Smith accused the White House of purposefully stalling the legislation so that it would not pass before the end of last year's session. "A White House source told us the Administration was never serious about reform and never wanted to reach agreement in the first place," Smith said at Wednesday's meeting. "All members should be offended by the Administration's dishonest negotiation."
Administration officials and House Democrats insisted they did not walk away from the discussions and were still earnest in trying to reach a compromise.
Both sides agree on the bill's central provision, which would separate the agency's enforcement and services arm. One office would oversee services such as naturalization, visa petitions and refugee applications, and the other would enforce immigration law and oversee border patrols, deportation and investigations.
But there is disagreement on the specifics of the new agencies and how they would be coordinated. Under the legislation passed Wednesday, the heads of the two new arms would be directly responsible to the Attorney General. Currently, all policies and functions are under the supervision of an INS commissioner.
The reform legislation previously passed by the panel placed immigration affairs under an associate attorney general who would "supervise" and "oversee" two new major offices. Panel Democrats support the idea of a supervising Attorney General, but want the position to carry more supervisory and coordinating powers.
They introduced an amendment including this provision, but it was defeated on a voice vote.
"This represents the status quo," said Smith of the Democratic proposal. "Only the name has changed ... . This keeps a single top-heavy structure when what we really need is two separate agencies."
Smith said he was assured of support for his amendment last November, but that the Administration actually decided to oppose the compromise. At that time, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, the panel's ranking Democrat, called Smith's amendment "only an evil kissing cousin of the original bill" and pointed out that it did not enjoy the support of the White House, immigration advocacy groups, or any Democrat on the panel.
Democrats on the panel Wednesday again pointed to the lack of support among those groups for the legislation.
They criticized a provision on the bill that places the inspection program under the enforcement arm, saying that inspectors, who spend most of their time deciding whether people are admissible to the United States, should be in the services arm.
The November proposal would have created separate accounts between the bureaus, creating a "firewall" so that fees for services could not be used for enforcement. Democrats, who had criticized the previous proposal because it was discretionary, criticized the new bill for lacking any firewalls at all.
The two sides also disagreed on who should coordinate certain shared functions, such as training and personnel. The new bill would place those functions under the Justice Management Division, which is responsible for a number of departmental functions. In a letter to the committee, the INS opposed this change.
The INS now has a backlog of over 4 million applicants for services, according to Smith. These include 1.4 million waiting for naturalization and 1 million waiting for permanent residence status.
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