Security System in Reference to Immigration - Essay Example

SECURITY SYSTEM IN REFERENCE TO IMMIGRATION The seriousness of the security threat posed by immigration to the receiving country Completed by Your name University name 9th May 2006 Introduction: Globalization has been the defining trait of the late twentieth-century, exemplified by sharply increased trade in goods, inter-connected financial markets and large-scale international migration. Globalization is defined by cross-border connectivity, including porous borders, which serve up to expedite flows of goods while at the same time augment the level of immigration - both legal and illegal. Simply put, the large-scale movement of people poses potential threats to the security of the European Union and the United States. It should also be patent that solutions to the pressures created by large-scale immigration, are beyond the means of any single state. Migration and the safety challenges it poses can be controlled only by international agreement and increased administrative cooperation within and among member states. The events of September 11th 2001 have underscored the urgent need to move quickly on defining immigration as a valid transatlantic security issue. The threat of terrorism will require increased immigration control in the form of a more meticulous screening of visa applicants by consular officials in the countries of origin, shared computer data between national law enforcement agencies, stepped up border patrols, and undertaking combined decree enforcement and international security actions to identify and arrest suspected terrorists such as was undertaken by NATO troops in Bosnia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia earlier this year. These trends in which the lines between military, security, police work and foreign policy become blurred will continue to produce. To ensure the safety of our citizens and our wider global community this author argues that we need to seem at immigration policy as a security issue. To be sure, we must be careful not to brand all immigrants as terrorists (none of the 19 terrorists of September 11th was an immigrant. They were in the U.S. on temporary, "non-immigrant" tourist or student visas. Further, records indicate that they never applied to the INS for a Green Card or any other adjustment of status). Yet, after considerable review of the existing literature, consultation with scholars, policy makers, and security experts alike this author has come to the conclusion that because virtually every sort of immigration, i.e., refugee and sanctuary policy, the issuance of non-immigrant visas, and other temporary-stay provisions can potentially be exploited by terrorists, immigration policy in general should be framed in terms of security. Therefore, focusing on just one category such as student visas, or even temporary visas in general would be shortsighted. Rather, in light of September 11th all aspects of the immigration system, including the way visas are processed in overseas consulates, the handling of foreign citizens at ports of entry, policing the nation's borders, and enforcement of immigration laws within the European Union and the United States need to be transformed and strengthened in order to reduce the terrorist threat. No doubt, this presents a formidable challenge to the men and women who supply on the front-line such as border police, asylum and visa officers, immigration judges and national militaries. All these actors are forced to leave administrative decisions with limited information and often must be made in moments of crisis, involving highly charged national debates. This paper examines the contemporary (and newly emerging) challenge facing the member states of the European Union and the United States in protecting their borders against international terrorism while at the similar time acknowledging the veracity of large-scale immigration to these societies and protecting the rights of non-citizens. Close administrative cooperation at an international level among security, judicial, law 5 enforcement and national militaries must be given more weight in our attempt to wrestle control of unlock borders while at the same time fashioning humane policies, which take note of the rights of non-citizens, legal and illegal, inside our national borders. Although historians, sociologists, and legal experts have written extensively on immigration policy little has emerged from the public administration and civic policy disciplines. In examining immigration policy through an administrative and policy analytic lens, we can better identify processes and patterns relating to the issuance of visas and immigrant selection, as well as the role of program organization and administration. In addition, a careful study of administrative capacity also may facilitate to answer the more difficult and vexing questions relating various administrative structures in order to guarantee that implementation which is effective within the arena of immigration policy. Overview of Immigration to the E.U. and the U.S. Every position must face the difficulty of regulating the entrance of individuals into its natural region. Likewise, the state must establish the conditions of residence for aliens, and the methods by which non-citizens can become citizens. Decisions such as these, concerning the handle of a population within a given territory, are simply not technical, economic or demographic choices; they are profoundly political choices that often must be made in moments of crisis, involving highly charged national debates. They literally can affect the lives of millions of people; and they can divulge in pristine form the innermost workings of the political system and the key philosophical assumptions upon which the structure is based. What better way to study the relationship between the state, the individual, and society than to look at the way in which the state deals with foreigners, who are among the most vulnerable members of any (democratic) society, lacking many of the basic rights that are guaranteed to citizens. James F. Hollifield (1989) "Migrants into Citizens: The Politics of Immigration in France and the United States." Paper delivered at the 1989 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 31 to September 3, 1989, Atlanta, GA. When James Hollifield delivered this paper at the 1989 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association barely three months before the descend of the Berlin Wall he seemed to foretell the crisis situation which the member states of the European Union (at that time the European Community) and the United States would visage when coming to terms with the unprecedented international migration flows they experienced in the early 1990s. With the collapse of communism in Europe and the subsequent rise of irredentist and nationalist tendencies on a global scale, both Western Europe and the United States were faced with the challenge of sustained wide-scale migration flows into their territory throughout the early half of the decade. Accompanying these flows were highly charged national debates surrounding colonization which as Hollifield noted laid 7 bare and revealed "in pristine form the innermost workings of the political system and the key philosophical assumptions upon which the systems are based." it is surprising, however, is that despite the restrictionist climate of public opinion in both Western Europe and the United States, the 1990s has been the decade of immigration and one, which recast the racial and national composition in throughout Western Europe and the United States. Large scale immigration to the United States and the countries of Western Europe who now construct up the European Union has continued irrespective of economic cycles, public opinion, and restrictionist tendencies, immigrants and foreigners have acquired rights and therefore the capacity of liberal states to control immigration is constrained by laws and institutions. Within this framework, argues Gibney (1999) states do not maintain completely open borders but as an entity that strives to form national communities consistent with liberal egalitarian principles and that treats foreigners according to the same principles. In short, this new rights-based liberalism affords certain legal entitlements that protect immigrants against the exclusionary powers of the state. Yet at the same time, terrorists to shield their activity from legal authorities have used these legal entitlements and liberal policies. In both the U.S. and E.U. the convergence of liberal immigration policies in the past fifty years is the combination of rights-markets coalitions. The so-called rights based expansionism relied chiefly on the institutional transformation of the legislatures and courts in both the E.U. and the U.S. This author notes that a new political culture, which developed in the 1960s, made possible the emergence of a innovative politics of civil liberties and human rights. Relying on the principle of constitutional and social state, courts granted foreign workers who had repeatedly renewed their residence permit the right of permanent residency. This meant that it became legally very difficult, and eventually impossible, to deny these workers further residence. To which Hollifield (2000) adds, "Rights in liberal democracies have a very long half-life. Once extended, it is very difficult to roll them back". Looking at the situation in the U.S. Christian Joppke (1997) notes: Throughout the 1980s hard-nosed government measures of accumulation detention, deportation, and high-sea interception were undercut by increasingly objector courts that no longer deferred the traditional plenary power of Congress and the president over immigration, and brought to bear the communitarian force of immigration law on the new field of asylum. In concert with this institutional transformation arose the political mobilization of social movements and political parties in both countries which advanced a "clientelistic politics of immigration", strongly oriented toward liberal immigration policies. In comparing the European Union to the United States with respect to immigration policies, one must also keep in mind a fundamental difference between the two and the development of their political institutions. The United States was born and grew in the demographic circumstance of immigration while much of the European Union became nation-states in the context of emigration. The United States has always been an "immigration country." After centuries of emigration from the countries, which are now present-day E.U. members, net migration flows only recently, reversed direction. In a sense, the E.U. is transforming its political institutions of citizenship and developing something it previously did not need - an immigration policy, so as to obey the rules to the demographic context of immigration. Immigration and Transatlantic Security in the Aftermath of September 11th: The U.S. Administrative Response In the aftermath of September 11th, immigration and visas policy became a transatlantic security issue. The unexpected political terrain of post 9-11 signaled a decisive occasion for the member states of the European Union and the United States to energize their person and collective willingness to deepen integration in administrative matters. Implementing immigration and visa policy in the U.S. is the responsibility of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) within the Department of Justice. The INS is responsible for all areas of immigration policy which includes regulating enduring and temporary immigration to the United States (to include legal permanent residence status, nonimmigrant status, e.g., tourists or students, and naturalization; maintaining control of U.S. borders; identifying and removing people who have no lawful immigration status in the United States. The INS also works with other Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to uphold the laws of the United States. In addition, noted Secretary Ashcroft, "the INS has suffered from inadequate accountability between field offices and the headquarters, and a necessitate of consistent operations and policies", Under the plan, clear and separate chains of command for the agency's service function and the enforcement purpose are created with the goal of improving efficiency by eliminating layers of management between field offices and headquarters, and accountability is promoted by providing overall direction under a single agency head, the INS commissioner. According to INS Commissioner Ziglar the broad goal of the INS since September 11, 2001 is to divide the two functions. Or, as James Lindsay, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution writes "the dual function of the INS in post-911 America is to encourage international visitors, catch illegal immigrants, welcome refugees from foreign wars, stop the flow of illegal drugs, assist international trade, keep out terrorists, and embrace people seeking to become Americans. In the past year, the United States has implemented several measures aimed at getting more control of its borders and strengthening laws which increase law enforcement's ability to follow suspected terrorists living within its borders. Three measures having the greatest collision on current immigration policy include, creation of the Office of Homeland Security in the weeks immediately following September 11th; 11 passage of The U.S.A. Patriot Act in late October 2001; and passage of The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act in May 2002. Immediately after last fall's attack, President Bush created the White House Office of Homeland Security (and the Homeland Security Council). If Congress approves the creation to the cabinet level, the newly created Department of Homeland Security will be one of the most significant transformations of the federal bureaucracy in current memory bringing roughly 170,000 civil servants under one branch. The departments defining mission would be the protection of America's borders. It would be responsible for the following: border and transportation security; emergency response and preparedness; chemical, biological and radiological countermeasures; and information analysis and infrastructure protection. The new Department of Homeland Security would include the INS and would divide immigration services from immigration law enforcement. The original Department would assume the legal authority to issue visas to foreign nationals and admit them into the country. The State Department, working through the United States embassies and consulates abroad, would persist to administer the visa application and issuance process, however. In the case of information sharing and gathering, the Department would employ in threat analysis and warning in an effort to thwart potential terror attacks via improved communications with state and local public law enforcement agencies. At present, legislation creating the Department has reached an impasse in the Senate due to President Bush's insistence on waiving civil service protections and denying union rights to some 43,000 civil servants who will be moved into the Department. Finally, the most wide-reaching law to impact current immigration policy is the border security bill that was approved by Congress in May 2002. Recognizing that it's possible to distinguish terrorists from immigrants, the latest law mandates better intelligence gathering and information sharing among government agencies. Most importantly, it provides for a "layered screening system that uses technology and linked databases to recognize those with criminal or terrorist ties before they enter the United States". Specifically, the law requires enhanced review of visa applicants; authorizes funds to hire additional staff and to train consular officials and diplomatic security agents; authorizes the State Department to issue all foreign guest visas that are tamper 13 resistant and machine readable utilizing biometric identifiers, e.g., retina scans and finger prints; finally, the Act authorizes the State Department to be given access to information contained in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database as consular officials perform thorough background checks on all visa applicants (U.S. Department of State, May 2002). According to one sponsor of the legislation in the U.S. House of Representative noted: The terrorists who launched the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon clearly exploited the comparative openness of our immigration system to kill innocent Americans. It is imperative that we make urgent changes in our immigration laws and procedures to thwart future potential terrorist acts. Of particular importance is to better monitor the millions of foreign visitors who come to our nation each year on a temporary basis through tourist, student or temporary work visas. The resolution is not to single out Middle Easterners for exclusion or selective enforcement. Instead we need to more carefully check the backgrounds of all visas applicants, better police the borders, strictly enforce the law within the country, and, most important, reduce the level of immigration to give the INS the breathing space it needs to implement fundamental reforms. Theoretically, it makes sagacity to track those who come as students, or temporary visitors, the problem is that the Immigration and Naturalization Service cannot possibly be expected to fully implement these measures without chief investment in the agency's personnel and data-gathering resources. To find a better idea of the problem faced consider the following: INS Commissioner James Ziglar said that, while there are 500 million entries and exits from the United States each year, his agency has fewer than 5,000 inspectors to process these visitors and about 2,000 investigators and intelligence agents to deal with those who have overstayed their visas or violated their immigration status . CONCLUSION: Clearly, what is needed is an increased investment in personnel, better synchronization and information sharing internationally, and within the U.S. (both horizontally among Federal government agencies and vertically between state and local governments). The list of international agencies, federal agencies, and state and local governments is long. This conglomeration of public agencies makes it essential to develop real-time information sharing across international borders and bureaucracies. A new Brookings report notes, "That although considerable resources go into the collection, analyzing and sharing of information, serious shortfalls remain." Further, "today's information strategy lacks an overall architecture. Immense information collection can be of little value until the data is shared in a usable way". With only 2,000 investigators and intelligence agents, the INS is clearly overextended. If the INS is to be effective, agency manpower will have to produce. The program's objectives are to promote co-operation between national administrations responsible for implementing Community rules and to guarantee that proper account is taken of the Community dimension in their actions; to promote the uniform application of Community law; to persuade transparency of actions taken by the national authorities and to improve the overall efficiency of national administrations in their tasks. In addition the agenda will assist in constructing effective border control measures. REFERENCES 1. Chapin. D. Wesley. 1997, Peace and Conflict, the Political Effects of International Migration in Greenwood Press, http://jspc.library.wisc.edu/issues/1999-2000/article3.html. 2. Global Security, THREAT POSED BY THE CONVERGENCE OF ORGANIZED CRIME, DRUG TRAFFICKING AND TERRORISM.2000-2006. http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/congress/2000_h/hju68324_0.htm 3. Immigration Daily, 1999-2006, American Immigration LLC, http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/News/2002,1122-senate.shtm. 4. Lands. Baum. Mark, March 7, 2005, Immigration Threat, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.aspID=17216..Al-Qaeda's Illegal FrontPageMagazine.com. 5. Policy Brief, Immigration Reform, August 19, 2003, http://americas.irc-online.org/briefs/2003/0308immig.html. 6. SIRC Review and Complaints Functions, 2004-10-14. How SIRC Carries Out Its Review Function-an Overview, http://www.sirc-csars.gc.ca/annual/2003-2004/sec1a_e.html. Read More