\A OVERSIGHT OF IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZA-
TION SERVICE PROGRAM CITIZENSHIP USA
Y4.G 74/7; OV 2/7
Oversight of Innigration and Katura...
HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE OX NATIONAL SECURITY,
INTERNATIONAL AITAIRS, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT
REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
SEPTEMBER 10 AND 24, 1996
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight
'?>
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
39-435 CC WASHINGTON : 1997
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402
ISBN 0-16-054322-3
r{V OVERSIGHT OF IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZA-
r TION SERVICE PROGRAM CITIZENSHIP USA
/4.G 74/7: OV 2/7
]versight of Innigration and Hatura...
HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE OX NATIONAL SECURITY,
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT
REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
SEPTEMBER 10 AND 24, 1996
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight
'Vf
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
3&-435CC WASHINGTON : 1997 ~" "" "^J
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of" Documents, Congressional Sales Office. Washington. DC 20402
ISBN 0-16-054322-3
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
WILLIAM F. CLINGER, Jr., Pennsylvania, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. OILMAN, New York
DAN BURTON, Indiana
J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
WILLIAM H. ZELIFF, Jr., New Hampshire
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
STEPIiEN HORN, CaUfomia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida
PETER BLUTE, Massachusetts
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia
DAVID M. Mcintosh, Indiana
RANDY TATE, Washington
DICK CHRYSLER, Michigan
GIL GUTKNECHT. Minnesota
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
WILLIAM J. MARTINI, New Jersey
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona
MICHAEL PATRICK FLANAGAN, Illinois
CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
MARSHALL "MARK" SANFORD, South
Carolina
ROBERT L. EHRLICH, Jr., Maryland
SCOTT L. KLUG, Wisconsin
CARDISS COLLINS, Illinois
HENRY A. WAXMAN, CaUfomia
TOM LANTOS, California
ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. SPRATT, Jr., South CaroUna
LOUISE Mcintosh slaughter. New
York
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GARY A. CONDIT, CaHfomia
COLLIN C. PETERSON, Minnesota
KAREN L. THURMAN, Florida
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
BARBARA-ROSE COLLINS, Michigan
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
Columbia
JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
GENE GREEN, Texas
CARRIE P. MEEK, Florida
CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
BILL BREWSTER, Oklahoma
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
ELIJAH CUMMINGS, Maryland
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
James L. Clarke, Staff Director
Kevin Sabo, General Counsel
Judith McCoy, Chief Clerk
Bud Myers, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal
Justice
WILLL\M H. ZELIFF, Jr.^
ROBERT L. EHRLICH, Jr., Maryland
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
JOHN L. MICA, Florida
PETER BLUTE, Massachusetts
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona
New Hampshire, Chairman
KAREN L. THURMAN, Florida
ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
TOM LANTOS, CaHfomia
LOUISE Mcintosh slaughter. New
York
GARY A. CONDIT, Califomia
BILL BREWSTER, Oklahoma
ELIJAH CUMMINGS, Maryland
Ex Officio
WILLIAM F. CLINGER, Jr., Pennsylvania CARDISS COLLINS, IlUnois
Robert Charles, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Andrew Richardson, Professional Staff Member
Ianthe Saylor, Clerk
Cherri Branson, Minority Professional Staff
(II)
CONTENTS
Page
Hearing held on:
September 10, 1996 1
September 24, 1996 85
Statement of:
Aleinikoff, Alexander, Executive Associate Commissioner for Programs,
Immigration and Naturalization Service, accompanied by Louis D.
Crocetti, Associate Commissioner for Examinations, Immigration and
Naturalization Service 42
Conklin, Thomas, Deportations, Chicago INS; Diane Dobberfuhl, Adju-
dications, Chicago INS; Ethel Ware, Adjudications, Chicago INS; and
Joyce Woods, Adjudications, Chicago INS 92
Crocetti, Louis D., Associate Commissioner for Examinations, INS; and
David Rosenberg, Director of Citizenship USA Program, INS 151
Elghazali, Jewell, former employee of Naturalization Assistance Services,
Inc 6
Humble-Sanchez, James, Investigations, Los Angeles INS; Neil Jacobs,
Investigations, Dallas INS; Cora Miller, Adjudications, Las Vegas INS;
Robin Levds, Adjudications, Oklahoma City INS 125
Roberts, Paul W., chief executive officer, Naturalization Assistance Serv-
ices, Inc., accompanied by William R. ToUifson 18
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Aleinikoff, Alexander, Executive Associate Commissioner for Programs,
Immigration and Naturalization Service:
Information concerning a NAS licensee in Honolulu, Hawaii 45
Information concerning closed testing centers 61
Information concerning two memoranda dated June 14 and 15, 1996 . 59
Prepared statement of 46
Crocetti, Louis D., Associate Commissioner for Examinations, Immigra-
tion and Naturalization Service, prepared statement of 155
Mica, Hon. John L., a Representative in Congress from the State of
Florida, document to Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton, following up their
conversation, document 1-016963; the document from Chris Sale to
Doug Farbrother vrith the Vice President; the Doris Meissner undated
document, 1300040; the e-mail cited, on 3/19/96 from Mr. Diefenbach;
the memo from Mr. Farbrother with the Vice President with Mr.
AleinikofPs handwritten comments; and the April 3rd, letter from the
officer in charge of the Fresno suboffice, Mr. Riding 71
Roberts, Paul W., chief executive officer, Naturalization Assistance Serv-
ices, Inc., prepared statement of 20
Ros-Lehtinen, Hon. Ileana, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Florida, prepared statement of 115
Rosenberg, David, Director of Citizenship USA Program, INS:
A letter from the district director of Dallas 179
Naturalization Applications Approved and Denied 191
Prepared statement of 164
Shadegg, Hon. John B., a Representative in Congress from the State
of Arizona, a White House letter which goes to citizens upon their
gaining citizenship, and an August 15 telegraphic message 183
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State
of Indiana:
A Washington Times, March 20, 1996 article 86
Memo to the Chicago Citizenship Assistance Council 147
(III)
OVERSIGHT OF IMMIGRATION AND NATU-
RALIZATION SERVICE PROGRAM CITIZEN-
SHIP USA
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1996
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, International
Affairs, and Criminal Justice,
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:30 p.m., in room
311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon, Mark E. Souder (member
of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Souder, Ehrlich, Schiff, Mica, and
Souder.
Also present: Representatives dinger and Hastert.
Staff present: Robert B. Charles, staff director and chief counsel;
Jim Y. Wilon, defense counsel; Andrew Richardson, professional
staff member; lanthe Saylor, clerk; Cherri Branson, minority pro-
fessional staff; and Jean Gosa, minority staff assistant.
Mr. Souder. Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming. The Sub-
committee on National Security, International Affairs, and Crimi-
nal Justice will come to order.
Our hearing today is concerned with the topic of naturalization
testing fraud. The United States of America is and always has been
a Nation of immigrants. Our country has a long and illustrious his-
tory of providing political freedom and economic opportunity to im-
migrants from every part of the world. Historically, granting the
prize of U.S. citizenship to immigrants is one of the most important
and solemn tasks performed by our government.
Immigrants who wish to become U.S. citizens must meet a num-
ber of legal requirements. They must reside in the United States
for a set period of time and during that time they must follow our
laws and show themselves to be of good moral character. In addi-
tion, they must learn to write, speak and understand English and
they must learn some basic facts about American history and gov-
ernment. We require new Americans to learn English and civics so
that they may participate fully in political and economic life rather
than being marginalized.
Recently, however, the naturalization process has become cheap-
ened by corrupt testing practices. For many years, the Immigration
and Naturalization Service was the exclusive administrator of Eng-
lish and civics tests. However, in 1991, the INS began to license
private organizations to administer the test. To date, six organiza-
(1)
tions have been licensed by INS for citizenship testing, and these
six organizations have over 1,000 affiHated testing sites throughout
the United States. The largest of these organizations is a company
called Naturalization Assistance Services, or NAS. NAS has over
400 testing sites and tests over 125,000 immigrants a year. This
subcommittee has been conducting an investigation of the INS Citi-
zenship USA program which is designed to naturalize 1.3 million
new citizens during the 1996 fiscal year.
We have been reviewing information and documents from numer-
ous sources, including 30,000 pages of documents turned over by
the INS. Our investigation has uncovered a pattern of naturaliza-
tion testing fraud within the NAS organization, and furthermore,
there is also significant evidence that the INS has knowingly con-
tinued to rely on NAS for more than a year after becoming aware
of this pattern of fraudulent testing.
First, documents produced to the subcommittee strongly suggest
that NAS should never have been approved by INS as a testing or-
ganization. The INS requirements for approval state that each test-
ing organization must demonstrate experience and expertise in the
administration of testing for English and civics. However, when
NAS filed its application with INS, NAS was simply a driver edu-
cation school based in central Florida with no experience in either
English or civics testing. Nonetheless, NAS was swiftly approved as
a testing organization in August 1994. This approval was appar-
ently the work of an INS employee named William R. "Skip"
Tollifson who recently retired from the INS and now works for
NAS. Since at least June 1995, NAS has been plagued by revela-
tions of fraudulent and abusive testing practices at many of its
testing sites.
The implications are enormous. Tens of thousands of applicants
who do not speak or understand a word of English and who cannot
possibly pass a legitimate English and civics test are receiving
passing certificates from NAS testing sites. This is done through
blatant cheating orchestrated by test administrators who make the
test as easy as possible, give applicants the correct answers and
sometimes even fill in the answers themselves. In return for this
service, the applicants are paying hundreds of dollars, sometimes
as much as $850 an applicant, which is ostensibly a charge for
same-day training courses, but is really a high fee in exchange for
a sure pass.
This has caused problems when applicants with an NAS pass
certificate go to final interviews with the career INS officer who
can immediately tell that the pass was fraudulently obtained. The
applicant is rejected after spending hundreds of dollars on his test
or, more often, he is naturalized by INS employees rushing to meet
the production quotas even though he is not yet qualified.
Both INS and NAS have long been aware of this problem, but
neither has reacted by policing NAS affiliates or cracking down on
fraud. Instead, NAS officials have consistently pressured local INS
officers to accept its pass certificates even if the applicant cannot
speak or understand any English.
Documents provided to us by the INS show that NAS has no sys-
tematic or effective program to prevent fraud. On the contrary,
NAS allows and may even encourage fraudulent testing, hence rev-
enue. To date, NAS fraud has been exposed by the media in testing
sites in Dallas and St. Paul, and an INS investigator in Honolulu
uncovered fraud in testing sites there which led to criminal convic-
tions.
However, that is only the tip of the iceberg. Documents provided
to us by the INS reveal similar fraud from dozens of cities, in fact,
at least 10 different States. Even though NAS does not regularly
inspect its testing sites, enough fraud has come to light so that
NAS was recently forced to close down 41 testing sites over a 6-
month period. Still, the INS continues to rely on NAS as their
major tester. Documents indicate that virtually every time an NAS
testing site is examined or investigated by a third party, the test-
ing process is found to be fraudulent.
Meanwhile, the INS has taken the position that it is not the
INS's responsibility to inspect testing sites; instead, inspection is
the responsibility of the parent organizations, like NAS. After re-
viewing 30,000 documents provided by INS, we have found no INS
inspection checklist or reports or any other evidence of systematic
inspections by INS.
In addition, although INS says that its district offices are author-
ized to inspect testing sites in their respective areas, we have seen
no evidence that this is actually happening. On the contrary, the
documents show that in at least one instance where an INS district
office tried to schedule inspections of the local testing sites, Mr.
Paul Roberts, the CEO of NAS, refused to provide the necessary in-
formation to allow the inspections to take place. The bottom line
is that INS is exclusively focused on maximizing naturalizations in
1996, and has paid only lip service to the idea of antifraud enforce-
ment.
By all appearances, the INS has reacted to NAS testing fraud
only when an embarrassing report appears in the media. For exam-
ple, although INS was apparently aware of widespread NAS fraud
from June 1995 to November 1995, it took no action until a St.
Paul television station aired an expose of NAS testing fraud. At
that time, the INS temporarily suspended NAS operations, but it
was reinstated 2 weeks later.
Similarly, although the fraudulent testing continued from De-
cember 1995 to June 1996, it appears to be still continuing. INS
took no action until a "20/20" expose was about to be aired in early
July. INS sent NAS a "Notice of Intent to Suspend" letter on June
27, 1996, but did not suspend NAS, and NAS is still in business
today..
Finally, INS documents plainly show that INS Headquarters has
put great pressure on its field offices to accept NAS testing certifi-
cates, even when the holders of those certificates cannot speak or
understand a word of English. This has been made easier by the
hiring of thousands of temporary examiners at INS offices in con-
junction with the Citizenship USA push. The new examiners are
inexperienced, and are inclined to approve all naturalization appli-
cations.
At this time, I now recognize the chairman of the Gk)vemment
Reform Committee, Mr. dinger, if he has an opening statement.
Mr. Clinger. Thank you very much, Mr. Souder. I want to ex-
press, first of all, my appreciation to the subcommittee for holding
what I consider to be an extremely important hearing. I appreciate
Chairman ZeUff s and your efforts, Mr. Souder, in what has really
been an ongoing and pretty methodical investigation of flagrant
abuses in the so-called Citizenship USA program.
As part of its mission, the INS processes the citizenship applica-
tions of legal immigrants. Consistent with its mission, INS has an
interest in ensuring the efficient processing of applications of quali-
fied— underline "qualified" — individuals. Efficiency, however, re-
quires not only speed, but also accuracy and integrity. Equally as
important as swiftly processing qualified candidates is the con-
fident assurance that all of those naturalized are indeed legally ad-
missible. At issue here is the degree to which the quality of the
INS's work is being willfully compromised, and I think there is evi-
dence that would substantiate that it has been willfully com-
promised for the sake of quantity.
The Citizenship USA program was designed to naturalize 1.3
million new citizens during fiscal year 1996 alone. That is the high-
est number of new citizens in American history, and nearly triple
the total of over 459,000 which were naturalized in 1995. This ex-
tremely ambitious goal, whatever its motive, has produced errors
that go well beyond a few I's left undotted, a few T's left uncrossed.
This subcommittee's investigation, including the careful examina-
tion of over 30,000 pages of INS documents, has uncovered nothing
short of gross mismanagement. Just as alarming, the response
from the Immigration and Naturalization Service has been — I
think I can only characterize it as — careless indifference.
The subcommittee has ample evidence that one of the INS's six
licensed testing organizations. Naturalization Assistance Services,
or NAS, has issued thousands of pass certificates, as you indicated,
Mr. Souder, to applicants who cannot pass legitimate civics exams
or speak or understand English. NAS officials make tests shame-
lessly simple, give applicants correct answers, and sometimes, as
you have suggested, even fill in the exams themselves, all for a fee.
INS officers, under intense pressure to process as many candidates
as possible, sometimes look the other way when faced with un-
qualified candidates. Even in the wake of media exposes and re-
peated findings of fraud at NAS testing sites, the organization con-
tinues to profit and to churn out, "successful applicants."
This has to be a matter of great concern to this committee, as
the chief oversight panel of the House of Representatives. We have
to maintain the credibility of legal immigration in this country.
These antics and these procedures that we are going to hear about
today are hostile, totally hostile to that aim. So I hope that the INS
and this administration will take necessary steps promptly to stop
this blatant fraud. The committee will continue its work to see that
they do.
Again, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for presiding at this hearing.
Mr. Souder. Do any other Members have opening statements?
Mr. Hastert. Very quickly, Mr. Chairman, I have a great deal
of interest in this. It seems to me that the whole good government
issue of, first of all, the responsibility of the INS doing its job, tak-
ing immigrants, people who come to this country for a better life,
a better economic way of life, and to adopt the rules and the values
and the ambiance of this country, become part of that. That is their
job.
Their job is to move them through a process and bring people to
a citizenship status so that they can move and be participants in
the American process. But what has happened here, what appears
to have happened here — and we will have testimony today to vali-
date it — is that the INS is taking shortcuts; that they are bringing
in this organization, NAS, a for-profit organization, not a govern-
ment organization, and letting them take the shortcuts, letting
anybody who can get over the border, whatever border that may be
in this country, and take a shortcut. It does not make any dif-
ference if they go through the test; that they go through the proc-
ess; that they take the courses that they are supposed to be taking;
that they go through the interviews; that they go through all of the
things that have to be done. But, no, you just come in; we will take
the money, we will process you, and all of a sudden you become a
citizen.
I don't know why this is happening. I don't know why INS is let-
ting this happen, but it is here and the testimony today will prove
that it is happening.
We have to — for the taxpayer dollars that we spend, we are basi-
cally throwing those dollars away. We need to change that. I don't
know if there are other motives out there or not, but this is where
we have to get to the bottom of today, at this hearing, and I look
forward to the testimony.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Schiff.
Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The first thing is, I want to thank you for having this hearing.
I think it is on a very important subject. Second, I want to thank
the news media, particularly the "20/20" program for publicizing
this issue and the problems associated with testing for the citizen-
ship exams.
After I became aware of this particular problem — and here we
are talking about the testing of individuals being prepared to take
the citizenship tests — an article on a similar subject kind of leapt
out at me. It is a Scripps-Howard News Service article; it appeared
in the Albuquerque Tribune on September 5th. I would like to read
just very briefly from the beginning of it.
It reads as follows: "Clinton administration officials work to
speed the base of naturalizing legal immigrants, anticipating a po-
litical advantage in the votes of new citizens according to govern-
ment, documents and memos. But in rushing the process, mistakes
were made. Criminals became citizens, said officials with the Immi-
gration and Naturalization Service. At least three dozen people
who were naturalized are having their citizenship revoked after it
was discovered that they had criminal records and shouldn't have
been passed through, officials said.
"Tens of thousands were granted citizenship before they were
cleared by FBI investigations. Some INS officials. Immigration and
Naturalization Service officials, said political pressure to push peo-
ple through the system led to widespread problems."
Now, we have an identical circumstance on the identical subject
on what we are examining at this hearing today. I want to say that
if in fact the political motivation is true — and I say if it is true; I
6
can't document it, but if it is true — it is really presumptuous, I
think, to assume how any citizen is going to vote in advance,
whether they are a natural born citizen or the most recently natu-
ralized citizen.
But I would say this: Even if we knew for sure that most new
citizens were going to vote for the Clinton — for President Clinton's
candidacy, I would still say that we should naturalize these indi-
viduals who are seeking citizenship as soon as possible. Because
they have a right, once they become citizens, as all citizens do, to
vote any way they please. Whether I would agree with the vote or
not is not important. But we shouldn't be sidestepping the system
that was set up to make sure that only qualified individuals be-
come citizens of this country, and I am concerned that whether it
is for a political motivation or not, we are not adequately ensuring
that the people whom our laws intended to become citizens of this
country are the only ones who in fact are becoming citizens. I think
this hearing is a very important step to try to clear that up.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. We will leave the record open for 3 days
for other Members who may desire to put in opening statements.
We are privileged on our first panel to have Ms. Jewell Elghazali
here. She is a former employee of the Naturalization Assistance
Services, Inc., NAS. Will you please stand? We administer an oath
in this committee, since we are an oversight committee.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. SouDER. Let the record show that the witness responded in
the affirmative.
Ms. Elghazali, will you give us your testimony?
STATEMENT OF JEWELL ELGHAZALI, FORMER EMPLOYEE OF
NATURALIZATION ASSISTANCE SERVICES, INC.
Ms. Elghazali. I do not have a prepared statement.
Mr. SouDER. We were initially going to run the tape of the "20/
20" segment that you were in, which would have set this up a little
bit better, but we decided that the two tapes were going to take a
good chunk of the hearing with three panels.
Could you describe what your duties were with NAS?
Ms. Elghazall When I first started at NAS, I was a receptionist
and I eventually moved into the duties of an administrative assist-
ant. My duties as administrative assistant were dealing with com-
pliance issues, compliance with NAS policies. I was directly under
the supervision of Mr. Jeffrey Paren, the senior vice president.
Whenever clients would go to INS with a passing certificate and be
turned away, they would contact our office and I would handle
those calls. I would take down all the information and pass it on
to Mr. Paren.
At times, I graded tests, I actually graded the tests. I processed
new agency applications, I did credit checks, I checked with the
Better Business Bureau, city hall, anyone I could find to try to ver-
ify the information that was listed on the application. I did busi-
ness reference checks, NBR checks, and basically I did anything
that I was told to do by Mr. Paren or Mr. Durseau or Mr. Roberts.
Mr. SoUDER. What problems did you see with this testing proc-
ess? As you worked with this and as you did some of the back-
ground checks, and as you looked at the organizations, did you de-
scribe any evidence of any fraudulent testing you saw? How did
management react when you expressed concerns?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, I noticed through simply being a reception-
ist when people would call in and, you know, ask for their test re-
sults or they would call in about the subject of being turned away
by INS, many times they couldn't even converse with me in Eng-
lish enough to ask me about their test or to tell me what happened.
They would have someone speaking for them, and they would be
translating. I also noticed through grading tests, I saw a lot of
handwriting similarities, the same pencil strokes on 100 tests, for
example, and I just thought it was next to impossible for so many
people from so many different countries to have the exact same
handwriting. I also noticed that on occasion an entire batch of
tests, every test would have the same answers wrong. The same
answer would be wrong on every test, which gave me the indication
that they were either coached on that test or that someone else
took that test.
When I brought the similar handwriting issue to the attention of
Sharon Class, who is a data processing supervisor, her response
many times was to put it off to the side so she could look at it
later; or if she actually looked at it right then, if I had concrete ex-
amples right there in front of her, she would look at it and say,
well, yeah, that looks like the same handwriting, but we can't fail
them.
So I would then go over her head to Mr. Durseau, who — when
Mr. Paren was out of the office, that is who I was to report to. I
would take it to his attention, and this was more specifically in the
last 2 weeks I was with NAS, because I graded tests the entire
time. I took test batches to him many times and I showed him. He
said, yes, I believe this is the same handwriting.
One of the major ones I had a problem with in those 2 weeks is
an organization called Hermanade, Mexican National in California.
I brought this to Mr. Durseau's attention, and he told me that Mr.
Paren was out in California then taking care of that and that it
wasn't going to happen again and I should just do my job and
grade the tests. If they have a passing grade, if all of the words
are there, I am not a handwriting expert, so I just need to do my
job.
Mr. SOUDER. Were the types of questions on the test — you said
that often they couldn't carry on even basic English discussions
with you?
Ms.' Elghazali. Right.
Mr. SouDER. Were the questions on the test even more difficult
than the conversations that you were trying to engage them in?
Ms. Elghazall Well, I have some knowledge of the Arabic lan-
guage, if people called in who spoke Arabic, I could feel my way
through the conversation. They would speak to me in Arabic and
I would answer them in English. Sometimes people couldn't even
understand when I was trying to use minimal English, trying not
to speak like the average American person speaks, you know, like
trying to make them understand — like control number, test control
number. I tried my best to make them understand, and many times
they wouldn't be able to even carry on a simple conversation.
8
What is your control number, or where did you take your test?
They would answer: I am sorry, I don't understand. No understand.
Mr. SOUDER. Did you ever ask them how they passed a test or
presumed to pass it?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes.
Mr. SoUDER. What would they say when you would ask them?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, on one occasion the week prior to my de-
parture from NAS, someone called in and wanted to know about
the test results, and I said are you the person that took the test?
She said, "No, it's my mom." I said, well can I speak to your mom —
or my friend or something. She said, "She doesn't speak any Eng-
lish."
So I pulled the control number up, and if the control number
starts with EN, that is an English test, so I knew right away that
the person had taken their test in English. I said, "Well, did this
person take the test in English?" She asked them in Spanish, and
she said, "Yes."
I said, "Well, you do realize that when she goes to Immigration,
she is going to have to demonstrate the ability to read, speak and
write and understand English?" I said, "How did she take the test
in English?" She said, "I don't know. You tell me. I just want to
get her test results."
I mentioned that to Mr. Durseau, and he got very upset about
my telling that person that, and some of the other employees went
into closed-door meetings with him about that subject, I believe.
Mr. SoUDER. Thank you.
Mr. dinger.
Mr. Clinger. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I think
most of the people that would be calling in were people seeking the
results of their tests?
Ms. Elghazall They would call in for that or to be referred to
a testing site.
Mr. Clinger. Those who were calling for a determination as to
the success or failure of the test, had most of them succeeded? Had
most of them passed the test?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes.
Mr. Clinger. So these were not people who had failed because
of lack of understanding the language or anjd^hing else?
Ms. Elghazali. Right. I would say the majority of the people
that called in and could not speak English, once they were able to
find someone who could understand what I was saying enough to
give me their control number, I found out they did actually pass
their test in English; and they would in fact
Mr. Clinger. Right. But you would have to get somebody to in-
terpret to you?
Ms. Elghazali. They would get angry if they spoke Spanish and
there was no one in the office who spoke Spanish.
Mr. Clinger. NAS has a number of testing sites all over the
country, as I understand it.
Ms. Elghazali. Yes.
Mr. Clinger. About how many?
Ms. Elghazali. I am not sure exactly how many, but as this gen-
tleman said, about 400, I would assume. I thought the number was
higher than that.
Mr. Clinger. Do you know what steps, if any, NAS management
took to proctor how these centers were conducting the tests?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, they had a booklet that stated what was
to be done in the testing and what was not to be done in the test-
ing. I know that when they discovered problems, they tried to cor-
rect the problems, they would try to get in particular, Spanish
Business Services. Mr. Paren had asked him to start videotaping
his sessions because of the fraud, and I believe he started that in
January of this year; and when I left in March, he was still sending
him letters telling him, if you do not start taping your sessions,
your license will be canceled, but it was not at the time that I left.
Mr. Clinger. Despite a number of
Ms. Elghazali. Despite a number of
Mr. Clinger [continuing!. Directives that he should do that.
Ms. Elghazali. Right. In spite of a number of times that they
suspected fraud in the testing.
Mr. Clinger. But they didn't send representatives around to
monitor or check on the procedures.
Ms. Elghazali. Well, they had field investigators out, they had
one in California that I know of, and she would go into the testing
centers as a student wanting to take the test and she would rate
the center on how it presented NAS, if they were charging the fees
like they were — if they were overcharging students, that they were
allowed to take only the test, or if they had to take other — if they
had to have other services. At the point when I left, she was about
to be going into the testing sites and actually taking a test, partici-
pating in a testing session, but that didn't happen while I was
there.
Mr. Clinger. Now, you tried to bring to the attention of your su-
periors the issues that you felt were — part of the problem?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes.
Mr, Clinger. I gather that as a result of their seeming indiffer-
ence to those concerns that you — did you go to the INS to try to
convey these concerns to the Immigration and Naturalization Serv-
ice?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, the last 2 weeks I was there was when I
was grading tests, and that is when I saw it the most. Now, prior
to that, on breaks and outside of the office, there were other em-
ployees that had voiced their concerns and they told me on the oc-
casions that I would grade tests, don't even bother, you are just
wasting your breath and their time. They are not going to fail
them. We are just going to pass them. We see that it's the same
handwriting, but it doesn't do us any good.
Mr. Clinger. Did you notify the INS about these?
Ms. Elghazali. I notified — well, when I left, I contacted Mr.
Lear, because I remembered him from KSTP.
Mr. Clinger. He was with the INS?
Ms. Elghazali. No. He was a reporter. I didn't know where to
start. I remembered him because I had answered the phone many
times when he had called, and I just happened to remember his
name; and I contacted him, and he put me in touch with ABC, and
they in turn put me in touch with INS.
Mr. Clinger. What was the nature of your contacts with INS?
10
Ms. Elghazali. Immigration and Naturalization Service sent Ra-
mona McGee and Dan Strong from the St. Louis office and I believe
Ramona McGee is from the general counsel's office out to Spring-
field, MO, where I live to, I guess, interrogate me or interview me.
They were there for about 10 hours. They asked me several ques-
tions. They got it all on tape, and they told me that they had ended
up with 90 pages of transcript from our conversation. They told me
that there was a possibility of criminal charges, you know, for the
alleged political corruption.
Mr. Clinger. When did this interview take place?
Ms. Elghazali. Two weeks after the "20/20" show aired, so late
July, early August.
Mr. Clinger. Have you seen any evidence that anything has
transpired as a result of those interviews?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, they told that me that NAS had asked for
more time on their Notice of Intent to Suspend. So after the last
week of August, I contacted Dan Strong at the St. Louis office of
the Immigration and Naturalization Service twice and asked him
what had happened. He said, "Well, we are scheduling conference
calls, and I will be getting back with you as soon as I know some-
thing." He never called me.
Mr. Clinger. And you haven't, to this day, heard from him?
Ms. Elghazali. To this day, I have not heard from him.
Mr. Clinger. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Hastert.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to qualify, the No-
tice to Suspend, was that to suspend you?
Ms. Elghazali. Notice of Intent to Suspend NAS and their alter-
native citizenship testing program.
Mr. Hastert. All right. Let me ask you a question. In your
work — how long did you work for NAS?
Ms. Elghazali. Five months.
Mr. Hastert. During that period of time, you would go out and
stay in an office and you would grade tests that were given out in
other centers? There are about 400 centers around the country?
Ms. Elghazali. I didn't do that full-time. My actual job was ei-
ther receptionist or administrative assistant, but on occasion, when
they had a lot of tests come in, they would have all of the adminis-
trative assistants stop what they were doing and grade tests.
Mr. Hastert. So you weren't necessarily qualified to be a teacher
or a test grader? All you had to do was to be able to read it, and
as an assistant then they put you in a position of being able to go
out and read these and evaluate tests?
Ms. Elghazali. As far as I know, there are no qualifications to
grade those tests. You have a template that has the answers cut
out. It's graded by hand. You place the template, the series tem-
plate, over the test and you mark the wrong answers and then you
read the sentences, and if all of the words are there, then you —
then the person passes. That is how you grade the test.
Mr. Hastert. So the basic concept or idea, you say all the words
are there?
Ms. Elghazali. All the words, yes.
11
Mr. Hastert. That people have to say as a response to a ques-
tion about the Constitution or voting or whatever it would be.
Ms. Elghazali. Well, those are all multiple choice. There are 20
multiple choice questions and two English sentences.
Mr. Hastert. Well now, multiple choice questions, especially in
English, are sometimes quite — it takes some understanding of the
language and you're saying that from your understanding a lot peo-
ple who took these tests couldn't speak English, but yet they were
taking this test.
Ms. Elghazali. They were passing — I was noticing, this is just
in the cases where people called in.
Now, there are several people out there who worked very hard
to pass that test, and those people deserve every right to have that
citizenship.
Mr. Hastert. What do you think the pass-failure rate — I know
you didn't do that in your job officially, but did over half the people
pass these tests?
Ms. Elghazall Oh, well over half. I'd say 90 percent.
Mr. Hastert. Ninety percent. What did you have to do to fail the
test?
Ms. Elghazall You had to miss, I believe it was more than 7.
Mr. Hastert. Out of how many?
Ms. Elghazall Out of 20. And you only had to get one of the
English sentences correct, you didn't have to have both of them cor-
rect, and they were not counted off for spelling.
Mr. Hastert. So it wasn't a very, very
Ms. Elghazall It was geared to a low literacy level.
Mr. Hastert. It wasn't there to weed people out.
Now, the other issue that you talked about was that you found
that a lot of these were in the same handwriting?
Ms. Elghazall Yes.
Mr. Hastert. When you took this to the officials of NAS, they
just kind of overlooked it, and your colleagues who also did that
same job, you reported that they said, well, you just don't worry
about that anymore, nobody ever pays attention. Is that correct?
Ms. Elghazall Right. They said it is like beating your head
against the wall.
Mr. Hastert. How are these people that may have written the
test, test after test after test, how do these centers get selected?
Ms. Elghazall Well, I don't know how the process was before
I was there.
Mr. Hastert. Well, while you were there.
Ms. Elghazall While I was there, there was an application that
they would fill out and they would send that in along with
Mr. Hastert. "They" being? Is it an organization or somebody
out to make money, or what?
Ms. Elghazall Well, it was just an application generated by
NAS. They would fill out the application and they would include
it with their business licenses and leases — the lease for the prem-
ises.
Mr. Hastert. So what kind of businesses are they?
Ms. Elghazall Well, a lot of them are — they are companies that
do tax returns that also do citizenship testing. There are companies
that offered English tests, English language classes, English as a
12
second language classes, and they will offer the test. They are non-
profit organizations such as Catholic Charities.
Mr. Hastert. Were they also profit organizations?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, the majority of them were for-profit organi-
zations.
Mr. Hastert. Were for-profit organizations?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes.
Mr. Hastert. Now, their remuneration, or pay, was it by the
number of people that they passed or the number of people that
came through their doors? How did they get paid?
Ms. Elghazall By the test, each test.
Mr. Hastert. So for each test they got paid?
Ms. Elghazall Yes.
Mr. Hastert. And each — whether they passed or didn't pass, or
just
Ms. Elghazall Well, the person had to pay for the test whether
they passed or not, and if they failed it the first time, they were
allowed to take it one more time at no additional charge.
Mr. Hastert. Do you remember seeing a lot of these repeat tests,
or would you have no way of knowing whether they were repeat
or not?
Ms. Elghazall Well, there were, on occasions, you know, like if
the people actually did the handwriting themselves, there were
times when, you Imow, their English was just so bad they would
leave out words and they wouldn't pass the test. I did notice, there
were people that failed. You know, I am not saying that there is
dishonesty in every testing center, but there is a lot of fraud going
on. There is a lot of fraudulent testing going on.
There are, however, a lot of people out there that are actually
taking the tests themselves, and sometimes they have to take it
four or five times before they pass.
Mr. Hastert. But you say, repeatedly you saw tests come in
with the same handwriting, the same answers, the same pencil
marks time after time after time after time?
Ms. Elghazall Yes, sir.
Mr. Hastert. I was in education for 18 years; I taught the Con-
stitution and gave a Constitution test, not for aliens or people com-
ing in to get — but I understand how to process works.
So you say basically this was a test mill, that people were taking
this thing and moving through the process, and there wasn't a lot
of discretion on whether it was fair or honest or under the type of
situation that tests like this should be given?
Ms. Elghazall Well, the individual organizations, you know,
they were the ones — I know that NAS was ultimately responsible
for the consequences, but the individual organizations were actu-
ally the ones that were committing the fraud.
Mr. Hastert. One last question, Mr. Chairman. So it was pretty
easy for the NAS to give instruction to its employees to just look
the other way?
Ms; Elghazall Yes.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. I believe you said you worked for NAS for 5 months,
was it?
13
Ms. Elghazali. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mica. When did you first realize that there was a scam or
fraud in the testing going on?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, about 2 weeks after I started, or I believe
at Thanksgiving when we came back from the Thanksgiving week-
end, we had the Notice of Suspension. INS had suspended us from
the testing program because of the Simon Chung Friendly Teach-
ing and Testing Service, because of that organization; that was
when I first became aware that there was some fraud out there.
Mr. Mica. So this is almost immediately?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes.
Mr. Mica. There was a notice from INS of suspension?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes, we did — or they were suspended, NAS was
suspended for about 2, 2V2 weeks in late November, early Decem-
ber.
Mr. Mica. When they were suspended and then reinstated, did
anyone come in and question the employees who had participated
in the previous testing?
Ms. Elghazali. No.
Mr. Mica. And you worked — you said the administrative assist-
ants did the actual evaluation of the tests?
Ms. Elghazali. No. Our jobs were more administrative. How-
ever, on occasion, when there were too many tests for data process-
ing to process, they would pull us off of our normal duties and have
us grading tests.
Mr. Mica. So some was done automatically and some was done
by hand?
Ms. Elghazali. No. It was all done by hand. All the grading is
done by hand.
Mr. Mica. How many people were grading by hand? Were there
dozens?
Ms. Elghazali. No. At the time that I left there were, I believe
there were five or six people.
Mr. Mica. And about the time that they were first taken out of
the business, about the same number when you started were grad-
ing tests?
Ms. Elghazali. When I started there were three or four. They
added two more.
Mr. Mica. With any of those employees, did you discuss with
them what you had seen?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, you know, like I said, on occasion in the
beginning I would grade tests and I would notice that and
Mr. Mica. And were all of the employees pretty much aware of
what was going on?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes, but they were doing their jobs.
Mr. Mica. No one came forward? You are the only one that came
forward? None of them came forward and expressed any
Ms. Elghazali. Well, to my knowledge, they are all still em-
ployed by NAS and they are afraid they'll lose their jobs.
Mr. Mica. Did you feel like you were being threatened or could
lose your job if you ratted?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, when I started bringing it to their atten-
tion, to Mr. Durseau's attention, about 3 weeks prior to my termi-
nation from NAS, I had been told by Mr. Paren what a great job
14
I was doing. I went into work one day and Mr. Durseau — this was
after grading tests for 2 weeks and bringing these things to his at-
tention, and mentioning to the other employees that I thought,
there was fraud and this was highly illegal — I went into work on
the following Monday and I was terminated.
So I cannot believe that my performance
Mr. Mica. Is that the first time you expressed to the higher-ups
that you felt fraud was being perpetrated?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, that was the first time — well, no, I had
taken tests to Jeff Paren before, and when I took them to him, his
response was to fail the entire group. He would fail the entire
group.
Mr. Mica. If he felt that there was fraud?
Ms. Elghazali. Right.
Mr. Mica. So there was some indication from — at least from this
first level.
The second level, when you expressed that there were problems
and felt there was fraud, is that when they came down on you, or
that individual?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, he said that the decision had been left up
to him, and he said that my performance was not up to NAS stand-
ards, but it was 2 to 3 weeks prior.
Mr. Mica. No one else, to your knowledge, complained to any of
those supervisors?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, they had — they would go a couple of times,
and then when they saw it wasn't going to get them an5rwhere,
they would just stop.
Mr. Mica. So they did go at least to the first level, but not the
second level?
Ms. Elghazali. They went to the first and the second level, and
when they did that a few times and got no results, they stopped.
Mr. Mica. Again, when they were suspended, at the beginning,
no one from INS came and talked to any of the NAS employees
that were doing to processing?
Ms. Elghazali. You mean about the suspension and fraud in
testing?
Mr. Mica. Right.
Ms. Elghazali. No.
Mr. Mica. When did you first talk to INS officials? Was that
after you had gone to the reporter?
Ms. Elghazali. That was after the "20/20" show. She kept my
location confidential until that show aired.
Mr. Mica. Are they threatening you with any type of charges?
Was that the implication that you made?
Ms. Elghazali. No. They haven't — you know, I am not under in-
vestigation for charges because I don't know, they haven't men-
tioned anything about that to me.
Mr. Mica. All right. Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Schiff.
Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to ask first, if I can: It is my understanding that one
of your duties, at least partially, was to approve franchise requests
by businesses who wanted to do this business as a franchisee of
NAS; is that right?
15
Ms. Elghazali. I didn't approve them. I processed the appHca-
tions and passed them on for board approval,
Mr. SCHIFF. Processing them, then, did that include indicating
whether you thought they were qualified or unqualified as busi-
nesses to get a franchise from NAS?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, there were several steps to the process, I
would check their credit, and if their TRW report was really bad,
then a lot of times it wouldn't go any further than that. I would
just hand it to Mr. Paren and he would write on there whether
he — well, he would usually write on there that he didn't think it
should be approved.
Mr. SCHIFF. Are you aware of any franchisees being approved by
NAS who, based upon your investigation, you thought should not
have been approved?
Ms. Elghazall Well, I know when I went to speak with Immi-
gration, they had a list of every one of the testing affiliates in the
country, I couldn't give you specific names because I didn't write
them down. I wasn't allowed to do anything like that. I couldn't
write anything down from that list, but there were, I noticed, two
or three on there that had been approved since I left that, at the
time that I left, had not been approved. I guess their application
had been reopened and reprocessed,
Mr. SCHIFF. Did you bring that to the attention of the Immigra-
tion and Naturalization officials?
Ms. Elghazall Yes, I did.
Mr. SCHIFF. Pardon?
Ms. Elghazall I did.
Mr. SCHIFF. All right. So you told them there were at least some
franchisees who had not been approved when you were there, but
now they appear to be functioning as franchisees?
Ms. Elghazall Yes, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. All right. To the best of your knowledge, did INS do
anything about those franchisees who were operating who were
originally not approved by NAS itself, or not with your rec-
ommendation?
Ms. Elghazall To my knowledge, I don't know. They had me go
through this list and they had me check off every one that I recall
there being some type of problem with, because I had access to the
agency files. I did a lot of the filing, so I had access to the files,
and I was at one point combining files from Mr. Roberts' office and
Mr. Pareh's office, and in doing that, I was straightening investiga-
tive material. For instance, if this particular agency had had some
type of investigation, if they had been closed, I had access to all
of this information. I told INS — you know, I went down this list,
and I checked off all of the agencies that I believed had had some
type of problem. I can't tell you what those problems were, but I
recall there being some type of investigative material in their files.
Mr. SCHIFF. To the best of your knowledge, has the INS closed
up any one of those franchisees?
Ms. Elghazall That I checked off? I don't believe so,
Mr, SCHIFF. Thank you.
Let me go back. You talked about your own termination from
working at NAS. I am wondering if you could go back on that a
16
little bit. Who actually said that you are terminated from employ-
ment at NAS? Who told you that?
Ms. Elghazali. Bill Durseau.
Mr. SCHIFF. What was his position?
Ms. Elghazali. Vice president of operations.
Mr. SCHIFF. Did he give you anjrthing in writing at that time?
Ms. Elghazall No, he did not.
Mr. SCHIFF. Did he give you orally a reason at that time as to
why
Ms. Elghazall My performance was not up to NAS standards
is the reason he gave me.
Mr. SCHIFF. Did he give you any reason why your performance
was not up to NAS standards?
Ms. Elghazall No, he did not. I was never written up or coun-
seled. It was a shock to me. I worked overtime the prior Saturday,
and I went in to work the next day and I was terminated. I was
shocked. I didn't expect it.
Mr. SCHIFF. To the best of your knowledge, had the NAS officials
been complimentary of your performance up until then?
Ms. Elghazall Yes, up until then. The agencies had too. In fact,
I had just spoken with an agent in Dallas the prior Friday, the last
official duty I did at NAS with a client, with an agency, and she
was thanking me for the referrals that she was getting and telling
me that the people were so happy and it was a less intimidating
environment than INS.
Mr. SCHIFF. Up until then, had you — I should say, up until then,
you had been raising questions to NAS officials about certain prac-
tices within their organization; is that right?
Ms. Elghazall Yes.
Mr. SCHIFF. As of that time, had you also raised questions with
the Immigration and Naturalization Service about NAS?
Ms. Elghazall No, I had not.
Mr. SCHIFF. All right. So you kept your remarks within the orga-
nization?
Ms. Elghazall Right. I told Immigration if I had continued my
employment at NAS and I had not seen changes, then I would
have, you know, because they told me that things were being taken
care of, that it was not going to happen again, and I believed them.
Mr. SCHIFF. But my point is, at the time that you were termi-
nated, you had kept whatever observations you made within the
chain of command at NAS?
Ms. Elghazall Yes.
Mr. SCHIFF. Thank you. I have no further questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SOUDER. I want to just for the record ask again — I know you
have dealt with this question a couple of different times — when you
notified NAS, their reaction was that they were going to fix it?
Ms. Elghazall Right.
Mr. SouDER. But when you specifically — I mean, I don't think
there is anything much more upsetting than we heard the idea
that there are hundreds of names in the same pencil and similar
writing. What was their specific response so that?
Ms. Elghazall Their specific
17
Mr. SOUDER. That you are not a handwriting expert? Is that
what I understood you to say?
Ms. Elghazali. Right. They told me at one point, we are not
handwriting experts and if we actually fail these people, we could
get sued. They said, we don't want to do anjrthing to encourage liti-
gation.
Mr. SouDER. How often did you see that?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, when I graded tests, every occasion when
I graded tests, I saw that. At least in one batch I saw it every sin-
gle time I graded tests.
Mr. SouDER. How many times would you say you graded tests?
Are we talking 10 times here, 50 times, hundreds of times?
Ms. Elghazall I probably spent about 1 month out of my em-
plo3anent at NAS grading tests at different intervals. You know, a
day here or 2 days there.
Mr. SouDER. We thank you for your — does anybody else have fur-
ther questions?
Mr. Mica. I have just a quick question, if you wouldn't mind, Mr.
Chairman.
You said that over 90 percent of the applicants that were being
tested passed; is that correct?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes.
Mr. Mica. What percentage would you estimate that were really
qualified, say overall, that should have in fact passed?
Ms. Elghazali. Well, I can't answer that based on every test
that they have done, but I can answer that, based on the tests that
I graded personally, I would say maybe 20 percent, 25 percent.
Mr. Mica. Should pass?
Ms. Elghazali. I would say about 25 percent of those people that
I passed I believed actually did their own test. The handwriting
was obviously someone who had English as a second language.
Mr. Mica. So over 60 percent?
Ms. Elghazali. Yes. I would say one way that this could be ei-
ther proven correct or incorrect — and I realize that this is an awful
lot of work — if every test that NAS has ever given could be turned
over and put through some type of analysis, this is one way that
this could be verified, that there is in fact similar handwriting. Be-
cause, there is widespread fraud in this situation.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SoUDER. I thank you for your testimony. I think we — I want
to reiterate that we have no opposition to legal immigration
through a process. We need to encourage that. Most of us came
through a similar pattern somewhere in our background. My cam-
paign chairman and good friend is Armenian, who came over here;
and America is a place of refuge, and he is so proud of his Amer-
ican citizenship. So many people around this area and around the
Nation, in Minneapolis, different people who are proud of that.
This is a cheapening of being an American, and it is really dis-
couraging, because we want to try to encourage it, but it should
mean something when people go through it; and what you have de-
scribed is frightening. I thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Chairman, just as a sideline, it was just yes-
terday that I had some time back in my district, and I met a young
man who has started a business, applied to the INS, went through
18
the process, took his test, waited a whole year, waited a whole year
to ever get the interview. So I think maybe there is a little dif-
ferent treatment for different people here. It is disturbing to me.
Thank you very much.
Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. You are excused.
Will the second panel please come forward, Mr. Paul Roberts and
Mr. WiUiam Tollifson.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. SouDER. Let the record show that both witnesses responded
in the affirmative.
Mr. SouDER. Mr. Paul Roberts is the chief executive officer of the
Naturalization Assistance Services, Inc.
Mr. Roberts, we thank you for coming, and if you would like to
give us your opening testimony.
Mr. Roberts. Yes, thank you.
Mr. Souder. We usually have 5 minutes for the opening testi-
mony, and we will insert the rest into the record, and then follow-
up questions. If you want to summarize that, feel free to do that
too.
STATEMENTS OF PAUL W. ROBERTS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFI-
CER, NATURALIZATION ASSISTANCE SERVICES, INC., AC-
COMPANIED BY WILLIAM R. TOLLIFSON
Mr. Roberts. I am Paul Roberts, chief executive officer of Natu-
ralization Assistance Services. I would like to thank Chairman
Zeliff and members of the subcommittee for the opportunity to ap-
pear before you today concerning the INS standardized citizenship
testing program and the role NAS has played in partnership with
INS in making the program a success.
NAS has over 2 years' field experience in the delivery of the
standardized citizenship testing program, and although the pro-
gram has not been flawless, we are proud that we have tested al-
most 150,000 prospective Americans and enabled many to become
part of the American dream. We are constantly striving to improve
testing security and integrity, and to that end, we have increased
security measures to further ensure that our licensees strictly ad-
here to all rules and regulations. We have a zero-tolerance policy
for cheating, and the record will reflect that we have acted swiftly
to revoke all licensees discovered engaging in improprieties.
Initially, I will provide a brief overview of the naturalization
process to illustrate how the program functions; the benefits of the
program to the government, to persons seeking to become citizens,
and to the American people.
Next, I will address issues concerning the program raised by the
committee, particularly relating to testing integrity and security.
To understand the program, it is useful to review the process of
becoming a U.S. citizen, naturalization, and how it works. First of
all, it is important to remember that only legal, permanent resi-
dents of the United States, those with so-called "green cards," are
eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship. To reach this point, an appli-
cant must have been admitted as a lawful, permanent resident and
be a person of good moral character and meet statutory require-
ments.
19
The first step in this process is to file an application with INS.
The second step consists of a comprehensive interview with an INS
examiner, which cannot generally be waived. At the interview, the
prospective citizen is questioned on information provided in the ap-
plication and testing in English on the fundamentals of U.S. his-
tory and government and ability to read and write English.
As an alternative, an applicant may take a standardized citizen-
ship test administered through a national testing entity, such as
NAS, and then would not be retested on U.S. history and govern-
ment at the INS examination. However, the applicant must still
demonstrate English language ability by answering questions in
English concerning the application. Once again, the interview is
conducted in English.
In other words, the INS examiner tests on both English — tests on
spoken English, while the NTEs test on history, government and
written English. INS always has a double-check on an applicant's
qualifications for citizenship. INS does far more than rubber-stamp
a test given by an entity such as NAS.
Finally, if the examiner approves the application, the applicant
will be scheduled for a naturalization ceremony where citizenship
is officially conferred after a final review of qualifications.
On June 28, 1991, INS published in the Federal Register a No-
tice of Program that solicited qualified organizations to submit pro-
posals to become approved to develop and administer a standard-
ized citizenship test for naturalization applicants.
In July 1994, we submitted a proposal to INS to become an NTE.
After a review period, we received notification from INS requesting
additional information and clarification of some issues regarding
the contents of our proposal. After submitting our clarifications, we
received approval as an NTE on August 22, 1994.
I see that my time is running out and I would like to make one
last point. Though there are many mj^ths surrounding the program,
some of those myths, we hope that we can get through today so you
understand how the program works.
NAS licensees include some of the following organizations:
Catholic Charities, American Red Cross, United Farm Workers;
Dade County, FL, public schools; Collier County, FL, public schools;
Riverside, CA, public schools; New Haven, CT, adult education cen-
ters; Solano County, CA, Department of Health and Social Serv-
ices; San Luis Obispo, CA, Literacy Council. NAS licensees are all
subject to the same guidelines and procedures for maintaining ex-
amination security and integrity.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to make sure that this gets into the
record.
Mr. SOUDER. We will insert the entire statement in the record,
and if you have other materials at some point you want to submit,
as well.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Roberts follows:]
20
Statement of
Paul W. Roberts
CmEF Executive Officer
Naturalization Assistance Services, Inc.
September 10, 1996 (1:30 p.m.)
Before the
Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Subcommittee on National
Security. International Affairs and Criminal Justice
I would like to thank Chairman Zeiiff and members of the Subcommittee for the opportunity to
appear before you today concerning the INS standardized citizenship testing program and the role
NAS has played, in partnership with INS, in making the program a success
NAS has over two years' s field experience in the delivery of the standardized citizenship testing
program and although the program has not been flawless, we are proud that we have tested
almost 150,000 prospective Americans and enabled many to become part of the American dream.
We are constantly striving to improve testing security and integrity and to that end we have
increased security measures to further ensure that our licensees strictly adhere to all rules and
regulations. We have a zero tolerance policy for cheating and the record will reflect that we have
acted swiftly to revoke all licensees discovered in engaging in improprieties
Initially, I will provide a brief overview of the naturalization process to illustrate how the Program
functions; the benefits of the Program to the government, to persons seeking to become citizens,
and to the American people.
Next, I will address issues concerning the program raised by the Committee, particulariy relating
to test integrity and security.
After this brief statement, I will be pleased to answer questions concerning our standardized
citizenship testing program.
I. Standardized Testing in the Naturalization Process
To understand the program, it is useful to review the process of becoming a US citizen ~
naturalization — and how it works. First of all, it is important to remember that only legal
permanent residents of the United States ~ those with so called "green cards" — are eligible to
apply for U.S. citizenship. To reach this point, an applicant must have been admitted as a lawful
permanent resident and be a person of good moral character, and meet statutory residency
requirements.
21
The first step in the process is to file an application for naturalization with the FNS The
application requests the information needed by the INS to determine whether the applicant is
eligible for citizenship. There are many requirements to become a citizen; passing the
standardized citizenship test is only one part of the complex process.
The second step consists of a comprehensive interview with an INS examiner which cannot
generally be waived. At the interview, the prospective citizen is questioned on the information
provided in the application and tested in English on the ftindamentals of US history and
government and ability to read and write English. As an alternative, an applicant may take a
standardized citizenship test administered through a National Testing Entity (NTE), such as NAS,
and then would not be re-tested on U.S. history and government by the INS examiner. However,
the applicant must still demonstrate English language ability by answering questions in English
concerning the application. Once again, the interview is conducted in English.
In other words, the INS examiner tests on spoken English while the NTEs test on history,
government and written English. INS always has a double check on an applicant's qualifications
for citizenship. INS does far more than rubber stamp a test given by an entity such as NAS.
Finally, if the examiner approves the application, the applicant will be scheduled for a
naturalization ceremony, where citizenship is officially conferred, after a final review of
qualifications.
II Program History - INS and NAS
On June 28, 1991, the Immigration and Naturalization Service published in the Federal Register a
Notice of Program that solicited qualified organizations to submit proposals to become approved
to develop and administer a standardized citizenship test for naturalization applicants.
In July 1994, we submitted a proposal to the INS to become an NTE. After a review period, we
received notice fi'om the INS requesting additional information and clarification of some issues
regarding the contents of our proposal. After submitting our clarifications, we received approval
as an NTE on August 22, 1994.
At the time of our NTE application, I ran an educational program, approved by the State of
Florida, educating young adults in the areas of civics, their responsibilities as adults, and
awareness of the detrimental eff"ects of drugs and alcohol, as well as testing the knowlege of the
students for certification to the State of Florida. Contrary to published reports, I was not running
a "driving school"
Page 2
22
From the onset of our participation in this program, it was evident to us that the concept of a
partnership between government and private industry would require constant vigilance and
cooperation between the two parties to ensure that the program's objectives, and requirements
were met to the satisfactions of all parties In that light, we have continually striven to inform the
INS of our activities and operational methodologies with the goal of demonstrating our fulfillment
of the standards of the program and the expectations of the INS
Examples of our efforts in this area have included the following:
• Participation in numerous conference calls between the Service and the other five
nationally approved testing entities concerning voluntary modifications of program
delivery standards.
• Participation in a national meeting of the NTEs and the Service at INS
Headquarters, in which each of the NTEs shared proprietary information
concerning testing techniques, security procedures, and item development criteria
• Organization and presentation of national conferences for all N AS licensees in
which the latest standards and procedures are reviewed and implemented.
• Maintain ongoing dialogue with designated INS liaison officials.
NAS spends substantial resources on monitoring; that is, ensuring that our licensees administer
the standardized citizenship test in a manner that preserves examination security and integrity
We employ security and compliance personnel who make random and unannounced visits of our
licensees' test sites, including undercover investigations. NAS screens and monitors its licensees
and, if need be, will continue to suspend and/or cancel any licensees who depart from NAS'
standards of test integrity.
in. Benefits of the Standardized Citizenship Testing Program.
The Program has numerous benefits to the government and taxpayers First, by re-allocating time
normally spent conducting citizenship examinations, INS officers are able to concentrate on a
more thorough review of the applicant's qualifications and eligibility as a potential United States
citizen. This "freeing up" of time allows officers to better screen citizenship applicants
Second, by utilizing the standardized citizenship examinations, INS officers' productivity is
increased, thereby reducing the need for additional INS personnel.
Third, this program is not funded by tax dollars.
Page 3
23
Fourth, the expertise of the NTE in delivering standardized examinations affords apphcants a
more uniform, less subjective, test of their proficiency.
IV. Clarirication of Myths Surrounding the Standardized Citizenship Testing Program
Perhaps the most popular myths surrounding the Program are that an applicant who passes a
standardized citizenship test will:
• automatically become a US. citizen; or
• will be "guaranteed" U.S. citizenship.
This clearly is not the case. The standardized citizenship test does not certify an applicant's
eligibility for citizenship, nor does it certify one's proficiency in English As discussed earlier,
after filing an application for naturalization, an applicant must appear for an interview with an INS
examiner. At the interview the examiner questions the applicant concerning the application for
naturalization to determine eligibility for citizenship. If the applicant has failed to fulfill any of the
many requirements for naturalization, the application will be denied The naturalization interview
is conducted in English, with some exceptions.
Another myth is that taking a test with an NTE puts an applicant at the head of the citizenship
queue. This is simply not true. All applicants are interviewed at INS in order of application filing,
whether previously tested by an entity or at INS.
Yet another myth is that the Program is not administered with the highest level of test security and
integrity. NAS strives to ensure propriety in the testing process. NAS's vigilance in this area has
led to the investigation and cancellation of licensees who have not met our high standards for test
administration and security. We have always worked in cooperation with the INS, and in more
than one instance, we worked directly with INS agents in the investigation and, when necessary,
prosecution of persons and/or firms involved in alleged impropriety. We recognize that these
efforts require continual review to improve our investigative techniques. As a result, NAS has
employed Mr. Mike Williams, who is seated directly behind me, the former Chief of the United
States Border Patrol, to direct our monitoring and security program on a national level. Mr.
Williams has over 28 years of experience in law enforcement. This Subcommittee should be
familiar with him as he testified before this Subcommittee on three occasions while he was with
the Border Patrol. Mr. Williams enjoys a reputation for the highest integrity and honesty and
NAS welcomes his addition to its team.
Finally, another myth is that the standardized citizenship test is primarily delivered by small,
unreliable licensees. NAS includes among its licensees the following:
Page 4
24
Catholic Charities
American Red Cross
United Farm Workers
Dade County Florida Public Schools
Collier County Florida Public Schools
Riverside Califonua Public Schools
New Haven Connecticut Adult Education Centers
Solano County California Department of Health and Social Services
San Luis Obispo California Literacy Council
Finally, all of NAS' licensees are subject to the same guidelines and procedures for maintaining
examination security and integrity
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your time and attention. I would be happy to answer your
questions.
Page 5
25
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Tollifson.
Mr. Tollifson. I have no opening remarks.
Mr. SouDER. OK. Thank you. We appreciate you coming.
Let me start with one question that we have raised in our open-
ing statements and want to have both of you be able to address
this. I know Mr. ToUifson was at INS at the time your appUcation
came in; and up to the point when I think there were three compa-
nies that were added, there seemed to have been a pretty strong
track record, a history and background in testing, yet from your ap-
plication, it didn't seem like there was as much background. Driv-
ers training was the primary expertise. Driver testing was the pri-
mary expertise of NAS, and a core question immediately jumps out,
that you are now the largest testing service in the United States.
What were your qualifications, and first, if Mr. Roberts could
elaborate a little bit on that, and then, Mr. Tollifson, if you could
explain why they would have been selected?
Mr. Roberts. OK. In the State of Florida, we are approved under
Florida statutes to conduct three programs, three curriculums.
They are all classroom-based. One of the programs was a drug/alco-
hol traffic education program, which is required of all new drivers
in the State of Florida. That program consists of classroom mate-
rial and work, which talks about the rules and responsibilities of
young adults in the world once they were getting a driver's license.
It has to do with the use of drugs and the bad effects of that, the
results on their driving ability, and the results of their bad behav-
ior on them as a citizen and of their consequences.
It was not a typical behind-the-wheel program, teaching people
left turns and right turns. It was a class that was required by the
State of Florida to get a driver's license. We ran that program in
central Florida as well as two other programs that were similarly
accredited by the State of Florida.
Each one of these programs had with it standardized tests that
were given, the DATE program, the D-A-T-E program; if somebody
passed the standardized test, they would present their certificate
to a driver's license examiner and would be issued their initial
driver's license.
Mr. SoUDER. Had you had much experience with immigrants in
that?
Mr. Roberts. We did have some because of new people coming
into the State that were required to get driver's licenses through
IRCA or whatever.
Mr. SouDER. But you didn't primarily have south Florida? It was
more central Florida?
Mr. Roberts. Mostly central Florida.
Mr. SouDER. Mr. Tollifson, could you explain, while there is
nothing necessarily wrong with that background, certainly they
had some experience, it is not to the level of experience of ETS, or
the companies that have given a lot of those national tests and had
more experience in the past.
Why were they cleared as one of the major providers, and were
there others who were applying at the same time? What kind of
standards did you have that would have allowed them to become
a testing service or a clearinghouse for that, particularly since they
seemed to have had the least experience of those doing it?
26
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Sir, the decision to approve Naturalization As-
sistance Services was on the basis of a single program that was
published as a notice in the Federal Register. I believe you will
find, if you examine that Notice of Program, that it talks about or-
ganizations that are capable. This would be certainly at variance
with some types of selective criteria that would ask to find the
most qualified.
It was not my interpretation then, nor is it now, that the INS
could only approve organizations that were of the standing and the
experience of Educational Testing Service, that they had to be a
not-for-profit organization, et cetera. I think it is something that
has been misunderstood about this program.
Mr. SOUDER. Is it your opinion that — it says, a testing entity
must demonstrate experience in developing and administrating re-
liable standard examinations of the English language and civic
areas. Did you consider what they had been doing in driver's edu-
cation a civics area?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Mr. Chairman, I considered the fact that they
were licensed by the State of Florida, that civics is as it is set forth
within the meaning, as I understood it, for the Notice of Program,
does not mean a graduate-level program at Harvard University in
civics. It is simply a program that would run to the simple diction-
ary definition of civics, and that is teaching people, exposing peo-
ple, to the responsibilities of individuals vis-a-vis the law and how
to live in society. I found that NAS had clearly been involved in
a civics area.
Mr. SouDER. I understand that we weren't proposing, and I don't
think anybody was proposing, a Harvard education. I think that
there is a question of where you have people who do driver's ed;
and I think there is some expectation when somebody comes and
says they want to come to the United States, that there is a little
bit more background than that, and that it is considered in the reg-
ulations. I understand that there is a lot of tension here, but you —
the sarcasm about Harvard, when in fact it was a driver's ed firm,
is a little bit of a gap.
Mr. TOLLIFSON. If I may, sir, I apologize if I appeared sarcastic.
I was not. What I am merely pointing out is that this notice of pro-
gram sets no standard. It was not up to Skip Tollifson or Stella
Jurina or Tom Cook or any of the other people at INS to impose
their subjective standards; and when a clear reading of this Notice
of Program says that the testing entity must demonstrate experi-
ence in delivering and administrating reliable standard examina-
tions in the English language and civics areas, I didn't feel that I
had to get an interpretation of that. I relied on what INS had used
previously to approve Educational Testing Service and comprehen-
sive adult student assessment system.
Mr. SouDER. I think, for the record, I also want to read that
there is a specific example in this. It says, for example, those that
are currently recognized and accepted by an established public or
private institution of learning, recognized as such by a qualified
State certifying agency. And in this — for Right-Way Driving
Schools, Inc., in their application, is there anything in there that
suggests that they had any experience in the English language or
27
in civics, as this would suggest? In your opinion, you are stating
that this does meet that standard?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Sir, I am merely stating that I was not in a posi-
tion to impose a subjective standard. The plain reading, as I under-
stood it, was that an organization such as NAS that was licensed
by a State to give not instructions in how to drive an automobile,
but the nature, as Mr. Roberts can explain to you, of his busi-
ness
Mr. SOUDER. I know what a driver's ed — I mean, it's basically a
driver's ed course like my kids took and I took.
Mr. Roberts. It's a little different than a basic driver's ed. Like
I said, it was a 4-hour concentrated program on drugs and alcohol,
the responsibilities of individuals in obtaining their driver's license
and such.
Mr. SoUDER. I gave you the benefit of the doubt; a driver's ed
course is usually longer than 4 hours. But it is a compacted form
of that.
One thing that is extra troubling with this is that had you not
gone to work for that firm, we would have even less probable scru-
tiny on it. But are you saying you didn't have any contact. Did you
have any familiarity with that firm when they were applying, or
did your contacts and development of relationships that eventually
led you to go to that firm occur after they were approved?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Excuse me, I don't think I understand.
Mr. SoUDER. In other words, you didn't approve the firm know-
ing that at some point you might go to work for them?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I certainly did not, sir.
Mr. SoUDER. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Hastert.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tollifson, it never occurred to you, or I don't know what the
ethics of the INS are, but it seems to me that even a person who
would have OKed or approved somebody going into business, then
you going back in and working for that agency would smack of
some type of complication. That never entered your mind?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. No, sir.
Mr. Hastert. It never entered your mind?
Mr. Tollifson. It never entered my mind, sir.
Mr. Hastert. It is not in the rules of the INS that would pro-
hibit you from doing that?
Mr. Tollifson. Sir, I received from an ethics officer, Frederick
Tournay, a specific reading on this.
Mr. Hastert. So you did check with an ethics officer?
Mr. Tollifson. Yes.
Mr. Hastert. So it must have entered into your mind.
Mr. Tollifson. I am sorry, sir.
Mr. Hastert. You said you checked with an ethics officer. There
must have been a question.
Mr. Tollifson. Excuse me, sir. I thought we were talking about
a poijit in time. Am I mistaken on that?
Mr. Hastert. I asked you if it ever entered your mind that it
was a breach of ethics to do this.
Mr. Tollifson. To do what, sir?
28
Mr. Hastert. To go into their employ after you approved these
people.
Mr. TOLLIFSON. If I may correct the record, I did not per se ap-
prove NAS. I was a staff officer at INS. I received work assign-
ments, I completed those work assignments as best I could; I
passed on those work assignments to my superiors.
Mr. Hastert. So you never had anjrthing to do with the approval
of this organization?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I did not per se approve this application.
Mr. Hastert. I said did you have anything to do with the ap-
proval of this agency?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. No.
Mr. Hastert. No? Thank you. You remember that you are under
congressional oath.
Mr. Roberts, I have internal documents from the Department of
Immigration services here, and it says, quote — I just want to know
if you know of this or not; while it is hearsay, it has been reported
to HQBEN, which is the home offices, by more than one source —
that "NAS CEO Paul Roberts has stated in public forums that he
did not view it as his role to police its affiliates, but rather that
it was the role of INS.
"In addition, it is not unreasonable to conclude that NAS plans
now on file were taken directly from copies of the other testing or-
ganizations' quality control plans. For several weeks, those plans
were under the charge of Mr. Tollifson, who was assigned to adjust
them and write a report prior to his retirement."
Do you have any knowledge of that, Mr. Roberts?
Mr. Roberts. I don't have any knowledge of that memo.
Mr. Hastert. How about the activities?
Mr. Roberts. One part of that about the monitoring programs,
we were under the direction of INS to submit our monitoring pro-
gram within 30 days of December 13th.
Mr. Hastert. How about the statement, it wasn't your job to
know the quality of your
Mr. Roberts. I don't ever recall saying that. It is obviously our
job to police our organization.
Mr. Hastert. This is in a memo, it says — written by a Mrs.
Chang. It says, "The fact is, problems largely stem from its choice
of testing," referring to NAS, "partners, mainly ethnic community
entities that are too eager to help the applicants pass the tests."
Is that something that you would generally do?
Mr. Roberts. Could I see the paper that you're
Mr. Hastert. Well, we will make this available to you. You can
answer this or not answer. Would you rather not answer it?
Mr. Roberts. Would you repeat it again, please.
Mr. Hastert. Well, the statement is a memo to the head office
of INS from a Ms. Pearl B. Chang, and it refers to NAS saying,
"The fact is that NAS's problem stems largely from its choice of
testing partners, mainly ethnic community entities that are too
eager to help the applicants pass the tests."
Mr. Roberts. I would really like to see the paper. That is very
complex, so that I may read along with you.
Mr. Hastert. We will get it to you.
Mr. Souder. We are getting it to you.
29
Mr. Hastert. Further, have you ever been — felt Hke you were
under any pressure to get a lot — is there a quota of how many peo-
ple that you have to get through these tests?
Mr. Roberts. No, sir.
Mr. Hastert. To be interviewed?
Mr. Roberts. No, sir.
Mr. Hastert. Do you know about how many have applied for
tests for these programs?
Mr. Roberts. No, no, I don't.
Mr. Hastert. No idea at all how many have passed the edu-
cation program, and I would suppose, the test? Is there a require-
ment you have to go to so many classes or an3rthing like that?
Mr. Roberts. Our responsibility is to administer the standard-
ized citizenship test, the 20-question multiple choice test and the
two written sentences. Many of our licensees have ongoing, long-
going English-as-second-language classes or some kind of edu-
cational program such as the Dade County public schools, Collier
County public schools, that at the end of this educational process,
the test is administered.
Mr. Hastert. So you have no idea what your success rate is?
Mr. Roberts. Our passing rate varies somewhere between 89 to
91 percent.
Mr. Hastert. We have here a notice from the INS that it is 93
percent.
Mr. Roberts. Like I said, it varies. The average is 89 to 91. We
give quota reports.
Mr. Hastert. It says your average is 93 percent.
Mr. Roberts. We give quota reports to INS.
Mr. Hastert. So you have quotas. Is it quarterly?
Mr. Roberts. Quarterly reports to INS on our test site activity,
the number of people that have passed, the number of people that
have failed.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Chairman, my time is up, but I would be eager
to come back.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Schiff.
Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tollifson, you now work at NAS, Naturalization Assistance
Services, Inc.; is that right?
Mr. Tollifson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Schiff. How long have you worked at NAS?
Mr. Tollifson. Since April of this year.
Mr. Schiff. Do you have a title with NAS?
Mr. Tollifson. Yes, sir. I am a technical advisor.
Mr. Schiff. You are a technical advisor. All right. Where did
you — where did you work prior to going to work for NAS?
Mr. Tollifson. At the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service.
Mr. Schiff. For the INS?
Mr. Tollifson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Schiff. How long did you work for the INS?
Mr. Tollifson. Over 27 years, sir.
Mr. Schiff. Over 27 years. When did you leave the INS?
Mr. Tollifson. March 29th, sir.
Mr. Schiff. So you left the INS on March 29th of this year?
or* Ate m
30
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Yes, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. In April of this year you went to work for NAS?
Mr. ToLLiFSON. Yes, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. On what date in April did you go to work for NAS?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I believe it was April 1st.
Mr. SCHIFF. So you were unemployed for 2 days?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Yes, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. You left INS on March 29th, I presume by retire-
ment?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. By retirement, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. You went to work for NAS on April 1st?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Yes, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. About 3 total days later, right?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Yes, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. Now, did the application by NAS to be approved by
the INS, Immigration and Naturalization Service, to give these
tests, did that application pass through your hands at all?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Yes, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. It did. When was that?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. In 1994, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. In 1994. Do you remember when in 1994?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I am not certain of the date, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. First half of the year, last half of the year?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. The first half of the year.
Mr. SCHIFF. What exactly did you do with that application, or to
rephrase it, why did the application go through your hands?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I was part of the naturalization branch, and I
had a collateral duty and the collateral duty was dealing with the
testing program. As such, I answered the telephone and handled
inquiries of various kinds pertaining to the standardized testing
program.
Mr. SCHIFF. What did that have to do with approving NAS's ap-
plication to administer the program?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Sir, it only meant that as a staff officer I gath-
ered the application in its final form as submitted by an organiza-
tion, in this instance, NAS; I presented the application to my su-
pervisor, my supervisor took it from there.
I recall in the instance of the NAS application that it was out
of my hands for quite a while. It came back to me through my su-
pervisor with a note on it. One of the assistant commissioners
wanted clarification on something, and I had to go to the general
counsel section and get clarification; I did. I gave the application
back to my supervisor, and then it was up to him to deal with it.
The INS staff officers don't, in my experience, my own experi-
ence, do not per se approve things, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. But the staff officer, which was yourself, does essen-
tially the investigation upon which that decision is finally made;
isn't that right?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I prefer — I don't prefer the word "investigation";
I don't mean to quarrel semantics with you, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. What word would you use?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. "Examine the application," "adjudicate it," "as-
semble it."
Mr. SCHIFF, I will accept all three of those.
31
You said that it was in early 1994 that you reviewed the applica-
tion. When did it come back to you through your supervisor for ad-
ditional work?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I am not certain. I do recall that it came back
to me in final form with a letter that one of the clerical people had
prepared, that was signed by the assistant commissioner, approv-
ing NAS; and it was my job to just assemble the folder and then
begin to collect various reports that the company would send in.
Mr. SCHIFF. When were they finally approved?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Sometime in August 1994, sir.
Mr. SCHIFF. August 1994. All right.
What do you do as a technical advisor for NAS since April 1,
1996?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Well, among other things, I have been working
on a preparing-for-citizenship book that will be a commercially
available product. It is a study guide. Various — within the NAS,
there really is no technical expertise. They are not aware of the Im-
migration Act, they are not aware of the technicalities with the reg-
ulations.
Mr. SCHIFF. But they don't have to be aware of that to be ap-
proved; they have already been approved?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Well, yes, sir, but in the course of their business,
the licensees will pose various questions back to the NAS Head-
quarters, and then those questions would, in turn, be referred to
me.
Mr. SCHIFF. One last question, Mr. Tollifson. What is your salary
at NAS? What salary did you go to work for on April 1st?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. $70,000.
Mr. SCHIFF. Thank you.
Yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Ehrlich.
Mr. Ehrlich. Sir, is it true, Mr. Roberts, that INS suspended
NAS's testing authority from November 22, 1995 through Decem-
ber 13, 1995?
Mr. Roberts. The initial letter was for November 22nd, yes. But
once we were reinstated, the date was changed from the 22nd, I be-
lieve, to November 25th, the suspension.
Mr. Ehrlich. So we are talking about approximately a month?
Mr. Roberts. I think it was about 3 weeks.
Mr. Ehrlich. Sir, during that time, did you have an opportunity
to discuss the suspension with Mr. Tollifson?
Mr. Roberts. I don't believe I discussed the suspension with
him. As I recall our conversation, I merely told him that we were
suspended.
Mr. Ehrlich. Is that the singular or the plural? Did you have
one conversation with him or numerous conversations with him?
Mr. Roberts. I don't recall. It was probably a couple of conversa-
tions. He was not in Washington, DC, at that time. He was on an
assignment outside of INS Headquarters.
Mr. Ehrlich. Sir, your best recollection — that is all I can ask,
your best recollection — is that during the time of the suspension,
you had more than one conversation?
Mr. Roberts. Yes, more than one.
32
Mr. Ehrlich. Sir, to the best of your recollection, I believe you
just testified that your conversations only concerned the fact of the
suspension; is that correct?
Mr. Roberts. I believe the conversation was that we were sus-
pended, that we had a letter from INS that was faxed to us that
we were suspended.
Mr. Ehrlich. Sir, what else can you remember concerning — that
seems to be an interesting way to begin a conversation; that cer-
tainly is not the way you end a conversation. What else can you
remember concerning those conversations?
Mr. Roberts. It was a conversation that — when we received the
notice over the fax machine, part of the notice was that we needed
to contact somebody at INS about the letter, that we received it;
and upon doing that, we couldn't get hold of this person. It was
very difficult to get hold of them.
Mr. Ehrlich. Do you remember who that person was?
Mr. Roberts. I believe it was Mr. Cook. Once we got hold of
them for clarification, we were constantly leaving messages on the
voice mail. It was a very important item to be taken care of.
Mr. Ehrlich. I understand why.
Mr. Roberts. I recall a conversation with Mr. Tollifson asking
him if he knew of anybody else at the service where we might di-
rect a letter or direct our attorneys to talk with.
Mr. Ehrlich. Do you have a specific recollection of any other in-
quiries you may have made to Mr. Tollifson during that timeframe
with respect to the suspension?
Mr. Roberts. No, I don't recall anything else.
Mr. Ehrlich. Do you recall what, if an3rthing, he reported to you
concerning the suspension?
Mr. Roberts. I don't recall anything.
Mr. Ehrlich. This was a pretty important time?
Mr. Roberts. Yes, it was.
Mr. Ehrlich. You do not have any recollection concerning any
statements he may have made to you which — I am not sajdng they
are inappropriate, I am just asking a question here.
Mr. Roberts. Like I said, I remember a couple of conversations
about why we were suspended. Once again, we were dealing with
trying to contact INS and the attorneys and trying to get every-
thing going. It was a very, very difficult time.
Mr. Ehrlich. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is
it your recollection that he gave you any advice with respect to how
to proceed through the suspension process?
Mr. Roberts. No, he did not give us advice on how to proceed
through it. I do not recall anything like that.
Mr. Ehrlich. OK. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
I yield back.
Mr. SouDER. Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. Mr. Roberts, it appears from some of the information
that I have that your organization, NAS, has had sort of a record
of a very rough time in meeting the requirements set forth by NAS,
and under review by — I am sorry, INS — review by INS for im-
proper actions. When did you first get the contract to begin this
service?
33
Mr. Roberts. We were approved by a letter that was signed by
Lawrence Weinig, I believe it was August 22, 1994.
Mr. Mica. In 1995, INS was investigating some of the problems
with your organization and issuing certificates along with a local
organization called Friendly Administrative Services. Were you
aware of that problem?
Mr. Roberts. We were aware of the problem. We investigated
the problem, and we suspended and ultimately canceled their li-
cense. I believe we notified the Dallas district office of our problems
with Friendly Administration Services.
Mr. Mica. After you suspended your relationship with Friendly
Administrative Services, did you have any further relationship
with Mr. Kevin Hun Lee who, I guess, had signed certificates by
that organization?
Mr. Roberts. No other relationship.
Mr. Mica. One of the charges that was brought about by INS
said, several applicants indicated that, through interpretation, test-
ing was done — this is in 1995 — in the native language of the appli-
cant, not in English. One person indicated that the English sen-
tence that was to be written for the test was put on the blackboard
and the person being tested could merely copy it. Most of the appli-
cants reported being charged approximately $285 for this service.
Were you aware of these problems?
Mr. Roberts. That is one of the reasons we suspended them, one
of the major reasons that we suspended them. When we became
aware of that, that they had done native language testing, that
sentences were written on the board, they were immediately sus-
pended and canceled. So when that came to our attention
Mr. Mica. Were you aware that a Ms. Young (Adrian) S. Han,
a proctor and instructor working for one of these organizations,
was dismissed for passing five applicants who were later deter-
mined to have failed their examinations, and then was employed
by you?
Mr. Roberts. She was never employed by NAS.
Mr. Mica. She was never employed by NAS?
Mr. Roberts. No, sir.
Mr. Mica. Mr. Roberts, you were suspended in November of last
year?
Mr. Roberts. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mica. Was there any suspension or problem this year?
Mr. Roberts. We received a Notice of Intent to Suspend
Mr. Mica. That the first witness had testified about? What was
that date?
Mr. Roberts. I am not sure when we got the Notice of Intent to
Suspend this year, but it was July or August.
Mr. Mica. At the beginning of the employment of the young lady
who testified, sometime during her employment?
Mr. Roberts. That was the first notice in November 1995 that
she was employed.
Mr. Mica. I would like to ask Mr. Tollifson, were you involved
in trying to regain the certification and participation of NAS when
that suspension was noticed?
Mr. Tollifson. No, sir, I was not.
Mr. Mica. You were not involved in any way?
34
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I was not involved in that, sir.
Mr. Mica. Did you talk to INS at all about that suspension?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. To INS Headquarters, sir?
Mr. Mica. Pardon?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Do you mean to INS Headquarters?
Mr. Mica. Anyone with INS.
Mr. TOLLIFSON. No, sir, I didn't. I was not at Headquarters dur-
ing that time.
Mr. Mica. No. You were with NAS this year, right?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I thought you were talking about the suspension,
sir.
Mr. Mica. Yes.
Mr. TOLLIFSON. That was in 1995.
Mr. Mica. I am talking about another suspension in 1996.
Mr. Roberts. We were not suspended in 1996. We had a Notice
of Intent in which we were required to submit documents and re-
buttal
Mr. Mica. Right. I guess it was 2 weeks that the first witness
talked about
Mr. Roberts. No. The first witness was employed in November
1995, when the first suspension notice was given.
Mr. Mica. OK. But there was a second notice.
Mr. Roberts. The second notice was the Notice of Intent to Sus-
pend which came in July or August of this year.
Mr. Mica. And she was still there?
Mr. Roberts. No, she wasn't.
Mr. Mica. I am sorry then.
Were you involved in preparing any documents or work on the
second notice when they got the second notice that they were going
to be suspended?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Yes, sir, I was.
Mr. Mica. You were involved in that?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mica. What did you do and whom did you contact?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Well, I was contacted by Mr. Roberts and various
legal counsel for NAS, and I prepared a lengthy statement that
was a report, historical report, on the testing program and where
it came from.
Mr. Mica. Did you directly contact anyone employed by INS
about the proposed suspension?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. No, sir, I don't recall doing that.
Mr. Mica. No one?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. But if I might add, having just recently left the
agency, I do have friends within the agency that I do speak to on
occasion, less frequently as time goes by.
Mr. Mica. Did you talk to any of them about the pending situa-
tion?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I don't recall that I did.
Mr. Mica. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Roberts, you said that you suspended different
firms you have contracted with, depending on your uncovering in-
formation. Have you ever suspended a firm or can you give me
some examples of some who would have been suspended from pro-
viding services to you other than when media have already identi-
35
fied them, or INS — in other words, that you have uncovered
through your own investigation?
Mr. Roberts. Yes, we have many of those. I would like to supple-
ment the records with those kinds of letters and actions that we
did do. I believe even in the opening statement you had said that
NAS has suspended or canceled 43 test sites. Obviously most of
those are done on our own since the media has only uncovered two
of them. So the majority of those that you gave in the opening
statement were
Mr. SOUDER. In other words, those were ones that you discov-
ered?
Mr. Roberts. Yes, sir.
Mr. SouDER. OK. We heard from the lady on the first panel that
many of the people she talked to couldn't speak English, or didn't
appear to speak English, and we have seen that in other places.
How do you think that somebody could pass a test if they don't
have the ability to speak or understand English?
Mr. Roberts. That is a very good question, and we have talked
about that in many circles, including Ph.D.'s that are on our advi-
sory board, people that teach English as a second language. We
have talked about the issue at length. I don't know what the an-
swer is.
I would say, once again, our part in the standardized citizenship
testing is a multiple choice test and sentences that are written in
English. I can't answer your question how that happens. I am not
an expert in linguistics or learning or any of that. But there is —
I will tell you there is great debate in the academic world on how
that happens.
Mr. Souder. According to some of the documents we have seen,
it wasn't just a question of whether the people could understand
what communism was or capitalism or a form of government, they
couldn't even answer basic questions like, where did you take the
test? That brings into mind a core question.
If we don't quite understand how they can pass a test if they
don't speak English; we don't want to make a judgrnent — and we
don't want to make a judgment that the pencil markings all seem
to be from the same pencil; we don't want to jump to any conclu-
sions about the fact that only one of the two sentences has to be
correct in the first place; that anybody who has ever been to college
or high school or elementary school knows how multiple choice test
information is not exactly a litmus test of your ability to under-
stand in the first place. If somebody merely gives you the letters,
you don't have to understand English to put the letters down. A
fundamental charge is being made that it looks like, when you
combine those things, if you were in this seat as opposed to your
seat, it is not just enough to say, oh, well, there is a debate about
this.
Mr. Roberts. I think it is a high-stress, high-anxiety type situa-
tion they are placed in when they come into the INS office.
Mr. Souder. On the phone, too?
Mr. Roberts. On the phone, I don't know. My response to that
is, I don't understand it myself. I am listening to what everybody
is telling me. People that speak many languages say that they can
write and they are able to understand, but when it comes to talk-
36
ing, to communicate with somebody else in that language, there is
great difficulty doing that.
Mr. SOUDER. I can understand the stress, and I certainly would
understand stress, but to even not know what city you took it in
is — suggests that it is a more fundamental problem.
There is also a memo — do we have a copy of this to give? It is
an internal memo from Cynthia Lee to Benedict Ferro where she
recounts a conversation she had with you that says, "Paul Roberts
of the Naturalization Assistance Service called me today, informed
me that two people had contacted him regarding the NAS approval
letters. I told him that many of the applicants could not speak Eng-
lish, in fact, many of them could not even be sworn in to conduct
the interview. In those cases, I explained that we do not accept the
approval letter. At this point, he became somewhat angry and said
that we should then be denying those cases on the applicants' in-
ability to speak English, not on their ability to read and write, pass
the history and government portions.
"I did state that I had no idea how these people were able to pass
a written history, government and English test when they could
not even conduct the most basic conversation in English, and the
conversation became sort of ugly. I told him that he should contact
my supervisor. I checked the regulation, section 1.21, understand
and demonstrate and speak words in ordinary usage of the English
language."
Are you familiar with — have you ever seen this document before?
Mr. Roberts. I have not seen this document.
Mr. SoUDER. Are you familiar with the conversation?
Mr. Roberts. I vaguely remember a conversation, yes, sir.
Mr. SouDER. Are you maintaining here that — because INS clear-
ly has reservations, too, that theirs is a technical reservation, that
they should object to it on language grounds, not on the fact of a
written test? Do you want to try to clarify your discussion here?
Mr. Roberts. Once again, I think this falls back to what we test
for is the multiple choice and the sentences. We do not test on
somebody's spoken English ability. I believe the 312 section, or
some section of the code, states that if the person presents the cer-
tificate, they are not supposed to be retested on history and govern-
ment. It is the duty and the authority of INS, if this person does
not speak English, to fail them because of their inability to speak
English. That is my recollection of what this conversation was; I
was simply asking her to accept the certificates, but if people do
not speak English, note that they fail because of their inability to
speak English.
Mr. SouDER. Why would you have gotten angry over that?
Mr. Roberts. Pardon me?
Mr. SouDER. If they were not going to be approved anyway, why
did you get angry?
Mr. Roberts. I think we were in a technical debate of a point,
and that issue is, they were routinely denying our certificates. All
they simply had to do was say, the person didn't speak English,
they had the authority, the right, and the
Mr. SouDER. Was your pa3rment based on acceptance?
Mr. Roberts. On acceptance of?
37
Mr. SOUDER. In other words, what did it matter to you? Tech-
nically, since you already have a fail rate that is only one-half of
everybody else, why would this have gotten you so angry?
Mr. Roberts. Like I say, I remember parts of the conversation.
There might have been other things that she said that I don't recall
the entire conversation.
Mr. SouDER. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Ehrlich.
Mr. Ehrlich. Mr. Roberts, if it was February 1995 and I walked
in to see you and said, "Hi, my name's Ehrlich. I run Ehrlich's
Testing Service and I want to become your licensee." What steps,
what procedures would you implement to check me out?
Mr. Roberts. Did you give a point in time? I didn't hear the very
beginning.
Mr. Ehrlich. Beginning of 1995.
Mr. Roberts. There was an application to be filled out, your
name, your business name, where you intend to do business, the
site where you were going to give the test, general overview. Could
you secure the test booklets? Did you have proper staff to make
sure they were secured so no one could leave the offices? It was an
application procedure.
Mr. Ehrlich. Proper staff to secure the books?
Mr. Roberts. Yes. Or the books could be properly secured at
your location.
Mr. Ehrlich. Let me ask you specifically, what about inquiries
into the technical abilities of the folks that I have on my staff?
Mr. Roberts. To what extent?
Mr. Ehrlich. Were you looking into the people that were work-
ing for me?
Mr. Roberts. I think in 1995, we did have a separate individual
application. I think it was that — I don't recall for sure — that we
could ask everybody that is involved with the testing program to
fill out — we implemented this at some point, I am not sure exactly
when this was phased in. So anybody who was going to proctor a
test or administer the test, we would ask information on them.
Mr. Ehrlich. OK. Do we have that? Could I ask you to provide
that?
Mr. Roberts. I sure will. I will provide the whole application, if
you would like.
Mr. Ehrlich. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks.
I yield back.
Mr. SoUDER. Mr. Hastert.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Roberts, just a couple of recollections here. I
have a letter to you from INS dated November 26, 1995, that says
that upon review of videotape and the recent broadcast on a St.
Paul television — on and on — and it says, we have found the follow-
ing: Asian Pacific Resources test proctors assisted applicants with
test information by indicating the correct answers to test questions.
Asian Pacific Resources test proctors permitted applicants to
amend their test answers after the examination time expired and
the test papers were examined. Asian Pacific Resources test proc-
tors drilled or tutored applicants on the test questions prior to the
administration of tests.
38
Another statement that is in here also, INS to William
McNamee, complaining that through the last several months, there
have been numerous reports of applicants for citizenship who were
given letters from NAS which indicate that they have satisfied the
section 312 requirements which, for a number of reasons, field of-
fices believe were improperly issued.
Another letter, a news release, U.S. Department of Justice, Hon-
olulu. Special agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Serv-
ice today arrested four employees of a Honolulu testing service on
charges of conspiracy in defrauding the INS. It goes on to say that
this organization was a branch of the Naturalization Assistance
Service, which is currently authorized by INS to administer the
INS citizenship test.
Another letter, again to Mr. McNamee from the INS. It says in
a memo dated 1-9-95, the OIC indicates an auditor for the State
of California examined a large number — it didn't say how many —
of the tests and found that they were all in the same handwriting
and everyone passed. This is something that comes out of, again,
your organization.
Well, we can go on and on and on. But, you know, this is tax-
payer money, money paid by the Federal Government. It happens
over and over and over again. A series of letters here are -complain-
ing to the INS that your applicants are being turned down.
Also a letter from our friend — well, the person here making this
request is Mr. Tollifson to INS employees complaining, this is
dated 4-26-96, complaining that "Skip" has no right to intervene,
even if there is some kind of a problem, let alone when BAL is only
applying prescreening procedures.
There is an established routine that any entity may follow to
work in the — I guess you never worked with these people, Mr.
Tollifson, but I think that is probably an impropriety. It goes on
and on.
I think maybe you could define, what is the fine line here? When
were you committing fraud and when were you not committing a
fraud here, taking Federal dollars and doing what you are doing?
Mr. Roberts. We are not supported by one Federal dollar. There
is no tax money given to NAS, period.
Mr. Hastert. All right. What happens — who are these people
who are paying you?
Mr. Roberts. The applicants.
Mr. Hastert. The applicants. What do the applicants get in re-
turn?
Mr. Roberts. They pay a $30 fee to take the test.
Mr. Hastert. What did they get?
Mr. Roberts. If they pass the test, they get a certificate issued
that says they passed the test.
Mr. Hastert. They get citizenship then, right? You're the door-
way to citizenship, right?
Mr. Roberts. No, sir, I would not characterize it that way. There
are many, many requirements to become a citizen.
Mr. Hastert. But you are a key requirement. They have to pass
the test.
Mr. Roberts. We are one of many requirements to become a citi-
zen.
39
Mr. Hastert. How many?
Mr. Roberts. There's all kinds of them.
Mr. Hastert. Tell me. You're the expert. You have to apply, take
the test, you have to have an interview.
Mr. Roberts. You have to have residency requirements, there
are a number of questions that have to be satisfied. Once again,
I am not a technical expert. We give the standardized test.
Mr. Hastert. But you can't get citizenship without passing the
test; is that right.
Mr. Roberts. That is one of the requirements.
Mr. Hastert. So you are the key to the door. And when they are
a citizen, what are the benefits they get?
Mr. Roberts. The benefits of becoming a citizen?
Mr. Hastert. Yes.
Mr. Roberts. There are numerous benefits.
Mr. Hastert. Sure. I rest. Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. Mr. Roberts, Ms. Han that I spoke of, you are sure
that NAS never hired Ms. Han?
Mr. Roberts. Ms. Han was not an NAS employee.
Mr. Mica. At any point?
Mr. Roberts. At any point. I do not recall her being on the pay-
roll at all.
Mr. Mica. Mr. ToUifson, I asked you the question about contact-
ing any INS employees dealing with the potential suspension this
past year. Again, I will ask you the same question. Did you contact
any INS employees, any active Federal employees of INS, relating
to or regarding this situation?
Mr. TOLLIFSON. If I may, if I understand the question
Mr. Mica. You told me you had friends and you had contacts, but
I am not sure if I got a direct answer. The question is, this pro-
posed suspension — most recent, when you were there — ^you said you
prepared documents and some other background for going back to
INS with. And then you said, you had friends, et cetera. I am not
sure if you answered my question if you contacted any of those in-
dividuals who are actively full-time employed or part-time em-
ployed INS employees about the situation.
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Subsequent to leaving INS, NAS has become in-
volved in a Notice of Intent to Suspend situation.
Mr. Mica. Right.
Mr. TOLLIFSON. I asked that that not be confused with a Novem-
ber 1995 suspension, of which I had zero part.
Mr. Mica. Right.
Mr. TOLLIFSON. The 1996 Notice of Intent to Suspend, yes, I did
participate in preparing documents for NAS, and I did on a few oc-
casions contact people within the agency pertaining to that suspen-
sion, yes, sir.
Mr. Mica. I thank you.
I want to go back to Mr. Roberts, if I may, again.
Mr. Roberts, I have read some of the various memos from INS.
I have one in October, October 6, 1995 — can staff take a copy down
to him, please — and it is from the acting Assistant Commissioner
of Adjudications, or signed by that individual; and at this time you
were also concerned — this may be, in your defense, in some of the
40
steps that you took. You had contacted, and I guess we had had
some other questions about NAS being a bit confused about what
the language requirements were and testing requirements, and you
had made contact and expressed your concern. On October 6th,
they issued this memo.
It says, "The applicant's inability to speak English may not be
the sole reason for finding that the test results were obtained
through fraud or misrepresentation." That is the end of the quote.
All district office adjudication offices should be aware of this
change.
Then on January 26, INS sends out a new memo, and that is Mi-
chael Aytes, acting Assistant Commissioner of Adjudications, and
he says, "It is to all adjudication officers who deny or continue a
naturalization case because the applicant holds any standardized
citizenship test certificate, but cannot communicate in English
words of ordinary usage and is not otherwise exempt from the Eng-
lish literacy requirements of CFR 212.1, must note in writing — in
parentheses — in the record and ensure that the applicant under-
stands that the applicant's failure to demonstrate English literacy
in accordance with CFR 212.1 is the reason for the denial or con-
tinuance."
In your opinion, was INS trying to move these folks through in
an expedited fashion? Did you have any — did you feel that you had
any leeway to waive or to — not to waive, but that they were trjdng
to move folks through in an expedited manner?
Mr. Roberts. I don't have any opinion that way. Once again, our
business was administrating the test and sending out the test re-
sults. As far as their application process, you are going to have to
talk to INS about that and what their motivations were.
Mr. Mica. Well, did any of this seem contradictory in any fash-
ion, or did you feel you had the license to proceed and move these
people posthaste, regardless of their ability to read or write or con-
duct the exam in English?
Mr. Roberts. We just administer the test to the licensees in the
communities. When people come in and request to take the test,
they are given the test. So I can't answer your question.
Mr. Mica. So you didn't feel like you were under any — it is a bit
confusing, because you seem to have had an argument with INS
about the interpretation of this.
Mr. Roberts. That is because that was already written in code.
That is what is in Federal law or rules that this particular quote
was in the rules.
Mr. Mica. You didn't notice any change from their standpoint in
the interpretation? You didn't feel like you were doing anything dif-
ferent all the time?
Mr. Roberts. No, sir.
Mr. Mica. Always interpreting it the same way?
Did you want to respond, Mr. Tollifson?
Mr. Tollifson. Yes, if I may, sir. May I see the Cynthia Lee doc-
ument?
Cynthia Lee in her memo, or whatever this is, refers to section —
Title 8, Code of Regulations, section 312.1.
I believe she should have referred to 8 CFR 312.3, standardized
citizenship testing, specifically, section (a)3. What it clearly says is
41
that an applicant who passes a standardized citizenship test, as
provided in paragraph 1, shall not — and in Immigration, one of the
first things we are taught is "shall" is a strong word — shall not be
re-examined at the naturalization interview as to his or her inabil-
ity to write English and history and form of government of the
United States unless the examining officer has reasonable cause to
believe, subsequent to verification of the applicant's test results
with the authorized testing entity, that the applicant's test results
were obtained through fraud or misrepresentation. The applicant's
inability to speak English may not be the sole reason for finding
that the test results were obtained through fraud or misrepresenta-
tion.
If I can just make one comment
Mr. Mica. Go right ahead.
Mr. TOLLIFSON. Educational Testing Service is one of the organi-
zations that gives this test. Educational Testing Service has pro-
vided standardized tests to just about everybody in the whole
world, certainly in our Western world and in this country.
I believe, since I know that the people who are responsible for
this specific wording, that that was put in as a flag for an adjudica-
tions officer not to go behind the work of an Educational Testing
Service lightly, that what Cynthia Lee was reacting to is why this
person doesn't speak English. I am going to read the wrong section
of law.
I don't believe that Mr. Roberts was totally in error for trying to
point out to an adjudication supervisor that you are looking on the
wrong page, ma'am. Mr. Roberts and I have discussed that, and
that is what I believe is what happened.
Mr. Mica. I just wanted to hear your interpretation. I thank you
and yield back.
Mr. SOUDER. We are done with our questioning. I wanted to
make a couple of comments here at the close. I think that there is
a distinction. I found your last reading and interpretation interest-
ing. There is a distinction when we have the accelerated rate that
we are seeing currently, when we have a firm that has been sus-
pended multiple times, has had multiple subcontractors termi-
nated, has 41 of the 52 cases in July that are in question, when
we have allegations on national television that there are "hundreds
of names in the same pencil" things, it becomes more of a debate
as to which clause is covered there, because there was a question,
even as you were reading that, of what is the intent and whether
or not there is reason to be suspect as far as which one would even
apply.
So I don't think it is quite as clear-cut as that, but I understand
that there could be some debate as to which takes preeminent ef-
fect. But here my understanding is not the argument over whether
or not the applicant would be denied, but denied on what grounds.
Mr. Roberts. Sir, may I make a comment, please?
Mr. SouDER. Yes, go ahead.
Mr. Roberts. You mentioned that there were tests with — 100
tests with the same pencil mark on them that were passed. I be-
lieve Ms. Elghazali said in her testimony that when that occurred,
Mr. Paren said that everybody in the class was failed. I think if
you will review the record, she testified that if there was a batch
42
with 100, there was a batch with 100, and Mr. Paren said, every-
body in that batch failed.
I would just like to make that point for the record.
Mr. SOUDER. What we are going to do, because a lot of the an-
swers here, in our opinion, were unclear and we are still sorting
some of that out, is to keep the option open for two things; one is
written questions, as well as additional inserts that you may have
or that we may have, and also have the right to call back if, as we
do these investigations, we decide we need to have another public
inquiry.
I thank you for coming today.
Will the third panel please come forward, Mr. Alexander
Aleinikoff, Mr. Louis Crocetti.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. SoUDER. Let the record show that the witnesses responded
in the affirmative.
Mr. SouDER. Mr. Alexander Aleinikoff is the Executive Associate
Commissioner for Programs at the Immigration and Naturalization
Service.
Mr. Lewis Crocetti — is that
Mr. Crocetti. Yes, that is fine.
Mr. SouDER [continuing]. Is the Associate Commissioner for Ex-
aminations at the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Mr. Aleinikoff, do you want to go first?
STATEMENT OF ALEXANDER ALEINIKOFF, EXECUTIVE ASSO-
CIATE COMMISSIONER FOR PROGRAMS, IMMIGRATION AND
NATURALIZATION SERVICE, ACCOMPANIED BY LOUIS D.
CROCETTI, ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER FOR EXAMINATIONS,
IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
Mr. Aleinikoff. Mr. Chairman, I think my oral statement here
may go just a minute or two over the 5 minutes, if the committee
would permit me to have the extra 2 minutes.
Mr. SoUDER. Yes. We would like you to try to stay within 5, but
we give a little leeway.
Mr. Aleinikoff. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you today. I am pleased to discuss with you our naturalization test-
ing program. But I would like to take a minute or two, to start,
by laying out the groundwork for a better understanding of the
Citizenship USA program. There have been some recent reports in
the media about the INS citizenship program, and I would like to
take a few minutes to review the origins.
Quite simply, the numbers tell the story, Mr. Chairman. In pre-
vious years, naturalization applications had averaged about 2- to
300,000 per year. I have a chart here which shows the applications
in recent years. I hope the committee can see it, or I can make it
available to you, Mr. Chairman.
In fiscal year 1994, that number rose to 550,000 and in fiscal
year 1995 it leaped to more than 1 million. Already this fiscal year
more than 1 million persons have filed for naturalization, and we
expect these record levels to continue next year as well.
By early 1995, these record-breaking numbers had created a
huge backlog for us. Without increased resources for the program,
processing times rose dramatically. By the summer of 1995, the
43
INS had conceived of Citizenship USA, a program designed to re-
turn our processing times to acceptable levels.
We announced Citizenship USA in August 1995. Our stated goal
was to get current with naturalization applications by the summer
of 1996. By getting current, we meant a processing time of 6
months from time of filing an application to swearing in as a new
citizen. That goal was subsequently slipped a bit to the end of this
fiscal year, September 30.
While Citizenship USA is a nationwide program, we initially fo-
cused major resources in the five district offices with the greatest
number of pending cases: Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York,
and San Francisco. At the time, these five offices had about 75 per-
cent of our pending caseload and the waiting times for interviews
were patently unacceptable.
This is a chart that shows the waiting times at the initiation of
Citizenship USA. An applicant filing for naturalization in Los An-
geles would have waited more than 2 months — I am sorry, 2 years.
These numbers are in months. In Miami, it would have been over
4 years. In short, Citizenship USA strived to put both naturaliza-
tion and service back in the Immigration and Naturalization Serv-
ice.
Naturalization applicants are long-term, permanent residents
who pay a significant fee for a service, the efficient adjudication of
their application under the law. Had we not taken steps to meet
the tremendous challenge of the huge increase in applications, I
think we would now be facing criticism for inaction and dereliction
of duty.
The importance of U.S. citizenship cannot be gainsaid. Both for
the applicant and for the Nation he or she seeks to join, it is a deci-
sion of singular significance. It is the highest benefit, some might
justly say "honor" that this Nation bestows on immigrants.
Because of the tangible and symbolic importance of the granting
of citizenship, INS's increased efforts must be carried out in a man-
ner that does not compromise our standards. This we have done.
No policy directive, no guidance has been issued that reduces the
standards we apply to naturalization proceedings. There have been
no instructions from Headquarters that have pressured people to
approve unqualified applicants for naturalization. Indeed, our de-
nial rate under Citizenship USA is at or above historic levels.
Furthermore, our efforts have received bipartisan support from
the Congress. The reprogramming for this purpose have been ap-
proved by our Appropriations Committees. The second, in January
1996, expressly identified the means and the goals of Citizenship
USA. Chairman Harold Rogers' Notice of Approval states, that he
is, "pleased that the INS is reprogramming" — I am sorry. He is
"pleased that the INS is recognizing the significant workload and
addressing it in this reprogramming."
I believe Citizenship USA is a responsive and a responsible pro-
gram of which the INS is justly proud.
Let me add that the program will not be completed this fiscal
year. While we have significantly reduced processing times, we will
continue to face an avalanche of naturalization applications in days
ahead and it require continued efforts to stay current with our
backlog.
44
Recent accounts in the media have also focused on the INS pro-
gram which authorizes private companies to test naturaUzation ap-
plicants on their knowledge of written English and American civics.
While some of these accounts have been exaggerated, to my mind,
the INS acknowledges that the program has experienced problems
centered around allegations of fraudulent testing practices. We are
committed to correcting these problems in the citizenship program,
and we will outline for you today steps we have taken and will be
taking to address the problem.
Let me start, though, by stressing an important fact. Even if an
applicant holds a certificate from a private citizenship testing serv-
ice, noting the successful completion of a standardized test on writ-
ten English and civics, the certificate does not guarantee an appli-
cant's naturalization. Every naturalization applicant is interviewed
by an INS adjudications officer. During this interview, an applicant
must demonstrate that he or she is a person of good moral char-
acter, has been a lawful, permanent resident of the United States
for the required time, is personally attached to the principles of the
U.S. Constitution and possesses a functional knowledge of the Eng-
lish language, including the ability to read, write and speak words
in ordinary usage unless the applicant is statutorily exempt. Appli-
cants who cannot communicate in English to the adjudicator and
who are not exempt by statute from the English requirement are
not eligible for naturalization, even if they possess a certificate
from a private citizenship testing organization.
If I might add, I was interested in Ms. Elghazali's testimony this
afternoon, Mr. Chairman, where she said she received numerous
calls from people who were complaining that they had received a
certificate from NAS, but were not permitted to naturalize because
an INS officer said, you can't speak English, we cannot approve
your application.
Therefore, I guess, in response to Mr. Hastert's opening com-
ments here, there have been no shortcuts taken. The applicant still
sees an INS adjudicator and they test on the English requirement.
If they cannot speak English and they are not exempt from the
statute, they will not be granted citizenship.
We established the testing program in 1991 to provide an alter-
native venue for naturalization applicants. Assertions by some that
the INS has ignored the problem of testing fraud, or only re-
sponded following press reports, I do not believe are supported by
the record.
Over the past year, the Service has taken a number of significant
steps to improve the process. Since the suspension of NAS in No-
vember 1995, we have undertaken the following enforcement ef-
forts. We have demanded and received monitoring plans from NAS
and other testing entities. We have instructed our field offices to
undertake announced and unannounced visits to testing sites.
Pursuant to INS efforts and monitoring by the national testing
organizations under our instructions, 42 testing sites have been
closed in this calendar year. Based on an INS-initiated investiga-
tion, the operators of a testing site in Honolulu were prosecuted
and convicted in May. I understand they were sentenced yesterday,
but because of the time delay with Hawaii, we were unable to learn
what the sentence was, but we will supply it to the committee.
45
[The information referred to follows:]
In the case of Friendly Testing Services, a NAS licensee in Honolulu, Hawaii, 4
defendants were indicted on charges of Conspiracy to Defraud the INS. One, Kyung
Sup Chong, plead guilty and was sentenced by the U.S. District Court in Honolulu,
Hawaii to 2 years probation and a fine of $1,200. Sentencing of the three other de-
fendants is scheduled for November and December.
Mr. Aleinikoff. There are currently 17 investigations in INS
field offices. In June we ordered NAS to suspend a Dallas affiliate
and issued to NAS a Notice of Intent to Suspend and possibly ter-
minate their entire testing program. Our review of NAS's response,
which in fact totaled nearly 1,500 pages, is nearing completion.
Also in June, INS program officers met with representatives of
the national organizations to discuss test security. Based on those
discussions and our independent analysis, we are today notifying
the organizations of new procedures and policies they must adopt
by October 1st to further ensure a credible and secure testing pro-
gram. These include:
All new testing affiliates must be approved by INS Headquarters
and we will make that decision after consultation with appropriate
local INS offices;
All new affiliates must demonstrate educational testing experi-
ence;
Tests may not be scored in the presence of test-takers;
More stringent requirements for the dictation of the English sen-
tence used for proof of written English proficiency are provided;
A prohibition against the practice of combining testing fees with
fees for other services is included so that local affiliates do not cir-
cumvent the requirement that the testing fee be reasonable;
National organizations will be required to report to INS the
monthly results of the organization's own monitoring efforts, in-
cluding any sites closed for cause, and shall set up a special tele-
phone service for INS officers use to be able to verify the validity
of a test certificate;
Finally, we have initiated a high-level policy review of the overall
testing program. Policy options are now being prepared and consid-
ered that examine the outside testing — whether the outside testing
program should continue, and if so, in what form.
These actions, I believe, demonstrate a serious commitment by
the Service to ensure a sound and secure testing program, one that
will allow the American public to have confidence that only those
persons eligible to naturalize are being naturalized.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your indulgence on the extra sev-
eral minutes here.
Mr. SOUDER. Thanks you for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Aleinikoff follows:]
46
Testimony of
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Executive Associate Commissioner for Programs
Immigration and Naturalization Service
before the
House Committee
on Government Reform and Oversight
Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs
and Criminal Justice
concerning
Naturalization Testing Fraud
September 10, 1996 at 1 :30 p.m.
311 Cannon House Office Building
47
Thank you for inviting me to address the Subcommittee on the issue of naturalization testing
fraud. The granting of United States citizenship is the highest benefit the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) can bestow upon a qualified applicant For this reason, maintaining
the integrity and security of the naturalization process, and in particular ensuring that the process of
testing naturalization ^plicants on knowledge of English and United States history and government
(civics) is without fiaud, is critical and of paramount importance to the INS.
Recent accounts in the media have focused attention on the INS program which authorizes
private companies to test naturalization applicants on their knowledge of written English and
American civics. While some of these accounts have been exaggerated, the INS acknowledges that
the program has experienced problems centered around allegations of fraudulent testing practices.
The INS is committed to correcting the problems in the citizenship testing program and to
eliminating instances of fiaudulent activity. We will outline for you today the steps we have and are
taking to address these problems.
Before outlining these steps, we would like to stress a few relevant facts. First, even if an
applicant holds a certificate firom a private citizensbip testing service noting the successful
completion of a standardized test on written English and civics, this certificate does not guarantee
an ^[jplicant' $ naturalization. Second, seventy percent of our naturalization applicants are tested by
the INS on English and civics during the naturalization interview while only thirty percent use the
services of the private testing organizations. Every naturalization applicant is intaviewed by an INS
2
48
Adjudications Officer. During this mtcrview, an applicant must demonstrate that he or she is a
person of good moral character, has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States the
required amount of time, is personally attached to the principles of the United States Constitution,
and possesses a functional knowledge of the English language, including the abihty to read, write,
and speak words in ordinary ussige, unless the applicant is statutorily exempt from the English
rcqwireraent$- Applicants who cannot communicate in English to the adjudicator, and who are not
exempt by statute from the Enghsh proficiency requurement, are not eligible for naturalization even
if they possess a certificate fi-om a private citizenship testing organization.
History of the Citiyenship Testing Program
The INS established the citizenship testing program in 1991 to provide an alternative venue
for naturalization apphcants to fiilfiill some of the testing requirements found in Section 3 12 of the
Immigration and Nationality Act (English proficiency and knowledge of United States history and
government) prior to the actual naturalization interview. The program was designed to make the
testing process more consistent and to increase accessibility to applicants by providing testing sites
outside of INS offices, where applicants might feel more comfortable. The concept was modeled
after a similar civics testing program undertaken during the Legalization Program, which was a part
of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
The document upon which the program is based and currently operates, a 1991 Notice of
Program (56 FR 29714), establishes criteria that an organization must meet in order to be authorized
3
49
to conduct testing on behalf of the INS. Once authorized, a national testing organization is permitted
to administer the test via a network of authorized testing affiliates.
By taking and passing a citizenship test administered hy an outside testing agency, a
naturalization applicant has demonstrated his or her skill at written English and knowledge of
American history and government. Applicants holding a passing certificate issued by these
organizations are not questioned on these requirements during their mandatory, in person
naturalization interview by the INS imless the INS officer has reason to believe that the applicant's
test results were obtained through fi^ud or misrepresentation. In addition, applicants who possess
these test certificates must still be examined on oral English abiUty during their interview with m.
INS officer, except for those statutorily exempt (legal residents over the age of 50 with 20 years
residency, legal residents over the age of 55 with 15 years of residency or certain disabled
individuals). Only certain disabled individuals are exempt horn the American history and
government knowledge requirements.
The first two organizations authorized to conduct testing, the Educational Testing Service
(ETS) in 1991 and the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CAS AS) in 1992, had
both been involved with civics testing diuing the Legalization Program. The other four national
organizations presently authorized to conduct civics testings are Southeast Community College,
authorized in 1993, The Marich Associates and Naturalization Assistance Services (NAS),
authorized in 1994, and American College Testing (ACT), authorized in 1995. These six national
organizations to date have approved approximately 1 ,000 testing sites around the nation to conduct
4
50
testing. We estimate that during this fiscal year, approximately 300,000 naturalization applicants
will take a citizenaliip test administered by the national testing organizations.
Monitoring by Testing Organizations and INS
The six national testing organizations are required under the Notice of Program to mairrtain
a secure testing environment diuing the administration of the test While the language of the Notice
does not specifically delineate all the requirements for monitoring and quality control procedures,
all of the six organizations have instituted internal monitoring plans to oversee the area of testing
security. These plans, coupled with the authority of the INS to make unannounced on-site visits to
any test site, are designed to ensure that testing is conducted in the proper manner.
The monitoring plans of the six national testing organizations provide for annoimced and
unannounced site visits to testing sites by authorized testing monitors. Most of the organizations
maintain a regular inspection schedule for their afGUates. This schedule is augmented by inspections
which result from reports received from either the public or the INS that a local site is engaged in
imauthorized or unethical testing practices. These inspections can result in disciplinary action by
the national organization, ranging fixim suspensions to terminations. For example, our records show
that from January 1 thru September 1, 1996, the national testing organizations have closed a total
of 39 testing sites for such violations as charging customers too much for services, ofifering
unauthorized immigration services, and unethical pioctonng practices observed during unannounced
inspections. One national organization has also required 20 affiliates to withdraw from the testing
5
51
program because of an unwillingness on the part of the affiliates to attend mandatory retraining
sessions. Testing organizationfl also review all testing booklets and scoring sheets for evidence of
similar handwriting which could point to fraudulent activity and warrant an inspection.
Some national testing organizations also use procedures such as post-testing telephone
conference calls with their affiliates to determine if the affiliate has administered the test in
accordance with the organization's standards. This protects the integrity of the testing process and,
if necessary, can be the catalyst that would institute unannounced inspections or sanctions.
The INS has tesponsibility for oversight of the national organizations and shares the
responsibility for monitoring local testing affiliates. Program officers in INS Headquarters conduct
regular conference calls (every six to eight weeks) with the national testing organizations to inform
the organizations of policy or procedural changes and initiatives which would have an effect on the
testing process. The INS also contacts the appropriate national testing organization when we leara
of an allegation of unethical testing practices conducted by a local testing affiliate, and we require
a response back on the organization's findings, generally within ten days. These reports have led
to investigations and terminations of local affiliates by the parent national organization. We also
have the authority to suspend a national organization for violations of acceptable testing procedures,
and to require a national organization to close immediately local affiliates for testing violations. To
date, the INS has suspended one national organization for violations and has required that
organization to terminate three local testing affiliates.
52
The Notice of Program gives the INS the authority to make vmannounced inspectioii visits
to any testing site in order to maintain the integrity of the testing process. With increased filings for
natuiahzation over the last two years, INS offices are aware that they must become more proactive
with fiilfiiling their inspection responsibility. In one instance, an unannounced undercover
investigation by the local INS office led to grand jury indictments and successful criminal
prosecutions of the employees of a local testing affiliate. Local INS ofBces were directed in April
and May of this year to institute an unannounced inspection schedule of citizenship testing affiliate
locations if the office did not have an inspection/monitoring plan already in place. Local offices
have also been directed to work closely with the local United States Attorney's Office in the event
of a potential criminal investigation of a local testing affiliate.
Actinn.«i/Imnrovements in Progress
Over the past year, the INS has taken a number of significant steps to improve the process
under which the testing organizations operate. We arc working to improve monitoriikg coiiy)liance
which will directly rediice the opportunity for fraud. AD of the testing organizations have submitted
theii monitoring plans to us, which we are in the process of reviewing. Wc conduct regular
conference calls, as noted earlier, with all the testing organizations to inform them of policy and
procedural changes which affect theii operations, and recently held a meeting with all the
organizations at INS Headquarters to discuss key issues such as testing/proctoring procedxires and
monitoring. We have also reminded all field offices of their monitoring and inspection
responsibilities with regard to the private testing organizations.
7
53
In order to Tninimize the potential of firaud, the ENS is strengthening existing procedures for
the outside testing program. Pursuant to the INS authority in the 1991 Notice of Program to oversee
the outside testing program, the six national testing organizations must now comply with the
following requirements:
»• All new testing affihates must be approved by INS Headquarters. We will make that
decision aAer consultation with the appropriate local INS ofQce;
»■ AD new affiliates must demonstrate educational testing experience;
»• A prohibition on scoring tests in the presence of test takers;
»■ Increased scrutiny of identification documents of test takers to eliminate the possibility of
a person substituting for another durii^ test administration;
► More stringent requirements for the dictation of the F.ngli.'iVi sentences used for proof of
written English proficiency; and
► A prohibition against the practice of combining testing fees with fees for other services, so
that local affiliates do not circumvent the requirement that the testing fee be reasonable.
In addition, the INS is clarifying the reporting requirements currently placed upon the
nationals. Nadonal organizations will be required to report to INS:
*■ the complete testing schedule for all affiliates;
>■ the names of all persons passing a test, and shall set up special telephone service for INS
officers' use to be able to verify the validity of a test certificate; and
► monthly results of the organization's own monitoring efforts, including any sites closed for
cause.
54
In addition to curing the problems within the current citizenship testing process, the INS is
in the process of revising the method by which we determine a naturalization applicant's English
proficiency and knowledge of American civics. Lack of standardization among INS offices has, fiw
some time, led to inconsistent standards. We are working with recognized experts in linguistics and
civics to develop standardized tests which will accurately determine an applicant's English
proficiency and knowledge of American civics. The standardized tests and accompanying
educational materials which will be developed as a result of these efforts will be used in all ENS
offices as well as by any organization authorized by INS to conduct testing should the INS elect to
continue the outside testing program.
Finally, the Service is engaged in a complete re-evaiuation and revision of the regulations
establishing the outside testing program. Options being considered include the limiting of private
organizations authorized to conduct citizenship testing to not-for-profit and traditional educational
organizations as well as a possible return to INS-only testing of naturalization applicants on English
and civics. We anticipate a final decision being made on how to proceed with the revisions to the
testing requirements found in Section 312 of the Immigration and Nationality Act within the next
few weeks.
CONCLUSION
Maintaining the integrity and security of the process by which the INS grants United States
citizenship to qualified qjplicants is absolutely essential and of the highest priority. The INS takes
9
55
seriously its respansibility to oveisee the national citizenship testing program. Problems exist within
the system, but we are taking action to remedy them. Our actions aimed at improving the existing
program, combined with our commitment to developing a standardized means of assessing an
applicant's knowledge skills, will help eliminate instances of testing fraud.
I will be pleased to answer any questions.
10
56
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Crocetti, did you have an opening statement?
Mr. Crocetti. I have no opening statement, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SoUDER. Thank you.
Mr. Hastert.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the indulgence. I
have another meeting that I have to get off to.
Interesting, your testimony. I have a document here that was
supphed to the committee, and it is dated June 15, 1996, and the
subject is a retraction and correction of requested memorandum of
June 14, 1996, and it is to a Mr. Neal Jacobs in your organization
in Dallas, TX, from Mr. John Page of your organization in Dallas,
TX.
It states, "Approximately 6 to 8 months ago, I received what I
believe was an intelligence report on an investigation ongoing in
Hawaii on the contract entities that were performing examinations
for the Service. I believe that was NAS doing that. As I recall, ex-
tensive fraud was suspected and/or had been uncovered. This re-
port advised other offices to be on the lookout for this sort of
thing."
It goes on to say, "I asked the then acting Deputy District Direc-
tor, Mr. Kim Ogden, if he had heard of this type of fraud in the
Dallas area. Now, the Dallas area is also an area that NAS was
operating in.
"He told me that there were numerous irregularities noted lo-
cally, he also indicated" — and again this is in this statement, and
again I am loosely paraphrasing him — that this was a service, in
parens, that sees Headquarter's pet project, and the sentiment was
that the Service — again in parentheses — Headquarters wanted a
hands-off policy as it related to these entities.
"I advised" — again, next paragraph — "I advised Kim Ogden that
I would let him know if I got any reports of fraud in this area; and
again, the fourth paragraph, in my memorandum of June 14, 1996,
I erroneously said that Kim Ogden told me that he had not re-
ceived information of fraud activities at local contract entities.
Given more time to think and recall a casual conversation that
took place some 6 to 8 months ago, I wanted to recant that state-
ment and correct it. Again, my memorandum of June 14, 1996 re-
garding this subject was requested by Neal Jacobs, ADDI."
My question, sir, is why does INS Headquarters want to take a
hands-off approach to naturalization testing fraud?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Well, Mr. Hastert, I don't know Mr. Page, I
don't know Mr. Ogden, but this is an erroneous statement. The
Service does not want a hands-off approach.
As you know, there were two memoranda that came out
Mr. Hastert. This is under the letterhead of the Department of
Justice, sir, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Isn't
that who you represent?
Mr. Aleinikoff. I work for the INS, yes, sir. This is a super-
visory special agent in the Dallas office. There are 23,000 employ-
ees of the INS. I do not know this man. I do not know Mr. Ogden.
But irrelevant of who they are, it does not accurately state the pol-
icy of Headquarters. This is somebody writing from Dallas.
Mr. Hastert. Would you halt for a minute? Let me read what
it says.
57
It says, he also indicated — and again, I am loosely paraphrasing
him — that this was a Service Headquarters pet project and the sen-
timent was that the Service Headquarters wanted hands-off.
Mr. Aleinikoff. First of all, this appears to be a report of a con-
versation that happened 8 months ago. I have no idea why this
memo was generated. It looks peculiar to me, to say the least. In
any event
Mr. Hastert. It was generated because he wanted to recant
what he said before.
Mr. Aleinikoff. It sounds like he is recanting a memo that was
written the day before. I have no idea why Mr. Jacobs asked him
to write this.
I do want to say, Mr. Chairman, for the record, that we would
have hoped that the committee would have supplied — we asked
that the pages that were going to be used today could be supplied
to us so that we could have appropriate answers on all of the docu-
ments supplied to us, and we were not given a list of documents.
So I don't have an answer as to who Mr. Page is or why he has
written this letter.
I do want to say, this does not represent the Headquarters policy.
There were two memoranda written from Headquarters in April
and May of this year that I was involved in that specifically said,
we want tough monitoring going on of these outside entities. I have
announced today 10 or 11 new requirements we are imposing on
our outside entities. This is a false statement.
Mr. Hastert. Well, I would make sure, because you are under
oath as well, sir, and representing the INS, that this is one of your
employees, a memo to another one of your employees in Texas say-
ing this statement came from Headquarters.
I just want to make a point. If INS does not intend to do any-
thing about NAS fraudulent testing because the agency's first pri-
ority is to naturalize as many citizens as possible, I think that is
terrible. That is a fraud on the American people, sir.
Mr. Aleinikoff. Mr. Chairman, if— may I respond? The light is
on, if I could respond.
Mr. SouDER. Yes.
Mr. Aleinikoff. Sir, as the memo reads, first of all, it says he
is not reporting a conversation from Headquarters, this is — he is
reporting this was a Service pet project. I have no idea where he
got this idea.
But I would respectfully take issue, Mr. Hastert, with your state-
ment that we were rushing people to naturalization. We have a
commitment to meet that people be naturalized in a reasonable
length of time. We have met that commitment not by speeding up
the interview process, not by cutting down on the standards, but
rather by hiring a large number of adjudicators, trained adjudica-
tors, who will hear these cases. That is how we have handled the
asylum crisis facing the agency, that is how we have handled the
naturalization problem that we have seen, and that is what we are
committed to doing.
Mr. Hastert. Let me ask you — my time is up, but these are two
of your employees in some type of an oversight position in Texas,
and I think I would like to have a written response by next week,
58
in 1 week, and your followup to what this conversation was all
about in Texas. It might enlighten you and me both.
Mr. Aleinikoff. I would appreciate knowing it myself, sir.
If I could explain my position, I am the Executive Associate Com-
missioner for Programs. These people in the field report up the
chain to the Executive Associate Commissioner for Operations.
They are not in my chain of command. But I will be happy to get
an answer.
Mr. Hastert. I would just like in writing a response to this.
Mr. Aleinikoff. I would be interested in a response as well, sir,
and we will provide it to you.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you.
[The information referred to follows:]
59
INS Insert to Transcript at p. 106
Thank you for the opportunity to explain the two memoranda,
dated June 14 and June 15, 1996, both prepared by Mr. John Page
to Assistant District Director of Investigations, Neal Jacobs.
Both memoranda allude to an alleged informal conversation between
Mr. Page and then Deputy District Director, Mr. Kim Ogden,
regarding fraudulent activity associated with one of the outside
testing organizations, NAS, and INS Headquarters alleged response
to these reports.
First, I would like to reiterate that INS continues actively
to monitor the operations of the six national testing entities
that conduct citizenship testing on behalf of the Service. In
addition, when the Service discovers fraud or irregularities in
the citizenship testing industry, we take immediate corrective
actions to prevent such fraud from tainting the integrity of the
citizenship process as a whole. There are no Service or District
office policies, guidelines or directives whatsoever instructing
them to adopt a "hands-off" approach to naturalization testing
fraud. Rather, the Service has specifically directed the field
on at least two occasions to establish on-site monitoring and
inspections teams and to report evidence of fraud or
irregularities from outside testing entities to the local and
regional offices as well as Investigative Units so that
appropriate investigations can be conducted and immediate
enforcement actions taken to prevent continued fraud.
With regard to the specific memoranda prepared by Mr. Page,
we have ascertained that the memoranda erroneously misstated not
only the nature of the conversation between Mr. Page and Mr.
Ogden but also Headquarters policies on naturalization testing
fraud. First, as indicated in the June 15, 1996 memo, Mr. Page
clarified that he recalled Mr. Ogden telling him that there were
numerous irregularities noted locally and forwarded, not that he
had received information about fraudulent testing at local sites.
Second, Mr. Ogden, in a September 20, 1996, memorandum to Deputy
District Director Jorge Eiserman, categorically states that " [a] t
no time did I receive instructions from [Mr. Eiserman] , the
District Director, Region, or Headquarters to adopt a 'hands off
policy toward these entities. Further, I did not issue similar
instructions to my subordinates. Finally, I do not recall a
conversation with John Page wherein I referred to these entities
as a 'pet project' of Headquarters." Finally, District Director
Arthur Strapp confirms that neither he nor the Dallas District
Office has ever been pressured to "look the other way" or by any
other means to compromise the integrity of the naturalization
program. In fact, the Dallas District Office, prior to any
notification from Headquarters, had already instituted an
oversight monitoring program designed to discover fraud and
report irregularities arising within the district. In addition,
before Headquarters notified the Dallas District Office about
possible testing fraud in Hawaii, the Dallas District Office had
already increased its vigilance and reported concerns about non-
60
INS testing in remote locations to Headquarters. Further,
several local providers in the Dallas district who failed to meet
the testing standards required by INS were removed from the
approved rosters as a result of their activity. Finally, when
fraud was discovered with one of the local licensees in the
Dallas district, the Dallas Office of Examinations conducted a
thorough interview of every candidate on his or her application
for naturalization and all eligibility requirements, without
regard to whether he or she may have presented a testing
certificate from an outside testing organization.
The statements of Mr. Strapp and Mr. Ogden combined with the
actions of the Dallas District Office and the actions of the
Service nationwide all evidence that the Service has a proactive
approach to monitoring of the outside testing organizations that
conduct citizenship testing on behalf of the INS and that the
Service neither condones nor tolerates fraud in the
naturalization or citizenship testing program.
61
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Aleinikoff, first, let me say I want to commend
you. I believe it is a little late, but I think it is very important, the
steps you announced today. I think that it looks like it is attempt-
ing to address a number of the concerns that we have been ad-
dressing, much like it is one of the goals of our committee to help
bring oversight.
One of our concerns that we have been expressing during this
hearing is, it seems like it took initially KSTP in Minneapohs-St.
Paul and then "20/20" to make the point where even you were —
at one point they were saying they were going to resist a subpoena
if you tried to get their videotape, and they were hoping that would
try to catch the fraud. With a lot of news publicity about it as we
get near an election and as we hold hearings, we see what I believe
at least looks like a great first step, and I want to first commend
you for that.
Now, as you well know, the thing I said there, the key political
word was "first." As we have gone through a number of Medicaid
and Medicare fraud hearings and questions — I think we have had
like four on the subcommittee, this committee, on Medicare and
three or four on Medicaid — one question that we have really re-
peatedly asked the Justice Department, the IG and others, is, if
somebody has been found guilty one time or even two times, or
kicked out — here you have the biggest firm that you are working
with, that we have heard all kinds of charges about, that was on
suspension at one point, now they are on suspension again. You are
saying that there is — that you have just about reviewed the docu-
ments. Why does it take so long?
Mr. Aleinikoff. That is a good question, Mr. Chairman, and I
first want to thank you for your compliment.
If I could say something about the first part first and then get
to your question, I don't think this is the first step. I think in fact
after the NAS suspension in November 1995, we went out to our
testing entities; we said, provide us with monitoring statements.
They then provided us with monitoring plans and, I think, cranked
up their monitoring; and pursuant to those new monitoring plans
from January to this date, 42 testing entities have been discon-
tinued based on either INS initiation or their own initiation.
Mr. SouDER. Have any of those been reinstated?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Not to my knowledge, sir. We can check on that.
[The information referred to follows:]
Regarding the reinstatement of closed testing centers, please note that one na-
tional orgariization has reinstated one local testing center it had closed earlier this
year, but only after the local testing center had undergone retraining and recertifi-
cation. This reinstatement took place prior to the INS's imposition of stronger affili-
ation controls, which took effect October 1.
Mr. Aleinikoff. Moreover, we then sent two memos to the field,
which the committee is well aware of, saying, please step up your
investigation of these fraudulent activities. We then had the crimi-
nal conviction in Honolulu.
We then in June called in all six testing entities, sat around the
table, said, how can we make this a better program; and we have
come forward with the steps we have today and then we also filed
the Notice of Intent to Suspend against NAS. So I think there has
been a constant and continual tightening of the program; that is
39-435 97 - 3
62
going to continue because the integrity of this program is crucial
to us.
Now, as to your second question, if I can recall it, I am so
sorry
Mr. SOUDER. Why did it take so long?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Why did it take so long? I now remember the
question.
Mr. SouDER. It is a good filibuster.
Mr. Aleinikoff. Yes. We suspended NAS in November 1995.
They came back with a monitoring plan. It then took — we watched
their monitoring for a few months and they in fact through that
time suspended — I think out of the 42, 33 were NAS affiliates. So
they were undertaking actions to suspend their affiliates that were
not doing a good job of the program.
We then, when we received information of the Dallas episode, it
rang some bells for us, not just because it was an affiliate, but be-
cause of Ms. Elghazali's statement to "20/20", that what she said
on "20/20" which we had never heard before — and, remember, her
testimony was that she didn't come to the INS with this informa-
tion. We pursued her after "20/20" to get the information from her.
So that was the first time we heard the information. She directly
linked
Mr. SouDER. And since she was fired, you can see why there was
a lot of reluctance to
Mr. Aleinikoff. I fully appreciate it. In fact, until she stated
today that we had interviewed her, we were not going to disclose
that in order to protect her, because she asked us not to. In any
event, we did talk with Ms. Elghazali, and we saw her statements
on "20/20".
At that point, we had a direct linkage to NAS Headquarters.
This was not simply the act of an affiliate where NAS could say
it was a bad affiliate, we got rid of it. We ordered them to get rid
of the affiliate immediately, but we had much more substantial
grounds.
Of course, we have to do an investigation; we can't simply accept
statements on television. When we went back to "20/20" prior to
their broadcast, we said, please give us the name of the person who
was only identified by her first name. We said, please give us her
location so we can go interview her. "20/20" refused to give us her
name or location until after the broadcast and until after they had
talked with her. That is what, in part, slowed down our investiga-
tion and our action against NAS.
Mr. SouDER. Let me step back once. Why was NAS reinstated in
2 weeks the first time?
Mr. Aleinikoff. We filed a Notice of Intent — we filed a suspen-
sion notice. NAS came in and complained, as you might expect. The
lawyers began to talk and we were able to reach a settlement that
we thought met our goals. The Minneapolis subsidiary, the affili-
ate, was suspended and terminated and NAS was forced within 30
days to come forward with a monitoring plan.
Actually, the first monitoring plan they produced was not to our
satisfaction. We had to go back to them again and say, please
produce a better monitoring plan.
63
But that was the goal we sought in our action against NAS, and
we permitted them to operate under their monitoring plan for sev-
eral more months until we began to have other indications that
showed us that perhaps the problem was not fixed; and at that
point, we filed a Notice of Intent to Suspend, and we are nearing
the end of our investigation and examination of their documents.
Mr. SOUDER. As you well know, when you see something occur
as we have seen with Mr. Tollifson, it rings huge bells throughout
now Federal system, whether you are a staffer of the House or Sen-
ate or of the administration.
Did he have any role in ending that suspension? Do you know
whether he had been talking with NAS during this process? Any
casual observer looks at this and says, this looks like at least a su-
perficial— not a legal, proven — case that there was inside dealing
going on with the biggest firm and, actually, one that got bigger
after he left the agency and went to them.
Mr. Aleinikoff. I think the appearance is not good. I have no
independent information as to whether there was communication
or not other than what Mr. Roberts said today. I was not involved
in the first decision to suspend, so I don't have any independent
knowledge one way or the other.
Mr. SouDER. My time is up, but I want to make a clear point
that I do think that your steps were good steps, and I am glad that
you are moving on NAS. But we can't get away from a lot of the
other things that are swirling around, it being an election year,
and other things. It is, at the least — I am not saying that we
shouldn't do this, but it looks pretty convenient that all of this is
coming when voter registration periods end October 1st, or usually
a week thereafter, when a firm that has been the biggest registra-
tion firm in the Nation may get suspended, but all the work is done
prior to this administration's, in effect, political deadlines. While
the program and the ideas may be good, which I am not question-
ing, it does raise questions in our mind, why didn't this occur ear-
lier and could there have been political pressures that kept your
Service, who we have heard over and over today, individual agents
in your firm being concerned about the processes. We have a con-
cern that in fact they may have been impacted for political reasons,
and that is another whole discussion.
Mr. Aleinikoff. May I respond to that, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. SouDER. I am sure you will get a couple more chances. You
can make a brief response.
Mr. Aleinikoff. The brief response is, again, I appreciate your
comment.
There is no political pressure to do Citizenship USA. The reason
I started with the charts was to show that we had a service to pro-
vide, and people were waiting 3, 4, 5 years for their naturalization
application, which was due to a whole set of factors.
I have talked to a number of people in the field, our career peo-
ple in the field, on how to make this program happen in every dis-
trict around and, quite frankly, they are hurt, surprised, don't un-
derstand the claims of political interference. They view this as a
wonderful program that finally gave them the resources to do what
they wanted to do, which was to naturalize people who want to be-
come citizens of the United States. It is the end of our immigration
64
processes; it is the one thing that the Immigration Service does
that we feel really good about is making new citizens of the United
States.
I understand the appearance problem. I can categorically say,
Citizenship USA was not motivated by political considerations and
the people in the field will tell you that if your investigators go out
and talk to them.
Mr. SOUDER. There is not a Member of Congress who probably
hasn't called one of your offices, concerned about somebody in their
district and the wait and the process. That is really not what we
are getting into here. It is the massive scale of the question.
Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. Mr. Executive Associate Commissioner, you just said
that you didn't think that there was any political motivation be-
hind signing these folks up and getting them naturalized. We have
obtained documents through requests to INS.
The first one I have is a document from the United Neighborhood
Organization of Chicago to the First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton,
dated September 28, 1995. It says, "Following up our conversation
on Sunday, September 17th, I am alerting you to the newest oppor-
tunity that presents itself to you in those active citizen campaigns."
Further in the letter it says, "The pilot also may provide the
Democrats with a strategic advantage at next year's convention.
The people stuck in Chicago's naturalization bottleneck represent
thousands of potential voters. Similar backlogs exist in politically
important States that have large urban concentrations of eligible
permanent residents like California and Texas."
Then it goes on about Chicago.
We also obtained a memo dated 3/19 — an e-mail, 3/19/96. It says,
"Please be aware of the White House initiative to further enhance
and accelerate the Service's naturalization efforts under the Citi-
zenship USA project." This is by Ethan Diefenbach. Are you aware
of someone by the name of Diefenbach?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Mr. Mica, a member of your staff just handed
me documents. I don't see the one that you are referring to.
Mr. Mica. It also talked about NPR representatives, National
Performance Review representatives visiting in Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Miami on this initiative.
We have also obtained documents, and we don't have a copy of
the documents; again, you have not provided us with that. But that
come from — well, there is a fax from Chris Sale, and I guess he is
the Deputy Commissioner of INS. And Doug Farbrother, is he with
the Vice President's office?
Mr. Aleinikoff. He is with the National Performance Review.
He is a career employee.
Mr. Mica. In this memo it says, "When I met with Doris" — I
guess Doris Meissner, the Commissioner — "I told her to get the re-
sults the Vice President wants. I need to get plenty of authority
into the hands of your district directors in the big cities. I simply
don't have time to deal with the entire multilayered organization.
She deferred to you as the internal manager. I need you or Doris
to sign something like the attached. Please let me know soon."
Then we don't have this document here, but this is a very inter-
esting document. I would like to get a copy of it, if we may, and
65
it was prepared by Farbrother, I guess, for the Vice President to
send to the POTUS— President of the United States, I think that
stands for — and it is divided into several sections.
It says, improving service for citizenship appHcants; 2, lower the
standards for citizenship — and this, I note, was dropped from the
revised version of the draft; and then 3, delegate authority to local
managers; 4, put Headquarters to work; 4, use legal service temp
agencies; 6 — I am sorry that was 5; 6, make more money available.
It goes on and talks about — well, there are even warnings in the
memo. It says, "But INS warns if we are too aggressive at remov-
ing the roadblocks to success, we may be publicly criticized for run-
ning a pro-Democrat voter mill and even risk having Congress stop
us."
Of course, we didn't get these memos until our recent inquiry.
So you are telling me that there is no political motivation to this
project? That there is no intent to sign these folks up in any rapid-
fire order?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Sir, the letter to the First Lady — which, by the
way, I did not see until we produced these documents several
months ago; it never came to my attention, although I think it
must have come to the INS if we produced it to you — was written
in September 1995. That was a month after we had announced the
program and several months after we had begun planning for the
program.
It makes a recommendation, as I recall, and I haven't had a
chance to reread it here, that certain groups take over more active
role in our nationalization process by doing clerical work. That is
a recommendation that we have repeatedly rejected. As far as I
know, this memo had no influence on anjrthing we, the Service, did.
Mr. Mica. Were you working with this other memo that we
haven't gotten a copy of, but I read, from which I obtained the in-
formation about the memo? This memo is being prepared for the
Vice President to send to the President about this project. Were
you involved in working on this at all?
I think I have got some documentation that may in fact, if we
had a handwriting analysis, have TAA. Are those your initials?
Mr. Aleinikoff. If it was hard to read, it was probably my hand-
writing.
Yes, sir, I do know that document and my handwriting is on the
document. It was provided to us by the National Performance Re-
view for comment. I wrote that indicated that they were bad ideas
being proposed.
As far as I know, no final draft of that document was ever made.
We took no action based upon it. That, I believe, was prepared —
your counsel would know the date; I think it was a March or April
of this year, 1996, document — well after the initiation of Citizen-
ship USA, sir.
Mr. Mica. Should we have Chris Sale and Doug Farbrother sub-
poenaed to come in and talk about their conversations with Doris
Meissner on this memo and the timing on it? Are you aware of
that?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Chris Sale, it is Ms. Chris Sale, by the way. Mr.
Farbrother is a member of the National Performance Review,
66
which is the re-engineering team of the White House, of the Vice
President's office.
NPR did talk with us about re-engineering our process. They vis-
ited our sites, as you can see from much of the e-mail. They had
some helpful suggestions. They had some very bad suggestions on
how we could undertake activity, we thought. And the memo that
you are describing, which apparently — Mr. Farbrother told us NPR
had, I think, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Com-
merce; he attached four or five other such delegations that were
used in other NPR re-engineering efforts as part of the attempt to
get Headquarters off the backs of local field people. It is part of the
re-engineering mantra to let the field people go in the way they
want to go.
Mr. Mica. But there wasn't any intent to sign these people up
before the election to get registered before the election?
Mr. Aleinikoff. No, sir.
Mr. Mica. I will submit also from your Fresno officer in charge,
Don L. Riding, April 3, 1996, "Dear Mr. Rausch, as you must be
aware, the INS has been told to naturalize everyone who filed form
N-400 prior to April 1, 1996, in time for them to vote in the No-
vember election."
That doesn't mean anything; it is just like Mr. Hastert's ref-
erence, just another bureaucrat out there?
Mr. Aleinikoff. No, sir, we have turned over 30,000 documents
to this committee, and I think you may have identified a few here
that have references. I think this is the only one that I am aware
of — maybe there are others that counsel can provide — that make
this assertion. This is an officer in charge in Fresno. This is not
an accurate statement. The White House did not instruct us to ini-
tiate this program.
As to the Farbrother memo, we rejected his suggestion. We didn't
adopt the waivers that he wanted because we thought it was inap-
propriate to do so.
And let me say also that the goal of Citizenship USA, Mr. Mica,
was not to naturalize people. It was to adjudicate cases. Whether
they were naturalized or not. And as I say, our naturalization de-
nial rate this year is at or above historic levels.
Mr. Mica. I won't get into why a memo is being prepared for the
President and we won't get into all of the details. We may need to
call some additional folks in to get to the bottom of this.
I do have another question relating to your Federal employee
practices. We heard Mr. Tollifson admit here this afternoon that he
went back and contacted INS employees. What was his — was his
rating GS-15, or above, do you know?
Mr. Aleinikoff. I don't know whether Mr. Crocetti knows.
Mr. Mica. Is it common? Do we in Congress need to start looking
at these postemplojrment practices where people in the revolving
door leave the agency and then in an apparent conflict of interest,
are back dealing with their new private employers to the det-
riment, possibly, of the public interest?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Sir, I share your concern about that. I had not
heard that Mr. Tollifson had called during the most recent problem
until just a few moments ago. I view that as troubling, and I agree
that it is something worth looking at.
67
Mr. Mica. My subcommittee — I chair the Civil Service Sub-
committee— will be looking into it, I can assure you.
I have taken more than my time and yield back. And, Mr. Chair-
man, if it smells like a duck and it quacks like a duck and it walks
like a duck and the water runs off of it like a duck, I think it is
a duck, and I smell a political duck here. Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. I wanted to foUowup briefly on this memo from the
Fresno district office.
Is it your testimony that if Mr. Riding was called in under oath
that he would say that the national INS did not tell him to natu-
ralize everyone?
Mr. Aleinikoff. It was Mr. Diefenbach to Mr. Riding.
Mr. SouDER. Mr. Riding to Mr. Rausch, As you must be aware,
the INS has been told, which also means that it wasn't an INS di-
rective. Somebody told the INS to naturalize everyone who filed
form N-400 prior to April 1, 1996, in time for them to register to
vote, specifically for the big September 30th push.
Is it your testimony that if we called Mr. Riding, he wouldn't say
that that came from Headquarters?
Mr. Aleinikoff. I have never seen this memo. I don't know Mr.
Riding. I don't know what he would say.
I can tell you that as one of the people crafting the Citizenship
USA program, it was never a goal of the program to naturalize peo-
ple in order to permit them to vote.
Mr. Souder. Were they told to naturalize everyone who filed
form N-400 prior to April 1st by September 30th?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Yes, they were, because the goal was to get cur-
rent with the pending applications by the end at least — we origi-
nally said, by the summer, and then we had a game saying the
summer really ends September 21st, because it was difficult for the
districts to meet the summer, July or August, goal because it was
a tremendous burden and it slipped to the end of the fiscal year.
And the way we measured that was by saying 6 months from the
end of the fiscal year is April 1st.
Mr. Souder. So your testimony is that even though backlogs
were standard 2 years up to 4 years and that this had been build-
ing, just conveniently, we were going to eliminate the entire back-
log 30 days before this election?
Mr. Aleinikoff. I wouldn't say "conveniently," sir.
Mr. Souder. Just a happenstance?
We are not — there are no allegations here that there is any at-
tempt by your Service to bring people in who shouldn't be Ainer-
ican citizens. There are allegations that because of, in our feeling,
a somewhat unrealistic goal driven by political considerations that
there has been a sloppiness in the subcontracting process which led
people, for financial gain, to accelerate the citizenship process,
which requires you to hire all kinds of supplemental agents you
couldn't possibly train as detailed agents temporarily in this big
push. As you had experienced in your department prior to that —
I don't care how hard you trained — you can't overcome experience.
Which raises questions as to why we have different GS levels in
the U.S. Government.
You are acknowledging that you have to do something internally
because you had not just a little fraud. You have people going to
68
jail and national TV on your case, and at some point, why wouldn't
you have said, boy, that September 30th goal, if it wasn't an elec-
tion year, normally somebody in charge of the department would
have said, hey, this isn't working. You know, we ought to slow
down a little bit.
We are cheapening the process of becoming an American. We
have pencil marks all over the place and people getting fired who
are making the allegations. We have a guy in the department going
over to the No. 1 firm in the country. There would be red flags and
alarms and flares going off all over and saying, hey, we need to
slow down unless there is another motive. That is why we are
being persistent in that line of questioning.
Mr. Aleinikoff. I appreciate the question, and I appreciate the
appearance that you raise here. I would separate the NAS problem
from the Citizenship USA problem. The NAS problem precedes
Citizenship USA; it was announced in September 1995. It was a
program that was begun by the prior administration.
Mr. SOUDER. Could you execute Citizenship USA without the
massive scales that NAS is doing?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Absolutely. Absolutely. NAS saves us about 5 or
10 minutes per interview. We think an outside testing program, if
it is run properly, is a good idea in the same way that colleges and
universities turn over their tests to outside test entities, and that
is why we are looking at this procedure.
But we could do this program without NAS. NAS does a very
small portion of the work by giving a quick citizenship test which
may take 5 or 10 minutes of an interview to give. It asks 10 ques-
tions.
Moreover, the outside testing entities do about 20 percent of all
of our testing; 70 to 80 percent of it is still done by INS, by our
adjudicators and, of that, NAS does just half of that 20 percent. So
we don't need NAS for Citizenship USA.
If I might, sir, as to your claim about the cheapening of the proc-
ess, we knew when we started Citizenship USA that we had to do
it right or we would be facing allegations of cheapening U.S. citi-
zenship. The Commissioner of Immigration at the confirmation
hearings said that naturalization would be a priority for her be-
cause she believes it is a good thing for people to join our commu-
nity, to take that step, for immigrants who have been here for a
number of years to sign on and say, we belong, we are Americans.
It has been a deep commitment of hers. She would not permit us
to have a process that cheapened that. We think we have, in terms
of Citizenship USA, taken very good and strong steps, that that
has not occurred.
The naturalization ceremonies that I participated in and wit-
nessed have been moving experiences, one on Ellis Island with
Mayor Rudy Giuliani administering the oath. It has been a good
process, and the best test of that is, our denial rate, sir, is where
it has always been and in some districts higher than it was. I don't
think we are running people through the process in a way that de-
means citizenship. It is not our intent to do so.
If you have some suggestions as to how to avoid that appearance,
we are open to suggestions.
69
Mr. SOUDER. As one suggestion, that you do not jack up the num-
bers at a rapid rate as you were doing to hit September 30th.
The testimony was that we were going at an exponential rate to
try to wipe out the backlog in one shot, which resulted in a number
of things occurring, one thing that we are focusing on today in the
testing. It is a key part, if not the majority; I mean, it is — 150,000
is not the majority of 1.3 million, but a key subcomponent, which
is why they doubled the number of firms eligible to do this.
It is — frankly, one comment that we haven't made today, I have
talked to a couple of Vietnamese immigrants who struggled to get
here and who have been raped as young girls, and you can hear
in some of the documents the cries of immigrants to the United
States who thought, mistakenly or correctly, that they were getting
citizenship process by passing this test, who paid a lot of money in
this process, and they feel they have been mistreated as well.
Now, this is one component, but we also have the whole question,
which is not the focus of this hearing, of Soldier Field and how the
green cards are handled — whether people went door to door, wheth-
er people have been logged in, and whether the cards are being
sold on the street. That is another hearing topic.
But there are concerns because, as a management person, one of
the things I would have said is that it is a noble goal, but you were
doubling and then doubling and actually in this time jumping
150,000 to 1.3 million. That is big, particularly with something this
precious.
Mr. Aleinikoff. It is an ambitious goal. Let me say two things
about it.
One, I think that we have learned in the Service that we need
ambitious goals to get the Immigration Service moving and com-
mitted to a goal, and it is important to do so.
More importantly, the money used to fund these positions and
fund the process comes from fees that the applicants pay. This is
all supported by fees — no appropriated funds at stake here. These
are fees that go into our exams fee that we dipped into and relied
upon to do this.
Now, we did so under the — to the delight and, I would say, some-
what under the pressure of our Appropriations Committee that
said, you are getting all of these exam fees in there. They are sit-
ting in a pot. You are not giving people service. You have got to
commit to getting down to 6 months for naturalization, and 4
months also for adjustment of status, and we have done similar
things for our adjustment of status program. This was a bipartisan
effort welcomed by the Appropriations Committee that people not
wait long; once they have paid their fee, they are entitled to their
service.
Mr. SoUDER. Every Congressman would like the process for peo-
ple who deserve citizenship and are going through the process that
the process be accelerated. We were not talking about mass rallies
at Soldier Field. And I don't think Chairman Rogers, whom you
quoted — he would, I am sure, applaud what you just said there.
But we have taken quantum leaps in a managerial sense.
Mr. Mica.
70
Mr. Mica. Mr. Chairman, I have a unanimous consent request,
and I ask unanimous consent that we include in the record the doc-
ument
Mr. SOUDER. Without objection so ordered.
Mr. Mica [continuing]. To Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton, follow-
ing up their conversation, document 1-016963.
The document from Chris Sale to Doug Farbrother with the Vice
President.
The Doris Meissner undated document, 1300040.
The e-mail that I cited, on 3/19/96 from Mr. Diefenbach.
What we have of the memo from Mr. Farbrother with the Vice
President with Mr. AJeinikoff s handwritten comments.
Also the April 3rd, letter from the officer in charge of the Fresno
suboffice, Mr. Riding.
I ask unanimous consent that they be made a part of the record.
Mr. SouDER. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information referred to follows:]
UNO
71
The United hi cighhorhood Organization of Chicago
,20 ... F,.Un„ Markc, • Ch.ccso. lU,.,o., ^^^'T ■ Plu^c (M2> ^^2-6.^0, ■ Fas Oi:. J-:.on~
ScpiemN:r2}(. 1995
)-iiM Uily HiUjry K-xlhaiit-Clinmri
The While House
160() P;nnsylvunia Avenue
Wush.ngion. O.C 205(Ml
Ooai Ms. Kodham-Clinion.
Followina up our tonvcrsjiion nn Sii(Hl;iy. Scpiemhcr 17. I jin aleninvj yon lo ihc newest oppoiTuniiy thai has
prcsenied ii.xcir to UNfVs Aai^^; Ciii/jjitfhip Caiiipjiiyn. Ba.^1 1'n the numi'rr and guiliiy cvfUNO'? naiurjliui)<in
uppliCa.K'ru;. .i» ~cll j.s l.iN( > > cll'icicni <mircJv;.'i. i'<c:ti .""ul n.-jioii:il fNS tirritial* have apiiriiuchej L'Nl) wiiti ihc
iippiinunMy lo panitipyio in a piUii pnvjrjiii which wikiKI icm Miaicuios ihni ftin;oly aiJc)rcs.s ihc curruii njiurjli7jiKin
hu.'usin^ on .Mr;iici;ic.\ iluu jilow iiiiii-yvivcniiiu;ni;il iiry:ini/:iiii>n> In ;i'«uiim.' ihc Clfrital hull; nl life nuiurjli^linn
pmcoo-. lhr\ piloi will unuPIc Ihi.- IN.^ in livii"> mjiV nn ii.imr.ili/aiinn i-;ivc ivvicw. tviixlcr painil and mha pnnniics.
The pilni will nni niily innve .ipplicunis ihrnuyh Ihc prnt(.-vs mnix; quickly atid crikicnily. hut il unjhlc:> ihc INS m
.idtlm-oi ihc inillion> ni ii;iiurjli:£.iiinn jppliciiinrvs |v;i«llnL' n.innnwiili; jnd ,v4ill achieve Oimmi-Viiuncr Dons Meisxncr'v
ynal ol' I2(J duy lumurnuiiil. We Miew ihji this piini ivill drasjicJily iwlucx' Ihc nnic heiwvxn 3pplic;iiiiin and Oalh
adminLsiraiion (cuncnily jveiueinv: I '/; m iwn )-e;n>c) wnhnui t.nmpinini.'iinL ihc inietihiy of ihc pi\>ccss
This piliM jImi injy provi<le ihc I Vinocrais wiih j .•jraleyic iKlv.ininije ui ncxi ycar".N Cifn\<eniion. The pciipic siuclt in
CJiicaen s naiuiali/jiinn hnillenccl; ivpiociii ihiiu.sjnd>ynl pmeninl vmcrs. .Suniljrhael:lnp> CXi-J iii/MiliiicjIly
iiiipniuni siaics ih.ii hjvc Ijpa- uttuii ii>nceni[:iiinn> nu-lieihlc pcnnancnl rcMilcni.s. like Ciililiwub anU Te*;ii. In uci
nnce icsied in Chiej\;o. ihe pilni injy tv innsi i|uiekly replioied by Ihc I AH network in Los Anjxlcji. The lAK has
tlevcliipec) .1 chua"h-rvLsoi. njiur.ili/jiinn pni^ftiin iiiiKlelcd alter UNO's, .md ! nm atnlKlem in then ahiliiy lii exceed the
^lleec^^ wc hiivc .iceniiipjislicd in C'hita^n.
Ka-neiu/ine Chieayns henel'ii. Mjyiu kiehani M Daley h;iN pledj:rd lull support in UNCVs Aaivc Cili/cnship
C-jjiipaicn Aiiienani/iny iiiiinrjraniv hy injkinL' ihein .nvaiv nl the lull ivsponsihililics ol citi7cn.ship is j prioruy I'nr
our public and pnvjx scLnnr allicN. Tlii-se paiin(.T< h;i\x- plaiimil lar.-e Oalh eereinomcs in I9V6 lor l(l.(Xl(l new
Aincneans ji j nine Aceele-nninji ihe naiiinili/.iiinn pnm-s.\ inr ihoavands ol elicihle Chicauoans is key in the
Cjiiopaicns t:03i ,ii ■Jb.lXX) new vm^-i n.-vi.sir3iion.s inr rii>6. Th<.>c p.«cnli.il Ne-w Aincnuuvs can have ercai Si>cial.
piililie.il. and cennnnm iinfuei. n.i| jnsi in Chieayn bin acn-vs ihe Uiiili'il Slates.
t-raiiiin'^ ihc rLiuinili/.uiim ennimversv wiihin ihe mnie.si "I j c-isl eilr/enship iniiiaiivv prnvidisc a enunierpotni in ihe
Kepunlican Pjnyv m jncc nn le^.nl iiniiiiL'raiinn. The i>Mie is ni« aNun ihc pnihleiiLs iiniiiiei:inis hnne lo Ihe Unual
.Siaio. bill whai wi. .i.v j tnuniry iki m miournic iniiin-jr.inii inh> Amenean Micicty
I have enclosed iwn piei-.e.>^ ihai explain Ihc spceilV .isfx-ux nl UNC )\ Campaicn. I am imen»luj in oaaWishini;
•.nppnn Inr ihe pinpnvcJ p.kii p,„..;ij,„ ,„ „rik;r 1.. nvviVMiiv ihr pnlii^.v ..I i.v'iinplciiKmalion. I li«ik inrwanl in
ncjnne limn yoii li ym, haw j,,,- gviL-si mns nr issui-v. pl.-.ix inniiKt inyscll or inv xs-siitiaic Gaca Coine/
.S meekly.
1-016964
laiiiel S. Soli.s
^'lesKicni/txceuiivi. i jnceini
72
FAX for Chris Sale
FROM, Doug Farbrother .
)^I^C
When I met with Doris Friday, I told her that to get the results the Vice
President wants, I need to get plenty of autfiority into the hands of your
District Directors in the big cities. I simply don't have time to deal with the
entire multi-layered organization. She deferred to you as the internal
manager.
I need you or Doris to sign something like the attached. Please let me know
soon.
73
Memo for ENS District Directors in:
Los Angeles
San Francisco
New York
Miami
Chicago
Newark
Houston
*•
From: Doris Meissner — Commissioner, Immigration and Naturalization
I hereby delegate to you my authority to waive INS rules and regulations,
within the confines of law. Please let me know which rules you have
waived.
I expect you to use this authority to strengthen security against y
naniralization of aliens who do not meet statutory qii«l jficgt^^;*'«t«nHaTf4f
~!or7^!}B«cican citizenship, and To enhance the speed and convmience ot die
process for those who do. I hold you accountable for your judgment and the
results.
1
irfi^^--.-
I also authorize you to recruit and hire temporary eiaployees locally as
needed to expedite the naturalization of qualified aliens. . "^
6
5^ S^J L»H i^u4.^ -
#iC ^y '^^
/- uJ**W t^ ^^^
13-000040
74
Aucv.c;- Ricnard J
Oac.': 3 ' 19^96
TO
:06 PM
-C HQ-EEO-001
TO
TO
TO
TO
TO
TO
CC
CC
Normal
Jonn Clarice at ERO-003
David H Parish ac ERO-003
Phyllis D Chi ac NRO-OOl
Joe M Jansen aC NRO-OOl
Debbie Dusenberry ac SRO-001
Wayne Johnson ac SRO-001
Greg Hard ac WRO-003
Rufus F Johnson
Daniele C Berman
Subjecc; Cicizensihip USA II
Message Concenc
Please be aware of a "White House" inicaeive to further enhance and
"accelerate the Service's Naturalizatidn efforts under the Cicizenship
"gSA proiei:i-._ Tlie iijIuLMnaLt^n— ctTX5''oITice has atTTirg' Lime regarding"
CTiis initiative is limited. We do know however, that the latest
efforts CO suBBQXC_Ct5e_ project iwnicn runs through December) call for
~extehding__the hours at existing' facilities to~g7^rm. - 8 p.m.
(Monday- Friday) and 8 a.m. to ? on Sunday. The focus is at existing
'citizenship locations, and, with the exception ot New York City, no
aadicional space beyond what has been obtained or in process is
required .
NPR representatives and David Rosenberg have visited GSA '" tAj__San
'Fran, Chi, New" York and Miami on this intilTive so you may want~~eo
"contact these GSA regions (as well as INS district ottices) to
up-to-dace on these eventTT
Please provide this office with cuiy pocencial impacc to your space
actions chac chis "Whice House" iniciacive has caused.
As more information becomes available I will pass it on.
.= ich
C4
'Js-
1-023746
75
Memo for President Clinton
Subject; Improving Service for Citizenship Applicants
You asked us to expedite the naturalization of nearly a million legal aliens
who have applied to become citizens. INS had begun last year gearing up to
process the growing backlog of applicants but. largely because of
bureaucratic delays, has not made much of a dent in it yet.
Members of my National Performance Review staff have^cn working to
remove the bureaucratic roadblocks so that INS office*^ Lo$ Angeles, San
Franciisco, Chicago, New York, and Miami can qmrfay double or triple their
production. Hardly any of the roadblocks are statutory: we have tha j^ k-,
admimstrative authonty to remove most them.
But, INS warns that if we are too aggressive at removing the roodblocks to
success, we might be publicly criticized for running a pro-Democrat voter
mill and even risk having Congress stop uj. Indeed, many of the roadblocki
originate with the INS staff — people who might wefTcompIam if we waive
the regulations and procedures they have created and followed for years —
people whose complaints might seem credible to the public.
This paper describes the prog and coni of several controversial actions that
we could take to ext?edite processing. We'd like your guidance.
C^ rr~*~r\
JLower the standards for citizens
yeaTa ul tajjldUiity, Liasic knowledg(
character — and we wouldn't chang(
broad latitude to interpret those s
management has already begun
educating* the older ones, to be
ire I
basic standards are in law —
glish and Civics, and good moral
'ose. But INS adjudicators have
3 and decide who meets them. INS
new adjudicators, and "re- n r^^ Ar v
About 75% of applicants are^pproved at the first intervierw. Another 1 S'/tf '^ 'ijf'^f^
are eventually approved a&cr they study English and Civics longer or br' '^'^
in more documentation u^porting their good moral character. Some of this
1 S% could be approve^quicker if the adjudicators were more liberal. , V-*'?^— C^"*^
On the other hand, experienced adjudicators may object publicly to '^'~*-**' '
interference with tuir judgment. In fact, charges that we are lowering
clE>
..I -
lllllll
76
standards appeared recently in USAToday and wetr^hc jubject of Dave
Letlerman's Top Ten List: Number one qucstion^n the new citizenship teat
"Fill in the blank: U. S. "
,.^K
UVJ^
PRESOEVTIAL GtJlDANCE:
Delegare authority to local manngcri: A basic cause of processing delays
in the five cities is ^fc«)i^tant intcrferSCtyf INS headquartem, all with the
best of inlentions. "ralyprobtem-nrriorunlque to INS; it's one of the key
challenges of government reinventioa Exarnplcj of the INS roadblocki
include: hiring procedures that were taking months followed by employee
drug t«ts, fingerprint and credit checks, and in-depth background
investigations that were taking more months (we have now speeded it all up
some), prohibitions against using temp agencies, time-wasting procedures
requiring paper records that duplicate corapxiter records, ciimbersome
centralized control over computer systems, the list goes on. i K« t )
One quick solution is lo dclegat«4©4i«L4enioT INS managers in the five cities
broad authority tg^ive headquarters rul^. It's not at risky as it sound*.
Several agency heads, mcludmg the Chief of Naval Operations, have
delegated that kind of authonty without embarrassment or ill effects. ' In fad
the five ENS field numagers are such experienced and coiiservBtive jjeople
that we would have to keep encouraging them to use their new authority
boldly.
However, there will likely be criticism from the headquarters staff and their
counterparts on the HilUhel "things are out of controL" _ rUvv^^^j^^^-
Other / '^' crt«>wvO
.V
^T
PRESIDEKTUL GtnDANCE:
Yes.
No
Put headquarters to work: The most immediete^obliem in the field is that
they dont have enough people processing the agmcatioiu; each city could
A-vr*vJ vsjvA/(
'cK-^ OcpJLNd^^r
IB eeezss
77
use another IgO-200 people immediately. Meanwhile, there
in INS headquarterSjbusUy guiding the field.
800 people/
We could detail 500 or more of the headquarters employees (rotating them
monthly) to the five cities to process citizenship applications. The cost of
their travel and living allowances would be ofl^et by savings from not having
to hire and do background checks on additional temporary workers. INS has
detailed headquarters people to the field on a smaller scale in the past.
The advantage is getting people on the job without the delays of recruiting,
hiring, and background checking. The downside is that enough headquarters
people might not want to go. And, of coiu^sc, those that do go would Iea\
their important headquarters work temporarily undone. / \ fl\'^
PRESIDENTIAL GtJlDANCB:
YES
No
Other
Use legal services temp agencies: There are temp agencies that specialize
in supplying young lawyers. We could proctire their services quickly
through temp agency contracts already in place. They would be an excellent
source of bright, energetic workers of good character. As contractor ,
employees, they could not make the final decision granting citizenship -A
that is a governmental function that muat be done by a government ^
employee. Btil they cpnld MiKrr^gnv thc>«pplicant». test their knowledge of
English and Civjcs.fchcck the FBI report) and make a recommendation that
would be approved bya gi
the vast majority of applic
iTcmployee. That process could handle
tits w}io gualiiy eati^y: .
To use legal services temi^'lgoicies effectively, we would have to waive
0PM rules that limit duration to three months for the total project and 45
days for an}' individtial lawyer, federal employee unions are sensitive about
these rules. We would also accept the lawyers' recent admission to the bar as
evidence of their trustworthiness, and skip the usual checks INS does on new
«"ployeet. U> y^vt^^ .,
PwcsroENTiAL GuiDANca: Yes >-f*^ (^_a a
No A#^,^A -"^^^^
/^'
ifAtC^ /y-v^
IIHIIIIIiill
TB 0ee299
78
~f
/;)
Other
A
(^
^'
Make more money available: If we succeed in gearing up the process
dramalicolly soon, we will need to make more money available before the
end of the fiscal year. The cost of processing citizenship ifr-covered by
application fees, not appropriated funds. But Con^ss still gets in ^n the
oct. The fees go into a receiving account (which h^ contains STK million)'
and cannot be transferred into a spending account uiitil INS has notified'
Congress and wailed 15 days. At least, that is the legal rcquircmeni. The
practice haji been to wait as long as it takes to gain the written approval of
the appropriation committees; the last time took four months. Requiring that
kind of Congres-sional approval of Executive Branch decisions was ruled
unconstitutional by the Supreme Courj-^caadeu^o, ironically in the case of
^ Chad^a vs. INS. ^c^ vK»v«^]^
If wc need more money quickly, we could begin spending 1 5 days after
A^
notifying Congress of the transfer. But breaking with »h''-"'"'"n"i*iiTinnnl -^ — • '-' '
tradition of waiting for committee aproval, which is the common practice
between all agencies and their appropriation subcommittees, will really raise
hackles on the Hill. Retaliation would probably take the form of stringent
new controls in next year's appropriation bills. We can fight that kind of
thing with line item vetoes btit, creative minds on the Hill will search for
some way to get even. , , _,
Presidential Guidance: yes /v^v/w
kvr-s)
^•c k^
Ml^r^X^ -
^^^-^4^
^
'^V>J«J -\- t*Ov^<,vv^l
IB 0e030d
79
P^ S-^^ O'rr-^^l^y'f/^,
'/
Improving Service for Citirxnuhip Appllcanti
ou asked us to expedite the nalurali/aiion of nearly a million legal aliens who have
applied to become citizens. INS had begun la-it year gearing up to process the growing
backlog of applicanu but, largely because of buiraucratic delays, has not made much of a
dent ill it yet.
Mombeni of my National Perfomiarce Review staff have been working to remove the
(I- bureaucratic roadblocki so that INS offices in I^s Angeles, San Francisco, Cliicago, New
-— York, and Miami can quickly double or triple their production. Hardly any of the
'^ roadblocks are statutory; wc have the administrative authority to remove most them.
But. INS warns that if wo arc 1(H) agjfrciwivc at removing the roadblocks to better service,
we might be publicly criticized for running a pro-Democrat voter mill and even risk
having Congress stop us. Indeed, many of the roadblocks originate with the INS staff —
people who miglit well complain if we waive the regulations and procedures they have
creiited and followed for years — people whose complaints might seem credible to the
ptiblic.
Thi.s paper describes the pro.s and cons of five controversial actions that we could take to
improve service. We'd like your guidance.
1. DelegHtc authority to local managen: A basic cause of delays in the five cities is the
constant interference of INS headquarters, oil done with the best of intentions. This
problem is not unique to INS; it's one of the key challenges of government reinvctitJon.
Examples of the INS roadblocks include: hiring procedures thai were taking months
followed by employee drug icsLs fingerprint and credit cheeky and background
invesiigation.5 that were taking more months (vyu have now speeded it all up some),
prohibitions against using temp agencies, lime-wasting procedures requiring paper
records that duplicate computer records, tight control of computers, the list goes on.
One quick solution is to delegate to the senior INS managen in the live cities broad
authority tu waive hcadquarten rules, it's not a.H ri.sky as it sounds. Several agency
huuds, including the Chief of Naval Operations, have delegated that kind of authority
without embarrassment or ill effixts. In fact, the five INS field managen are such
experienced and conservative people that we would have to keep encouraging them to use
their ikw authority boldly.
I lowevcr, there will likely be eritiei.sm from tlie headquarters suff and their counterparts
on the Mill that "things ore out of control."
GUIDANtni; YES
NO
OTHkk
■lllllllil
80
2. Put headquartcn to work: The most immediate problem in the field is ihai ihcy
don't have enough people processing the appliwiiions; each city could use another 100-
200 people immediately. Meanwhile, there are 1,800 people in INS headquarten, busily
guiding the field.
We could detail 500 or more of tkc headquarters employees (rotating ihem monthly) to
the five cities to process citizenship applications. The cost of their travel and living
allowances would he offset by savings from not having to hire and do background checks
on additional temporary workers. INS has detailed headquarters people to the field on a
smaller scale in the posl.
The advantage is getting people on the job without the delays of recruiting, hiring, and
background checking. The downside is that enough headquarters people might not want
to go. And, of course, those that do go would leave their important headquarters work
lemporurily undone.
Guidance:
YES
No
OTHER
f'
&
3. Get other aRcncica to pitch ini In the five cities where INS needs the most help, other
federal agcncici like IRS, VA, and Social Security have largo numbers of employees. We
huve iLsked them to detail some of their workers to INS. So far, we haven't gotten many,
even when INS offered to pay. The other agencies all have work of their own to do.
liyou asked the Cabinet and other agency heads, they might be more willing to detail
people to INS. But. we might also get accused of slowing down tax refunds, veterana
benefits, and social security payments.
CiuinANCC:
YES
NO
OniKR
4. Use Infill icrvicca temp ygencies: There are temp agencies that specialize in
supplying young lawyen. We could procure their services quickly through temp agency
contracts already in place. They would be an excellent source of bright, energetic
/^ workers of g«KHl charaAer. As contractor employees, they couldn't make the decision
>, granting citizenship — thai is a govcmmenlal function that must be done by government
cinploycca. But they could interview the applicants, test their knowledge of English and
Civics, check tlic FBI aTurt, and make a reuommendulion thai would be approved by a
government employee. That process could handle the va.st majority of applieanu who
qualify easily.
illlHIiil
81
To use legal services temp agencies efTectively, wc would have to waive 0PM rules that
limit duration to three months fof the total project nnd 45 days for any individual lawyer,
federal employee unions are sensitive about these rules. We would also accept the
lawyers' recent admission to the bar as evidence of tlicir trustworthiness, and skip the
usual checks FNS docs on new employees.
Guidance: Yes
No
OTHER
5. Make more money availabU: If wc succeed in gearing up the process dramatically
snon, we will netsd to muke more money available before the end of the fiscal year. The
cost of proc«sing citizenship is covered by application fees, not appropriated funds. Bui
Congress still gets in on the act. The fees go into a nrceiving acuiuni (which now
contains Sl'K. million) and cannot be transferred into o spending account until INS has
notified Congress and waited 15 days. At least, that is the legaJ requirement Tlie
practice haa been to wui( tu long us i( takes to gain the written approval of the
Appropriation committees; tlie last time took foiir months. Requiring that kind of
Congressional approval of Executive Branch decisions was ruled unconstitutional by iha
Supreme Court years ago, ironicaily in the case ofChadha vs. WS.
If we need more money quickly, we could begin spending 15 days after notifying
Congress of the transtcr. But breaking with the unconstitutional tradition of waiting for
committee oprovnl, which is the common practice between all ugenuies and their
uppropriation subcommittees, will really raise hackles on the Hill. Retaliation would
probably lake iho form of stringent new controls in next year's appropriation bills. Wc
can fighi that kind of thing with line item vetoes, but creative minds on the Hill will
search for some way to get even.
Guidance: Yes
No
Otheii
Hlllliilii
82
U.S. Department of Justice
Inunigntioa and Narunliutioa Service
Officer ia Oiarg* — Fremo Suboffloe MJFultooMall Frenio, CA 93721
April 3, 1996
Edward M. Roach
President, Local 1616
P.O. Box 2023
San Francisco, CA 94126
Dear Mr. Roach:
As you must b* aware, th« INS ha« b«en told to natiiralii^ evarvone
who_flled for* K-400 prior to April 1^^996 in time f or_ them to
register to vote in~th« Huvw^er^lectioa. This would not be as
dltficult if it didn't take so long^ro^ljring new employees on
board.
I aa writing to notify you that it fflight b« necessary to order some
employees to work overtime. This is an action I have never taken
previously and would like to avoid, if possible. I aa open to
suggestions the Onion may have to avoid ordering employees to work
overtime.
We will be expected to keep our naturalisation program open six
days per we«k until we have net our goal. We have three groups of
employees to consider:
1. DAO's - The Adjudicators will be expected to work six days
per week. Five days will be devoted to Interviews and one day for
review. Any DAG who calls in sick on his review day tnore than once
may face a leave restriction and be required to obtain a doctor's
certification for additional sick leave.'
2. Application Clerks - The Application Clerks will be busy
but are not individually indispensable as the DAO's are. I hope
that overtime can be worked on a volunteer basis. We may be able
to reduce the need for overtime by hiring students to work this
summer. I expect that any Application Clerk that wants to work
overtime will be able to work as often as she wants to. I do not
plan to hire students to keep from paying overtime. The idea is to
get the work done without having to order unwilling employees to
work overtime.
3. Records Clerks - The records clerka will be busy assisting
witb Citizenship DBA (CT7SA) and unlimited overtime may b« available
for them. I hope to be able to hire enough temporary help to
eliminate any need to order these employees to work overtime.
1-022940
83
I do not plan oa denying annual laav* to anyon* who ha* approved
leava between now and September 30th. I do expect the employees to
^cooperate as much as possible. I welcome input from the Union and
hope to be able to accommodate the desires of those employees who
want the additional money along with the desires of employees who
for personal reasons need more time away from work.
Sincerely,
Don L. Riding
Officer in Charge
Fresno Suboffice
1-022941
84
Mr. Mica. Mr. Chairman, I have another unanimous consent re-
quest.
I have a number of questions that we have not gotten into this
afternoon, but I would Uke to get some answers from INS. I ask
unanimous consent that they be submitted to the witnesses and
then be included as part of the record.
Mr. SOUDER. Without objection, so ordered.
I conclude, Mr. Aleinikoff, with a question that some of the
memos that Mr. Mica read to you were from, I think, two of the
three people in charge of Citizenship USA in Chicago, yet you
seemed surprised to see those.
Mr. Aleinikoff. I am not sure which you mean, sir. I don't be-
lieve they were from people in charge of Citizenship USA in Chi-
cago. The letter from Mr. Soliz — he is a private citizen; he is not
associated with the Immigration Service.
Mr. SoUDER. You are saying that you haven't seen — ^you were not
aware of these types of exchanges taking place, even though
Mr. Aleinikoff. I had not seen the letter from you, no, the e-
mail from Diefenbach or the memo here, which is not signed, from
Don Riding, prior to the production of documents for the commit-
tee. I had seen the Farbrother memo and the Sale memo and, you
know, expressed my opposition to it.
Mr. SouDER. Your testimony was that you were not aware of any
political pressure coming from this administration to try to speed
up the process?
Mr. Aleinikoff. Correct.
Mr. SouDER. With that, and if you have additional things to sub-
mit to the record, we will leave the record open for at least 3 days,
possibly a little longer, to get all of the materials. We thank you
for coming today, and with that, the subcommittee stands ad-
journed.
[Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
OVERSIGHT OF IMMIGRATION AND NATU-
RALIZATION SERVICE PROGRAM CITIZEN-
SHIP USA
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1996
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, International
Affairs, and Criminal Justice,
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:05 p.m., in room
311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Mark E. Souder (member
of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Ehrlich, Ros-Lehtinen, Mica, Souder,
Shadegg, and Thurman.
Also present: Representative Hastert and Becerra.
Staff present: Robert Charles, staff director and chief counsel;
Jim Wilon, defense counsel; Andrew G. Richardson, professional
staff member; lanthe Saylor, clerk; and Cherri Branson and Dan
Hernandez, minority professional staff.
Mr. Souder. Good afternoon. Thank you for coming.
The subcommittee will come to order.
This is the second hearing in the subcommittee's investigation
into irregularities in the process of naturalizing new citizens. This
hearing will focus specifically on the "Citizenship USA" program,
which is expected to grant American citizenship to a record 1.3 mil-
lion applicants during this fiscal year, triple last year's total of
450,000 naturalizations.
I believe we all agree that America welcomes all immigrants who
work hard to play by the rules, and come legally to our country to
join their families or contribute to our society.
I would like to submit for the record at this point, an article that
I wrote with Congressman Chris Smith that was published in the
Washington Times, March 20, 1996, on the importance of protect-
ing legal immigrants in our immigration bill.
[The information referred to follows:]
(85)
86
but protect legal immigrants
\ By Chris Smith and
t Mark Souder
5 A s Republican congressmei
ZA who came to Washington plan-
1 -i- \ing to do battle against high
i taxes, wasteful spending, the culture
of abortion and pornography, and
pervasive government regulation,
we were surprised to learn that the
real enemy, according to some, is
legal immigrants.
Back when we were learning how
to be consei-vative Republicans, you
did not have to be against immigrants,
and you were supposed to be in favor
of refugees. When the Immigration
and Naturalization Service wanted to
send 12-year-old Walter Polovchak
back to the Soviet Union, and when
U.S. agents dumped defectors Simas
Kudirkas and Jaroslav Medvid back
onto the ships from which they had
escaped, it was conservatives who
were most outraged.
Ronald Reagan said it best: "Who
but a Divine Providence could have
placed this nation here, a beacon of
hope to those oppressed behind the
Iron Curtain, or starving in Africa.
the boat people of Vietnam. Cuba
and Haiti — this new Jerusalem.
thisshiiUBg Ciry on a Hill." — =-
•-s"TraTegal immigrant sentiment
(among conservanves is sometimes
I assumed to be based soleiy on free-
I market economic principles. But this
lis not the only reason, or even the
I most imponant. .-^s pro-family con-
ien.-aDves. we are deeply suspicious
of laws that have unnecessarily
harsh impact on families. Many of us
'are also motivated by love and
respect for our immigrant parents or
grandparents, and by the teaching of
Jesus Christ that we are all brothers
and sisters. What we do unto the
\least of our brethren, we do unto
Him.
I This does not mean that everyone
' Rep. Chns Smith is a New Jersey
Republican, and Rep. Mark Souder
is an Indiana Republican.
\n the world can come hve n the/
' United States. Particuiarl/ when it \
comes to illegal immig/'ants, the
American tradition of generosity is
/tempered by commitment to fair-
'oesyan orderly procedures.
rius weeK tne tiouie wiITbe vot-
ing on H.R. 2202, the "Immigration
in the National Interest Act." Most
provisions of the bill are about
strengthetung enforcement against
illegal immigration. It would add
1,000 border patrol agents, make it
easier to deport criminal aliens and
raise penalties against alien smiig-
gling and document fraud. It would
also prohibit the use of temporary
foreign employees to replace laid-off
American workers, and facilitate the
deportation of aliens whose receipt
of welfare benefits cause them to be
classified as a "public charge." These
provisions will have the overwhelm-
ing support of conservatives.
We hope, however, to delete other
provisions that are just too rough on
refugees and legal immigrants:
• ■ The bill would eliminate the
small number of vTsas now allocat-
ed tor Prolhers and sisters of U.S.
citizens. Ic would also effectively
proTuHirmost ciazens from spon-
soring their parents. But the harsh-
-est provision of all would cut off eli-
giDiiity for so-called "adult
children" unless rhey can meet a
series of new rests, including eco-
nomic dependency". Ironically, sup-
porters of the bill justify these
restrictions by suggesting that we
somehow protect the "nuclear"
family by e.xcluding other relatives.
Most Amencans would be surprised
by 5 law that says if your 21 -year-old
daughter gets a job. she is no longer
a member of your nuclear family
and can never live with you again.
■ The bill would also virtually
eliminate the attorney general's
powerfouse"humariiranan pamlp"
Mdstcongressional offices have had
to deal with cases m which an Amer-
ican family has adopted an orphan
overseas, or wishes to sponsor a rel-
ative to care for a sick family mem-
ber — only to run up agSinst a brick
wall of a hypenechnical ruling from
an immigranon official. We hope to
preserve the current law which
allows the attorney general to admit
people temporarily in these com-
pelling cases. (Many Cuban and
Viemamese refugees have also been
permitted to come to the United
States under the parole power)
. ■ We hope also to delete a orovi-
sion thafWould dramaticaily cut the
nunitreriirr&rugees vvho can be
adnuLieU uliu the-tJmteffStates. The
new statutwy cap for refugees
would be 50,000 — less than half the
number we admitted in fiscal 1995.
This may sound like a fairly high
number, but even at their current !
levels, refugees are only about 8 j
percent U.S. immigrants. The cut
would hurt people who are in trou-
ble because they share our values; '
"old soldiers" and religious i
refugees from Viemam.. Chnstians I
and Jews from extremist regimes in ]
the Middle East. Chinese women i
who have fled forced abortion, and j
those who have escaped the tyxan- i
ny of Fidel Castro. |
■ Finally, we hope to delete a lit- j
tle-noliced pi^vision whereby |
almcsrau categories of iinmigration !
woul2~"sunse::' — uhat is. go to zero
— if Congress did not pass a new law |
within eight years. In practical i
terms this means that if "Jie bill j
passes as currentiy written, a hand- i
ful of determined ann-immigration I
senators could end most legal immi- j
gration. No family-based immi- ;
grants e.xcept spouses and minor i
children. No employment-based
immigrants. No humanitarian
immigrants. No refugees.
Tradinonal .-Xmencan values do
not mandate any particular level of
immigration, but they neither do they
condone a new American culture
based on ethmc identity or popula-
tion-control ideology, as opposed to
ideas and hard v/orW. We are moral-
ly obliged to reject measures so harsh
that they seem to regard the only
good Samaritan as a dead Samaritan.
l-TnT:^/ fn fiv l-iPalfVi incufonno
87
Mr. SOUDER. I want to read a couple of comments with it, be-
cause it could easily be misconstrued in a hearing like this that our
focus is against legal immigrants, when the focus is more on the
process.
What I had in this article was: Prolegal immigrant sentiment is
sometimes assumed to be based solely on free market economic
principles, but this is not the only reasoning or even the most im-
portant. As pro-family conservatives, we are deeply suspicious of
laws that have unnecessarily harsh impact on families. Many of us
are also motivated by love and respect for immigrant parents or
grandparents and by the teachings of Jesus Christ that we are all
brothers and sisters. "What we do unto the least of our brethren,
we do unto him."
This does not mean that everyone in the world can come to live
in the United States. Particularly when it comes to illegal immi-
grants, the American tradition of generosity is tempered by the
commitment to fairness, to an orderly procedure — and then we
argue for four different things that we wanted changed in the bill,
which we, for the most part, achieved to help protect legal immi-
grants.
I wanted to say that to establish upfront that I am not one who
has a past record or current record of criticizing legal immigration
into the United States and have in fact tried to amend some of the
bills that we have had go through here. But we also should all
agree that the Federal Government has an obligation to ensure
that every naturalized citizen meets every legal requirement for
citizenship.
Our investigation has so far uncovered disturbing evidence sug-
gesting that this is not the case in the "Citizenship USA" program.
The administration's push appears to have stretched the natu-
ralization process past its breaking point.
In our first hearing, we learned that the Immigration and Natu-
ralization Service allowed NAS, a driving school, with no previous
expertise in testing for English and civics, to become the largest
outside contractor administering these tests to naturalization can-
didates and continued to rely on it despite numerous reports of se-
rious testing fraud.
These included testimony that NAS routinely gave passing
grades to applicants who obviously could not speak English, and
media footage showing its employees giving applicants the correct
answers during the test to questions that they had gotten wrong.
I agree fully with many of our colleagues that such testing fraud
cheapens American citizenship and the legitimacy of the process for
the countless new citizens who observed and complied with every
requirement.
At that hearing, the INS acknowledged that it should have exer-
cised greater oversight and announced tightened procedures at our
hearing. It also claimed that testing fraud alone could not have ad-
mitted ineligible applicants because each one also had to undergo
screening by the INS.
Today's hearing is to gather evidence to determine whether those
protections have similarly been undermined by the Clinton admin-
istration's rush to naturalize new citizens.
88
The subcommittee's investigation suggests that the administra-
tion and INS management is putting employees under extreme
pressure to handle crushing numbers of naturalization applicants.
We have also discovered that much of this critical work is being
conducted by temporary employees hired so quickly that they did
not receive the usual job training or background investigation.
As a result, examiners are unable to effectively screen for such
requirements as English language knowledge, good moral char-
acter, payment of taxes, and the ability of immigrants to support
themselves. We know of numerous instances where the INS natu-
ralized convicted felons because it believed that moving applica-
tions was more important than doing thorough checks.
Moreover, the program has stripped INS employees from other
duties, and forced INS employees to repeatedly work long hours of
mandatory overtime, including evenings and weekends. Naturaliza-
tion ceremonies have become so large that control over thousands
of green cards and naturalization certificates has been lost, leaving
significant potential for fraud and lucrative sales on the black mar-
ket.
The administration has taken the position that the Citizenship
USA program is a response to a growing backlog of citizenship ap-
plications, scheduled coincidentally to end September 30, 1996. It
is certainly true that the INS has faced a growing number of citi-
zenship applications in recent years. However, documents and in-
formation provided by the INS show that it has worked hard to
double its own backlog. With the help of numerous "community-
based organizations," INS "outreach" activities generated as many
as 700,000 applications during the past year. In addition, the INS
has changed the way it calculates its backlog to increase it by
100,000 to 200,000 applications.
Why would the INS do such a thing? Disturbingly, the evidence
suggests that the naturalization push may have resulted from di-
rect orders of the White House to naturalize new citizens to reg-
ister them as Democratic voters for the upcoming elections.
Chicago Alderman Daniel Solis, one of the key players in the
Citizenship USA program, candidly wrote to First Lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton that it would "provide the Democrats with a stra-
tegic advantage" and that "the people stuck in Chicago's natu-
ralization bottleneck represent thousands of potential voters."
Solis later bragged to the media that he had personally raised
the issue with President Clinton, who directed him to contact high-
level White House officials Harold Ickes and Rahm Emmanuel
about the initiative.
Similarly, the Vice President's Office demonstrated the adminis-
tration's continued high-level interest in the program after its be-
ginning through repeated communications and oversight. Further
evidence demonstrates that the votes of the new citizens were
made a priority through increased and unusual emphasis on voting
during naturalization ceremonies, as well as that outside groups
improperly conducted voter registration activities on the premises
of naturalization events.
I would like to thank Chairman dinger and Subcommittee
Chairman Zeliff for their personal interest in and support for this
89
important investigation, and I look forward to continuing it with
the subcommittee.
I now recognize the ranking member, Mrs. Thurman of Florida,
for her opening statement.
Mrs. Thurman. Thank you. I hope you will bear with me. I have
caught a cold somewhere along the line.
Mr. Chairman, before I comment on the substance of today's
hearings, I want to express a little bit of disappointment at the
process being used by the subcommittee's majority. In the past the
chairman of the subcommittee and I have tried to work together,
but a number of events have occurred to show that courtesy no
longer is extended to the minority.
Let me cite one recent example. Last Friday evening, I was sent
Chairman ZelifP s letter to the INS Commissioner's request for ad-
ditional witnesses at today's hearing. That letter said in part, "The
subcommittee has already deliberated on the issue of which wit-
nesses it wishes to call," and that it would not hear additional wit-
nesses.
I do not know to which subcommittee the letter was referred. I
certainly was not part of any deliberation. I had no input on wit-
nesses. I was not involved in any decision about the scope of to-
day's hearing. In addition, I asked for copies of all correspondence
between the majority and today's witnesses. I should not have to
request this information. It should be given to this side out of com-
mon courtesy.
This is not the first time at the House committee — that this ac-
tion has happened before. In my first 2 years in Congress, this
committee sought to implement its oversight mandate in a respon-
sible, fair manner.
Mr. Chairman, I have to tell you, and I hope that these words
will be remembered no matter who is in power in the next 105th
Congress, and I hope that I never have to eat these, because I
would hope that if I were ever sitting in your chair that I would
extend the courtesy that I am asking of you today.
Now, I want to discuss the substance of these hearings. The nat-
uralization law is quite explicit. Only qualified applicants should be
granted citizenship into the United States. Any person who under-
mines or attempts to circumvent the law should be punished.
Second, naturalization applications have not been processed in a
timely manner in the past. In 1991, during the Bush administra-
tion, GAO found that INS failed to process applications within
INS's own. 4-month timeframe. By 1994, GAO found that 80 per-
cent of the applicants were processed in 4 months in several cities.
However, the process took 7 to 10 months.
Third, beginning in 1994, INS experienced a growing number of
applicants as aliens legalized by the 1986 immigration law became
eligible for naturalization. By 1995, the number of applicants rose
from an average of 300,000 to more than 1 million annually.
Fourth, in November 1995, INS requested and the Appropria-
tions Committee of the 104th Congress approved a reprogramming
of funds for Citizenship USA to relieve the backlog of increasing
staffing and other resources. INS focused on the five cities that
were suffering the most severe backlogs where waiting times had
increased to more than 6 months.
90
Finally, the majority alleges in its background memo that the
INS has procured certain left-wing, community-based organizations
to conduct educational and outreach programs. Congress instructed
INS to use community-based groups to provide immigrants with
services that INS cannot provide.
In addition. Congress did not impose a political litmus test on
those organizations, which, I might add, included the Daughters of
the American Revolution, the League of Women Voters, Jewish
Family Services, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and
the Polish-American Congress. I just wanted to get those items into
the record.
I have seen the newspaper articles that allege improper activities
within INS. Let me reiterate, I do not endorse circumventing the
law. Only qualified applicants should become naturalized citizens.
Citizenship is not something that is given as a right. It is earned.
Cheating cannot be condoned, but from the testimony we will
hear, many people will conclude that all Citizenship USA appli-
cants were not qualified. I find this implausible, but the sub-
committee will not get a chance to hear other views.
I fear that a politicized investigation will do more harm than
good in the long run. If there is a problem, then we should be hear-
ing from officials who can correct that problem. Instead the sub-
committee again will hear only from those that the majority wants
to hear.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SOUDER. I want to thank the ranking member.
I want to say briefly that we have worked together for the most
part through this past year, and I am sorry for any misunderstand-
ing with this hearing. Mr. Aleinikoff did testify at the last hearing,
and I thought gave very good testimony, with new programs that
he is going to implement after this hearing is over.
The witnesses today asked for their correspondence to be con-
fidential. We have to figure out how we are going to work through
that in the future when we run into this type of situation. This is
a little bit different type of a hearing, because, in effect, they are
here under subpoena, they are here in a whistle-blowing capacity,
we want to make sure there is not an intimidation effect of the
higher-ups of the people who are coming forth today on the first
two panels.
On the third panel there are a number of questions we want to
ask. We intend to have future hearings, and you are right; if, in-
deed, fraud is uncovered here on a massive scale, then we do need
to have the district directors in to clarify what happened and put
it into context, but it is very difficult to do all those things in one
hearing, and that is why we are having a series of hearings.
Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Souder, on the confidentiality issue, I am not
going to break confidentiality of any one of our witnesses, so I
think that might be kind of a lame excuse. We have dealt with sen-
sitive material throughout this Congress over and over again, and
it would seem to me on the side of being able to best facilitate a
hearing such as this for us to have all that same information.
It makes it very difficult when you only have half of the story
or what has been asked or what has been requested. In all fairness,
I take this job very seriously as one who is trying to make govern-
91
ment more efficient, more effective and certainly one who would
bring any question of improprieties to this Congress.
I think that is a very serious matter, and I would be on your side
if in fact that were what was happening here. That is how I feel
about those kinds of things we need to go on.
Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. I thank you for your concerns.
Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Today we are here to listen to testimony that will outline a natu-
ralization program that is basically out of control. We had the op-
portunity to hear at our last hearing on this issue individuals who
testified that the program now is designed to ignore laws and ig-
nore regulations. In fact, the process now seems hell-bent on sign-
ing up immigrants for two purposes: one, to vote and possibly tilt
our elections process; and second to, the rush and qualify these im-
migrants for benefits as we change our current welfare require-
ments.
I think that it is quite disturbing to subvert both the political
process and the social benefits that are provided to citizens of this
country, especially under the laws that we are trying to change and
improve here. My State of Florida has been devastated in fact by
the impact of the ever-changing Clinton administration naturaliza-
tion and immigration policy du jour, as we call it, a new policy
every day; just like changing the soup on a menu, they changed the
immigration policy.
Now we are going to hear testimony again that should shock
every Floridian and every citizen. My State, in fact, has seen the
impact of these deluges of illegal, and I call them semilegal, immi-
grants in Florida. Our hospitals and jails and schools are filled to
capacity, and our social services taxed and impacted.
INS, obviously, is an agency that is in disarray. It disturbs me
that INS may not know the difference between truth and law and
may not know the difference between the directives and the law es-
tablished by this Congress. Today's witnesses will confirm our
worst suspicions about INS and our national immigration policy,
which in fact I believe are both out of control.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing, and I yield
back the balance of my time.
Mr. SouDER. Thank you very much.
Our first two panels are composed of Immigration and Natu-
ralization Service line employees from across the country, who have
seen firsthand the effects that the Citizenship USA program has
had in the proper management of the naturalization process.
The first panel includes four employees from Chicago, Mr. Thom-
as Conklin; Ms. Diane Dobberfuhl, Ms. Ethel Ware; and Ms. Joyce
Woods.
Could you please come forward at this time, and we will swear
you in.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. SouDER. Let the record show that the witnesses responded
in the affirmative.
First, did I have everyone's name correct?
92
Do any of you wish to make a statement, any comments on the
record at the beginning?
STATEMENTS OF THOMAS CONKLIN, DEPORTATIONS, CHI-
CAGO INS; DIANE DOBBERFUHL, ADJUDICATIONS, CHICAGO
INS; ETHEL WARE, ADJUDICATIONS, CHICAGO INS; AND
JOYCE WOODS, ADJUDICATIONS, CHICAGO INS
Mr. CONKLIN. We would hke to thank you for inviting us here
so that we can get to the truth on what is actually happening in
the field. We have a little statement that we came up with.
Dear members of the committee: We are before you today be-
cause we have the responsibility to ensure that the oath that we
all took as servants to this country is upheld. We could no longer
stand by and watch as the citizenship process began to diminish
the greatest benefit this country can offer; that is the gift of citizen-
ship.
Basically that is it.
Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for coming.
I talked to Congresswoman Thurman and I want to ask a couple
of questions at the beginning before we start our normal 5-minute
rule, to get into the record what you do and what your job entails.
Ms. Dobberfuhl and Ms. Ware and Ms. Woods are Adjudications
Officers; is that correct?
Ms. Ware. Yes.
Ms. Dobberfuhl. Yes.
Mr. Souder. And Mr. Conklin, you are currently in Deportations.
Had you worked in Adjudications as well?
Mr. Conklin. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. Could you tell us, each of you, how long you have
worked for the INS and how much of that time you have worked
in examinations?
Mr. Conklin. I have worked at INS since December 1982, and
all of it was in Examinations until April of this year.
Ms. Dobberfuhl. I started with the Immigration Service No-
vember 1992. I worked in Adjudications the whole time. I have
been in Citizenship since February 1995.
Ms. Woods. I have worked with INS since September 1992. I
worked in the Citizenship branch since March 1993, I believe.
Ms. Ware. I began with Immigration on November 28, 1977. I
began as an entry-level clerk and I am now a District Office Adju-
dicator. I have held almost every low-grade job. I have worked my-
self up the line to where I am now. Right now, I am serving as the
Legalization Officer in Chicago.
I worked in Citizenship for approximately 1 year. I have been a
District Office Adjudicator for that long.
Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Could you tell us briefly what an examiner looks for
when interviewing a naturalization applicant? Do you look for abil-
ity to speak English, financial support, FBI fingerprint?
We will start with Ms. Ware and go down as to what you do and
describe your job a bit?
Ms. Ware. As Citizenship Officers, we look for eligibility, mean-
ing whether or not they meet the residency requirement, whether
93
or not they have had their green card for the period of time re-
quired, whether or not they can speak, read or write and under-
stand EngUsh, whether or not they have good moral character. Ba-
sically, that is all I remember right now.
I am sorry. That is basically what it is. We review the applica-
tions; we send out the fingerprints; we take photos, proper photos
and that is basically it.
Mr. SOUDER. Do any others have comments on your day-to-day
job?
Ms. Woods. I could comment initially about what happens before
we interview them, briefly. The applicant submits fingerprints, a
completed application, 2 photos, a copy of their alien registration
card and the proper fee. These fingerprints could be actually any-
body's fingerprints per se, because they are not done by the INS.
With the fees and everything, it should be a minimum of 60 days
before we ever interview anybody because we have FBI checks.
If the FBI doesn't send us back a hit within 60 days, then we
have to assume that that person does not have a criminal record,
unless we would otherwise suspect that. So we have a lot of prob-
lems with fingerprints. We will get to that later.
Mr. SouDER. Are all the naturalization interviews for Citizenship
USA programs being coordinated by regular INS examiners or have
you added others to the process?
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. We have both permanent officers and tem-
porary officers. At last count, I believe we have 43 officers total, 12
of which are permanent, leaving 31 as temporaries. We have also
had some officers from other offices on detail to our office, that
could be from 3 to 10 at a time all working on the Citizenship USA
program. Some are doing support work, some are doing interviews,
testing, getting the files ready, calling in the applicants. We are all
working on the process.
I would like to expand on what Ms. Ware said as far as what we
are looking for. Child support, if that is an issue. As Ms. Woods
said, fingerprints and arrests, if they have any arrest history, we
need to look into that as well. Selective Service is an issue with
males born within the required time period, and any breaks in em-
ployment also.
Mr. SouDER. At this point, what we normally do is go to 5 min-
utes per side on questioning, and we will be pretty generous today
because we may go back and forth to make sure we get the ques-
tions in the record.
I will start my regular questioning at this point.
Let me start. If I understood, Ms. Dobberfuhl, you said that there
were 12 permanent and, in effect, 31 temporaries. Do you believe
that temporary workers do an effective job in the naturalization ap-
plicants as interviews, and if not, why not? Why is there a sudden
influx and what does that do to the process?
Ms. Dobberfuhl. They are trying very hard. They are doing the
best they can with what they are given. Right now the training —
it is not what was regulated, from my understanding. I am not in-
volved in the training, but they are supposed to have a 40-hour
training class.
Right now the new officers are sitting with a training officer for
approximately 2 days and maybe observing another officer do inter-
39-435 97 - 4
94
views, and then I believe they are on their own. So given the short
amount of time to gather all the knowledge and what to look for
during an interview and study of the law, they don't have the
amount of time needed that all the permanent officers had.
Mr. SOUDER. Could each of you react to this statement? Those of
you who worked your way up the system, your orientation has been
detail, make sure people are qualified to be a citizen and go
through all that process. Is there a different type of mental atti-
tude among the temporaries, is there some kind of a "this is a
push, we got to move people through" and less concern about the
details than those of you who have been there for many years?
Ms. Ware. Well, I would say yes. They know that they have to
approve, approve, approve. That is the only thing they can do, be-
cause they don't know all the grounds on which to deny. I for one,
I was only there for a year. I continued, I denied. I was taken out
of my booth and a temporary officer put there to do what I was
doing and I was doing other menial jobs. This was when I was in
CUSA.
Right now I am a legalization officer. I don't feel that they have
had enough training. We have had to go to school down to Glynco,
GA, to acquire the training to be an officer.
I feel that instead of going out getting new people who have no
prior immigration experience to do citizenship, is not right. We do
have qualified people, for instance, the information officers who
could have been detailed into those positions, who could have done
a better job, I feel, than the temporary officers.
Mr. SoUDER. Could some of the others of you comment?
Mr. CONKLIN. I would like to expand on that, if I could.
In August 1995, I became the training officer for citizenship.
When I got into Citizenship, we were trained the way things were
always done. We didn't like that, we, the examiners that were
there, we took it upon ourselves to read the law books.
We turned Citizenship the way it was supposed to be. It took us
2^2 years to get Citizenship running properly. Everybody knew the
sections, law, and you knew what to look for to do an application.
You had a very short time, maybe 10 or 12 minutes to do an inter-
view. That is a short amount of time to go over all the areas, espe-
cially like good moral character, which was mentioned earlier, that
encompasses all kinds of things; arrests, child support, student
loans, selective service. All that accompanies good moral character.
Then you have all the other sections to look for. I was called to
Washington as part of a group to establish a training program for
Citizenship USA. There were six of us there, five from the district
offices, and one person from Glynco, GA. We came up with a train-
ing program that was 40-hours long, consisting of all the security
training, ethics, professionalism, the N-400 adjudications and safe-
ty, all those things were encompassed, history of the INS, were in
the 40 hours.
After the 40-hour training program a temp officer or a new offi-
cer coming into the Service into your district would go through this
program, and they should have the basics down. They were sup-
posed to sit with qualified officers for another week to see how the
interviews went. Then you could see how people reacted.
95
You sat with a couple of different people and you could pick up
what points you like best and what points you might not like about
the way people question, and things like that. The end of March,
the Chicago district had its first training class consisting of eight
temp officers and approximately six or eight of our new permanent
officers were in the class.
I taught it with another officer named Steve Tanda and Stacy
Summers. Stacy Summers backed us up if one of us couldn't be
there. We went through the first training program.
Everything went well; those officers. For the first day, 2 days,
they sat with the people they were supposed to, and then there
were other details they had to do, putting files together and that
stuff, because that is always a priority. If you don't have the file,
then you can't do the application, you can't do the interview effec-
tively.
After I left April 1st, I went into Deportation. There has not been
another class taught in the Chicago district. Three weeks after I
went into Deportation, I went back and talked to the supervisor
and asked her when are you going to have the next class, just let
me know, I will talk to my supervisor about coming back and help-
ing. There was never another one taught.
The current procedure now, Mr. Tanda at best gets 2 days, most
of the time about 1, 1.5 days, to try to go over everything that a
person needs to do to do an N-400 application. After he instructs
them on this, they sit with another temp officer, most of the time
which just went through the same process, to watch how they do
an interview.
The temps that they are watching didn't get the complete train-
ing so they don't have an idea of what they are doing fully but they
are training a new temp officer. So when he sits there to do it, he
has even less idea of what the law actually says. They don't have
time to get into the law book and read the law books. Most of the
temp officers their main priority is if I do a good job, I do what
they want me to do, I will get a full-time job.
Mr. SOUDER. Mrs. Thurman.
Mrs. Thurman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am going to first ask you a couple of questions that probably
require just a yes or no, and I would like you all to answer them.
Are you here voluntarily?
Mr. CONKLIN. Yes.
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. Yes.
Ms. Woods. Yes.
Ms. Ware. Yes.
Mrs. Thurman. Do you fear any kind of retaliation from being
here, and at any time were you offered to come into a closed hear-
ing without the press? Do you feel that there will be any retaliation
against any of you for testifying before this committee?
Ms. Woods. It is possible.
Ms. Ware. Yes.
Mrs. Thurman. Have you written to this committee about Citi-
zenship USA and have you discussed any letter with majority staff
prior to your appearance here today?
Ms. Ware. I have not written.
Ms. Woods. I have not written.
96
Mr. CONKLIN. No.
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. No.
Mrs. Thurman. This goes into more substantive questions, let me
ask you, how long did you work with the Citizenship USA pro-
gram?
Mr. CONKLIN. From the beginning of it up through April of this
year.
Ms. DoBBERFUHL. I was also from the inception until the
present.
Ms. Woods. The same as Ms. Dobberfuhl.
Ms. Ware. I have had 1 year recently, but was detailed into posi-
tions several times.
Mrs. Thurman. When you say recently, when was that?
Ms. Ware. I was detailed about three times in 1992.
Mrs. Thurman. So you have not been involved with the program
since 1992?
Ms. Ware. Yes, ma'am. I was involved 1 year from 1995 to Au-
gust of this year.
Mrs. Thurman. In your jobs, if you have particular grievances
with the way in which the program has been operated, can you tell
me to whom did you report those grievances to and what was done
to address them?
Ms. Woods. A big concern is criminal histories, and I have re-
ported that to the person who is the supervisor of Citizenship, and
I was told in particular situations that it wasn't a priority because
they have these numbers to fulfill. That is not what she said, but
that was inferred.
Mrs. Thurman. So that is not what was said, it was inferred?
Ms. Woods. Yes.
Ms. Ware. I reported that when we go to the outreaches and we
accept these school letters, these ETS letters and NAS letters, that
the people are not able to speak English. I have denied some who
have had those letters. I was told not to deny, but to just bring the
letter back to the supervisor, and I did so. Where it went from
there, I don't know.
Ms. Dobberfuhl. I also have brought some concerns to the su-
pervisors, the temporary supervisors as well as the permanent su-
pervisor with regard to some of the outreach problems we have had
when we are offsite. Also with regard to cheating in the testing
room. It doesn't really seem to be a big concern to them. Depending
on what the situation is, they say they will check into it, they will
get back to me.
As far as cheating, before the program started people caught
cheating during the exam or with notes in their purse, or whatever
the case was, we would deny them for 5 years, which is the penalty
under good moral character. Now if we catch anyone cheating, we
give them a denial letter and they can reapply the next day.
Mr. CONKLIN. I expressed many concerns to the supervisor. I
talked to the supervisor on an average of four times a week about
different things that were coming up with the Citizenship USA pro-
gram. I was always given a response that she will check into it or
it is a good point and she will bring it up, but things never
changed.
97
For instance, the cheating was one of them. When they changed
that to get rid of the 5-year bar, I was given the response that,
well, myself and the higher echelons discussed it and they couldn't
see where it would be a 5-year bar. It is hard to prove 5 years of
good moral character when you just cheated. Common sense would
say you just cheated, so 5 years would be 5 years from now. But
they didn't look at it that way.
They said, well, 5 years, I guess you still have good moral char-
acter. We caught you cheating. But on the other hand, the same
service if they catch me cheating down in Gljoico, GA, I lose my
job. If it is bad enough for me to lose my job, why wouldn't it be
worse for somebody who is about to become a citizen of the United
States, which is supposed to be the ultimate gift.
Mrs. Thurman. What problems have you had in working with
community-based groups in your areas?
Ms. Woods. In particular one organization, Hispanic organiza-
tion that we work with very closely, the liaison there interferes a
lot with the officers. He will question the officer's decisions, he will
question the documents the officer asks for.
In particular about 3 weeks ago, he came up to me and said, I
don't trust her. She just asked him for a driving record. I don't
think she needs that.
I said, you know I would never second-guess another officer. Be-
sides, if they didn't have a license, that is a very valid thing to ask
for. In fact, there were officers doing testing procedures, and he
would be standing over them questioning what they were doing,
and if he didn't like what was going on, he would call our perma-
nent supervisor right in front of the officer, and because that par-
ticular person is so close with our supervisor, it was extremely in-
timidating to these officers. It has not just happened to one or two,
but I have heard complaints from at least four or five.
Mr. CONKLIN. I would like to expand on that. I was at an out-
reach center, we have one named HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant
Aid Society. We take turns being captains. They pick an outreach
team and then one person is made a captain. You are responsible
for all the liaison between the Service and the outreach group, and
to make sure all the files are there.
Two times in a row I went to HIAS, there was one officer in par-
ticular that HIAS did not like that officer, so every time she had
a case that was not granted, they would come to me and say, why
isn't she granting these? You need to grant these cases.
I would just tell them that I would look into it and report them
to my supervisor and then she could take it in there. The officer
that was involved was immediately taken off outreach. She was no
longer allowed to go to outreach because HIAS had complained.
We had another officer when they got the rating, one of the out-
reach groups had complained and her rating was downgraded. The
only thing that was negative in the rating was that there was a
complaint from one outreach group. It doesn't matter how many
good letters you get, you are not going to make everybody happy
all the time.
Outreach groups are basically there to try to get as many people
through as they can. They do not like when we do not pass some-
body, when we don't grant them that day, or if we are going to
98
deny them, they get upset, some take it personally that some of
their people are being denied, so they will try to harass us, the in-
dividual officer, whoever is the captain that day, or they will go
right to the supervisor: Why wasn't this person granted, why
wasn't this, why wasn't this?
Ms. DoBBERFUHL. Just to add, the pressure from a few of the
outreach groups is extremely high. For that one in particular, you
know they are pressuring you, constantly asking you questions:
Why wasn't this approved, why wasn't this a continued case? They
exhibit a lot of pressure on us to get the cases moved through.
Mr. SOUDER. I want to sort out a couple of points here.
Ms. Ware, earlier you said that you were in the post of Adjudica-
tion until August, and I thought you said the first round that they
pulled you off that and started giving you menial or less-skilled
tasks?
Ms. Ware. Yes.
Mr. SoUDER. Were you told why?
Ms. Ware. I wasn't told why, but I know I had a tremendous
amount of denials and continued cases.
Mr. Souder. What would be some examples of some denials, why
you turned some people down?
Ms. Ware. Arrest records, false testimony, some because of lack
of prosecution.
Mr. Souder. What kind of message do you think that sent to
other officers? You had been there, you had worked your way up
the system, you had been in the system for a long time, is it known
among the temporaries that you were moved off and that you were
a tough officer?
Ms. Ware. I can't say yes to that. I think so, but I can't say a
definite yes, that it is known to the other temps.
Mr. Souder. You mentioned that there were, there was one orga-
nization in particular where there was a close relationship with a
supervisor.
Ms. Woods. I said that.
Mr. Souder. Could you explain what you mean? Do you believe,
was it a personal relationship, was it a political relationship, what
do you mean by a close relationship with the supervisor?
Ms. Woods. Political. They worked together. UNO has been
working closely with Chicago INS. We don't have staff to do every-
thing so they have picked up a lot of things as volunteers. When
we have the hearing ceremonies, we have packets, and it has like
a passport application, a citizenship handbook, voters registration,
et cetera, they will do those little bags for us for the ceremonies
because we can't do them. We just don't have the staffi In addition,
we had a big ceremony in May where they were trying a new way
to do a big ceremony and we have learned from it. It was a big dis-
aster, but it still shouldn't allow UNO volunteers to be at our office
mailing out certificates.
Mr. Souder. Is that legal?
Ms. Woods. No. I don't think so.
Mr. Souder. But you were having to do it because they were try-
ing to accelerate it so much that it wasn't going to get done?
Ms. Woods. They were doing it. I was never asked what I
thought about it.
99
Mr. SOUDER. This person you said was present at the time. On
what grounds were they present when you were getting the infor-
mation out? Were they accompanying the person applying? The
person who would call and complain, were they there during the
process, or would they call after the denial?
Ms. Woods. In respect to the outreach, the liaison from UNO
would call right in front of the officer and complain about them.
Mr. SoUDER. What was the outreach person doing there?
Ms. Woods. I am talking about at the outreach centers doing the
interviews. I am saying after the ceremony when the ceremony
didn't go very smoothly, there were UNO volunteers in our office
actually mailing out secure citizenship certificates to people who
were at the ceremony, because we weren't able to do it.
Mr. SouDER. It is illegal but you were pressed so greatly that it
was happening,
I want to get into this intimidation question. You were at an out-
reach center and the outreach director would be there, and if you
denied somebody, he would call on the phone in your site to a su-
pervisor?
Ms. Woods. I personally didn't deny somebody. By law we are
not to tell them what the person's problem is. Sometimes they will
pry and try to ask, and I tell them we can't tell you this. This is
a privacy issue.
Let's say just in the testing procedures, he didn't like the one of-
ficer, she told him not to touch the files, because they are not sup-
posed to touch the files. But he was trying to be helpful, I guess,
and she told him not to touch the files, and he didn't like that she
said that because we are so short-handed.
They have had to help us so much that he feels more of a part
of the INS organization than maybe some of the INS people; I don't
know. So he felt compelled to put the files in order, pull appoint-
ment letters, stick them in the files, when they are not supposed
to be touching them. He didn't like her response to that.
She was getting it ready for testing and he is standing over her
observing her. She asked him what he was doing and he didn't
like — where you don't — he was questioning what she was doing
when she knew exactly what she was doing. He didn't like her ask-
ing him not to touch the files or not to be standing over her watch-
ing her, and he called the supervisor right in front of her. That
happened a couple of times. So it is not necessarily in the denial
situation.
However, if an officer were to ask for documents and he felt in
his estimation, even though he wasn't an officer that this wasn't
necessary, he could possibly complain to the supervisor. I have seen
him call the supervisor in front of the officer.
Mr. CONKLIN. I think the question you are asking is what hap-
pens is we will do an interview, the applicant will leave. We have
told them they are being denied, for whatever reason. As soon as
they go out, they talk to the outreach coordinator. Then the out-
reach coordinator will come back in to you: Why are they being de-
nied? We say they know. You can talk to them, but we can't tell
you why. Then while you are doing the next interview, they are
calling the supervisor and complaining that you didn't grant that
person.
100
I remember we were at an outreach once — this problem has been
going on for awhile. We have been working with outreach groups
before CUSA. Now the problem is increased with CUSA because
they want a lot more of these granted.
The outreach groups want a lot more granted. They think that
the more applications they put in, the more people they are going
to get granted. That is the way the outreach group looks at it.
Prior to CUSA, myself and Officer Woods were at the Cuban
Center, our district director was called, at the time, A.D. Moyer. He
questioned us on how many grants did we have that day, not how
many people we interviewed, how are things going, but how many
grants did we have that day. So Officer Woods had to count and
report to him how many grants each officer had and report to him
how many grants we had that day.
Ms. Woods. He asked me if more people were being denied than
normally or something unusual. We know that she called him be-
cause we could hear the phone ring, and there was no phone ring-
ing, and all of a sudden, she said, "Joyce, Mr. Moyer wants to talk
to you." I was totally shocked. I didn't know how to respond.
Mr. CONKLIN. Since CUSA, the outreach groups are working clos-
er together with the immediate supervisors. In fact, at one point
UNO had volunteers in the office putting applications and files to-
gether. Files definitely are not for public use, and they were there
with files in a room by themselves, putting applications in files.
Ms. Ware. That is what I wanted to say. I also want to say that
when we do go to outreach, we have a daily report sheet of our
work. That is for our supervisors, but we have to give them copies
of our tally sheet. To me — so if we denied anybody, there is another
way of harassing us, saying this officer is the one who did so.
Mr. SOUDER. I just want to say that — we are going to continue
to do questioning here — that I am outraged at the intimidation of
employees and the implications of that. Anybody who has ever
worked in a business situation can see exactly what is going on,
that when people who are over you send signals, it not only affects
you, but everybody else, particularly when you have 75 percent of
the employees being temporaries watching for that.
In any management system, you know what management is ask-
ing for is what you deliver and you start catering to those things.
I am outraged that they are putting this type of pressure on you
and also outraged that they expressed no outrage when you ex-
pressed your concerns earlier. From what I heard you say, nobody
said this is terrible. They had a benign effect on that and are in-
stead sending you the signal that it was a count.
Mrs. Thurman.
Mrs. Thurman. Let me ask that question.
When your supervisors were in fact contacted by the outreach,
were they supportive of what you were doing? You make it sound
like none of them ever supported you, that they overturned every-
thing you did. Is that true?
Did they overturn what you had suggested to an applicant, and
what in fact was from a supervisor's standpoint, did they only take
their side or did they seem to try to just contain the issue?
Ms. Woods. As reprehensible as it might sound, many times
they just listen to the one side; they don't ask us what happened.
101
Mrs. Thurman. Did they take any action or punishment toward
you or just Hsten?
Ms. Woods. For instance, for the one officer I gave the example
of where she was doing the testing and he called the supervisor.
He ended up talking to a temp supervisor who didn't get all upset
about it, but then he called the permanent supervisor, and I think
the next day she had a discussion with that particular officer and
told her that she needed to work better with him, et cetera. Many
times she doesn't even ask you what happened. She just makes an
opinion, I guess. I don't know what else, since she doesn't ask you.
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. I agree. I know of two instances in particular
where an outreach group has complained or questioned the way an
officer does something and you find out several weeks or so later,
and the officer is never informed. As Mr. Conklin said, the one out-
reach group where an officer was tougher than some other ones,
she was immediately taken off of going to that outreach group. The
officer was never told anything.
Mrs. Thurman. Was she reassigned?
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. Actually, she was on detail from our airport.
She was just out for 3 months helping us. She was kept in-house
to do in-house interviews instead of going on outreach.
Mr. Conklin. I don't know if it is the same in every district, but
I know in Chicago usually what happens is if somebody complains
about you, you are wrong until you prove yourself right. You will
be out in the field, you come in that day, they might say come in
and have a talk. You won't find out for 3 weeks, and then, all of
sudden, you had this problem and they have never heard your side,
but you were automatically wrong.
The files, when we bring them back, get put in different places
grants in one spot, continued in another, and denials, you keep
your own denials, if you have any. We used to keep them in our
office, continued stuff, and the file would disappear, been taken out
of your office and given to another officer to take care of. That hap-
pened numerous times.
When somebody had a complaint if an individual came in to com-
plain or an outreach group complained, that file would be given to
the supervisor or taken out of your office and you would never see
it again. The next thing you know, here is this person with a cer-
tificate at the ceremony.
Mrs. Thurman. You are saying that some of these applicants
might have gotten approval over your objections?
Mr. Conklin. Yes.
Mrs. Thurman. Is that true for all of you?
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. Yes.
Mrs. Thurman. Do you think it is rampant, or do you think you
are giving us just some of the situations? You have mentioned two
of the outreaches, but how many outreach areas are there within
Chicago?
Mr. Conklin. Personally, I would say it is pretty rampant. We
have another outreach group that I have complained at least 10
times myself about the group is cheating. They have an outreach
group, they also conduct the ETS testing.
We get the applicants in, they cannot speak a word of English.
There is no way they can read and write and pass a history govern-
102
ment test in English. They can't even tell you their name. We have
reported it.
One time the supervisor said, well, send a couple of people out
the day they do the testing. When the two officers got there, they
were waiting for them before they started the testing. Obviously,
they are not going to be doing anything underhanded because they
knew those two officers were going to be there. But it is a rampant
problem.
Mrs. Thurman. How many outreach centers are there?
Ms. DoBBERFUHL. I believe there are about 15.
Mrs. Thurman. Let me ask, do any of you or have you ever seen
anything in writing that directed INS personnel to ignore or cir-
cumvent naturalization laws or the regulations?
Mr. CONKLIN. When I brought up the fact that all the reading
and writing had to come out of the M-289 and 291, because that
is what 8 CFR says, our supervisor, Shirley Roberts, wrote a memo
saying that these textbooks on citizenship for English reading and
writing. In reviewing these textbooks, it is apparent that the mate-
rial contained in these books is above the elementary level and that
the elderly and/or applicants with limited education would rarely
succeed with such testing.
She said it has been the policy of the district office not to use
these, and we don't have to use them if we don't want to, but the
law says we shall use them, so we have to. I was in the military
for 10 years and in that time we learned "shall" means you have
to do this. This says we don't have to.
Mrs. Thurman. Does it give you an alternative?
Mr. CONKLIN. Yes. It says sentences used for testing shall take
into consideration all the factors and shall not be limited to the ex-
cerpts from these textbooks. They wanted us to use the sentences
that they used in the past — in fact, I have an example of the first
10 sentences.
Mrs. Thurman. What do you mean when you say in the past?
This is something that has gone on before?
Mr. CONKLIN. No. When I got into Citizenship they used sen-
tences like the sky is blue, the car is red. These are the type of sen-
tences that need to be used out of the books. Let me give you an
example.
A person may not be tried twice for the same crime. It is right
out of the books. I made 10 of them, and I gave this to the super-
visor, and after I gave this to supervisor that is when the memo
came out saying we don't have to use these sentences. We can use
the sky is blue, the car is red.
Mr. SOUDER. I ask unanimous consent that those be inserted in
the record.
I would like to go a little — I want to make a brief comment, be-
cause one of the things I was trying to draw out is that we are kind
of drawing out how frequent the problem is here, but in addition
when intimidation occurs a message gets sent and so you don't
know how frequent it would have been because intimidation moves
through the system and stifles the toughness that necessarily
would have been there. Would you agree with that statement?
In other words, at whatever level it was, it potentially has been
compromised substantially in the last year because of the push for
103
numbers, because of signals sent, because of intimidation of em-
ployees. By calling supervisors, word-of-mouth, this gets written up
if this happens and it may come back in your record. Those are
classic methods to change behavior. Would you agree that whatever
frequency would have been documented, it is probably a lot higher
but nobody wants to document it at this point?
Ms. Ware. Yes.
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. Yes.
Mr. SOUDER. Could you explain, about how many interviews per
examiner per day, and is there something called "community inter-
viewing" occurring at this point? Did you ever do it as mul-
tiples
Ms. Woods. Single. We test them en masse. If they pass the test,
then they go on to the interview. I personally, until I started on
this fingerprint project, I was working just the mornings, because
they put us into split shifts in the last 2 weeks. One day I did 14
interviews in 4 hours, something like that. I was talking to the
temps, and in their workday they were doing 20 to 30 interviews.
Mr. SouDER. What usually gets shortchanged when you speed up
that much? WTiat are the most likely things you are cutting out?
Ms. Woods. There are certain things that I would normally ask
for that maybe because they don't — we are given time to do the
interviews, but we are not given any time to foUowup on anything.
I was told, you may have to do overtime to do that. Then, of course,
that gets into denials. I am supposed to do denials, but I don't have
a computer. We went through one or two 8-hour days of training
on the new Windows 95, and then we were all given electric type-
writers. We were all appalled. Slowly a few people are getting com-
puters, but it is very difficult to be able to do anything without a
computer, denials, investigations, et cetera. So, of course, that
would discourage anybody from doing them.
Mr. SoUDER. I want to raise another subject. I think one of you
alluded to the Soldier Field, I think one of you said disaster. Could
you explain what that was? I have questions about it. Was that a
massive swearing in ceremony of how many people?
Ms. DoBBERFUHL. That ceremony took place August 6th of this
year, and I believe there were approximately 11,000 people sworn
in as citizens. They were sworn in en masse. For registration, what
happened was everybody had a designated area to report to as far
as seating based on their alien registration number so we could
keep everybody kind of in order. People would come in, they would
show us their oath invitation letter, we would make sure every-
thing was filled out and tell them to have a seat.
During the ceremony we were to take the letters into a back
room where they had support staff matching up the letters with
the certificates to be handed out after the ceremony. After the cere-
mony was over, we went into the stands to hand out certificates
row by row, which would have worked effectively had we had the
time and if we had most of the certificates ready to distribute.
I know in my section when we handed a certificate, we took the
alien registration card. It got so crazy toward the end that several
INS officers were just taking the box of certificates that hadn't
been sorted yet row by row, because we ran out of time. We were
trying to distribute them one at a time as people left their row.
104
which turned into a fiasco because everybody of course wanted to
leave at the same time, and it was a disaster.
At the end an announcement was made that those of you who
didn't get your certificates, you will be getting it in the mail. Those
people, since they didn't get a certificate, they still had their green
cards.
A lot of these certificates ended up being sent by mail with a
note saying, please, send in your alien registration card. Some of
them came into the office to try and resolve the problem. Basically
it would have been I think a good system had we had the time and
the personnel to get everything ready.
Mr. SOUDER. Normally isn't there a logging process where you
turn in the green cards — how many outstanding could there poten-
tially be? You said toward the end it got rushed. Are we talking
fifty, hundreds, thousands?
Mr. CONKLIN. At least probably 5,000 cards did not come back.
Ms. Woods. I believe there were over 4,000 certs that didn't get
passed out because they weren't ready yet. I was at the health desk
at the end. Everybody who didn't get a cert was given a letter and
told to go to the health desk. I didn't know that that many certifi-
cates didn't get handed out. So now we are getting mobbed.
There are four of us sitting at this table trying to get informa-
tion. We are told just to take their phone number, and I am think-
ing this isn't fair to these people. They are going to tell them to
come pick up these certs when they have already taken off the day,
they have been in the hot sun, many of them since 7:30 a.m., and
now it is 2, 3. We have elderly people, people taking time off from
work, handicapped.
So I started to take their green cards and make sure I had their
full address. At least we have the green card and we know that
and we can mail it. Then I was told to quit taking the green cards
because we were just going to call the people in instead of mailing
their certificate.
Mr. SoUDER. Is there a market for — do you log in whether you
got all those green cards?
Ms. Woods. Yes, we do in the end.
Mr. SouDER. Did all of them come back or are some of them
missing?
Ms. Woods. I would be surprised if all of them came back.
Mr. CONKLIN. The ceremony, you have to close it at the end, and
they are not finished closing the ceremony.
Mr. SouDER. Because they are still trying to track down some-
body?
Mr. CONKLIN. All the paperwork has to be closed. You have to
take the green card and write down which number it is and check
their name. It is sort of a long process. I don't believe they have
begun on that ceremony yet.
Ms. Woods. There is a large ceremony going on today of over
8,000 today in Chicago — excuse me — I don't know how many, but
several thousand.
Mr. CONKLIN. On the Soldier Field, I am in Deportation now and
those officers and agents were detailed to help out with that cere-
mony. So they stopped most of the other functions so they could go
to the ceremony and help out.
105
One of the Deportation officers, he started in August, the month
after I did, he came up, he was Border Patrol, and asked them if
I find somebody that is not quaHfied, if they can't speak EngHsh
to me and they are young, what do I do? He was told, don't worry
about it. We just need to process these people and get it done.
Mr. SOUDER. I want to ask some more questions regarding Sol-
dier Field. Knowing there was probably a set date that this event
was going to occur, and it sounds like when you have that many
people there was probably a big push toward that date; was there
a lot of accelerated processing right before the event?
Ms. Woods. Yes.
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. People were working overtime every night,
specifically the clerical. I believe they were staying until 8 or 9 p.m.
trying to get the certificates typed, the computers updated and get-
ting all finishing touches prepared as best they could beforehand.
They were asking officers to stay every day to help, to do clerical
work, to update, to do interviews. Whoever they could get to help
for overtime they would be willingly accepted to stay and work late.
Mr. SouDER. We will have more information on this hopefully in
the second panel.
In today's Los Angeles Times there is a charge that the FBI
learned that 5,000 of the 60,000 immigrants naturalized in 6 days
of mass ceremonies in Los Angeles last month, concealed past
criminal records that might have disqualified some of them for citi-
zenship. Did you have time to do the criminal record background
checks, and do you have an idea of the numbers potentially we
were talking in Chicago?
Ms. Woods. On September 12, I was taking leave on the 13th,
it was a Friday and I was talking to my supervisor about the fact
that we had 10 boxes of prints, about this big. I have to guess, be-
cause I didn't count every single one, but I would guess in those
boxes there were a couple of hundred returned prints from the FBI,
200 to 300. I said something about me checking them, and she said
no — knowing we had a ceremony on September 14th, no, she said
all those people have already been interviewed. She said — let me
give a little background.
Lincoln, NE, is a service center and they started processing all
our citizenship applications and now the citizenship applications
that we do now have all gone through them and they have taken
care of all the fingerprints for those. That meant to me all these
people have been interviewed, many of them have been natural-
ized. Then she added that it was not a priority.
The hearing was a priority, but these were not a priority. So on
my own on overtime the following week, I came back Monday and
I started doing overtime and I started going through the prints, a
slow, slow process by myself, and I found many of them indeed had
been naturalized.
Charges ranged from deportation proceedings before they got
their green card, we were probably aware of it or of an immigration
violation, to rapists, aggravated felons, gang members, people
charged with deportable offenses, unlawful use of a weapon, drug
dealers.
In fact, I was able to pull out a few of them from a couple of dif-
ferent hearings and I pulled out one guy who was approved by a
106
temp officer. The temp officer, if he had been more knowledgeable,
would not have approved this case. He knew the guy had a drug
offense. He didn't have the prints in the file, so that wasn't his
fault, because the prints were not a priority to get to the file.
The system we have hasn't been working and has just gotten
worse. AnyAvay, I looked at it and said, this guy is deportable. He
should not become a citizen. In the file there was a court-certified
disposition showing the guy received 18 months probation. Now,
you don't get 18 months probation for a minor marijuana offense,
which is the only thing that you possibly could do without being
deported. In addition, that person had 2 pounds of marijuana he
was caught with in Texas. So I had to call in these people and do
this on my own.
I really didn't get any help, I think, until I said I can't do this
on my own anymore and they would give me the afternoon, because
we had started the double shifts. I would have to interview in the
morning, and in the afternoon I would do as much as I could, and
I started doing overtime. Even yesterday up until the time I left,
I was still working on trying to make sure we don't naturalize any
more criminals. What they may have done may not be a deportable
offense, but many of them committed perjury.
Ms. Ware. I would like to add, a lot of the people we are natural-
izing now got their green cards through the Amnesty program.
They were fingerprinted. Sometimes there is information, there is
a red cover put there.
Sometimes there is information under that red cover that we
could use that would help let us know that these people are crimi-
nals and do still have cases pending. But we were told that we
could not look under that red cover. We had to adjudicate the ap-
plication. We could not go back to see that.
Ms. Woods. In addition, the temps were trained not to look at
anything other than that since the person became a resident. They
are not to look under the visa packet if they came over at the air-
port, or the adjustment packet. There also can be papers there
from other proceedings.
In one particular case I looked at the prints and a person was
naturalized, had an outstanding warrant by the FBI in Chicago. I
reviewed the file and I found a bright pink slip in the file where
the temp interviewed the person and it said, Official Investigation,
FBI. Minimally that should have been given to the supervisor.
However, if the temp was told not to look at anything, then they
were following orders, and I think that is a travesty. If that war-
rant is still outstanding, I have no idea, because in our office we
have all these employees, we have all these criminal cases but
don't have an officer in our section who can run leads or criminal
checks on people. They have moved those two people to the other
section, so we don't have that available to us, and I can't do these
things by myself
Mr. SOUDER. Mrs. Thurman.
Mrs. Thurman. I want to foUowup on, you said that not all of
these offenses would be deportable?
Ms. Woods. That is correct. But that doesn't mean they are eligi-
ble for citizenship.
107
Mrs. Thurman. Can you tell me which ones those are, and be-
cause of the fact we have mentioned the Los Angeles Times article,
because there is a rebuttal to that that says 69 or 70 were
Ms. Woods. The only thing I can figure by those numbers are
deportable, because there is no way that only 69 people had a
criminal offense out of 5,000.
Mrs. Thurman. I need to understand. There are different of-
fenses that would cause different actions?
Ms. Woods. OK. If you have two convictions of theft, you could
be deportable. They are called crimes involving moral turpitude.
We have had things from auto theft to aggravated felons, unlawful
use of a weapon, rape, et cetera. I would say to be truthful, a ma-
jority of the criminal offenses were more of a minor — were a minor
offense such as theft, et cetera.
Mrs. Thurman. So those are not deportable?
Ms. Woods. Only if there is one. If there is two, then it can be
deportable.
Mrs. Thurman. How does that relate to citizenship, then? You
need to help me through this.
Ms. Woods. OK. If somebody is deportable — we go through the
law books, through what is considered good moral character, and
it is not considered good moral character to have a criminal back-
ground. We are told to look in the last 5 years, although we are
not limited to that by the law. If somebody is convicted or has a
significant criminal history and has convictions, they could be ineli-
gible for citizenship but not necessarily deportable.
They could be denied for citizenship because they have a recent
conviction and it is possible that their conviction is so serious or
so numerous that they could be deportable. That means they would
go in front of an immigration judge, they would be set up, what we
call an order to show cause, they would be set up for a deportation,
go in front of a deportation judge, and the immigration judge would
decide whether this person would be told to leave the United
States, to be deported.
Mrs. Thurman. I want to go back to another issue on the tem-
porary.
Mr. Conklin, in the beginning you talked about temporaries and
how much time that they were exposed to the procedures and the
process. Do you know if there was a decision made by your super-
visors in fact that temps would only be able to look at certain kinds
of information and then it would be passed on to the more senior
members within your groups to make those final decisions?
Because it sounds to me like in one instance, if we are not giving
them the full educational opportunities to totally understand what
is involved in a case, that they might — I don't know, but they
might — certainly when I get somebody in my office, I don't give
them the first crack at the worst thing that might be happening.
Is that a possibility here, or do you know if in fact that happened?
Mr. Conklin. The way the training program was set up, it was
set up for a primary/secondary-type officer for every district except
Chicago. Chicago told us at the time we were setting the program
up, we were not doing that. We will have one officer who will take
the case from start to finish.
Mrs. Thurman. They were denied the information?
108
Mr. CONKLIN. No, because at the training program that I con-
ducted we gave them the extra information. We allotted enough
time in the training program that each district could train on how
they do their interviews. That is when we covered the good moral
character and all the arrests
Mrs. Thurman. So they could go back within those records and
look under the red folder, et cetera?
Mr. CONKLIN. This is the way I explained about legalization. Le-
galization gave you amnesty for immigration. If you married fraud-
ulently or crossed the border illegally, they gave you amnesty for
those arrests. You had to file a waiver for criminal arrests.
Now, those criminal arrests are not gone just because you got
your green card. Later on, when you are coming in for citizenship
and you are asked the question, have you ever been arrested, have
you ever gone to court, have you ever been fingerprinted, have you
ever been in jail, and they are saying no, now they are committing
false testimony because they have been arrested. That is the dif-
ference— ^you can't go under the red cover and say, oh, well he mar-
ried somebody just to get his green card. You are denied citizen-
ship. You can't do that.
Mrs. Thurman. Do you agree?
Ms. Woods. I agree that they were told — it surprised me that
they were told — they told us all actually in a staff meeting we had,
they said you are not to look under the covers, you are to look only
at the application and nothing prior to them getting their resi-
dency. In fact, I questioned the acting deputy district director at
the time and I said, what if we need to do an investigation or do
something, like we have a lot of fraud. There is a lot of fraud with
documents, et cetera.
He said that is really not going to happen. That isn't working.
I said, well, actually I have done a lot of investigations and I have
been successful in my attempts. He got kind of mad, but still, the
problem is we were told you are not to look before they got their
residency, you are not to look in the file. This person didn't look
in the file, as they were instructed.
Mrs. Thurman. Do you know of any confidentiality laws or any-
thing that would protect that? Is there a reason?
Ms. Woods. I am talking about general files. I am not talking
necessarily about legalization files. No, I don't, because you are
supposed to look at the person.
Mrs. Thurman. So that red FBI, or whatever, is open?
Ms. Woods. The red FBI
Mr. Conklin. The red cover is an immigration legalization cover.
Everj^hing under that was used for legalization.
Ms. Dobberfuhl. It is just a cover sheet, not an envelope or
sealed folder.
Ms. Woods. It identifies that it is legalization right off the bat
to anybody.
Ms. Ware. Amnesty came about through the Simpson-Mazzoli
bill. Maybe that will help you understand when we say "Amnesty"
what we are talking about.
Ms. Woods. Amnesty and legalization are the same.
Mr. Conklin. Can I expand a bit on the fingerprint chart?
109
Mrs. Thurman. I wish somebody would, because I am not sure,
1 minute I am talking about something that you said is confiden-
tial
Mr. CONKLIN. It is not a confidential file. Anything under the red
cover is prior to legalization. That means the person got their card
through legalization. We are not supposed to use stuff that they re-
vealed to us in legalization against them.
A fingerprint chart, when they did their fingerprints, they gave
us a chart. We are not using the chart against them. We are using
the FBI report that came back from that chart. That is independ-
ent the cover because it was all for the card and legalization, but
in Citizenship you can still refer to that FBI return, because that
was a hit.
You can go back and see, yes, he was arrested three times. We
can look at the information, but we can't use it against him that
he was trying to enter a fraud marriage to get his green card, be-
cause Amnesty cleared that.
Ms. Woods. It is a long process. The person puts in the finger-
prints, and then if everything is properly filled out and sent to the
FBI, if everything is done properly, then it is put into the file. The
problem is they are not making it to the files.
Mrs. Thurman. You were referring to the 1986 law; is that cor-
rect?
Ms. Ware. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Thurman. So that was actually in 1986?
Mr. CONKLIN. The legalization program.
Mr. Souder. We need to move on.
We have been joined by Congressman Hastert and Congress-
woman Ros-Lehtinen.
Congressman Hastert.
Mr. Hastert. I understand you all work in the Chicago office. I
represent a district west of there, so I have cities like Elgin and
Aurora.
I want to get this right; one of the biggest problems that we have
in our area are illegal immigrants coming in, bringing drugs in, or-
ganizing gangs and doing criminal activities in our area. You are
telling me that you have been instructed basically to overlook FBI
fingerprint checks and to not look for welfare fraud or tax fraud
and not to look for fraud in original procurement of a green card;
is that correct?
Ms. Woods. I would agree with everything but the — we are not
told not to look at the prints. We are told not to consider what is
in the legalization files. If the fingerprints had been done properly,
we would be looking at the prints. I wouldn't say that we were spe-
cifically told don't look at fingerprints. Of course, we are supposed
to. We are supposed to be a law enforcement agency.
Ms. Ware. But oftentimes we don't have the prints.
Mr. Hastert. The prints aren't there for you to look at. You can't
see what you don't have?
Ms. Woods. Exactly.
Mr. Hastert. What about the issue of welfare fraud or tax
fraud? Is that something that is being kind of brushed over?
Ms. Woods. Yes. We were told we are not the IRS. In order to
have a good case for welfare fraud, you have to have the time to
110
do the interview properly to gauge what is going on. You have to
ask for letters from welfare.
For instance, I had a woman I interviewed and it took time, a
lot of time, which I am not given that much time, and I had to fol-
lowup a couple of times. She has three children, she is living with
the father of her children, and she is going to college for free and
she is telling them, oh, I never declared any taxes in order to get
her college paid for free. But on the other hand, she is showing me
tax returns that she filed with her common-law husband. So there
is obvious fraud there. It takes time to be able to work with these
people in welfare, et cetera. It takes time and I don't have it. I am
not given that opportunity.
Mr. Hastert. I know we have files and files. My office works
with your service all the time, and trying to get people who have
waited their turn, done the right thing, get them on-line. What is
happening, these people are being pushed back in line in an at-
tempt to move in people who have FBI fingerprints but you can't
check them, people who have committed welfare fraud, but they
are being expedited, and people who have fraud in the original pro-
curement of the green cards; is that correct?
Ms. Woods. I don't understand — ^you are saying that your peo-
ple
Mr. Hastert. These people are being expedited.
Ms. Woods. Yes. They are being expedited through the system.
It is not encouraged to ask questions, because we are not the IRS,
et cetera.
Mr. Hastert. So people who live in my district, including many
naturalized immigrants legitimately, are being asked to pick up
extra welfare costs because these people who are criminals are
being expedited through the process?
Ms. Woods. Exactly.
Mr. Hastert. That is really wrong. That is amazing.
Ms. Dobberfuhl, what ways are people being expedited into a sit-
uation, especially in the city of Chicago, to be signed up to vote?
Ms. Dobberfuhl. What I have noticed, before the CUSA pro-
gram started we would have court hearings twice a week in the
Federal building downtown, ranging anywhere from 100 to 130
people. We would have a small ceremony and people would get
their certificates, occasionally there would be a reception for them
and that would be it.
Voter registration I never observed to be an issue then. It was
never even mentioned until the big ceremonies started, when voter
registration cards were handed out with the welcome packets.
Aldermen and other representatives giving speeches were urging
people to fill out the cards, send them in, drop them off on their
way out of the building. It really became an issue — when the CUSA
program started we started having these very large hearings.
Mr. Hastert. So basically when this program started there was
a political advantage. We would hope everybody — there was a polit-
ical push there; is that correct? They are making pitches that these
people need to sign up to vote?
Ms. Dobberfuhl. Yes, I agree.
Ill
Mr. CONKLIN. Prior to CUSA I used to give the speeches at the
ceremonies. I went to every ceremony every Tuesday and Thurs-
day. It was part of my job as an examiner.
When I would go there I would give the speech about that now
that they are citizens they can petition for their relatives, and
other benefits, that they are not a second-class citizen because we
don't have classes in the United States, and how proud they should
be to be a citizen, and if they would like to register to vote they
could.
Every Tuesday and Thursday we never had speakers coming in
and saying you need to vote, you need to register, this is a big part
of being a citizen. Now at every mass ceremony they have all these
guest speakers and the majority of what they have to talk about
is that they have to vote. You hear very little about now you can
petition for your relatives. Or if you have already petitioned for
your relatives, let the Service know because now you are a citizen,
you need to change in a different category.
Mr. Hastert. I learned a long time ago not to ask a question
that you don't know what the answer is, but let me ask this ques-
tion. Have you found that most of these speakers are from one po-
litical party?
Mr. CONKLIN. I can't say. I don't know.
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. I don't know.
Mr. Hastert. Are they mostly aldermen from the city of Chi-
cago?
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. I can think of only one alderman in particular,
and he is from the city.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. I am a Republican, a naturalized American
and a proud supporter of the Citizenship USA program, and let me
tell you why. This program was initiated to clear up a huge backlog
of naturalization applications. I will speak to you in respect to my
congressional district, where I represent a community where the
overwhelming majority of the individuals who reside there were
born outside of the United States, are very happy and pleased and
proud to now belong to this beautiful family of Americans, and are
very anxious to become American citizens, having nothing to do
with the welfare bill, having always been anxious to become a part
of this democratic process. These individuals were lost in a maze
of bureaucracy.
For 18 months, most of them had to wait to become naturalized,
praying and hoping, praying that the ineptitude of INS would not
rear its ugly head, that their papers would somehow wind their
way through the process and that they would be able to one day
swear to be an American citizen. I remember very proudly the day
that I was able to raise my right hand and swear allegiance to this
beautiful country.
Most of the time it worked, but a lot of the times that process
didn't work for these individuals. There was a lot of confusion, the
bureaucracy was not streamlined the way that it should be and
there was mass confusion.
I don't think this was planned confusion and a plot on behalf of
the Reagan administration, and I don't think that it was a planned
112
confusion plot of the Bush administration, but now we have a pro-
gram in place and, all of a sudden, this is a massive plot by the
Clinton administration to get registered voters.
God forbid, we are now stressing voting. This is said in hushed
tones like we should say, and they encouraged people to vote. Can
you imagine trying to do that?
I speak regularly at these naturalization ceremonies. I spoke at
one just yesterday; individuals there encouraged them to vote. I did
not say that, because my speech was long-winded enough, but last
time I checked, and I know in these hushed tones that we say, and
these people say that they should vote, I think that that is a plus.
Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think it is bad, even though we
may be Hispanics, God forbid, that is a terrible thing, I guess, but
I think we are still encouraged to vote. I think my vote counts just
as much as anybody else's vote who is a registered voter and
should be voting. That is another part of this hearing, where we
say, and there is voting fraud because they are encouraged to reg-
ister to vote. Can you imagine?
So this confusion that went on for many administrations I don't
think was a planned plot. The bureaucracy just was not working
for many individuals. I know. I have been in elective office for al-
most 15 years. I know this process well, plus I know it intimately
myself because I am a naturalized American. I am totally against
any criminal becoming a U.S. citizen, but I have a hunch that
maybe this might have happened during the Reagan administra-
tion also, it might have happened during the Bush administration,
and had the bureaucracy worked the way that it should have been
working, there might have been more processing taking place and
maybe those mistakes might have been happening as well.
I don't condone any criminals becoming citizens. If any criminal
has become a citizen, we not only ask INS, we demand that INS
rescind that citizenship immediately, because it cheapens my natu-
ralization to have a scum bag be an American. It cheapens
Americanhood to have a criminal get this opportunity that is de-
nied to so many others. So no one is condoning this, and INS has
a bureaucracy that I know, unfortunately, all too well, makes mis-
takes.
If they rush through the system and some individuals should
have been checked that weren't checked, shame on INS, shame on
any caseworker who was involved in doing that, and that should
be rescinded immediately.
But to say as this subcommittee has done, with all due apologies,
this fraud and abuse has occurred because the Clinton administra-
tion, which as indicated by a certain document, sees the Citizen-
ship USA program as the source of a potential 300,000 Democratic
votes, most of them in California, New York, Florida and Illinois,
has put intense political pressure on the INS to manufacture —
manufacture as many new citizens as possible whatever the cost.
Well, as a manufactured citizen myself, I would imagine that
perhaps in Florida, where I would imagine that most of the new
registrations of new citizens are Republican, I don't know. I don't
check. I don't keep up. I am not only unopposed this election, but
was unopposed 2 years ago, so I couldn't begin to tell you what the
registration is in my district.
113
I represent the people, every single one of them, whether they
are voters or not, whether they are Republican or Democrat. Sup-
pose some GOP operative in my area looked at the figures; I would
imagine people are still registering Republican, because if not, 1
would have seen an article in the paper. They would have said,
we've got to speed up this process because we have a potential gold
mine in Miami, FL especially, where the overwhelming number, I
would imagine, are registering Republican.
Suppose some GOP wise guy wrote a similar memo, just as I
guess as some Clinton official might have written it, about the Citi-
zenship USA, and then you say, wow; this is a real plot. Well, I
don't see that as a plot. I see somebody, let's write this memo, see
if we can get a political advantage.
Whether they write the memo or not, this process is taking place.
People are going to register whether Democrat, Republican or Inde-
pendent. I would hope that they register Republican, but I hope
they register period. I hope they vote. I prefer that they vote for
the Dole-Kemp ticket, but I prefer for them to vote. I don't see this
as a blight on our democratic system.
If there are mistakes, they must be corrected. If there are serious
mistakes, let's make sure that no one is abusing the system, be-
cause it cheapens me and it cheapens the hundreds of citizens that
I have helped to naturalize in my congressional district.
But let's not say that this is some plot of the Clinton administra-
tion. Because if so, and I don't know where these Democratic votes
are, but if they say that they are in Florida, we are gaining more
Republican seats in Florida every day, from the Statehouse to the
White House. So some official in the Clinton administration sure
has their facts wrong, as they see Florida as a gold mine of Demo-
cratic votes, because if that were true, I think I would have read
it in our local paper.
Is there fraud, is there abuse? I think there is incompetence and
there was incompetence in all of these administrations, and it
should be eliminated. But to say that there is this huge plot going
on, I think is really stretching the fabric here. If there is, let's weed
them out, let's make sure that anybody who was a partner in this
fraud and in this abuse gets drummed out of the Service imme-
diately, because I think it demeans the good workers that INS has.
I know we have them because we have them in my Miami office,
that services thousands of questions from individuals from all
walks of life day in and day out. It is a bloated bureaucracy. It
needs to be streamlined.
Maybe some other program needs to be put in its place. That
would be fine. Maybe that is the way to get the system to work.
I am not justifying any of these problems. Their citizenship must
be rescinded immediately, but let's not get carried away with the
plot theories of the Clinton administration in this Citizenship USA
program.
I would like to point out that the Hispanic Caucus was very in-
terested in testifying before this subcommittee. They were refused
to testify as of yesterday. Then before the hearing, the subcommit-
tee changed its mind.
114
They want them to come, and I would hope that as a courtesy
to me, to other individuals who would like to testify, that next time
they be given an opportunity.
Frankly, Mr. Chairman, I don't think it would have hurt this
subcommittee at all to hear testimony from other members of the
Hispanic Caucus who are interested in this program, who have per-
sonal knowledge, as I have, of what this program has done, who
do not condone any problems in this program, who want this pro-
gram to work. They don't want criminals to become U.S. citizens.
That cheapens the process.
They were refused the opportunity to testify, and at the last
minute that offer was once extended when they had already made
other plans. I would hope that if this continues — this program ends
September 30th anyway, but if this is a problem inherent in the
bureaucracy, let's have more hearings.
I want this program to work, because I have thousands of other
people in my congressional district who don't want to wait 18
months, like they had in the past, 18 months where they can't trav-
el outside of the United States, they can't petition for their fami-
lies, they can't register to vote; oh, my gosh — register to vote
again — they can't do anything because they are not United States
citizens.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ros-Lehtinen follows:]
115
COMMITTEES:
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
GOVERNMENT REFORM
Chair:
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
AFRICA
Vice Chair:
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
WESTERN HEMISPHERE
D
Congress of tljc ^Hnitcb ^tateg
jl^ouge of Eepresientatilieg
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN
leTH DISTRICT, FLORIDA
PUASE RESPOND TO:
2440 Ravburn Building
Washington, DC 205l&-09ie
12021 22&-3931
DISTRICT OFFICE
5757 Blue Lagoon Drive
(NW IItmStreeti
Suite 240
Miami, FL 33126
13051 262-lSOO
STATEMENT BY REPRESENTATIVE ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN
TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
OCTOBER 24, 1996
Thank you for this opportunity to address the issues surrounding the Citizenship USA program.
As the Representative of a district with a large immigrant population, I am very familiar with the
backlogs of individuals waiting to become US citizens. For a number of years, the wait for those
who were seeking to start the final steps of naturalization has been growing longer and longer.
Budget consti^aints and personnel shortages, coupled with an increasing number of applicants,
had made a bad situation worse. The situation was so bad that those seeking naturalization would
wait, overnight, on the sidewalk for an appointment with an INS clerk to begin the path to taking
the oath of citizenship.
According to INS figures, some parts of the country saw backlogs ranging fi'om fifteen to
eighteen months, in Los Angles and New York respectively, as oppos^ to the traditional sk
months for the entire process that it should take The Citizenship USA program was implemented
as a coordinated effort to eliminate this backlog. As a result of this effort, the process in Los
Angeles is now seven months and in New York has reduced the wait to five months.
At the same time that these problems were being resolved, complaints were raised that required
criminal background checks were not being completed. I believe that those who do not deserve
the privilege of citizenship, because of criminal conduct , need to be weeded out. Anyone who has
taken advantage of this situation to secure an undeserved citizenship should have that fi-audulently
obtained status rescinded immediately.
We should not, however, throw out the baby with the bathwater. We need to remember the
situation that Citizenship USA was implemented to solve and work to improve and clear up the
huge backlog but INS should and INS must always ensure that the undeserving do not slip past
the system Therefore I ask this subcommittee to concentrate on the achievements of this program
with an eye to improving and eliminating the serious flaws If any criminal has obtained US
citizenship because INS did not complete a through criminal background check, then we must
take away the US citizenship from that criminal.
O ON RECrCl^O PAPf n
116
Mr. Hastert. Would the gentlewoman yield?
I understand your situation. I have not only a large Hispanic dis-
trict, I have Koreans, I have Chinese, I have a lot of people who
would like to be United States citizens. But when people are shuf-
fled in front of a line because of some reason or another, and people
who have been in my district for 18 months and have taken their
tests and don't get replied to, because people who have FBI finger-
prints that are not included in the records, people who have com-
mitted welfare fraud, but we have to look the other way, and peo-
ple who have fraudulently procured their green cards are getting
citizenship, when good people aren't getting citizenship, that is
wrong.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Reclaiming my time, it is wrong. But what
this committee has said in its statement is that it is a plot of the
Clinton administration. I will read it again.
This fraud and abuse has occurred because of the Clinton admin-
istration. I am saying it is incompetence, the same incompetence
that has carried INS, and this is about the most left-handed com-
pliment that INS can get, is still ruling.
Your constituents have needlessly waited 18 months. That is
wrong, too. Let's reinvent the wheel, let's make a kind of a program
that will have thorough background checks. I waited a long time
to become a U.S. citizen. I want this process to be clean, to be free
of abuses. I want it, too, and my constituents demand it. But this
is not a plot hatched up at the last minute.
Mr. SOUDER. You have mischaracterized my statement four times
now, I don't appreciate it. I have every belief that every citizen of
the United States should vote and should be encouraged to vote.
You missed the earlier testimony where we had witnesses say
that they were intimidated by agents who knew their supervisors
who stood there with their supervisors and intimidated them. I
hope we get every immigrant's vote. I welcome every immigrant
into this country.
I am not one who has been pushing on these immigration bills
the other direction, and the inference that somehow there was any
anti-immigrant tone to this has been incorrect. That wasn't my
thrust. I believe we have documents that say that, at least in some
areas, there has been political orientation to this. It isn't just cas-
ual. We heard it earlier today very specifically stated.
All these witnesses are not Republicans. They are concerned
about the process. They have also documented that there have been
not only a backlog change here, there has been a doubling of the
backlog because of outreach programs, which is another question,
but to try to do all that before this election, combined with the
memos that have been in the record, suggests that there has been
certainly an effort to capitalize.
Hopefully, Republicans will get more than their share of votes.
Many immigrants are coming to America because they believe in
what we advocate. I am sorry if there is any implication against
immigrants. The question is about the process.
For example, let me ask this question. My understanding was
that there were 200 to 300 prints in a box
Ms. Woods. Per box, 10 boxes.
117
Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. That had not been gone through. Some
of you have worked for 20 years in this agency — Ms. Ware.
Ms. Ware. I have 18 years and 10 months.
Mr. SouDER. Have you seen this before?
Ms. Ware. No.
Mr. SouDER. Have you seen where there have been 200 or 300
prints per box that haven't been gone through before somebody
came in?
Ms. Ware. No. I would like to say, too, that I don't consider my-
self Republican, nor do I consider myself immigration. I am not
here to down Mr. Clinton, but because I know that there is right
and wrong. I am here because I know that some of the things we
have been doing is not right and it is not the law.
Thank you.
Mr. SouDER. Do any of the other witnesses want to comment on
this statement?
Ms. Woods. I want to clarify that those prints were there and
they were gone through, but what was done was not done in an ef-
fective way. It is kind of a — in our office there are cases done out
of the office, there is cases done in the office. Prints done out of
the office are in these boxes. Cases done in the office, those prints
are in this area.
In August, I was looking for something to do; not that I didn't
have an3rthing to do, because I always — I have to tell you that the
four of us are very, very hard workers. We all get very good rat-
ings. We are not disgruntled employees that are here. We are very
concerned about the process.
Mr. SouDER. To the point that you said earlier you might be con-
cerned about retribution.
Ms. Woods. Very much concerned about it.
So what happened is some of these cases, these files that were
done in the office, most of those prints were in these boxes, but no-
body knew that. When you get done and you know that Lincoln,
NE, is taking care of all these prints for all these new cases and
that everybody else has been interviewed and we still have 10
boxes of prints, there is a problem, and that needs to be a priority
and not just set aside because we have a hearing in 2 days.
I am sorry; yes, you got to do that also, but if it would have been
done properly in the beginning, if the prints would be in the files,
then we wouldn't have to go back through and try to figure out did
this person get naturalized; if not, where is this file. We are work-
ing on envelopes now. We have people come in.
They are tested. If they pass the test, we have them fill out a
duplicate application because we don't have the file or the applica-
tion there because of problems getting the applications from Lin-
coln. I have these prints. I know that person was interviewed that
day. I can't find the file because it is in a work envelope. It is very
frustrating.
Ms. Ware. You stated you don't want to have to wait 18 months
for a person to be naturalized. Then may I suggest you hire people,
start a law, or something, saying immigration has to have so many
people working so, therefore, it would not create a backlog, perma-
nent people. Most of the backlog we have was created during this
118
outreach, bringing boxes and boxes and boxes of citizenship appli-
cations into the office.
Ms. Woods. Another problem was the green card replacement
program that started. It was, I think, $70 or $75 to replace your
green card, if you had an old edition. It was $90, and now it is $95
to apply for citizenship.
A lot of people were told it is just $20 more to apply for citizen-
ship, so maybe you just would like to do that. Between that, the
Amnesty applicant and when the welfare reform bills started to
come up, we saw an incredible increase in the amount of applica-
tions that we received.
I am not political when I am adjudicating an applicant. I am
looking at the applicant; I am not looking at the different politics,
et cetera. I just want to do what is right and what is fair. I am
really frustrated when I bring these things up to the supervisor
and it is thrown off.
Mr. SOUDER. I have been approached by many legal immigrants,
people who are so proud to be Americans, who are so concerned
that these kind of processes cheapen their citizenship and somehow
cast aspersions on them — and they are concerned that their vote
and their taxes — because a whole bunch of people are suddenly
being brought in, they hear it in their communities, and are very
concerned.
We will go one more round here.
Mrs. Thurman. I have one last question to all of you.
Why do you think of all of the INS employees that we have, that
you personally were invited to participate in this hearing today?
Ms. Woods. I don't understand your question.
Mrs. Thurman. Well, what I am asking is, do you know why out
of all of the employees that INS has in Chicago or other places,
why it might be that particularly — is there something that each of
you bring that is unique, that would be why this committee subpoe-
naed each and every one of you here?
Ms. DOBBERFUHL. I think we are all permanent officers. We have
all been working in Citizenship for a minimum of a year. We are
thorough in our work, we are hard workers, we know the law and
we have been actively involved in helping plan or carry out the
CUSA program.
Mrs. Thurman, So my guess is with that explanation you are su-
pervisors, or whomever, who might have spoken with this commit-
tee, would have suggested you to be here? Is that what you as-
sume?
I am curious to know how you came up with this witness list out
of all the INS
Mr. SoUDER. As the Grovernment Reform and Oversight Commit-
tee, our job is to look and see how effective programs are. When
we read about individuals who, in effect, are whistle-blowers in
their agency and you check whether that has credibility, you do a
hearing. We have had people from Citizenship USA. We will have
more, and we will do another followup, but this is not to have a
defense or an intimidation of people coming forth. They are coming
forth because they saw problems with that.
Our job as a committee is to look into all problems with it; not
to imply that everybody who got in the program was wrong. No-
119
body is even asserting that 80, 90 percent of the people wouldn't
have gotten in under normal procedures. Our job is to find fraud
in the government. When we have a Medicare oversight hearing,
it isn't to cast aspersions on the whole Medicare program. It is to
find the fraud.
Mrs. Thurman. It would seem to me in a whistle-blower situa-
tion, that there is supposed to be a certain amount of confidential-
ity instead of putting these people in a position of coming before
TV cameras, that we might have wanted to talk to these folks with-
out putting them in jeopardy.
I am sorry this has happened to you, especially with your an-
swers that you are concerned about retaliation.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Hastert.
Mr. Hastert. I guess what happens, the manifestations of prob-
lems come. But for my colleagues here, I have a memo that was
evidently written by a Mr. Farbrother, for the Vice President to
send to the President of the United States. It says: Note my con-
cerns, parentheticals are for background only, and may not be at-
tributed to me in any manner whatsoever, including congressional
staff.
The memo says: We have several serious principal sections. One,
improving service for citizenship applications. Two, lower the
standards for citizenship; this was dropped from the revised ver-
sion of the draft. Three, capital authority to local managers. Four,
put Headquarters to work. Five, use legal services, temporary
agents. And six, make more money available.
The first heading calls for removing roadblocks, which the author
alleges are not statutory but merely bureaucratic and can be re-
moved through administrative action. Another key quote: But INS
warns that if we are too aggressive at removing the roadblocks to
success, we might be publicly criticized for running a pro-Democrat
voter bill — I say voter mill. I say voter mill. That is in the memo
to the Vice President of the United States — and even risk having
Congress stop us.
Indeed, many of the roadblocks originate with the staff. People
complain if we waive the regulations and procedures they have cre-
ated and followed for years. This paper describes the pros and cons
of several controversial actions that we could take to expedite proc-
essing. We would like your — meaning the President's — guidance.
The second heading calls for INS to exercise broad latitude to in-
terpret citizenship standards on a more liberal basis. INS manage-
ment has already been training new adjudicators and "re-educat-
ing" the older ones to be more liberal.
I can understand from my colleagues on this panel and these
people who are testifying, when you start to re-educate to be more
liberal, and part of that education is not to look at the FBI finger-
prints and not to check for welfare fraud and not to see if these
people are procuring their green cards in fraudulent manners and,
in essence, allowing criminals into the United States. I think these
people have to be commended for coming forward with their testi-
mony, and I do that.
This document was issued in March of this year. Has there been
a time since March that you have been asked to expedite and you
120
have seen differences in how your general operating procedure has
existed?
Ms. Woods. Yes.
Ms. Ware. We are sworn to uphold the law. This is why we are
here. This is what we are doing. Now, we were told that any time
we see inadequacy, that we are supposed to report it. If we don't
report it, then we are just as guilty as anyone else.
Ms. Woods. One way in which we have been pushed so — they
have made changes. When v/e — the CUSA sites have satellite of-
fices, because we just have too many officers. We used to get Friday
as a work day to work on our denials. Now we don't even get a
workday. We are lucky to get a couple of hours. Or if we get a
workday, sometimes they will throw us on another project. Of
course, I haven't had one, and I don't have a computer to do deni-
als.
They tried to give me some workdays, but I had so many cases
and things to do that I couldn't get much of an edge on it. We got
a memo that we are supposed to have everything completed by the
end of the fiscal year. I know can't do it.
I am working on this fingerprint project, which is more impor-
tant than sending out denials. But those also are very important,
and it is very important for us to try to process this in as timely
manner as we can, because most of the people that we interview
are good people who are looking for this benefit for the right rea-
sons, and we are happy to do that. But for the people that are cir-
cumventing the system, we need time to follow through on that
properly, and it takes more than just the few minutes that it does
to grant a case.
Mr. Hastert. As a matter of fact, we have in this file that says
that you are being pushed, INS did not meet its goal of 100,000 re-
movals of fiscal year 1996, and the delay was hiring new detention
and deportation officers. Apparently such programs did not beset
CUSA, which was able to hire people it needed to meet the 1.3 mil-
lion person goal, and you are being pushed to do that.
Ms. Woods. We are ordered to work Saturdays. They are sched-
uling hearings on Saturdays. This was changes to our contract, the
union contract, and labor union contract which were never nego-
tiated with the union until we started to file.
Then, all of a sudden, management started to try to meet with
us after we filed. But never before had I noticed where they tried
to discuss anything with us. We were more complacent, and I think
we just got pushed to a certain point where we said enough is
enough.
Mr. CONKLIN. I don't vote Democrat or Republican. I just vote for
the person that I personally like. So I came here out of a sense of
responsibility. I know that there would be hundreds of other offi-
cers that would come here, except they are in fear of retribution.
I have had numerous people tell me that I am doing the right
thing; go and tell the truth. The acting district director told us in
a meeting that we should tell the truth and do what is right; not
to fear retribution, that we were subpoenaed, and this is what we
need to do.
That being said, in the back of your mind, we have worked for
the Service long enough, we are still in fear of retribution. It is just
121
a common thing. We know somewhere down the Une something
could happen to us. But the bottom Une is Citizenship has gotten
off track. It needs to be put back on track, the safeguards need to
be put back into the system so the people that shouldn't be natu-
ralized, aren't naturalized. That would cut a big portion of the peo-
ple out and the backlog would drop a little bit.
INS was not ready for the big influx of applications. That ac-
counted for a big portion of the backlog. You are going to need
more employees to get rid of that problem. As soon as this program
is over in September, the backlog is going to go back up.
But in the meantime, we have just naturalized a lot of people
that shouldn't have been naturalized. Every fingerprint chart that
comes back potentially is somebody who shouldn't have been natu-
ralized. It is all on their testimony. If they commit false testimony,
they are denied. If they don't, then we are going to look at what
was on that fingerprint chart.
Mr. Hastert. That really smacks of what the Vice President said
to the President, we may be criticized for running a pro-Democratic
voter mill, in his own words.
Mr. CONKLIN. In the amount of time officers are given to do
interviews and the information that they are given, when you do
an interview you are supposed to have all the information required
to do that interview. You have right now no information, you have
an application, sometimes you have a duplicate, because the origi-
nal application is not back from Nebraska. So how do you have any
of the information? You just ask them a few questions, hear the re-
sponses and they are done. You never see that person again. All
the safeguards are missing.
Ms. Woods. I understand the temps are still going to be there,
and after the end of the fiscal year they have still scheduled 800
applicants a day in our office. So my understanding is that this
program isn't over.
Mr. SOUDER. We have more Members now — I have been running
a very liberal hearing on the amount of time.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Just a comment.
First, I would imagine that being here would be your best life in-
surance policy. I don't suspect that there would be retribution, but
if there is, I think with the proud history of this subcommittee in
defending its witnesses on many occasions, on many topics, we
would be glad to help you in any way were you to suffer any ret-
ributions because of your testimony. That just has to do with what
you had said.
Going back to some other statements that were made by the
Members, the problem with the way that this is set up is that you
are forcing here a dichotomy. Either you are for a system that is
fraught with fraud and abuse, where no one's fingerprints are
checked, or you go back to the way it used to be where peoples' pa-
pers were strewn all over the place.
In Miami there were boxes, who knows where, and if they
matched up, you would become a citizen, and that would be like
a miracle. Where is the middle ground here? No one is advocating
giving citizenship to a criminal. No one is saying that, and it
shouldn't happen.
122
But to harken back to the good old days when the inept bureauc-
racy almost ground to a halt, I have been there. I know what it
is like. It was bad before, if it is bad for different reasons, that
should be weeded out, too. But if you have set up this dichotomy
where you are either for this terrible way it is now, or this incom-
petent way it used to be before, INS needs to be streamlined. The
bureaucracy needs to be weeded out. I would hope that some of
these Members who are so irate about this program will allocate
funds so that INS can put the "N" back in its name so it can be-
come a naturalization service.
Let's get the money that INS needs so it can be a system that
works efficiently, in the correct amount of time, so that people be-
come citizens without having to wish and pray and hope that their
papers get through the bureaucracy, so that workers are not over-
worked and so that things work out best.
But next time the INS budget comes up, let's all remember that
we want to fix this system, and let's allocate the funds to INS so
that workers can be paid, and so that paperwork can be shuffled
through the right departments and so that background checks can
be put into place, so that no one gets a citizenship certificate unless
they deserve it. So let's remember this when it counts at the appro-
priations time.
I yield back.
Mr. SOUDER. Last hearing when we went through the testing,
Mr. Aleinikoff came out with an excellent plan to be implemented
next year. I think by airing this today, I am confident that the ad-
ministration will do better the next time.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Let's hope that Congress does better by allo-
cating those funds, and I would hope that all of these irate Mem-
bers remember when it is time to pony up.
Mr. SouDER. We have been joined by two other Members, Mr.
Ehrlich of Maryland and Mr. Shadegg of Arizona.
My understanding is Mr. Ehrlich doesn't have a question for this
panel.
Mr. Shadegg, do you have a question?
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do.
Let me begin by saying that I have personally experienced this
issue. Some time ago a constituent called my office in Phoenix and
did what is not common, insisted that they talk directly to me.
They were not interested in explaining any issue to a staffer or
saying why they needed to talk to me.
My staff passed on a note saying this constituent needed to
speak with me, would I return the call. I called the individual and
the individual explained what has been under discussion earlier,
the individual was an INS employee and felt there was a tremen-
dous push on and great pressure to push, push, push applications
through. This constituent expressed grave concern about it, asked
me to see what I could do about it, expressed the fact that it was
not just the individual's concern but a concern shared by INS em-
ployees.
The second personal contact I had with this is I recently went
to a ceremony at the INS facility in Phoenix, which is in my dis-
trict, where they were talking about some new changes in the law
and about a new agreement that had been negotiated between Ari-
123
zona and the INS regarding the processing of criminal illegal aliens
and how to get them deported as quickly as possible following the
completion of a portion of their sentence.
I went into the building and had to get a little name tag, and
then stepped on to the elevator with another INS employee. The el-
evator was so small, I was shocked. I said, how do you use this ele-
vator to get people upstairs; because she had a gentleman with her
who I presumed to be an applicant, and she did identify him as an
applicant.
And she said, well, you know, it really didn't matter because be-
fore this recent push, we didn't used to do interviews upstairs. But
now, we are required to do these interviews upstairs, so the size
of these very, very small elevators does make a difference. Both of
those are personal anecdotes that bring the issue directly to my at-
tention and cause me some concern.
I want to ask a question of each of you, and I guess my first —
there are really three questions and what I will do is put all three
questions and ask you to each address all three; to the extent that
you weave your answers together, that would be fine.
The question I want to get to is. No. 1, do you believe the recent
push is political; No. 2, assuming you don't believe that, what do
you believe is the reason for the recent push; and No. 3, what is
your impression of what other people within the INS, your peers
or fellow employees or others that you come in contact with, believe
is the reason? Is there a common, accepted belief about why this
is going on at this time? Mr. Conklin.
Mr. Conklin. Personally, I do believe there is a political push on
this. The program was first started when I came on in August 1995
to develop the training program, we were told the original temps
were to start January 1st and the program was supposed to be
done by June; all the backlog was supposed to be done by June.
Well, the Democratic conventions were coming up the following
month, the Democratic and Republican conventions were coming
up the following month. In Chicago, the Democratic Convention
was going to be. That's where it was. Now, during the Democratic
Convention, I had an article come out where I had expressed some
opinions about Citizenship USA, and — I lost my train of thought
for a second. Hold on.
Mr. Shadegg. The article came out and you expressed your
views.
Mr. Conklin. And so far I have not had any retaliation back
through the Service for the article and I don't expect to because my
supervisor had talked — well, she was called and the acting at the
time — the acting assistant at the time had minced words with her
and basically for the first time I actually had a supervisor who
stood up for me and said he did the right thing, he told the truth,
that's what he's supposed to do.
We had a letter that came out where we were all told if we were
contacted by anybody from the subcommittee or questioned on this,
that we were to tell the truth and be straightforward.
Mr. Shadegg. That was after the article appeared?
Mr. Conklin. That was before the article appeared that we got
that memo. That was back probably 4 months ago that we got that
124
memo. When the article appeared, that's what my supervisor said.
He just did what he was told to do.
After the goal was not met in June or July, it was pushed to Sep-
tember. Everything has to be done just prior to the last day of Sep-
tember, just before October 1st. October 4th is the last day you can
register to vote, so if all of these people were going to be natural-
ized and were going to be used for the vote, in my opinion they
needed it done before October. They need it done before they can
stop registering to vote.
A lot of people in the Chicago district know what is going on. In
fact, I would say the majority of them know what is going on. They
know what safeguards have been missing out of the citizenship
process. People are detailed from different sections to Citizenship
to help out. Most of them have worked there, the/ve done it, they
know the problems. They do not express them in public because
they are afraid of retribution.
What was your third question?
Mr. Shadegg. Just the general attitude. Do other employees feel
the same way?
Mr. CONKLIN. The attitude I have been getting since the article
came out, people have been coming and telling me — well, first they
have been joking with me saying they would see me at McDon-
ald's— they have been telling me that they supported what I said
and they agree and they are glad that the truth is finally getting
out.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you. Ms. Dobberfuhl.
Ms. Dobberfuhl. I would have to agree for the most part with
what Mr. Conklin said. I also believe it is a political push as well
as several other people that I talked to in INS and other people
who are familiar with the program.
Being that it is an election year and the cutoff date is September
30th, which he said is right before the cutoff date to register to
vote, I do believe that political issues are definitely magnified.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you. Ms. Woods.
Ms. Woods. I look at the situation of people waiting enormous
months — and I worked as a duty officer the first months of this
past year and I worked with all these people who had all these
problems and a lot of them are the INS's fault. I worked as best
I can and hard as I could to relieve them of those problems and
I could see that something needed to be done.
But to be pushing things and not using our checks and balances
is really scary to me. I don't want to think it is political but it is
hard not to look at those ramifications. Indeed, something had to
be done, but is it so important to push the numbers to — and then
to demean what we were doing? That really upsets me.
So, I don't want to think it's political; however, it is a big ques-
tion mark for me and for — I can't speak for others.
Mr. Shadegg. Ms. Ware.
Ms. Ware. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I'm afraid I do believe it is political.
I didn't want to, but I had to look at the facts. I had tried for sev-
eral— a long — a long time to become an examiner. I was qualified.
But no one else was hired. I think since Sylvia Mano became an
examiner — I don't remember the year, sometime in the 90's, they
had not hired anyone.
125
Then all of a sudden they hired a tremendous number. I got the
job as well as many 12 or 13 other people become examiners all of
a sudden in all of these years. So that's why I believe that it is.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I see my time is expired. Let me simply make a
comment. I certainly would agree with Ms. Ros-Lehtinen that this
ought not be a choice between an old failed bureaucratic system
and one where we abandon the checks and balances. I certainly
don't favor an old bureaucratic system. But by the same token it
concerns me that we have procedures in place. We ought to respon-
sibly be streamlining the process and making the system work, but
we certainly ought not to be allowing it to be abused. And when
this kind of information comes forward, we have a duty to act.
Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I thank each of these witnesses. As we
have done hearings on Medicaid fraud and Medicare fraud, the
only way we can often learn things is when people come forth and
tell us and we check out and see how widespread it is and try to
verify it. Usually we can work together to try to clean this up, but
first it takes public servants willing to come forward with things
that are going on at the grass-roots level. We will now go to the
second panel.
Mr. SouDER. Second panel is made up of INS employees from
other offices around the country: Mr. James Humble-Sanchez from
Los Angeles; Mr. Neil Jacobs from Dallas; Ms. Cora Miller from
Las Vegas; and Mr. Robin Lewis from Oklahoma City.
If you will rise, I will administer the oath.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. SoUDER. Let the record show that the witnesses responded
in the affirmative.
We will start in the order that you are there. Do any of you have
an opening statement or any opening remarks that you would like
to make?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. Yes, sir I do.
Mr. SouDER. You can also in your opening remarks, if you have
anything you would like to comment on, anything from the first
panel, how it might relate to the things that you have done also.
STATEMENTS OF JAMES HUMBLE-SANCHEZ, INVESTIGATIONS,
LOS ANGELES INS; NEIL JACOBS, INVESTIGATIONS, DALLAS
INS; CORA MILLER, ADJUDICATIONS, LAS VEGAS INS; ROBIN
LEWIS, ADJUDICATIONS, OKLAHOMA CITY INS
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. Well, the first question I'm sure that the
committee would like to know is why an investigator would be here
when adjudications branch normally handles Citizenship USA. The
first reason and the primary reason is that the Los Angeles district
employees, as well as managers, have a well-founded fear of perse-
cution and retribution.
I myself, being the local president, or having been for 4 years,
have become accustomed to fighting management, and I will prob-
ably retire at the same grade that I am now, so I don't feel that,
let alone terminating, there is not much more that can happen to
me. So when my fellow co-workers from examination contacted me
in A'je c\n
126
with their complaints, I decided to step forward and speak on their
behalf.
The — there were about five common areas that the examiners all
basically had to say. They're district adjudication officers now and
it is a very tough job. They have to determine in 15 minutes in the
Los Angeles district whether or not the United States is going to
bestow one of the greatest benefits upon an individual this govern-
ment can give, and that is citizenship. In an 8-hour day, they do
20, and in a 10-hour day, they do 27. And the whole system is set
up for one thing and one thing only and that is a rubber stamp ap-
proval. If you are going to deny, the examiner has to justify the de-
nial.
Anjrwhere in the whole process if you question contractors that
we have out there that are allegedly moving them through the
process, you have to justify that. If you find fraud in the applica-
tion upon which they received their green card and you are going
to deny, you have to justify that. If they're on welfare and you find
evidence of that because they mistakenly provide you with evidence
to that, you have to justify that.
But most of the time there isn't any time. You have a 15-minute
interview. If you deny, then you are going to have to either deny
it at the end of your shift or on your own time. Recently, overtime
has been available, but the thing is it is an increase in your work
load of what you have to do.
They identified five basic areas that I talked about earlier. One
was the problem of the testing centers. We have six main testing
centers in Los Angeles for the Los Angeles district, Los Angeles
being one of the five key cities, one of our largest districts. And
three that have consistently come up among different examiners
where the document certifying their passing the requirements for
the testing center had been purchased by fraud. If they couldn't
pass the test, obviously because they didn't speak English or they
didn't have any knowledge of citizenship, for an additional fee they
could buy the document. That was a recurring theme among dif-
ferent examiners.
The second thing was, and this reverberated through the whole
district almost immediately, in early, mid August when we natural-
ized approximately 60,000, it was immediately known throughout
the Los Angeles district that 5,000 criminal hits had come back.
Now, to be fair to the Service, not all these aliens would have
necessarily been precluded from citizenship by their criminal activ-
ity alone, but all of them had to commit perjury in order for their
application to go forward at that time. So would their criminal his-
tory have disqualified them? No. Would the fact that they commit-
ted perjury at that time? Absolutely, yes.
The third thing is they're becoming aware of all the specialty ag-
ricultural workers that illegally obtained by fraud their green cards
are now coming in and wanting to obtain citizenship. They have
been told that they're not supposed to refer these because the back-
log is becoming too great.
And so the explanation when I talk to different managers is,
well, we are putting a system in place, we have one in place, this
is how it works. And it sounds really good when they put a politi-
cally correct spin on it, but the bottom line is where the rubber
127
meets the road, the examiner, there isn't one. There isn't a system
to adjudicate and then reinvestigate these applicant workers. I'm
an investigator and we're not getting any referred to us.
The fourth thing is that a large number are coming through and
because they have welfare documents on them, the examiners are
inquiring about their welfare status and they are not allowed to ei-
ther followup on that questioning or nothing is being done as far
as disqualifying them for that.
The fifth thing is the data base that INS uses is based on CIS.
We have got multiple different names but it's an inaccurate data
base. It's based on soundex: What is your name today? How do you
spell it today? What is your DOB today? There is no identifying
unique identifier like a fingerprint to INS files or applications or
records.
That pretty much identifies the areas that were a recurring
theme in the Los Angeles district.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Jacobs, do you have any opening remarks?
Mr. Jacobs. Yes.
Unlike all the witnesses here, I'm considered to be a senior man-
ager with INS, and the reason I'm here today is because I've put
25 years of my life into the INS and I feel that there are certain
things that have to be said and certain questions that have to be
answered.
Mr. SoUDER. Thank you very much.
Mr. SoUDER. Ms. Miller.
Ms. Miller. I'm another concerned citizen and proud American
and I have worked for Immigration for 28 years. It's not right. It
is making a double standard.
The people who had become citizens before — I brought the appli-
cation with me in case someone didn't know. It's a 4-page applica-
tion. This is quite an involved procedure to cover and get done in
15 minutes. This is a big piece of someone's life, and when you give
naturalization and that certificate is awarded, you don't back up
from that.
There is a provision in the law that you can denaturalize, but as
Immigration employees we know that's not feasible. That's not
done. There are still confessed Nazis who have still not been
denaturalized. So it is a very remote feature of the law and the
onus is on us to do it the right way. It's not our fault that there
is a huge, huge backlog. We are concerned with doing it right.
I just feel so strongly when I see these hits coming back, some-
one has already been naturalized and the managers throw their
hands up.
Mr. SouDER. Thank you.
Mr. SoUDER. Without objection we will enter the materials you
referred to into the record so it can follow logically your statement.
Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. I hadn't really thought about an opening remark, but
I guess the reason that I'm here is because I've seen my agency
doing things that were troubling, that were outside regulations,
that were contrary to the regulations, and when I brought it to the
attention of management, they seemed to brush it aside to overlook
it.
128
When I saw this opportunity, I figured this would at least make
other people aware of it and maybe I wouldn't be a lone voice in
the wilderness. Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Thank you all for coming. We have been joined by
Mr. Becerra and he is not a member of the committee.
I'm asking the committee, based on conversations that I had and
would like to go forward, and by committee rules we have to ask
unanimous consent to allow him to go at the end of our turn in the
committee to be able to ask questions and I would like to have the
committee give consent.
Mr. Shadegg. Reserving the right to object, is it considered that
he would join the committee as a full member and he would join
in the questioning of this panel and all future panels?
Mr. SouDER. I think one question becomes time and we have to
make sure that everybody on the committee gets their questions in.
But if there is sufficient time my intention would be to also let him
question the third panel.
Mr. Shadegg. Continuing with my reservation, if the committee
members are allowed multiple opportunities to question, that is I
get a second 5 minutes, you would anticipate that he would be a
member of the full committee for that purpose as well?
Mr. SoUDER. I would like to be as generous as we can with the
rule, knowing that we have a pending vote at 5 o'clock, but I doubt
that with this panel and the next panel we are going to take the
same time as the first. I would like to include him as we have other
Members. I know that he has a direct interest in it, even though
he may not agree with my thrust.
Mr. Shadegg. My only concern is one of time. I will withdraw
the objection, but if I might reserve it — I don't mind a single round
of 5 minutes. But if we get into a time bind, I do believe this is
an issue for the subcommittee.
Mr. SoUDER. I would ask if you have an additional opening state-
ment that you want to put in, that is fine.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Chairman, if I could say something,
John, as a background, this is not as last minute as it appears. We
had talked to the subcommittee and informed the Hispanic Caucus
of this hearing. Many had requested the opportunity to participate
and they were told that there was no time. Right before the hear-
ing, the chairman said that they could come. So we had gone
through the proper channels and they were turned down to make
an opening statement or at least participate in some way. This is
why the chairman was nice enough to allow Mr. Becerra to come.
Mr. Shadegg. As I said, I will withdraw my objection. My con-
cern would be is that some person could dominate the hearing or
take an excessive amount of time or take multiple questions. I
think the fairness questions comes if other members of the His-
panic Caucus were told they could not come, is it now fair to allow
them that one could come?
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. No, no. They were all told that they could
come but it was too late.
Mr. SouDER. When I was consulted after the hearings in Califor-
nia my opinion has been consistent. If there are multiple Members
who — first off, invitations go out for hearings. This was an over-
sight hearing and I didn't feel that we should have statements as
129
witnesses. If Members request to participate, depending how many
Members there are and how many questions, I would not have
signed off on multiple Members. But I do believe having some rep-
resentation because of the nature of the issue, and specifically the
questions come to me, Mr. Gutierrez who I understand can't be
here and Mr. Becerra is here. He has participated in many other
hearings where I have been, and I believe while we may not agree,
he will be a good questioner and there could be different opinions
and I think it is important that we have him in our midst.
Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Chairman, just as an inquiry, if I chose to
give Mr. Becerra some of my time, would that be objectionable to
anybody here, since these are people from within his district or
around his district?
Mr. SOUDER. At this point there is no objection to him just being
in the questioning. If we run into that, you could do that on the
third panel.
Mrs. Thurman. Thank you.
Mr. SouDER. Let me start with a question where we ended the
last panel just to get this on record. There is a lot of discussion
about what might be behind the accelerated push, because we not
only have a 4-year backlog but a doubling of that backlog.
Could you each comment for the record, do you believe that the
push was political? And if it wasn't political, what was the reason
for the push, only to eliminate the backlog but doubling the back-
log?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. Yes, I do. I have a lot of information that
may not be privy to the committee as far as resources, especially
in investigation, that are reassigned for high profile media atten-
tion-grabbing type of actions. We have all been reassigned for the
last — I mean, to different operations that are outside of our normal
area of expertise and our normal assignment. This is the third elec-
tion year that I have gone through and it is just particularly acute
this year.
So, yes, I would say yes, I believe that political aspirations or
motives may be behind this push. The numbers come from top
down. They come from the CO. It is a CO mandate, a CO push.
The districts comply as best they can or any way they can. The
numbers are not set at the district level.
Mr. Jacobs. I haven't been privy to anything above the Head-
quarters level. I can say that I have never seen a push like this
in my entire career. I cannot say whether it is just a bunch of over-
zealous bureaucrats at the Headquarters level who are just trying
to make the administration or the President like them. All I can
say is that this is something that is a new phenomenon to me in
the 25 years that I have had with the Immigration Service.
Ms. Miller. It's interesting to look at, the timeframes. The push
has been defined. The timeframe from the date the application is
received until it will be completed will be 4 months, and that's not
realistic. The testimony has already been that it requires a 60-day
processing over to the FBI. It's not realistic to put 4 months on. If
you say it is 4 months, then you are cutting corners and that is
where this problem is.
This year we have had a blizzard of memos coming down from
Headquarters, from central office, mandating to get these in, to
130
honor the contracting agencies that are doing the testing. We have
already learned with legalization that when you contract out,
cheating, selling the answers, that occurs. It seems that no one
learned from that. I'm left with no conclusion but there is some
very strong pressure here.
Mr. Lewis. I don't know if it's politically motivated or not. I've
never really thought about it.
Mr. SOUDER. What other possible reason would you put forth?
Mr. Lewis. I have no idea. I know that there is a lot of symbol-
ism, showmanship in this. We have never had hearings of the size
that we are having. We have never had the media coverage of nat-
uralization hearings that we are having now.
Mr. SouDER. Certainly as Ms. Ros-Lehtinen pointed out, every
single one of us have contacted our local immigration offices con-
cerned that our citizens were sometimes bogged down in the sys-
tem. There is no question that we need to clean up the backlog.
There is no question that with the new legalization attempts that
we have many people who need to be drawn in as legal immigrants
if they are going to be here illegally. The question comes is what
compromises come in the process?
Mr. Jacobs, we heard from Mr. Sanchez he was concerned about
investigations. Have you ever been told that investigations should
be put off until after the election or anything to that effect?
Mr. Jacobs. I think what my testimony concerns is what is not
being done rather than what is being done. For example, in the
Dallas district we process the citizenship section, processed 12,500
applications in the last 8 or 9 months; 2,500 of those applications
were actually rejected.
I run the investigations program. Not a single case was referred
to investigations for a positive kickback on a criminal record, a
fraudulent statement, a fraudulent testing entity or anything relat-
ed to any impropriety. And investigations, we are the ones who put
people under proceedings. We do the arrests. We present the cases
to the U.S. attorney, and the U.S. attorney is the only individual
who can decline a prosecution, and to my knowledge there haven't
been any prosecutions nor have there been any declinations.
Mr. SouDER. Mr. Sanchez, on the figure that you used, the 5,000
of the 60,000, and the comment in the newspaper in the Los Ange-
les Times was only — I think it was 69 would have been — I'm not
sure it was deported. Do you have any idea how many of those may
have been denied?
In the first panel we had a discussion about the difference be-
tween deporting somebody and denying citizenship and the ques-
tion of whether or not — let me ask a variation of this. You said that
they at least committed perjury by saying they didn't do something.
How many of these people may have come in under amnesty?
I was confused from Mrs. Thurman's questions, too. Did amnesty
mean that even if you had committed a certain crime, now that it
was not a variable? How many of these people may have had some-
thing that is covered under the amnesty?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. You are asking kind of a complex ques-
tion there.
131
Mr. SOUDER. Well, of the 5,000 and 60,000, how many of those
would have been denied if we had had all of the background
checks?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. Of the 5,000, the number of 69 is ridicu-
lous. That's ludicrous. I would say the number is somewhere be-
tween 50 and 70 percent of the 5,000. They come up with 69; that
is ridiculous. I don't know where they even imagined coming up
with that low of a number, but it doesn't work that way.
I mean, the ones that would not — the ones that would not be dis-
qualified would be the person who didn't knowingly commit per-
jury. That would be the person that was there and had a traffic
ticket that went to warrant and never knew it. I mean, and that's
going to be a minority of that 5,000.
What you are going to find is what I have working with aliens
from the Los Angeles County release line and the prison systems,
you are going to find some of our most bad element individuals: 43
different names, 23 different date of births, and a rap sheet that
falls down and hits the floor and rolls and keeps on rolling. Unfor-
tunately, these now are our permanent members of our society.
Earlier when we were talking about revocation of citizenship, in
the 9 years I have been in investigation in Los Angeles, we have
done zero. Not one. I have no knowledge of even one being done
because it is such a hard process and it is very, very rarely used.
We have now made these people permanent members of our soci-
ety.
Mr. SoUDER. Mrs. Thurman.
Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Jacobs, I am interested to know since you
are the head of the investigation, is that what I understood you to
say?
Mr. Jacobs. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Thurman. How long have you been with INS?
Mr. Jacobs. February will be 25 years.
Mrs. Thurman. OK. So, understanding that Citizenship USA
was set forth by the 1995 appropriations bill under this majority,
specifically so that we could move cases that had been sitting
around for a long time, taking a long period of time in which to
process and then moving on. Maybe from what Ms. Miller said, 15
minutes — or Mr. Sanchez — is not enough.
On the other side of that in a more constructive way, what would
have been your suggestions or what kind of suggestions have you
made as a supervisor to the Headquarters that would have imple-
mented this instead of having to go to this Citizenship USA, what
should we have done? Give me some ideas of how we could have
made this program better or you could have made this program
better?
Mr. Jacobs. I think if there was an intent on keeping the integ-
rity in the system, enforcement could have been brought in from
the beginning and been a partner in the citizenship program. I
think enforcement could have contributed to getting those record
checks done right away. I can pick up an alien tomorrow and have
a record check faxed to the FBI and a return within 10 minutes.
That is conceivable. We don't have to send in fingerprints; we could
fax them. There are many ways of keeping integrity in the system.
Mrs. Thurman. Are we doing that?
132
Mr. Jacobs. No, we are not because the enforcement section was
basically left out of the entire citizenship process. We weren't in-
cluded in it, and I believe we were kept out because had we been
brought in we would have slowed the process down and the num-
bers could not have been reached.
Ms. Miller. As an examiner, may I add if there were enough
personnel available you could have one examiner prereview the
files before the interview. When you begin the interview and you
are flipping through the papers, that is not effective and it is not
productive.
If an experienced examiner could go through, if you had adequate
clerical to separate this application and get the processing well in
advance of the interview, that's the effective way to do. Don't do
the interview before you have all the answers. And that's what
we're doing. We got ahead of ourselves and then we're trying to put
the puzzle pieces all back in. It's not working at all.
Mrs. Thurman. Let me just make a statement that I think is in-
teresting because we kept referring to the September 30th as if it
was a magical number. Do you all realize that that is the end of
the fiscal year as well? I mean, there is something to be said about
a money issue.
Ms. Miller. That is a budget factor.
Mrs. Thurman. Right. So the September 30th may have been
set — have those goals been set before as deadlines as of the fiscal
year that you are aware of? Goals? I mean, it is my understanding
that there have been goals under the years.
Ms. Miller. Many programs end on September 30th.
Mrs. Thurman. So that's not an unusual — for somebody to politi-
cize it and say, well, it had to be done because that might be the
time when voting records would be available or closed, that's the
implication — that's what has been kind of said.
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. In and of itself the date is not that sig-
nificant. You're right, that is the close of the fiscal year.
Mrs. Thurman. So that takes away kind of the political year
here to some degree.
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. If you take that as a single factor alone.
But I think if you look at a bigger picture, then it becomes a part.
Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Sanchez, in your testimony you talked about
that you had heard from many of your co-workers or workers
around, and when you heard from them, do you know of any action
that they had taken to where they thought there might have been
fraud or abuse to their supervisors and were not given backup or
were told, just leave this alone, you know, this is not your concern?
Or in some cases, was there some ideas of some things they might
have done?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. First off, the people that I contacted were
career employees and not the new ones, because those are the ones
I had known through my union activities. And yes, my first ques-
tion is, well, if you found a problem, what did you do? And most
of them ran into frustration, a kind of administrative roadblock.
It isn't a problem. There is no problem as long as we don't ac-
knowledge there is a problem. If we can pretend that this problem
doesn't exist, then we don't have to fix it. If we can keep the num-
133
bers acceptable and manageable, then we don't have a problem. It
is a circular type of mentality, but that is what you run into.
They presented it, but they are encouraged — nothing is ever put
in writing but they are encouraged not to keep referring these
things like they should be doing and then they are penalized by the
work load they get because they now have to deny these, and make
time to deny these on their own time.
The path of least resistance is the rubber stamp brand and that's
the problem, the denial process should not be as burdensome and
clumsy and verbose and large as it is. That's your problem. You
eventually wear the employees down.
Mrs. Thurman. Ms. Miller, Mr. Lewis, what have been your feel-
ings about when you have gone to supervisors or when things
haven't seemed to iron out like you expected? I mean, have they
helped you? Have they said, don't worry about this? This is your
job. I mean, do you feel like you haven't gotten any backup from
them?
Mr. Lewis. My immediate supervisor has been sympathetic, I
guess, is the best word I can use, but her hands are tied. I think
she's in the middle, and being part of management there is not a
whole lot she can do about it.
Beyond that, no, I don't think I have gotten any support if I've
said there was a problem. In fact I know that until January of this
year, if a person came in we put them under oath, we questioned
them about their criminal history. If they said they had no criminal
history, they'd never been arrested, if I had an FBI report in the
file that showed me they had, we would terminate the interview
and deny the application because they just lied to us under oath.
In January, I was told by the assistant director for Exams that
we couldn't do that any more, and it is contrary to regulation, by
the way, what he's told me. He said we had to confront them with
that and tell them, but I have this document and I know that
you're lying to me; don't you want to change your mind. Essen-
tially. Not those words specifically but essentially that is what I
was told.
Ms. Miller. Amend.
Mr. Lewis. Amend, yes. That's a good one.
Ms. Miller. My immediate supervisor has been very supportive
and sympathetic. But the assets — we've heard the term "trickle
down." The assets, the resources, the manpower has not trickled
down from Headquarters.
Earlier I heard the Representative from Florida mention to give
more money to the agency. That's very scary to me, because I
want — I feel so badly that Immigration is not using — this is a phe-
nomenal budget we have now. There is phenomenal public interest
in our agency and we're not doing it effectively. That is the part
that has us all here standing up and saying there is something
wrong, money is not the answer. We need to get it on track and
do it the right way.
Mr. Jacobs. Tlus Citizenship USA, the program was taken on as
a sacred cow. The office was opened 6 days, 7 days a week. Numer-
ous money was put into overtime. It was just like the top priority.
I've got literally in Dallas probably thousands of aliens that are
criminals that are running around on the street mugging people,
134
raping people, stealing. I've never seen any kind of a program that
said, let's go out and get these people. Let's work 6 days a week
and let's go out and we will give you money, we will take temps
and volunteers and we will bring people from other sections into
investigations to go get these muggers and thieves off the street.
I have never seen anything like that, but yet this was all put into
the citizenship program.
Mr. Lewis. In my office, examiners — excuse me, investigators
have been doing the examinations on some of the N-400 applica-
tions for naturalization. I mean, that is my job. Theirs is to arrest
the bad guys.
Mr. SOUDER. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.
Mr. Shadegg, do you have any questions?
Mr. Shadegg. Mr. Jacobs, you mentioned I believe in your testi-
mony that I think you said 2,500 applications were processed and
not a single referral for any impropriety either for false statement
in the application or for any kind of a prosecution; is that correct?
Mr. Jacobs. No, 12,500 applications were processed; 2,500 were
allegedly rejected by the Service. But out of the 12,500, there
wasn't a single referral.
Mr. Shadegg. Out of the 12,500, there was not a single referral.
You have been with the agency how many years?
Mr. Jacobs. Almost 25.
Mr. Shadegg. What would have been the norm? What would you
have expected out of 12,500?
Mr. Jacobs. Anywhere between 5 and 10 percent would be a con-
servative estimate.
Mr. Shadegg. In this instance there were none?
Mr. Jacobs. None.
Mr. Shadegg. Mr. Lewis, just to make sure I understood the tes-
timony you gave. You were instructed by a supervisor that contrary
to the regulations which govern the way you do your job and your
interview, if someone directly lied to you in the course of a sworn
statement in an interview regarding their criminal conduct, denied
having ever committed a crime, you have documentary proof in
front of them that they had, in fact, committed the crime, you were
to do nothing about that?
Mr. Lewis. I was to give them an opportunity to amend their tes-
timony. I was to confront them with the information, whereas in
the past if we had the information and knew that person had been
arrested, we would terminate the interview and deny them and
make them ineligible for naturalization for 5 years from that point.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you very much.
Mr. Jacobs, I couldn't help but notice in the information that you
supplied to the committee that you were involved in a meeting in
Phoenix, AZ, which is, as I indicated, in my district, in which you
expressed concern about this program and the way it was operat-
ing. You were joined in that concern by others in a similar capacity
as yours; is that right?
Mr. Jacobs. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shadegg. The individual there who was conducting the
training, I guess, what was his name?
Mr. Jacobs. Mr. Aleinikoff.
135
Mr. Shadegg. And when you expressed this concern, his re-
sponse was?
Mr. Jacobs. The conference was on or about June 5th. It was in
Phoenix, AZ, and it was like a training session for assistant district
directors for investigations. It was all my counterparts from around
the country. Mr. Aleinikoff gave a speech concerning the integrity
of the Citizenship USA program. I pointed out to Mr. Aleinikoff
that there didn't seem to be any integrity. I referred to the pro-
gram as a Jiffy Lube process.
At that point there was sort of like a chorus that echoed my feel-
ings. Mr. Aleinikoff got upset with that comment and basically ad-
monished me for making it. I indicated to Mr. Aleinikoff why I had
made it; the same concerns I have indicated here, and everybody
in the room was actually admonished, not just myself.
Later on, about a month later, my director, Mr. Strapp advised
me that he had had a conference call with Mr. Aleinikoff and the
regional director. He admonished me for making the comment be-
cause apparently Mr. Aleinikoff had told Mr. Strapp about the com-
ment I had made. And sometime in August I was served with no-
tice that I was being investigated for making disparaging remarks
and negative comments.
Mr. Shadegg. You indicated earlier that you had reached a con-
clusion that there was an intentional lack of integrity in- the pro-
gram because your section — is that called investigations?
Mr. Jacobs. Investigations, yes.
Mr. Shadegg [continuing]. Had been left out from the outset.
Mr. Jacobs. That's correct.
Mr. Shadegg. Tell me what do you mean? How do you base the
statement that you were left out from the outset? What signals did
you receive that integrity was not to be a part of this plan?
Mr. Jacobs. As soon as the marching orders came from Head-
quarters, there was a meeting that took place with all of the pro-
gram managers at the district and basically the citizenship pro-
gram was prioritized. We had to reach these goals which were
going to be impossible and we were told that every section would
have to make sacrifices, meaning we would have to donate time, ef-
fort, people, or whatever was necessary.
The other problems that came about immediately was that indi-
viduals from volunteer groups were solicited and temp agencies. I
immediately contacted the Department of Justice security person
who said you cannot have these people in that office unless you
have done a full background investigation. For example, right now
if I want a clerk, it will take between 3 and 6 months for a back-
ground investigation to be done on this person before this person
can enter on duty. Yet we went out and solicited these people not
only off the street and through the temp agencies, but we went to
ethnic groups. It is sort of like bringing the fox into the hen house
to do the guard work.
We had the situation in Dallas where we don't even have an
alarm system. It's a glass building. All we have is a lock on the file
room. We brought people in that we know nothing about. We put
them to work in the office and they have the whole layout of the
office. As far as security goes, they probably know where my lock-
ers are and my file cabinets are, and we can do nothing about it.
136
Mr. Shadegg. Those things combined with the fact that 12,500
appHcations are processed, you would expect 5 percent of them to
normally be referred for either further investigation or prosecution?
What would that be? That would be roughly — 5 percent of 12,500 —
6,200? Something in that neighborhood?
Mr. Jacobs. About 600 to 1,200.
Mr. Shadegg. I'm sorry; 600 would be referred and in fact there
were no referrals?
Mr. Jacobs. There were no referrals. No matter what we would
tell the director concerning the problems, it would be ignored. It is
not like he would say, well, let's work it out. It was basically ig-
nored, as if we didn't make mention of it.
Mr. Shadegg. Well, I thank you for coming forward to testify.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Becerra.
Mr. Becerra. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me say thank you to the chairman for being gracious and al-
lowing me the opportunity to sit here with the chairman and the
rest of the Members and thank the other Members for also giving
me the opportunity to be part of this particular hearing.
Let me ask a few questions of the panelists. Those who are in
adjudication, Ms. Miller and Mr. Lewis, can you tell me how long
you have worked directly with the Citizenship USA program?
Ms. Miller. Since it began. That's part of my job. I had been a
senior examiner when I moved up to Las Vegas in 1992. Moving
up from 9 years of citizenship work in San Diego.
Mr. Becerra. What do you do within Citizenship USA?
Ms. Miller. The interviews. Do the final hearings.
Mr. Becerra. Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. I don't work with Citizenship USA per se. I don't
know if it's just a matter of name or if there is more to it than that.
As I understood Citizenship USA, it was a program in the five
cities, Chicago, Los Angeles, a couple of other places. I work in
Oklahoma City, and we had — have — had essentially a version of a
citizenship process that has been speeded up. It's somewhat dif-
ferent. There is some outreach things like that. Some offsite test-
ing, but it is not Citizenship USA.
What I have been involved in in my office, I have been involved
in — ^well, I have been in the exam section in that office for approxi-
mately 2y2 years.
Mr. Becerra. Thank you.
Ms. Miller, is it your understanding that Citizenship USA goes
beyond those five or six cities?
Ms. Miller. There is like a parallel program or spin-off. All of
Immigration is focusing on the cattle drive. We are going to move
these applications through. This is your mandated processing time.
We will not hear anything other than that.
Mr. Becerra. So in terms of Las Vegas, your understanding is
that the Las Vegas office is related to the Citizenship USA
Ms. Miller. We're under the national push the same as everyone
else is. Citizenship USA is specific to those five cities.
Mr. Becerra. So you are not part of Citizenship USA. I want to
make sure I understand with regard to the Citizenship USA pro-
gram, do you fall within
Ms. Miller. We are not one of those designated cities.
137
Mr. Becerra. So the work you do may involve adjudication of
citizenship appHcations, but it may not be a part of
Ms. Miller. In addition to adjustments.
Mr. Becerra [continuing]. Those particular ones under the cat-
egory of Citizenship USA. You still do the processing, I imagine, in
your office the way any office does, even the offices under Citizen-
ship USA.
Ms. Miller. Right, and work with volunteer agencies and work
with our temps which all evolve from citizenship.
Mr. Becerra. Thank you. What was the size of the backlog in
Las Vegas a couple of years back before Citizenship USA began?
Ms. Miller. See, we have to factor in one more thing about Las
Vegas
Mr. Becerra. I only have about 5 minutes. If you don't know the
answer, that is fine. I could understand that.
Ms. Miller. Well, Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the
United States.
Mr. Becerra. So what was the size of the backlog you had prior
to commencement of Citizenship USA?
Ms. Miller. I watched it back up as more people arrived, and
when I got there in 1992 it was probably 8 months.
Mr. Becerra. So people were waiting 8 months?
Ms. Miller. From the time they filed it and we did their inter-
view and finished them up.
Mr. Becerra. Mr. Lewis, do you know what it might have been
in Oklahoma City?
Mr. Lewis. About 6 to 8 months.
Mr. Becerra. Do you know what it was, either of you, in cities
like Los Angeles?
Ms. Miller. In Immigration we network a lot, and I know that
Los Angeles was about 18 months or maybe 2 years.
Mr. Becerra. Two years, right. There are some places that had
backlogs as big as 4 years; correct?
Ms. Miller. Right. From files being lost.
Mr. Becerra. Do you know what the size of the INS's total na-
tional backlog is of people waiting to have their applications proc-
essed right now?
Ms. Miller. We don't have time to raise our head up to look.
Mr. Becerra. I have been told it is over 900,000 people who have
been waiting to get their application processed and that prior to
the commencement of Citizenship USA it was 500,000 people. So
it is actually growing even though Citizenship USA has been able
to process quite a few folks.
Ms. Miller. There are dump trucks bringing us loads. We have
more every day coming to us.
Mr. Becerra. That's right.
Mr. Miller. Good job security.
Mr. Becerra. Any sense of what the backlog might be if you
hadn't had the INS through the assistance of Congress provide ad-
ditional funding to help process some of these applications
through?
Ms. Miller. All I can think of is how much better it would have
been if we had done it the right way. We would have had the speed
if we had had that prescreening, if we had done it the right way.
39-435 97 - 6
138
Mr. Becerra. We are hoping that you will be able to provide us
in writing some of the documentation of the flaws in the program,
because certainly any time you try to undertake a massive pro-
gram, and it was a massive program that they have undertaken in
the last year, there are going to be some problems and hopefully
we will be able to bring some of those to light.
Do you all have a sense of how long it takes the FBI — and per-
haps this is more for the investigations individuals — how long it
takes the FBI to process a check of an individual who is applying
for citizenship?
Mr. Jacobs. It could take up to 6 months. However, there is a
mechanism for getting one in 10 minutes.
Mr. Becerra. You mentioned that before, that you could do a
quick check. Is there a reason why the INS hadn't been doing the
quick check prior to instituting something like Citizenship USA?
Mr. Jacobs. I think the reason was they were doing such a large
volume in citizenship.
Mr. Becerra. What about before Citizenship USA? Was there a
reason why they weren't using the 10-minute check?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. Let me address that on the investiga-
tions. The Immigration Service is a bureaucracy and it is a bu-
reaucracy at its best. Los Angels County Jail, which is four blocks
away, has a hand scanner; one block away LAPD has a hand scan-
ner. I can get a criminal check on somebody booked into there in
2 to 3 minutes.
We can't do that. We're the Federal Government. We have the
largest district as far as the geographical size, largest district as
far as employees, largest alien population, and for some reason the
CO hasn't thought it important to give us the tools to do the job,
and one of those tools would be a hand scanner with the ability to
be able to prove that the person sitting there in front of you is, in
fact, the person making the application and whether or not that
person is a criminal alien or not.
There is almost no — I mean, you could come up with a whole
bunch of reasons or excuses, a spin on why they don't do it, but
this is not cutting edge technology. They have had it in Los Ange-
les County for five and LAPD has had it for four. It is even cheaper
now than it was when it was introduced. I don't know why the five
key cities do not have that. If they did, they would drop a cor-
responding overload at Lincoln, NE, on the fingerprint card checks.
They are down, so they will be reasonable. At the same time we
would be able to go at full speed at the offices that are going to
adjudicate the majority.
Los Angeles district plans to adjudicate 326,800 this year. That
is 25 percent of the total of 1.3, and we don't have the resources
allocated. They might have the budgets, but not the tools. That is
because you have an ADP bureaucracy there that won't give to an-
other part of the bureaucracy some things because we have some
empire building going on.
Mr. Jacobs. There is something else that the committee should
understand. We are not just talking about criminal convictions
which render a person deportable; we are talking about a good
moral character of a person. For example, a person can come back
with three driving-while-intoxicated convictions, which in and of it-
139
self is not going to render anybody deportable. But when you do a
good moral character on an individual and you find out that he is
an alcoholic or a drug addict or if he is a wife beater that is not
going to render him eligible for naturalization regardless of wheth-
er he has a conviction or not.
Mr. SOUDER. I think it is important to note for the record, be-
cause of some of the comments here, that even in the most extreme
cases, we are not denying that most of the people coming in would
have qualified; that we are not welcoming those people. Comments
like Mr. Jacobs made about concern about whether there are thugs
getting into system and into the building, even in temporary em-
ployees, is a reaction, I would argue a fairly normal reaction, of
people who are used to being the gatekeepers and to protecting
what American citizenship is. Your job is to focus not on the major-
ity, because the majority will go through the system, but in focus-
ing on that small group who shouldn't be in and we seem to have
let down the guard.
I would argue, and we are trying to get the exact data, that
frankly eliminating the backlog is good and we needed to work on
that and that the fiscal year is an arbitrary world number unless
there was going to be a major slash in the budget or this adminis-
tration would have requested additional dollars — quite frankly, this
week we probably would have said, OK, whatever you want.
The question here is, and I honestly also believe that because
you are coming forth and others are coming forth, we're likely to
see changes that will change this a lot. To some degree the cat's
out of the bag.
In other words, we have moved 1.3 million people in, the major-
ity of whom are probably going to be great American citizens and
contributing to it, but we have also moved a lot of people in who
we have no idea or who there are problems with, and that is what
we are trying to draw out here.
Mr. Lewis, is there an Oklahoma City citizenship initiative? Is
that what your variable is?
Mr. Lewis. Right, it is something like that.
Mr. SoUDER. Was there not encouragement that other offices
have something similar to Citizenship USA?
Mr. Lewis. It is my understanding that it was.
Mr. Souder. As part of that, were you ever asked to do 6-minute
interviews?
Mr. Lewis. Yes, in January of this year, our officer in charge
came up with the idea that he could test the applicants en masse,
give them a written test — which by the way is contrary to regula-
tion— give them a written test 20 or so at a time and we could re-
duce our interviewing time from 15 minutes to 6 minutes. We did
attempt that one time, 1 day, and I guess it would depend on
which side of the fence you stood on whether it works or not. From
where I was looking, the toll that it took on the officers, the appli-
cants, the office in general, it did not work.
Mr. Souder. As part of the Oklahoma City citizenship initiative,
did you hire temporaries?
Mr. Lewis. It was suggested. They were — the positions were an-
nounced but we never brought anybody on. But we did use some
volunteers.
140
Mr. SOUDER. Did they have background checks?
Mr. Lewis. They were run through NCIC and their fingerprints
were taken, but they were put to work immediately before
Mr. SoUDER. Because I would think if there was anybody con-
cerned, it would be in Oklahoma City.
Mr. Lewis. Yes.
Mr. SouDER. All of us who work in Federal buildings have con-
cerns about people getting into the system, and the potential con-
cerns of Mr. Jacobs were addressing the height of government em-
ployees because of what happened in your city.
Mr. Lewis. I'm a union steward and I brought this issue to man-
agement as soon as I found out about it. We were all, everyone in
the office was upset about this because we didn't know who these
people were. There was no real background check done on them.
They would have been working with us for 30 to 60 days before we
would have gotten a background check back, probably longer than
that. Yeah, it scared us.
Mr. SoUDER. Was there not, Mr. Jacobs, a mass ceremony, was
it Fort Worth, with about 10,000 people just recently?
Mr. Jacobs. Last week there were 10,000 people naturalized at
Texas Stadium.
Mr. SouDER. Do you know whether or not there was logging of
the green cards or the citizenship or any of the problems we heard
about at Soldier Field?
Mr. Jacobs. No. I wasn't involved in that process.
Mr. SouDER. Mr. Sanchez, can you describe a little bit about
"temporaries" and how that worked in Los Angeles? I presume you
had transfers as far as detailees, temporaries?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. The problem was, when the final budget
came down to management, they were definitely behind the power
curve. So we have the citizenship process in three separate loca-
tions, and then you have it being handled by temporary contract
employees; and consequently, a lot of the files that we did have, we
couldn't find.
Those you couldn't find went from the proper file, the A file, to
a temporary file; and consequently, because of the same problems,
you couldn't find the temporary. So now you are doing adjudication
on a work folder, and what the work folder has, in essence, is what
the alien walked in and handed to you.
You are asking the examiner to do a thorough adjudication based
on facts before them, and they are not all before them, so it be-
comes an impossibility at that time. You are left with an adminis-
trative process devoid of any check-and-balance process.
Mr. SouDER. Did any of you see any of the English and civics
testing done by INS, particularly NAS, or any of the things we ad-
dressed in our last hearing, questions whether people actually
knew English, understood the civics points?
Mr. Lewis. I have seen tests that were done outside my office.
Our officer in charge goes outside to some of these outside entities,
and he will conduct tests there. I have seen tests that came back
where four out of five four-letter words were misspelled, and these
people were passed on their ability to read and write English.
Mr. SoUDER. Thank you.
Mrs. Thurman.
141
Mrs. Thurman. When Citizenship USA was put out, it was my
understanding that it was to clear up the backlog, so I understand
that there were people that had had their applications in for
awhile; is that correct?
Mr. Lewis. Yes.
Mrs. Thurman. So from that point, if you had been in the system
for 2 years or 18 months, would you have already gone through
possibly the application, whatever other kinds of things you do, so
it was just a matter of waiting at the end?
Ms. Miller. The problem on the backlog is, all these applications
were merely stacked. They had never been joined with the file.
When we say "processing," we mean separate the fingerprint cards,
separate this biographic sheet, and start the processing out to get
the record checks. That had not been done. Time had gone by with
that application just laying there.
Sometimes the checks were not even processed and put into Im-
migration; that is how inefficient it was. These funds were not even
put into our budget, because the checks weren't even processed.
Mrs. Thurman. So the person has been sitting there 2 years and
nothing has been done with their application?
Ms. Miller. Nothing. It is horrendous. It is an embarrassment.
Mrs. Thurman. What is really concerning is that this has obvi-
ously been going on for a long period of time, and it seems to me
that there is nobody to blame except all of us for not being able
to get this stuff done.
My question was going to be, like those 10,000 that might have
gotten sworn in, how many would have already gone through that
that were just waiting to put their hand up and be sworn in? Be-
cause I know at times in our of^ce somebody will have been wait-
ing for their final interview. Everything else had been done, and
then they would go in.
So the question: While some of this has been going on a fast
track, is it safe to say that some of these people had had a lot of
the work done up front and were just kind of moving through the
system at that point? Is that safe to say? Or just all 10,000 of those
came in within the last year and didn't have any real background
or anjrthing done on them?
I need to know what is going on out there.
Mr. Lewis. In Oklahoma City, we had the backlog just like ev-
erybody else did. Some of these things had literally been sitting in
a box somewhere waiting to be fed in, but we were shorthanded in
those areas of people that do that, so it didn't happen.
But if these people came in, and when we started this in Janu-
ary, if these people came into the community-based organizations
and filed their application, essentially we told these people they
were ready to file. INS staff would go out to these community-
based organizations, test and interview people there, take their ap-
plications; and these people have, in effect, jumped to the head of
the line.
The people that are in the file drawer are still in the file drawer.
Some of those have been moved out in the past few months, but
more people from outside entities have jumped to the head of the
line.
142
Mrs. Thurman. Did you have the same problems that we heard
from the first panel with outside groups?
Mr. Lewis. I have only gone offsite to do this kind of thing one
time; and that time, no, we didn't have a problem with that. I can't
speak to anything else.
Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Sanchez, is that the same thing you saw,
similar to what Mr. Lewis is talking about?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. Yes. They were very specific. They had a
lot of problems. The examiners provided me the documents and
what they said. They had a lot of problems with the people not
passing the 312 requirements of being able to speak English and
civic understanding and ability to write.
Mrs. Thurman. But on the backlog as well?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. I couldn't talk directly to it. It wasn't one
of the lines of questioning in things I had direct knowledge of.
Mr. Jacobs. I can't answer any questions. The way the program
ran in the Dallas district, it was an examination program and
there was no involvement other than us donating clerical help and
support help to help process the applications. We were not in-
volved.
Mrs. Thurman. So you really didn't have the direct knowledge
from Citizenship USA?
Mr. Jacobs. That is correct.
Mrs. Thurman. Yours was just what you had seen prior and then
what you were seeing then.
Mr. Lewis, when you talked about the FBI, is there a difference
if you ask a question of somebody who has been arrested or of
somebody who has been convicted?
Mr. Lewis. The question on the application form asks: Have you
ever been arrested, cited, charged, convicted, indicted, imprisoned,
fined?
Mrs. Thurman. So any one of those would have constituted
Mr. Lewis. Yes, it has all those elements.
Ms. Miller. Every variable is here.
Mrs. Thurman. I have not had the opportunity to look.
Ms. Miller. That is why I brought this, because it covers every
range of it. When we have a rap sheet, I know that they have had
bracelets on. That is not something you forget. When I see the rap
sheets and it tells me they have had a year in prison, that is not
something I'd forget.
Mr. Jacobs. Going back to what the previous panel said, if an
employee gets hired and we have the same questionnaire, similar
to the NAS application, and he checks off that he was not arrested
and we find out about it, we terminate him.
Mrs. Thurman. Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I passed on my
time before because I was waiting for some figures.
I am blessed with a wonderful congressional district that has re-
elected me without opposition, so I had no clue as to what the voter
registration of my district was. But knowing of this Clinton admin-
istration plot of using Citizenship USA to get more Democratic vot-
ers, I called the Dade County Elections Department from right
143
here, and I would like to read the statistics as to how well this plot
is going in my congressional district.
In August 1995 — and I am using that because the previous panel
used that as the beginning of Citizenship USA. From August 1995
to 1996, the Democratic registration in August 1995, in the begin-
ning of Citizenship USA, was 76,000. It increased after this huge
effort to get this streamlined bureaucracy going and ignore back-
ground checks and naturalize citizens, which should have never
happened, to a grand total of 77,000, so it was an increase of 1,000
new Democratic voters in the 18th Congressional. I have their
names; we will contact them.
The Republican registration in August 1995 in the beginning of
Citizenship USA was 109,000 and increased to 117,000, so it was
an increase of 8,000 new Republican voters, and I welcome the
Democrats as well as I welcome the Republicans; Democrats, Inde-
pendents, all are welcome.
Of these 1,000 new Democratic voters, if there is a criminal
there, I'd demand that their citizenship get rescinded as quickly as
I would demand that any of these 8,000 new Republican voters, if
they got their citizenship in a fraudulent way — it demeans me; it
cheapens my naturalization certificate — and I'd demand from my
local INS office that they take out that citizenship right away.
As we speak, I have my staff drafting a letter to the INS Direc-
tor, whoever that is, and I haven't a clue who that is. Maybe you
think that I am bosom buddies with the INS, and they do my pa-
perwork before any others. I couldn't tell you if the local INS Direc-
tor is a man or a woman or where that person came from. I never
met him or her. I don't even know where that office is.
I know where INS is at 79th and Biscayne. Maybe the INS Direc-
tor doesn't work in the main office. I don't know. But we have a
letter written to him or her saying, at least in my congressional
district, in the part that I know, if there is anybody who got citi-
zenship in a fraudulent way, we demand that it get rescinded.
We want adequate background checks. We want to make sure
that the program works for those who want to become citizens.
So I would appreciate it if the committee would make a note that
at least in my congressional district this plot has not been going
so well.
I 3deld back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SOUDER. I am glad they haven't focused on your district.
Mr. Shadegg.
Mr. Shadegg. I want to clarify a point. Ms. Miller, as I under-
stand your testimony. Citizenship USA does not specifically apply
to Las Vegas, NV, but there is a systemwide push to process these
applications and it has had these implications and these con-
sequences that you have testified to and heard testified to today in
your area; is that right?
Ms. Miller. That is correct. Every immigration office has these
guidelines as a spin-off of Citizenship USA.
Mr. Shadegg. And, Mr. Lewis, the same is true in your district?
Even though Citizenship USA does not apply specifically to Okla-
homa City, the same pressures have been brought there?
Mr. Lewis. That is my understanding, yes.
144
Mr. Shadegg. I want to followup on a point Ms. Ros-Lehtinen
made, the aspect of this that if, in fact, we are not doing back-
ground checks which ought to be done, or we are allowing people
to receive passing grades on tests that they ought not to get, that
in fact there are a number of things, including diminishing respect
for the INS as a whole; but also it demeans the genuine and seri-
ous efforts of all naturalized U.S. citizens, does it not?
Mr. Lewis. It does.
Mr. Shadegg. It cheapens what they did to achieve their citizen-
ship status.
Mr. Sanchez, have you observed what I will call "testing abuses"
in your experience in Los Angeles; that is, people passing tests that
should not have passed tests?
Mr. Humble-Sanchez. When I talked to the examiners on that,
each one had a different number, but broken means, in the course
of the questioning, they got the alien to admit that they purchased
their documents. So I would say, yes.
Mr. Shadegg. Mr. Jacobs, are you involved in that aspect?
Mr. Jacobs. We got involved in an investigation relative to the
NAS as a result of an expose that "20/20" did, but it was after the
fact. It was because of the "20/20" expose that it came to our atten-
tion.
Prior to that time, the Investigation Section had not been given
any referrals relative to any testing fraud, but the Examination
Section was well aware of a lot of problems with the program.
Ms. Miller. I just recently completed a full day of interviews,
and it was just a fluke in the way that they were stacked. I think
it was by the order they were presented, that all of the applicants
were from Korea, that they had all taken this offsite testing and
brought their certificate from NAS. They were completely, com-
pletely unversed in English, to the point that when I looked at the
wall and had my hands placed on my desk and said, "Please stand
and raise your right hands," they mimicked me and looked at the
wall. They knew nothing about English.
So we gave them all the option — this was 25 people; I had a fam-
ily member who was outside in the audience, who did understand
English, "Please come in. Listen to what I am telling them, because
it is very important. Do you want them to have time to study, be-
cause they are not versed in English; or do you want to withdraw
the application? You must have English." There was a mix on what
they decided, but the whole day was fraudulent certificates that
they had passed English, and they had no knowledge whatsoever.
Mr. Shadegg. Prior to the current climate, what would you have
done under that circumstance? How would you have dealt with
that many people who clearly were not proficient in English?
Ms. Miller. It would not have been that they had that certifi-
cate. This is a farming out of Immigration's job.
Mr. Shadegg. So they would not have had the certificate?
Ms. Miller. No. They would have presented themselves, and it
would have been my responsibility to deal with it.
Mr. Lewis. We have two separate but similar issues here, the
testing by agencies like NAS and those groups, and then the test-
ing that INS itself is doing. I have run into the testing with NAS
and those organizations where the people come in and can't under-
145
stand the simplest phrases, "raise your right hand," "sit down,"
that sort of thing. Those people, because of the way the regulations
are written, we have to give them a second opportunity to come in
and show to us that they can actually converse with us in English.
We can't challenge them on the information; the actual document
that they have got, we can't challenge them on that because the
regulations specifically preclude that. We can't use inability to
speak English as a reason to determine that they obtained their
letter by fraud, even though I don't know how a person could pass
the test in history and government and English if he can't speak
English.
The other half of that is the testing that we do. In the office, I
sit with an applicant, one on one, and will ask questions, "Who is
the President of the United States today?" He has to understand
what I am asking and give me an answer. I ask about 20 to 25
questions of each applicant. When they are tested ofFsite by the
INS, they are given a 10-question multiple choice test, so the stuff
that we are doing in the office has not changed in that respect. But
if they are tested offsite at one of these community-based organiza-
tions, the testing is much simpler; it has been watered down.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you.
I would like to make a brief statement. I believe vehemently in
legal immigration. I think this country is great because we have al-
lowed legal immigration. My State of Arizona benefits greatly from
legal immigration. I think, in fact, we should welcome people to our
shores every day.
However, I think it is reprehensible when we allow the system
to break down in the fashion that has been testified to today, and
I am not much interested in whether or not there is a Clinton ad-
ministration conspiracy. However, the conclusion that has been
stated here by individuals who are at some risk, coming in and say-
ing that they believe it is as a result of political pressure, is, I
think, extremely significant and I don't believe that it ought to be
belittled or ridiculed by registration statistics which show it may
or may not have had some effect in some congressional district.
I think the improprieties which have been documented here and
the courage it has taken for these people to come forward and talk
about those are of grave concern.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Chairman, I think I deserve — I don't
know what it means to belittle, but I do not think that when our
subcommittee puts out a memo that says that this Citizenship
USA, the fraud and abuse has been a plot of the Clinton adminis-
tration to get more Democratic voters and — you can read what our
memo says — for me to give statistics about my congressional dis-
trict; I didn't know my congressional district statistics because I
frankly don't care how many registered Republicans I have.
But I think that — perhaps I am talking out of school; is it incor-
rect if you say that there is a plot to get Democratic voters — and
I point out statistics that bear out the fact that in my congressional
district that does not occur.
And yet I agree that all of these terrible crimes that are commit-
ted by INS in a rush to get through citizenship should be abol-
ished, and I hope that all of us say that they must be. I don't think
that that is belittling it. If you say something is a fact, and I have
146
facts to prove that it is not so, I am not belittling anyone. I am
merely pointing out that if this is a plot, let's go district by district
and see where it is true. I know that in my district it is not true.
Mr. SOUDER. Having the right to defend myself, I said that I be-
lieve that there has been an organized effort to do this for political
purposes. I think that we have inserted the memos into the record
that show that.
I want to insert a memo to the Chicago Citizenship Assistance
Council — and nobody alleged that it was happening in your par-
ticular district; it says the State of Florida. The evidence that you
presented showed it wasn't happening in your district, and that is
exactly what it proved.
[The information referred to follows:]
I
I
147
City of Chicago
BOAILD OF F.T.F.CTION COMMISSIONZHS
HOOM 308, CTTY matt.
CHICAGO. rLLiNois ooeoa
[.AMce oouoH 1 3 1 a I see • toto
C3KU.U II vs DmsC^DB
July 16, 1996
TO: CHICAGO CITIZENSHIP ASSISTANCE COUNCIL
Re: May 24 and July 9, 1 996 Naturalization Ceremonies
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The final number of NVRA applications received from the May 24 Ceremonies is 5,855.
We have now totaled the applications received from the July 9 Ceremony and of the 7,000
new citizens that were sworn in, we have 3,442 applications.
As before, we will update you periodically as further applications are received.
Very truly yours.
Lance Gough,
E.xecutive Director
LG:jt
1-023099
148
Mr. SOUDER. In Chicago, we don't have a RepubUcan-Democrat
breakdown, but the important thing is that the numbers are large:
May 24, 5,855 of those people were registered, which they have a
complete right to do and a complete right to vote; on July 9th,
7,000 citizens were sworn in, 3,442 are registered.
The point is not whether or not they are Republicans or Demo-
crats and whether or not they have a right to vote. They do. The
point is that in Chicago there was an effort that was politically mo-
tivated. We can argue back and forth what it means for different
districts. It is a sizable number of people.
We both had a right to defend ourselves.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. I don't disagree with you, Mr. Chairman, and
I abhor using this process, which should not be fraught with fraud
and abuse or any political overtones used in that way. If those folks
did that, shame on them. I am just saying there are a lot of good
things that have been done in this program, and all we are hearing
about are the problems. I am not saying we should condone or
overlook those problems, but let's also talk about how this program
was fraught with problems beforehand also, and they had to wait
in addition to having those problems.
Mr. Shadegg. Mr. Chairman, in my defense, I want to point out
that the mere fact that registration in one congressional district
has not grown in favor of Democrats over Republicans does not dis-
prove a logical conclusion of a whole lot of other evidence that has
come forward. Therefore, we have no proof that in fact there was
no such plot, and therefore, I think it is inappropriate to ridicule
the purpose of this hearing.
Mr. SouDER. We have a third panel.
Mr. Becerra.
Mr. Becerra. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will bypass defending
myself for now.
I must say that in all of the discussion, I am actually dis-
appointed that 70 or 50 percent of the people are being registered;
I would hope we would have 100 percent being registered. It is all
conducted outside the doors of the citizenship ceremony, and I
would hope that we would have Republicans and Democrats and
Libertarians — just to get them registered.
As it is, about a third of the populace votes. Why should we dis-
courage the newest of our citizens who have taken the time to re-
nounce their former citizenship to register? I would hope we would
put some money into helping folks to register, to make sure that
they do participate and continue to make this country the greatest
democracy in the world.
Let me ask a couple of questions with regard to the backlog. Cor-
rect me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that there is an
existing backlog. I understand, I just got the information from the
INS that they are saying they have upwards of 932 applications
that are pending, that before Citizenship USA they had hundreds
of thousands of applications pending.
I believe, Ms. Miller, you made the point that each of those appli-
cations is accompanied by a $95 check to pay for the processing of
that citizenship application. So in many cases we have had millions
of dollars sitting and not earning interest, not the least of which
trying to get processed through for years and years.
J
149
I appreciate that you have all come here to mention and outline
some other problems in the program, and I hope that this commit-
tee has the opportunity to try to work with the INS to correct some
of the problems. I don't think anyone here is saying that the major-
ity of people that are getting processed through have criminal prob-
lems or have any problems that are more egregious, but certainly
I hope that we can all take from this, whether you are in Congress
or in the administration, the word is that folks are finding that
there are kinks in the process.
My understanding of the process is that prior to Citizenship
USA, the INS worked under the following rule: Once you got the
application, you sent the information to the FBI so that the FBI
could check to see about any criminal violations by that applicant;
is that correct?
Ms. Miller. The fingerprints, right.
Mr. Becerra. That under a rule enacted in 1982 the INS only
had to wait 60 days for the FBI to report back. If the FBI did not
report back within 60 days, then the INS could proceed forward
with that applicant, regardless of what FBI may subsequently turn
up, so INS was under no compulsion to check back with the FBI
after 60 days?
Mr. Jacobs. I think that was based upon the FBI stating that
at that time it took beyond 60 days to get a report check back. That
is not true today.
Mr. Becerra. I understand, under Citizenship USA, although
they get more than 9 out of 10 checks back within 60 days and al-
most 99 percent of them back within 120 days, there are cases
where prior to Citizenship USA the INS wouldn't have had to make
any effort to check back if it had not heard from the FBI after 60
days.
So it seems to me that one of the good things that has come out
of Citizenship USA is, in the process of trying to process so many
people who have waited for so long and paid the price to get this
processed through, that we are working closer with the FBI to try
to get these things processed. I hope that perhaps we will have a
chance to get testimony from the FBI to find out why in some cases
they are not getting back to INS within 60 days. We want to make
sure we proceed quickly with those who have applied and paid for
the work to be done, and at the same time, we want to make sure
the FBI has a chance to do its work and has the resources to re-
spond back.
Ms. Miller brought up points about some of the individuals who
came and had certificates that they had passed the exam, and some
of these individuals probably could not pass the tests. You men-
tioned 25 individuals. How many of those 25 did you reject?
Ms. Miller. They were all continued.
Mr. Becerra. You didn't stop them and ask them to go through
the process or report them to any of your supervisors?
Ms. Miller. When I opened the file and we started the inter-
view, as a part of the interview they handed me this original cer-
tificate. Because of the track record of that certificate, that is just
like waving a red flag. So I time out on the application and we chat
a bit just to establish their English ability, and we hit the big goose
egg every time.
150
Mr. Becerra. So did you stop any of those 25 individuals from
going through the process?
Ms. Miller. What we did was, as I said, I gave them the option
of deciding if they wanted to have a re-exam. A re-exam would be,
you get time out, you get to have a little more study, and we would
have a second interview and begin from square one.
Mr. Becerra. Of those 25, how many did you give a time out
Ms. Miller. I think about five took the option of having the re-
exam, and the others just signed and said, "I don't know any Eng-
Hsh."
Mr. Becerra. So you stopped the process for them?
Ms. Miller. They stopped the process. They withdrew the appli-
cation.
Mr. Becerra. Did any of those 25 go forward?
Ms. Miller. I didn't track the other five. I don't know.
Mr. Becerra. Let me make sure I am clear. Of the 25, 20 of
them decided to go ahead and hold off, 5 of them decided to do the
recheck at a later time.
Ms. Miller. Twenty closed their application by signing a with-
drawal. That closed it. It was all done.
Mr. Becerra. It was all done. They were not going to go through
the process?
Ms. Miller. No. The other five opted — they had enough con-
fidence in themselves that they thought they could cover it.
Mr. Becerra. So in the process you were able to find those who
may not, even with a certificate, really have been qualified to be-
come U.S. citizens?
Ms. Miller. It was a shocking day; really, it was.
Mr. Becerra. You were at least able to stop them?
Ms. Miller. Yes.
Mr. Becerra. Is it the case that most of the interviewers would
have that opportunity?
Ms. Miller. We have a — it is about an inch deep — on this flurry
of citing testing agencies that will be honored, and then you get an-
other memo. They seem to be in teletype form. Then you get an-
other one that says, "Permission has been revoked." Then you get
another one saying it has been reinstated.
I filed mine all with an ACCO fastener. It is very hard to keep
track of which certificate, just a minute, I have to check and see
if these people are still honored.
Mr. Becerra. You are constrained by time?
Ms. Miller. This is all within your 15 minutes.
Mr. Becerra. But it is required by law that you do a check? You
must examine these individuals?
Mr. Souder. We have heard testimony from the first panel that
because of time — Chicago had to waive it, Los Angeles has had to
waive it a lot — that a smaller office
Ms. Miller. I have the luxury of being in a smaller office.
Mr. Souder. You established the point that she has followed up,
but that has been, in the last hearing and this hearing, one of the
major questions — the function of time.
Mr. Becerra. It is my understanding that you cannot waive the
English requirement.
Ms. Miller. That is why you do the personal interview.
151
Mr. Becerra. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to the panel for your testimony.
Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for coming today. We appre-
ciate it very much. It has been a long hearing. We have one more
panel.
Our third panel includes two officials from the INS who are re-
sponsible for the management of the Citizenship USA program. Mr.
David Rosenberg is Director of the Citizenship USA program and
Mr. Louis Crocetti is Associate Commissioner for Examinations.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. SoUDER. Let the record show that the witnesses responded
in the affirmative.
STATEMENTS OF LOUIS D. CROCETTI, ASSOCIATE COMMIS-
SIONER FOR EXAMINATIONS, INS; AND DAVID ROSENBERG,
DIRECTOR OF CITIZENSHIP USA PROGRAM, INS
Mr. SouDER. Mr. Crocetti.
Mr. Crocetti. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the sake of brev-
ity, my testimony has already been offered, and I would prefer to
leave that as a matter of record, so that I have the opportunity,
with the very limited amount of time left, to address some of the
statements that have been made by prior panelists.
I would also like to mention that the field managers from the
cities referenced are also available, should the subcommittee desire
to discuss anything with them later. I would also like to invite you
to speak to the key program managers of the five major cities
where 75 percent of our workload and productivity has occurred.
First of all, please allow me to point out there was a question
raised during the testimony. Citizenship USA does not end in fiscal
year 1996 or September 30, 1996. It will continue in fiscal year
1997, as will the removal of criminal aliens and work-site enforce-
ment.
We have been doing priority management for better than 10
years in this agency, and one of the requirements of priority man-
agement is to prepare actual implementation plans. As I get into
the testimony, I think I can directly connect many of the state-
ments to a lot of the sensitivities associated with the need to pre-
pare plans and to make projections. I will address each of the areas
separately.
First, with regard to the training program, there was a 40-hour
training program that was developed by key field personnel and
Headquarters personnel and our training program out of Glynco. It
provides more specialized training on naturalization than actually
exists in our traditional immigration officer basic training course.
It focused on a primary and secondary method, which basically
means that you assign the less complex and more general work to
your new employees without regard to whether they are permanent
or temporary — they are new — and that the more complex work
would be referred to a more experienced adjudicator, which is the
secondary process.
In our reprogramming request, we requested permanent employ-
ees. The first reprogramming allocated us permanent employees,
and in the second reprogramming. Congress would only authorize
temporary employees.
152
One of the statements that was made, it is my understanding,
was that the training is not the same, and that is very true. I have
to agree with that statement. It is better and will continue to be
better. Because of our training situation, there is significant de-
mand placed upon our immigration officer academy as a result of
the thousands of additional enforcement positions and inspector po-
sitions we have received. As a result, the adjudication program is
now in the process, and we have nearly finished developing a spe-
cialized modular training program that in a way is similar to this
naturalization program, but it will be expanded considerably.
Chicago happened to have two training classes provided, the two
40-hour training courses, to handle the majority of the employees
that were coming on board. After that, they had a piecemeal ap-
proach, because they had one or two employees come on board.
However, the same training plan was provided, albeit it wasn't in
a full classroom setting.
With regard to the comment about temps, all they know is ap-
prove, approve, approve, this could not be any further from the
truth. If this is happening in the field, we will correct it and we
plan on following up on that. It is contrary to the naturalization
training lesson plan that I also just mentioned to you.
With regard to driving numbers, the issue of quantity versus
quality and getting a lot of pressure to produce and not enough
time — too much focus on the numbers — I can most certainly under-
stand this perception; and I also had similar perceptions in the
field when I really wasn't familiar with the bigger picture and the
overall plan.
Productivity is a very sensitive area in that it is directly related
to accountability and performance ratings. When Citizenship USA
became a priority and it entered into the arena of priority manage-
ment, field officers were required to put together a plan and to
make projections and to determine what was needed resource-wise
to reduce their processing time to 6 months. This did cause a lot
of pressure to be placed upon the field, because all of a sudden,
they are being asked to put together a plan to look at their average
production history and to provide a new plan with projections.
What we found is a lot of field offices didn't realize that their
performance or their productivity was below the norm and adjust-
ments had to be made. We have never developed a national per-
formance standard and mandated a certain number of cases to be
required. We shared the norm and encouraged it, but we also en-
couraged the field to factor in no-show rates, because, for example,
if you schedule 20 cases and your no-show rate is 20 percent, you
are going to average 15, 16, interviews. So we asked that that be
considered.
Some of the sensitivities associated with the Citizenship USA
program required change. Change, in and of itself, is not easily ac-
cepted by all. Employees questioning change is healthy and is en-
couraged, and we truly appreciate the panelists coming here today
and sharing what many, if not most, of them believe as being the
facts. But all of a sudden, the Citizenship USA priority came along
and put unnecessary pressure on individuals and threatened their
potential performance ratings.
153
With regard to the fingerprint situation, I can honestly tell you
after being in the field for 19 V2 years, having only come into Head-
quarters approximately iy2 years ago, that this process has been
broken for quite some time as well.
The old process was that the fingerprint cards came to the field
offices. When they got them, if they had enough staff, they tried
to connect them to the files. What the OIG appropriately pointed
out in their report of February 1994 was that this wasn't happen-
ing, that INS had a problem. Not only were records not getting to
the file fast enough, many field offices weren't even reviewing the
quality of the fingerprint cards before they submitted them. So
many of them were rejected. Those that were rejected, the over-
whelming majority were not reprocessed.
We are fixing this process. In fact, we have fixed this process
with the limited exception of ensuring 100 percent compliance.
However, we also have a newly developed inspection program that
is responsible for reviewing policy compliance and taking corrective
action, and that will be proactively implemented in fiscal year
1997.
Let me go a little further on these fingerprints, because I have
spent the majority of my time on fingerprints for the past couple
of months, given my concern about the allegations being made, and
I can honestly tell you that every piece of information I get
counters the allegations that you are hearing and what you are
reading in the paper.
The FBI just completed a study at our request. From the 1.2 mil-
lion fingerprint cards, that were processed between January 1,
1996 and September 18, 1996, 98.6 percent were processed within
90 days. We centralized the back end processing of all these re-
turned records in our Lincoln Service Center. For the first time, we
are actually organizing and coordinating the receipt of fingerprint
records from the FBI, and that includes rejects as well as hits. Re-
jects, for the first time, are actually being communicated directly
to the applicant, and we are requiring them to resubmit new prints
for reprocessing, and the necessary flags and holds are put in place
until that process is completed.
With regard to hits, not all the hits are convictions. The over-
whelming majority are arrests, and many of them include adminis-
trative arrest by the INS. We have reports available for you to dis-
cuss that.
Mr. SOUDER. Please wind up. I have been lenient on the time be-
cause you have been sitting here all afternoon and you are re-
sponding to very specific points.
Mr. Crocetti. With regard to rubber stamping, I would like to
comment that also after coming from the field and 19 y2 years expe-
rience, this is a traditional, long-standing perception of the enforce-
ment program. But I would like to connect it to the reference that
we don't refer cases to Investigations or don't have them do good
moral character checks. That has not been done since the early
1980's, right around the time Investigations developed a case man-
agement system where they would only accept priority cases that
primarily focused on criminal aliens and work-site enforcement. We
now do all those checks within the examination programs and have
not lowered one standard.
154
With regard to the incompetence-versus-plot theory, please let
me address that, because I actually object to both. Yes, there are
antiquated processes in dire need of improvement; yes, there are
regulations in need of revision; and yes, there are statutory needs.
But the foundation of our deficiencies is that the benefits program
has been underfunded and underequipped for many years, and this
is bipartisan. What agency or business could absorb a 300 percent
increase in demand with an already extremely limited supply? Not
many.
In closing, I assure you that our Citizenship USA efforts are non-
partisan and that we are focused and will remain focused on im-
proving the integrity of the citizenship process. Thank you.
Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Crocetti follows:]
155
U.S. Department of Justice
Immigration and Naturalization Service
Office of the Commissioner
425IStrrelNW.
Washinglon. DC 20536
Statement of
Louis D. Crocetti
Associate Commissioner for Examinations
Immigration and Naturalization Service
on
Citizenship USA
Before the
House Government Reform and Oversight Committee
Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs
and Criminal Justice
3 1 1 Cannon House Office Building
September 24, 1996
1:00 p.m.
156
Members of the Subcommittee:
It is a privilege to have the opportunity to respond to your concerns regarding Citizenship
USA. We are very proud of this program and of its accomplishments. As Associate
Commissioner for Examinations, I have responsibility for all adjudications programs, including
naturalization, adjustment of status and other benefits; land, air and sea inspections; benefit and
enforcement records; Information; the National Fines Office; the Administrative Appeals Unit
and Service Center operations. From this perspective, I can say, categorically, that Citizenship
USA has significantly improved the way we do business, both in terms of quality and quantity.
In fact, many of these innovative and sorely needed improvements will be helpful to other
benefits processes.
Citizenship USA is one of six priority programs which the Commissioner identified for
special emphasis in FY 1 996, along with Professionalism, Removal of Criminal Aliens, Border
Control, Worksite Enforcement, and Customer Service. Like Citizenship USA, all of these
priorities contain fiscal year goals and implementation plans. Time frames are focused on the
fiscal year, thus explaining why Citizenship USA and other priorities end on 9/30/96. Like
Citizenship USA, some priorities continue through FY 1997, such as Removal of Criminal
Aliens and Worksite Enforcement. Priorities are set annually in order to respond to the agency's
constantly evolving challenges in a strategic and thoughtfiil way.
I would also like to note that Citizenship USA is one of several National Performance
Review (NPR) projects under my jurisdiction. Others include more than a dozen inspections
process re-engineering labs at various air and land ports-of-entry, field model office labs in El
Paso and Detroit, and the business/government partnership lab at the Miami International
Airport. The purpose of an NPR lab is to empower designated interdisciplinary teams to evaluate
existing policies and processes with an eye towards identifying non-value added activities.
The goals of Citizenship USA are consistent with these NPR objectives, as well as our
2
157
Examinations program goals of eliminating backlogs and reducing processitig times, without
sacrificing the quality or integrity of our work product, in all of our adjudicative areas.
Naturalization and adjustment alone comprise one-third of our adjudications caseload. Thus, we
are focusing our effort accordingly.
I have been with the INS for 21 years, and I can tell you that before Citizenship USA,
district offices had become completely overwhelmed by the unprecedented increase in
citizenship applications. Many offices did not even know how far behind they were, because
applications that were mailed in sometimes sat in boxes for months before being entered into our
databases. Applicants had no receipt and we had no way to track their cases. Interviews were
scheduled manually. Both in terms of manpower and equipment, our offices were under-
equipped. They were literally drowning in work. Imagine the fee-paying applicant who has
played by all the rules and waited 5 years to apply for citizenship- and was told it would take an
unacceptable 4 more years to process their application.
Now we are addressing these problems. Through the Citizenship USA initiative, offices
are now staffed and equipped to do their job. Mail is opened. Data is entered into the databases.
FBI records are getting to the files. Interviews are being scheduled electronically. Customers
are finally receiving the service they are paying for in a timely maimer. And, all of this is being
done without compromising any standards.
Where Citizenship USA has changed naturalization processing, it has improved it. There
have been no changes in the hiring standards or compromise of the background checks, only
efficiencies. We have maintained the face-to-face interview which is at the heart of the
naturalization adjudication. Applicants who caimot speak English, and are required to by law in
order to naturalize, are not being naturalized. This would be contrary to both statute and
regulations. In the end, the best evidence that we have not lowered standards is that denial rates
are at or above previous levels.
158
We are also preparing new regulations that will strengthen the consistency and quality of
English and civics testing, improve the oversight and control of outside testing organizations, and
regulate fingerprint service providers. We are expanding automated technology. We have
already expanded Direct Mail to residents of Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Chicago, who
can now send their naturalization forms directly to INS Service Centers, rather than being
required to travel to District offices simply to file their application. This allows INS to centralize
and perform data entry and other administrative support functions much more quickly, and frees
District Office personnel to concentrate on interviews and other adjudicative functions. It also
provides better service to our customers, who now get a receipt and notice of processing time
frames.
Allegations have been made in the media that the Service has changed its fingerprint
clearance policy, so that we no longer have to wait for feedback from FBI. This could not be
further from the truth, as quite the opposite is happening. In fact, based on a 1994 OIG report,
the Service has been making continuous improvements to the clearance process.
Before I detail the improvements we have made, please allow me the opportunity to
provide you with a better understanding of the situation. INS thoroughly checks the criminal
records of all citizenship applicants through the FBI. Tlie overwhelming majority of applicants
for naturalization do not have any criminal records. The majority of FBI responses pertain to
arrests, not convictions. Many pertain to administrative processing by INS, not criminal history.
Of the limited number of responses from the FBI demonstrating a criminal record, only a very
small fraction represent convictions that bar a person from becoming a citizen. Notwithstanding
such, INS conducts fingerprint checks on all applicants between the ages of 14 and 79 years of
age. INS takes every reasonable precaution to ensure that individuals with disqualifying
convictions are not granted citizenship. In the very rare instances when this does occur, we
institute proceedings to revoke the benefit. We are awaie of only 60 cases of the nearly 1 million
naturalization applicants processed this year where individuals have been wrongly naturalized
due to fingerprint matches with disqualifying convictions reaching the files after naturalization
159
has taken place. In each of these cases, we are proceeding with de-naturalization proceedings.
INS has made numerous important improvements to the fingerprint process this year. In
Jime, INS centralized the receipt and processing of all FBI responses at the Service Center in
Lincoln, Nebraska. This allows us to coordinate internal agency processing by communicating
the FBI record to the responsible field office's designated point-of-contact by fax for matching
with the applicant's file in an expeditious manner. It also allows for data collection and analyses
that were nonexistent imder the prior process.
In August, the FBI agreed to provide INS a paper record of all negative records, or "no
hit", findings. We are actively in the process of developing technology that will allow us to
download all FBI responses (negative and positive) into INS databases. In addition, the FBI has
agreed to develop and provide INS with a monthly "Aging Report" of cases that reach the 90-day
processing point. Upon receipt, the Lincoln Service Center will notify the applicable field office
so that they can place the related file on hold imtil the fingerprint clearance process has been
completed.
Effective January 1, 1997, INS will only accept fingerprint cards from Designated
Fingerprint Service providers and other recognized law enforcement agencies. This is the first
time that INS has regulated who takes fingerprints. Internal controls such as random and
unannounced audits conducted by both contractor and Service personnel are built into this
program.
In order to get to where we are with Citizenship USA, we have improved, not cheapened,
the process. We are enhancing efficiency and customer service, while maintaining if not
improving standards of integrity and quality. We are extremely proud of what our employees are
accomplishing, and consider Citizenship USA to be one of the most successfiil initiatives
undertaken by the Service. As Commissioner Meissner has repeatedly stated, we have returned
the "N" (naturalization) and "S" (service) into the INS. We are also extremely proud to play
160
such a key role in welcoming new citizens who have played by all of the rules to our country.
Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee on this important subject. I
would be happy to take any questions you may have at this time.
161
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Rosenberg.
Mr. Rosenberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have an opening
statement which I will submit for the record.
Mr. SouDER. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Rosenberg. Citizenship USA is one of the most successful
and innovative initiatives the Immigration and Naturalization
Service has undertaken in many years. As Project Director, I am
proud to be part of this cross-unit project team which involves hun-
dreds of INS employees across the Nation. We are meeting the
challenge of modernizing the Nation's naturalization system at a
time when a record number of lawful immigrants are seeking to be-
come full members of our national community.
In its first year. Citizenship USA has accomplished several im-
portant objectives. We have successfully reduced processing times
for citizenship applications nationwide to traditional levels while
maintaining the integrity of the naturalization process. We have
initiated major improvements to procedures and operations. We
have reached out to local officials, civic associations and community
service organizations throughout the country to involve commu-
nities in the citizenship process. We have responded effectively to
an unprecedented workload increase and begun to redesign out-
moded processing methods. Our efforts have received bipartisan
support from Congress and other elected officials.
Let me briefly review the history of Citizenship USA. The im-
provement of the naturalization program has been a high priority
for Commissioner Meissner from the time she came to INS in Octo-
ber 1993. At her confirmation hearing, she expressed her belief
that naturalization is positive for immigrants, for their commu-
nities, for the INS and for America and stated that it was "my in-
tention to be much more active on the part of the Service where
naturalization is concerned."
More immediately. Citizenship USA addresses a crisis that faced
INS in fiscal year 1995, a huge and growing backlog of naturaliza-
tion applications that had already extended the adjudications proc-
ess well beyond the traditional period of 6 months. INS was accept-
ing applications and fees from long-term legal resident aliens,
knowing that in many locations eligible applicants would have to
wait 2 to 4 years to complete the process. Such delays were and
are not acceptable to INS, to the Congress or the American people.
In short, if we had not implemented this initiative, today INS
would under criticism for its failures rather than for its success.
By early 1995, INS was receiving applications for citizenship at
an unprecedented rate, which would exceed 1 million for the year,
nearly double from the previous year. By January, we already had
almost 400,000 cases pending. Even with increased management
emphasis and productivity improvements, we knew our existing
staff would be able to adjudicate only 500,000 applications that
year, which was the most INS had ever handled in 1 year. The gap
between our workload and our capacity was already large and po-
tentially overwhelming, and though the waiting times were grow-
ing everywhere, about 75 percent of the pending caseload was con-
centrated in the 5 largest of our 36 districts.
As you know, applicants pay fees with their applications, as with
all applications, and they, along with applicable penalties, are col-
162
lected into the Examinations Fee Account. This account funds the
entire naturaUzation program unless Congress makes specific addi-
tional appropriations. Accordingly, the INS sought to utilize the
Examinations Fee Account funds from these increased applications
to respond to this massive increase in workload.
We communicated our detailed plans in two reprogramming re-
quests to our appropriating committees, which were approved. Both
addressed the need for additional staff, particularly in our five dis-
tricts with 75 percent of our caseload — Los Angeles, New York,
Miami, San Francisco and Chicago. We later determined and noti-
fied the committees that the approved funding would permit addi-
tional hiring for another 15 cities with sizable, but far smaller
pending caseloads. The request spelled out other components of our
plan as well. Together, these two requests provided approximately
$80 million in additional spending authority for naturalization in
fiscal year 1996.
In his January 1996 approval letter, subcommittee Chairman
Rogers wrote, "I am pleased the INS is recognizing this significant
workload and addressing it in this reprogramming by hiring tem-
porary employees to handle the processing of workload in the six
cities that continue to have the highest volume of these applica-
tions." The six included another city for adjustment of status appli-
cations.
Earlier in the letter, he also stated that, "I further understand
with these additional resources INS intends to reduce backlogs in
naturalization and adjustment of status applications so that, by
midsummer, eligible persons will become citizens within 6 months
after applying."
To respond to this workload, we decided to combine three strate-
gies. First and most critically, we have hired a large number of ad-
ditional staff to be dedicated to naturalization cases. Second, we
have re-examined our work processes to improve efficiency and
quality. Third, we have worked to develop partnerships with orga-
nizations which could help prepare applicants and applications.
Once reprogrammed funds became available, we proceeded with
hiring. In the interim, we detailed INS employees from other of-
fices, all of whom volunteered to be part of the project, to key dis-
tricts to prevent the backlog from worsening. All workers — perma-
nent, temporary and contract — received appropriate security clear-
ances and training. They are all overseen by experienced INS per-
sonnel.
I will not go into all the specific changes and improvements we
have made in the process unless you have questions specifically on
those.
Let me address one or two more points here. Citizenship USA
addresses expanding INS's partnerships with schools, civic associa-
tions, State and local officials, and community organizations to pro-
vide better service to citizenship applicants. These organizations
offer information, application assistance, and English and civics
classes to prospective citizens. In some districts, officers conduct
interviews at community sites. As a result of these partnerships,
we receive better-prepared applications and have fewer no-shows at
our interviews. We provide no funding and make no pajrments for
these activities. Only trained INS adjudications officers conduct
163
naturalization interviews; these responsibilities are not delegated
to anybody else.
Community organizations and others play an active role in cele-
brating citizenship at ceremonies, as they have for decades. Part-
nership efforts of this type help to build bridges and creates cohe-
sion between new Americans and established communities. The
Citizenship USA initiative is an ongoing project of the Service. We
expect it to continue for several years as its innovations are institu-
tionalized throughout our system.
To correct any misunderstanding, the program is not ending Sep-
tember 30th. As is true for most Federal agencies, our objectives
are set on a fiscal year basis. As of today, applications are proc-
essed within acceptable timeframes. The number of applications
continues at record levels. We expect it will remain high in the
coming year.
Our focus is to maintain our new level of capacity, to utilize addi-
tional means to ensure the quality and timeliness of our adjudica-
tions, and to serve as a catalyst for broad community participation
in citizenship.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service is meeting an enor-
mous challenge, implementing an innovative and responsive natu-
ralization reform program with professionalism and solid perform-
ance. The Commissioner has stated many times that she is proud
of the men and women of the Service. Administering the system
that decides who can become a citizen is a high honor and a great
responsibility. The American people should remain confident that
we are dedicated to cariying out this public trust at the highest
level.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the additional time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rosenberg follows:]
164
U.S. Department of Justice
Immigration and Naturalization Service
Office of the Commissioner
425 I Street NW.
Washington. DC 20536
Statement of
David Rosenberg
Project Director, Citizenship USA
Immigration and Naturalization Service
on
Citizenship USA
Before the
House Government Reform and Oversight Committee
Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs
and Criminal Justice
3 1 1 Cannon House Office Building
September 24, 1996
1:00 p.m.
165
Members of the Subcommittee:
Citizenship USA is one of the most successful and innovative initiatives the Immigration
and Naturalization Service has undertaken in many years. As Project Director, I am proud to be
a part of this cross-unit project team which involves hundreds of INS employees across the
nation. We are meeting the challenge of modernizing the nation's naturalization system, at a time
when a record number of lawful immigrants are seeking to become full members of our national
community.
In its first year. Citizenship USA has accomplished several important objectives. We
have successfully reduced processing times for citizenship applications nationwide to traditional
levels while maintaining the integrity of the citizenship process. We have initiated major
improvements to naturalization procedures and operations. And we have reached out to local
officials, civic associations and community service organizations throughout the country to
involve communities in the citizenship process. We have responded effectively to an
unprecedented workload increase and begun to redesign outmoded processing methods. Our
efforts have received bipartisan support from Congress and other elected officials.
Let me briefly review the history of Citizenship USA. The improvement of the
naturalization program has been a high priority for Commissioner Meissner from the time she
came to INS in October, 1993. At her confirmation hearing, she expressed her belief that
naturalization is positive for immigrants, for their communities, for the INS and for America, and
stated that it was "my intention to be much more active on the part of the Service where
naturalization is concerned."
More immediately. Citizenship USA addresses a crisis that faced INS in Fiscal Year
1995: a huge and growing backlog of naturalization applications, that had already extended the
adjudications process well beyond the traditional period of six months. INS was accepting
applications and fees from long-time legal resident aliens, knowing that in many locations
166
eligible applicants would have to wait two years to four years to complete the naturalization
process. Such procedural delays were and are not acceptable to the INS, to the Congress or to
the American people. In short, if we had not implemented this initiative, today INS would be
under criticism for its failures rather than its successes.
By early FY 1995, INS was receiving applications for citizenship at an unprecedented
rate, which would exceed one million for the year, nearly double the number from the previous
year. By January, 1995, we already had almost 400,000 cases pending. Even with increased
management emphasis and productivity improvements, we knew that our existing staff would be
able to adjudicate only 500,000 naturalization cases that year, the most INS had ever handled in
one year. Thus, the gap between our workload and our capacity was already large and
potentially overwhelming. And though the waiting times were growing almost everywhere,
about 75% of the pending caseload was concentrated in the five largest of our 36 Districts.
As you know, applicants pay fees with their applications, as well as any applicable
penalties, which are collected into the Examinations Fee Account. This account funds the entire
naturalization program, unless Congress makes specific additional appropriations. Accordingly,
the INS sought to utilize Examinations Fee Account funds generated from these increased
applications to respond to this massive naturalization workload.
We communicated our detailed plans for Citizenship USA in two reprogramming
requests to our appropriating committees, which were approved. Both addressed the need for
additional staff, particularly in our five INS Districts with 75% of the national workload: Los
Angeles, New York, Miami, San Francisco and Chicago. We later determined, and notified the
Committees, that the approved funding total would also permit additional temporary hiring for
another fifteen cities, with sizable but far smaller pending caseloads. The request also spelled
out other components of our plan. Together, these two reprogramming requests provided
approximately $80 million in additional spending authority for naturalization in FY1996.
167
In his January 16, 1996 approval letter. Subcommittee Chairman Rogers (R-KY) wrote;
"I am pleased that the INS is recognizing this significant workload and addressing it in this
reprogramming by hiring temporary employees to handle the processing of workload in the six
cities that continue to have the largest volume of these applications." Earlier in the letter.
Congressman Rogers also stated that "1 further understand that with these additional resources
INS intends to reduce backlogs in natviralization and adjustment of status applications so that by
mid-summer, eligible persons will become citizens within six months after applying . . ."
To respond most effectively to this massive workload, we decided to combine three
strategies. First and most critically, we have hired a large number of additional staff to be
dedicated to naturalization cases. Second, we have re-examined our work processes to improve
efficiency and quality. And third, we have worked to develop partnerships with organizations
which could help prepare applicants and applications.
Once reprogrammed fimds became available, we proceeded with our hiring. In the
interim, we detailed INS employees from other offices, all of whom volimteered to be part of this
project, to key districts, in order to prevent the backlog from worsening. All workers —
permanent, temporary and contract ~ received appropriate security clearances and training. They
are overseen by experienced INS personnel.
In the five largest districts, we opened nine new Citizenship Centers to accommodate the
increased personnel and to set up a more efficient workflow. These centers are equipped with
updated technology. As much as possible, these centers are located in areas that are more
accessible to applicants or in areas that are some distance from existing INS citizenship services.
We have made several significant process improvements already, and more are underway.
Congressman Rogers' mentioned six cities because the reprogramming covered additional staff
to handle both backlogged naturalization and adjustment of status applications. In addition to the other
five cities, Newark, New Jersey received staff increases for adjustment applications.
168
We have streamlined the application filing process in our largest districts, by having applicants
mail their paperwork directly to our four Service Centers. We are also piloting a process which
allows applicants to file electronically. We have strengthened the management and monitoring
of our external civics testing program. We continue to work closely with the FBI to ensure
expeditious and thorough checks of applicants' criminal records. We are developing a new
computer system which will assist adjudicators by expediting their access to information fi-om
various computer databases. We have improved the timeliness of our data entry and accuracy of
statistical reporting. And we are supporting two new public television series to teach English and
American civics to potential citizens, so they are better prepared to meet the statutory
requirements for naturalization.
Citizenship USA also stresses expanding INS' partnerships with schools, civic
associations, state and local officials and community organizations, to provide better service to
citizenship applicants. These organizations offer information, application assistance, and English
and civics classes to prospective citizens. In some Districts, INS officers conduct interviews in
community sites. As a result of these partnerships, fNS receives better-prepared applications and
has fewer "no-shows" at the interviews. INS provides no funding and makes no payments for
these activities. Only trained INS Adjudications Officers conduct naturalization interviews and
adjudicate applications; these responsibilities are not delegated to any other party.
Community organizations, schools, foundations and clubs also play an active role in
celebrating citizenship at swearing-in ceremonies, as they have for decades. Such partnership
efforts help to build bridges and create cohesion between new Americans and established
communities.
The Citizenship USA initiative is an ongoing project of the Service, and we expect it to
continue for the next several years as its innovations are institutionalized throughout our system.
As of today, naturalization applications are being processed within acceptable timeframes. The
number of incoming applications continues at record levels, and we expect that it will remain
169
high in the coming year. Our focus is to maintain our new level of capacity nationwide, to utilize
additional means to ensure the quality and timeliness of our adjudications, and to serve as a
catalyst for broad community participation in citizenship.
As I have described, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is meeting an enormous
challenge, implementing an innovative and responsive naturalization reform program with
professionalism and solid performance. As the Commissioner has stated many times, she is very
proud of the women and men of the Service. Administering the system that decides who can
become a citizen of the United States is a high honor and a great responsibility. The American
people should remain confident that we are dedicated to carrying out this public trust at the
highest level.
170
Mr. SOUDER. Let me say up front, and this is just a general com-
ment, that whenever — this used to be called the "oversight commit-
tee." Now we have "reform" because we Republicans are politically
correct, as well, that any group, no matter what agency, feels that
we are concentrating only on the negative. That is what this com-
mittee does.
We are not a cheerleading committee. We are not trying to focus
on all the positive things it does. But that can have a demoralizing
effect on a lot of people who are doing a good job or good parts of
a program — I want to say that up front — and I gave you extra time
to respond.
It is also clear that we have some factual debates, just so I can
set this for the record, that we may have voting start relatively
soon, although I don't know what the status is of that. We also
have a little less controversial government reform thing tonight,
and that is, we are voting on, I think, a report on the so-called FBI
security files, which is likely to be a little bit of a ruckus as well.
So we may not be able to establish and get into some of the par-
ticulars you raised, but if we don't here, we may do some followup
questions.
I want to express some concerns right off the bat. I listened care-
fully to what you said in response. Let me see if I basically got this
point down.
My background is management; I have a business undergradu-
ate, as well as business graduate degree. I have a family business
and that is what I did. From what I have seen, the number of docu-
ments— and I am sure you are aware of these — that the INS — we
have documents that in March 1996 the White House directed — I
think we agree on what you are saying is the thrust of this, is that
the INS indicated that the White House wanted the program to be
accelerated.
We also have documents that show that Mr. Rosenberg along
with Mr. Farbrother and Roy Lyons of the Vice President's office,
began to travel around the country to see if the program was mov-
ing fast enough. We have documents that show that the Vice Presi-
dent's staff, including Elaine Kamarck, Mr. Farbrother and Ms.
Lyons, began going to other agencies searching for personnel, re-
sources that could be diverted to Citizenship USA. We also have
Mr. Farbrother wrote a memo for the Vice President, addressed to
the President, which outlined ways to lower the standards for citi-
zenship.
Just to wrap up those and other documents, my understanding
of your basic thrust is that what the administration was saying,
and in a sense in reinventing government, is that this was unac-
ceptable and that your job was to get the backlog down; and there-
fore, you are maintaining that this was not political, but rather
that it was good government?
Mr. Rosenberg. Is that directed to me, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. SoUDER. Yes. In other words, your defense is the fact that
we see the Vice President's intervention, the President being noti-
fied from time to time, although he pushed it back down, direct
White House, that this was something, because you felt it was un-
acceptable and therefore this isn't political, this is a version of good
171
government; it is what you should be doing, getting the backlog
down?
Mr. Rosenberg. Essentially, yes, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SOUDER. Otherwise, the Vice President's office wouldn't be
involved.
Mr. Rosenberg. I wouldn't characterize it as a defense, but
would characterize it as the facts.
In the early spring of this year, the Citizenship program, which
is a Justice Performance Review laboratory, one of the reinvention
projects for the Justice Department, did come to the attention of
the National Performance Review, and they contacted us and said
they were very concerned.
We had announced very ambitious goals, we had announced
them quite publicly. We had submitted to the Congress a request
for funding — to 0MB in October; I think it was submitted to the
Congress in November. Because of the government shutdown and
the delays in 0PM and other agencies of the government in react-
ing when they restarted with all the piled up work and in our own
agency, we were running very far behind our schedule to be able
to accomplish our goals within the fiscal year, and it looked like we
might be very embarrassed as an agency. It also would have been
a real slap in the face to our people who were making efforts, had
made plans and also were out having made statements in their
own communities.
Mr. SouDER. Basically you are saying, yes, you agree, that it
was — ^you explained why, but it was an attempt to reach your goals
and to do what you thought would be good government? It wasn't
an attempt to add people to the rolls to affect the election?
Mr. Rosenberg. Yes, sir.
Mr. SouDER. Here is my concern, that somebody with a manage-
ment background, that I wanted to establish, that what I heard
Mr. Crocetti say was that any agency would be under pressure to
absorb a 300 percent increase. I also heard him say that the back-
log in the FBI files is not something — it has been there for a long
time. It is not something new; it has been broken for a long time.
Now, what my concern is that while it is true that if you hadn't
gotten rid of some of the backlog, we would probably have called
you up here and said, hey, we have people waiting. The truth is,
if given this choice, would you rather get rid of the backlog or allow
people who shouldn't be American citizens into the system? There
is a tremendous pressure not to be embarrassed because you are
behind or because you had stated goals or because the government
shouldn't have been out, and I am sure that the shutdown
compounded the problem, but you acknowledge up front that this
system wasn't working right, yet you doubled it by soliciting and
put more pressure on.
The first goal should have been to make the system work as well
as possible and as perfect as possible in that element before you
expanded the outreach effort to bring more in. To me, that suggests
that in fact it was political or extremely naive from a management
standpoint, because the protections in the system are the thing
that make America unique, and every person who comes in here,
we should know their background, not go back later and try to fix
172
the program because we were accelerating it. I don't believe that
is good management.
Mr. Rosenberg. If I could respond, we don't believe that we have
made a choice to accelerate the process and ignore any kinds of
checks on people.
Mr. SOUDER. How do you respond to the fact that those boxes,
there were 200 to 300 names in the boxes that the staff didn't
know? Once you send the signal that the important thing to us is
acceleration of the process at the grass-roots, any MBA knows that
that is the natural reaction of the grass-roots, to try to meet what
you are stating, not what you are saying, and by the way, check
everything.
Mr. Rosenberg. I would love to have the time to address each
specific incident that was alleged, and with the advice and informa-
tion from the field managers — who, by the way, are present and
could have addressed the specific allegations. Many of those state-
ments were partly true, but may be misinformed or misleading.
I think some of the boxes you are talking about, the numbers,
we would question, but some of them are the response to the new
system of checking fingerprints that Mr. Crocetti described where-
by responses were centralized and then sent back to the district.
So we would have to go through each of those incidents to make
sure which are results of a fix of a problem and which are older
problems.
But we certainly did not say, damn the torpedoes, full speed
ahead, we don't care about quality. From the very beginning, in
every meeting that we had, in every statement of our priorities, we
made it clear that we wanted to protect the integrity of the process
and to improve the fingerprint process, the file-obtaining process,
in fact to speed it up so adjudicators in more cases had the file in
their hands when they did the interview.
We want a better process. We are not here to undermine it just
for the numbers.
Mr. Crocetti. With regard to the fingerprint process, keep in
mind that we did not develop this initiative having already identi-
fied the fact that a fingerprint process could not handle the work.
What had happened is during the reengineering process associated
with Citizenship USA, we identified a tremendous number of proc-
esses that were in need of improvement, and this was one of them.
Mr. Souder. Wasn't it the most important, though?
Mr. Crocetti. We knew from the OIG report that the records
were not getting to the file. Over the past couple of years, primarily
a year, there were a number of efforts where Headquarters went
out to the field telling them, you've got to fix this process, you've
got to have people review the records and review the rejects.
When we started Citizenship USA, we realized that for one of the
first times in history INS processing times were actually starting
to press up against fingerprint processing times. Therefore, it never
really surfaced as a major problem because it took us a year to
match people. We always had the records back.
So now we are reducing the processing time to 6 months and we
are getting to an average 90-day fingerprint processing time that
I had mentioned that the FBI is now experiencing, so the red flags
go up and we are going to fix it quickly.
173
We have done a lot of things and are going to do a lot of things
that you are going to be very happy with. But I wanted to point
that out. It wasn't an already extremely broken system which we
abused with Citizenship USA.
With regard to the number of records, over 1 million cases — now
we've had a lot of allegations in the field that criminals were being
naturalized. We conducted two surveys to the field initially. They
came in with numbers that were unsubstantiated. We went back
to the field; we want to know for sure you have reviewed the file
and made a decision with regard to those aliens not being eligible
for the benefit? The number we have come up with — it is a few
weeks old, but we're doing another survey as we speak — was 60 for
the entire naturalization program.
The numbers are exaggerated depending on how the people want
to use the numbers or spin it in the paper or do whatever they
want to do. There are two sides to every story. You can spin it as
you want. But I can tell you categorically the numbers are not
there and anyone who says it is, I challenge them to produce the
numbers. Many of the people making these allegations don't have
the national understanding. They are very focused on specific of-
fices, many of whom don't even work in the naturalization pro-
gram.
Now, with regard to Commissioner Meissner, she has internally
and publicly promoted naturalization for years. She emphasized
time and time again that she wanted to reinstate the "N" for natu-
ralization and the "S" for service in INS, and she has done that.
She made it a priority for the first time. And priorities in our ad-
ministration for the past 10 plus years get attention and get sup-
port. Not only did we get the attention and the support from the
Commissioner, we got it from the administration and we got it
from the Hill.
Now let's connect this to the administration. I can tell you, is
this political? Absolutely not, but subject to how you interpret it.
For example, we had dozens of national performance reinvention
labs. One of my responsibilities, and I have many, beyond adjudica-
tions and naturalization, is inspections, air, land, and sea; records,
information and enforcement records by the way; as well as the ad-
ministrative appeals unit and the national firearms unit; the na-
tional fines office. I can tell you that we have — I have in my pro-
gram better than 15 labs, all of them out of the NPR, all of them
receiving similar attention and support. Citizenship USA is a lab,
and that has been our involvement with the administration limited
to that National Performance Review lab.
Now other interests from the administration in the program I
look at very favorably and very positively, because the country rec-
ognized the need to address this problem. And Congress did that
when it approved two preprogramming requests, and I hope you
continue to do it because we already have another reprogramming
request prepared for fiscal year 1997, early October, that we will
be submitting, because we continue — we will continue to focus on
Citizenship USA, as well as other benefits-related processes. But
please, keep in mind when you hear all of this criticism about these
records.
Mr. SOUDER. Mrs. Thurman.
174
Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Crocetti, you said you came directly from the
field?
Mr. Crocetti. Yes.
Mrs. Thurman. So you worked with INS
Mr. Crocetti. Since January 1976.
Mrs. Thurman. So, when you came in and you were asked to
look at this program, I mean, did you bring or talk with your col-
leagues from before and look at what was out there and make sug-
gestions and recommendations before we actually started Citizen-
ship USA?
Mr. Crocetti. Yes, we did actually. We started looking at the
various benefits-related processes and specifically Citizenship USA
from a re-engineering perspective.
For several years before I came into Headquarters, I was highly
involved in the total quality management process and reinvention
and using employees as part of that re-engineering. And we did a
very similar thing with Citizenship USA.
Mrs. Thurman. So based on the chairman's comments about
some letter that I guess whoever that was from, talking about
where they would let down the rules and regulations, was that to
try to pull things along so you could come back, because now you
are doing more rules and regulations I understand? Was that to try
to break some barriers so that we got out of messes we were in?
Mr. Crocetti. The spirit and intention of the National Perform-
ance Review is to cut through all the bureaucracy and really re-
evaluate how you do business, and in one particular area, to focus
on how involved government should be. I can tell you, taking that
perspective on the Citizenship USA program, we are not experts in
the area of education. So that's one of the areas we focused on.
Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Crocetti and Mr. Rosenberg, based on the
testimony that we've heard today, particularly from those who are
working every day in the field — and it is a tough job out there and
it sounds like it is a lot more demanding. There is overtime. There
are a lot more applications being processed and investigations,
whatever.
Based on what you have heard, though — I mean, we had re-
quested at a time that we would also have some supervisors come
in and testify before this committee, because I want to know if
there is some kind of a link here between up here and what these
guys are being told and then those people right in the middle.
I mean, there is a communication gap going on somewhere along
the line. So I guess what I would like to hear from both of you, par-
ticularly from the standpoint that we have employees here who
seem to be somewhat concerned of retaliation, one, but also in
what's happening out there. What steps can you take now from
hearing from these folks as to the kinds of positive steps we could
be taking to rectify these problems and to clarify where there may
not be?
I mean, the other thing here, you don't have the observation deck
that I do, because I can sit here and watch heads bob up and down
or yes and no or write notes back and forth. But the idea of it is
that I think they've brought in information in here that is very im-
portant. But if we don't learn from it what good does it do any of
us?
175
I mean, I think that some of this information may not always
flow down to those people who are on the frontlines so you need
to give them some encouragement, and I think you need to give
this committee encouragement of how we're going to work through
some of these issues.
Mr. Rosenberg. Personally I think that is a very good point, and
I take it personally. We have made great efforts to speak to our di-
rectors from all across the country. At our examinations benefits
conference last year, we met with them all in workshops. We
talked about what we were going to do. The workshop that I con-
ducted actually was a brainstorming session for field people to sug-
gest how we should do these things and we took those comments.
You had a panel of people from Chicago, and I would note that
I have been out to Chicago several times, first with the Commis-
sioner, and we met with a large number of community organiza-
tions and also met with the staff. I have personally met with the
examinations staff a couple of times to talk with them, closed door,
not for reporting or anything, to say how shall we do this? When
we identified a project manager in Chicago, he sat down with them,
first with all the examiners and said, what's our plan? We did the
same thing in Miami, and elsewhere.
So we have started and our whole philosophy in this was to take
a lot of good ideas which have been brewing around INS for a long
time but have been withering for a lack of resources. Now that the
Congress would allow us to spend that pent-up exams fee account
in a significant way to try to use those ideas.
Where do we go from here? Certainly we will look into every one
of the statements made today. I do know there is another side to
many of those stories. There are people very well intentioned with
partial information who made a complaint to someone and thinks
it died because it didn't come back to them, when in fact their su-
pervisor took it. It became part of a further investigation or further
conversation. I also know that in any large organization there are
labor management issues or work issues that emerge and get
bound up in policy. But we will certainly take those.
Mrs. Thurman. One of the things that struck me, and this is not
the first time I've heard this, but just the idea that if they had had,
and even in some of the testimony there was talk about on-line,
some e-mail kinds of stuff that could be going on.
But I think it was Ms. Woods that said they had a typewriter
but they had been trained to have a computer. That is our fault,
quite frankly, if we are not giving the money for those kinds of
pieces of equipment. I certainly will take partly that responsibility.
But those are the kinds of requests that we also need to know
about.
Mr. Crocetti, I didn't mean to stop you.
Mr. Crocetti. It is a very legitimate question. Communication
has been something that is very close to my heart and something
that I have been working on at Headquarters and it's one of the
things that when I came in that we needed to improve our commu-
nication with the field. As I went through all the documents or as
many as I could, the documents that we shared with the commit-
tee, I, too, was disheartened by some of the e-mails and some peo-
ple that I know, and after talking to them realizing that most of
176
it is not deliberate. It is truly a lack of knowledge and understand-
ing.
And communicating with better than 25,000 employees and keep-
ing up the pace of the immigration in today's environment is ex-
tremely difficult, but it's not an excuse. We are focusing on it. We
have two outstanding people that I just hired solely to focus on
communication. That is their focus and we have identified some
tools how we are doing that, and we started doing that with the
Citizenship USA newsletter and the exams express bulletin, and
keeping them advised of all the activities going on within all the
programs within my responsibility. Program conferences involving
the field much more so in policy development through work groups
and participation; ongoing correspondence just to let them know
what is going on.
E-mail is a strange thing to manage. I mean, we are going
through e-mail hell right now and I can't fix that right away, but
we are working on those things, but we have to be realistic. With
the number of employees we have we will always have a certain —
and Congressman Souder, you know with your business manage-
ment background that you will always have a percentage of em-
ployees that either do not agree with you or don't understand or
deliberately try to undermine the system. You will always have
that percentage of employees so we will always have criticism.
I can tell you some of my closest colleagues strongly oppose pri-
vatization and strongly oppose involving the community and oppose
downsizing and rightsizing. You have all of these opinions just as
the subcommittee and the full Congress goes through every day.
Being realistic, I want to make sure that you clearly understand
that we are focused on that and we recognize the need to improve
our communication.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Shadegg.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me first start by saying that Mr. Crocetti, both, and you, Mr.
Rosenberg, made a point, a very deliberate point of stating in your
opening remarks, which were quite extensive and went way beyond
the 5-minute period, that this program does not end in September
1996. It does not even end in 1996.
That I must tell you, gentlemen, it sounds like the lady doth pro-
test too much. None of the witnesses that I heard before you came
to the dais said that the program ended in 1996. None of them said
that it ended in September 1996. What they did say was very clear
and it was very specific and that was that there was very signifi-
cant pressure to process applications by a deadline and that that
first deadline had been July and that it was then extended and
there was extensive pressure to process those applications by Sep-
tember. Not that the program ended, but to process the applica-
tions.
So denying a statement that the earlier witnesses had not made,
I think it is important to set the record straight on that.
Mr. Rosenberg, you are responsible for this program; is that
right?
Mr. Rosenberg. I am the project director.
Mr. Shadegg. You said in your prepared statement that you
were extremely proud of the program because — and I made a note
177
of it — ^you had been able to do all of this and to maintain the integ-
rity of the citizenship process.
Now that was a part of your prepared statement or a portion of
it which you read. I guess my question is, having heard what you
heard today, do you believe in fact that the INS has in Citizenship
USA and/or in its recent projects been able to maintain the integ-
rity of the process?
Mr. Rosenberg. Sir, I would state that we have improved the in-
tegrity of the process despite the points that were made today,
some of which were correct
Mr. Shadegg. My time is very limited, so Mr. Crocetti, do you
also believe you have maintained the integrity of the process?
Mr. Crocetti. Yes.
Mr. Shadegg. Does it trouble you that you have heard today
from line employees test scores are often — people are allowed to ob-
tain citizenship without, in fact, passing the test? Does that trouble
you, Mr. Rosenberg?
Mr. Rosenberg. I did not hear any testimony that persons — I am
sorry; could you restate that?
Mr. Shadegg. You should see the young lady behind you. She is
one of the line employees who has been part of the testimony today
who made it very clear that people are getting citizenship without
passing the test. When you just said you didn't hear that testi-
mony, she is sitting back there with a puzzled look on her face.
Mr. Rosenberg. Excuse me, sir. I didn't say I didn't hear the tes-
timony. I meant to say that I didn't understand the question. A
person does have to pass a test and they have to pass a spoken
English test by an INS examiner and if that examiner doesn't be-
lieve the person can speak English, they shall deny them citizen-
ship.
Mr. Shadegg. The testimony today has been pretty clearly that
people are getting citizenship without passing that test. Does that
trouble you?
Mr. Becerra. Mr. Chairman, may I just ask for a clarification?
Who said that people are getting citizenship? If I recall correctly,
Ms. Miller said that the 25 people were all stopped in the process.
Mr. Shadegg. Mr. Sanchez said it. I don't believe — I don't recall
the names of the witnesses but I heard it several times. It also
came out of the
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Becerra, if you have a point, have Mrs.
Thurman — I have been very lenient on not objecting to your point
or I am not saying you are wrong, but we're going to get way out
of the bounds of the committee rules.
Mr. Shadegg. For the record, Mr. Chairman, that testimony also
came out of the original Chicago panel before Mr. Becerra joined
us.
Mrs. Thurman. We will make sure that we have the record on
that.
Mr. Crocetti. Yes, I am concerned, as concerned as I am about
being here today, with some of the allegations and concerns and be-
liefs. But I can tell you that what Mr. Rosenberg is trying to say
which is clear in the regulation that these individuals should not
be granted if they do not speak English.
178
Now, if they're required to speak English and if they aren't, we
need to know about it because I have not had any cases identified,
and if I do, I will have them investigated.
Mr. Shadegg. I am really trying to get at the issue of the integ-
rity of the process. I heard quite clearly today from a witness on
the prior panel from Dallas, TX, Mr. Jacobs, I believe, that he was
aware of I believe 12,500 applications that were approved without
a single referral for either a misrepresentation or for prosecution
based on what went on. He testified that in the normal processing,
5 percent of those would have been referred for either investigation
or prosecution. I did bad math. The math — that would have been
about 625 referrals and he indicated there were none.
Mr. Rosenberg, does that concern you?
Mr. Rosenberg. It would if in fact it were the practice of INS.
But I believe, as was stated previously, the examinations unit con-
ducts those. It is not standard practice for there to be large num-
bers of referrals to examinations. If I could enter into the record
a letter from the district director of Dallas addressing that very
point that was raised in the Washington Times, we would like to
provide that to the committee.
Mr. SOUDER. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Rosenberg. Thank you, sir.
[The information referred to follows:]
179
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Immigrauon and Nacuralization Service
Datlas Dfxaitt 0£[Ut
SJOJ N. Slrmm»m FfTtw«y
Dallas, Tcoi JSU7
Sflptembsr 16, 1996
The Editor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
3600 New York Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20002
Dear Editor:
I am writing to express my disappointment with your articte by Ruth Larson,
"INS set standards aside, say officials," appearing in today's Washington
Times. I am disappointed by the woeful misreporting of the true facts
underlying the extraordinary Naturalization Ceremony taking place in the
Dallas matroplex tomorrow. But I am even more disappointed that the TIMES
"rushed to judgement" and utterly failed to corroborate Its "facts" or check
with me regarding the information it had which apparently triggered its report
Finally, I am amazed that your reporting expertise failed at least to suggest
to you that the information communicated and carefully timed to coincide
with the eve of our ceremony, might bo coming from a disgruntled employee
with a personal agenda extending well beyond "letting the truth be known."
Had you communicated with my office, you would have been told and
provided with persuasive evidence that neariy 16,000 applicants for
naturalization were screened and/or interviewed before the 10,400 who will bo
naturalized tomorrow were Identified. The remaining 5,600 did indeed fail to
establish their eligibility for the benefit being sought at their initial Interview
or during the "good moral character" and criminal history checks. Reasons
for their disqualification included a lack of preparation, failure to meet the
threshold requirements for knowledge of the English language or American
history and government, or (Oh, yesi) failure to pass the FBI and other
screening processes. There was no shortcutting going on here in Dallasl
I would also have been proud to tall you how the ceremony taking place here
in Dallas tomorrow was wholly conceived by our employees who accepted
our Commissioner's challenge to find better ways to accomplish our work.
I would have told you how an INS office with only 11 permanent employees
assigned to its naturalization program pulled off the largest administrative
naturalization ceremony in INS' history, literally saving the govemmeni and
180
taxpayers nearly 5100,000 dollars, even after some substantial monies were
spent on overtime, such monies amounting to less than the costs of 3
additional full-time employees. I would have told you how vs^ solicited
volunteers from other programs where we believed we could afford to
reassign some INS work on a temporary basis; absolutely no investigative
enforcement officer corps personnel were involved in this project, only one
clerical support person. I would have told you that the INS employee from
EI Paso was in Dallas temporarily at his own request and that of his District
Director so he could be near the side of a close relative dying in Oaiias. He
had substantial expertise in the Naturalization program and needed
desperately to be in the Dallas area without being off from work and
unsalaried for a few weeks. We were happy to help him, and he in return was
grateful for the opportunity to continue on the INS payroll. I would have told
you how the community responded In providing some very carefully
controlled volunteer work, all of a "non-sensitive" nature, again contributing
immeasurably to taxpayer savings.
I trust the TIMES will set the record straight on this matter. I'm not sure there
are any real or serious problems with the naturalization program anywhere
in INS - maybe a few small ones here and there which pale aside the
monumental task INS has set for itself. But I do know that there are no
problems with the naturalization program in Dallas. It has been run with
integrity and an extraordinary amount of employee involvement and sacrifice.
I am saddened by the knowledge that one of my "senior INS officials" has
embarked on a mission to discredit his conscientious co-workers in a
program about which he evidences very little understanding.
Please watch our ceremony on national TV tomorrow and see one of the great
success stories of community involvement - the 250 piece HONOR BAND of
gifted young musicians from all over north Texas, the 100+ community
volunteers and organizations helping out as ushers, the cooperation of
TEXAS STADIUM in providing a suitable venue for such a monumental event.
See if it doesn't help restore your pride in what it means to be a citizen of the
United StatesI
Sincerely,
'— 1/~>^
Arthur E. Strapp,
District Director
4
181
Mr. Rosenberg. But it says in it that there was a failure to cor-
roborate the facts; that this might be coming from a disgruntled
employee with a personal agenda extending well beyond letting the
truth be known. This is not the practice of INS to routinely refer
cases for naturalization to examination.
Mr. Crocetti. I would rather this not turn into any character as-
sassination, but I think the point we would like to make is that we
challenge that information.
As I stated earlier, with regard to the investigation's case man-
agement system, those cases would not have been accepted; they
would have been rejected. I think if one made an inquiry they
would see that there were literally thousands of cases in the Dallas
office that were closed without the knowledge of the district direc-
tor because they didn't meet the case management system.
These are similar cases, but it doesn't matter here because it's
no longer in the area of responsibility of the investigations pro-
gram. That changed in the early 1980's. They would never have
gotten the records an3rway. So connecting it to Citizenship USA is
actually a disconnect.
Mr. Shadegg. Mr. Crocetti, one of the points you made was that
in fact you were trying to speed up processing of backgrounds
checks. I believe Mr. Sanchez made the point that there is tech-
nology available where you can do a handprint and that equipment
is available apparently just down the block from his office.
Are there — are you familiar with that equipment?
Mr. Crocetti. Yes, we are very familiar with biometrics. We
work and use it and experience with it in airports of entry.
Mr. Shadegg. Is there some reason why the INS doesn't have it?
Mr. Crocetti. We are working very closely with the FBI, and I
am not a "techie," but it has a lot to do with technology and that
is not just available. The FBI is working toward that sometime in
the early 2000's.
Right now if you would like an update where we are at with re-
gard to the records, recently the FBI agreed to provide us with neg-
ative records as well, which is the very first time we are getting
negative records. But keep in mind that even with the resources
you have given us, they don't have enough resources to actually
connect over 1 million paper records to "A" files.
But what we are in the process of doing is developing an MRD
technology that will actually be able to allow our service centers to
key in select information off the fingerprint cards, put it on a tape,
send it to the FBI with the fingerprint cards so that they will be
able to send it back to us, communicate via technology all the nega-
tives and positives. We're hoping to have this up if not by the end
of the year, early next year. That is tremendous progress. That in-
cludes a full centralized environment where not only will we have
linking processing on the back end to match records, we will have
front-end processing at all four centers where all the cards will go
to the centers, be keyed in, and transmitted electronically. This is
a fantastic thing I assure the subcommittee.
Mr. Shadegg. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask one final series
of questions, all of which are based on some documents which I
would like to have put in the record. They include a White House
letter which goes to citizens upon their gaining citizenship, an Au-
182
gust 15 telegraphic message— I guess it has a document number on
it.
Do the witnesses have all of these? May I put these in the
record?
Mr. SOUDER. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information referred to follows:]
(
I
183
THE WHITE HOUSE
WAIHINCTON
Dear Fellow American:
I want to congratulate you ^n reaching the impressive
milestone of becoming a citizen of our great nation. As you
enjoy the benefits of American citizenship and assume the
responsibilities that accompany it, you follow the many brave
men and women who have sacrificed to establish and preserve our
democracy over the last two centuries.
You now share in a great experiment: a nation dedicated
to the ideal that all of us are created equal, a nation with
profound respect for individual rights. The United States is
a land of unparalleled natural beauty, vast opportunity, and
freedom. It is home to people *who have been drawn to our shores
from all over the world and who share a common love for life and
liberty.
Please join me in devoting your hopes, your prayers, your
energies, and your labor to our common good and to the future of
this wonderful country. Together we must strive to safeguard the
freedoms we hold so dear, not only for ourselves but for futiire
generations.
Hillary and I welcome you as a new citi;;en and extend our
best wishes for much happiness in the futxire.
Sincerelg^,
1-006549
184
Ttl£GtLAP»lC ME5SAOC
IMMIGRATION fc NATURALIZATION
SERVICE, HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20536
PRIORITY
2211
?Q]rr? 1995
FOt INK)«M*TIOM CAli
UNCLASSIFIED
CRAIG HOWIE
g;^-?!?!^
rmonttujiat
E]
TWfl I/^C« rOMUUOf C0MMUN1CAT70H USTT
mtSUuai TO U T»*KSM/mD r[<» ^««ii<n
TO:
ALL DZiTF.ICT DIRECTORS (EXCEPT FOREIGN)
ALL OFFICERS -IN- CHARGE (EXCEPT FOREIGN)
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL CONGRATULATORY LETTER/NATURALIZATION
ALL DISTRICT AND SUB OFFICES ARE REMINDED TO PROVIDE ALL
NEWLY NATURALIZED CITIZENS WITH COPIES OP THE PRESIDENT'S
CONGRATULATORY LETTER. THE WHITE HOUSE DESIRES THAT EACH
NEW CITIZEN RECEIVE A COPY OF THE LETTER AT THE
N;<TURALIZATI0N ceremony (whether ADMINISTRATIVE OR COURT)
AND HAS ESTABLISHED THIS AS A PRIORITY.
01 FICES may OBTAIN SUPPLIES OF .^"HB LETTER FROM THEIR
RESPECTIVE FORM CENTER. QUESTIONS: MARY ELLEN BLWOOD,
HQOPS, 202/514-0078 OR CRAIG HOWIE, . HQADN, 202/514-5014.
gL'ilNL, -EXCCUTIVD AjgOGIAUl
Louis ^> CLT^occra .• ^cre .
n«i«Ats*o*M M
1
1
ALL DISTF-^rr
DIRECTORS
(EXCEPT
F0REIC2I)
ALL OFFICERS
IN CHARGE
(EXCEPT
PQREia^)
UNCLS^SIFIED
1-028842
185
Author: X*xro DuJ9i« «« r»O-IIC-001
D*c«: 9/27/9S 1:55 PX
Priority: HormaJ.
XOi BQSXK OSX.HgEXM OSA tOSt OMTCX liCSHOWII •« CrmpVlM
cc: DrnTld I Bo««nb«9 «t HO-007
TO» Seott O H»«in»« »« HOHCB
TOi irmnd* X JMllar »t «O-001
CC: BQKXM OSX-HOXIB OSA »0«T Oma 1:HEI1.WOOO *t Crowp«l««
CC: BOSIX OSX.BOtaM USA POST OITICX l:TICOOK at GroupHis*
CC: O&la H S»uad»r» at HC-007
Subject: lU: B«f x Pr««. L««t«r
- - Haaaa^tt Contanta — -^
Craig,
kn expadltad raquaat was plaead with BQFXI on July 2S,
1995 . Aeeerdin^ to iaf o f roa BQ tha axpaetad ahlp data la
11-B-9S. Quaseitiaa ordarad ara 1,000,000 for Eaat and
700,000 for waat. According to your info thia ia going to
ba an inauilleiant anount. If you can gat aoaa projactad
uaa figuraa for rX96 aa aantlonad, I will plasa a naw order
with BQ upon xaeaipt of inforsation.
Any action to obtain printing eoonar, or incraaaa tha
quantity of currant ordar, would hara to bo eoordinatad
through tha BQ print abop.
w« split our atock with WPC a aonch or ao ago aof haw aiaei
daplctad tha raoaining aupply.
Karyn
Data: 09/27/1995 07:12 aa (Sadnaaday)
Frots: Cra^g Howia
To: CO(AII..W]tO-001.rullar Aranda K, COfAIL.BQMCB.Eaatinga
Scott o, ccxAII..Z1tO-Erc-001.0ubia Karyn
CC: TZCOOX, CCMAIL.BQ-OO?. Aoaanbarg David I, KZZLWOOD
Sub^act: Rat ' x Praa. I^ttax
Branda, Karyn 4 Scott: I raeaivad a call fron Bob Kattla, LOS Nats,
yaatarday. Ba waa raporting that thay w«ra aloaort out of tha **' 1 p*-""
lectar for naturalisation rararinl ■■ and that tha WKPoraa Ca^rtar had a
!3kckocdar raquart of ovar 700,000. Ba notad that thay axpact to nats at
isAsc 35,000 Dy tha and of tb« ealandar yaar. If XXroraa baa any axtra,
rjLD thay ba ibippad out V%rt.1 Or if thaaa ara on ordar for raprlnting,
;:ui mxa raquaat ba hi unpad up in tha lina7
^h« Coaamxonar'a goal ia to namrallxa 1.2 million paraen In fT96. And
h« you know.Jtba Wblta Houaa la rathar inaiatant that tha Clinton latrtar
b«~ ■
Jjatributad to aach naw citlxan. I do not think any of ua want to ba
'c:«ugbc ahort. Plaaaa lat oa know if thara ia anyrhing tha prograa can da
^o balp with this, and alao what can ba dana to halp out LOS. Also,
scna of tha folks on tha Citlsanahip USA taaa may ba abla to halp tha
Cantara' projact tha dletribution nuabara of thia lattar for tha ftwa bi9
natz
officaa for 1796. Thanks. Craig Bowia l_fl?5700
186
MEMORANDUM
TO: Lee Ann Inadomi
Office of Cabinet Affairs
FROM: Robert L. Bach (5^;^
Executive Associate Commissioner, Policy & Planning, INS
DATE: July?, 1995
RE; Letters from the President to Newly Naturalized Citizens
You have asked us for information concerning the possibility of the President writing
letters to newly naturalized citizens. This proposal raises several operational and policy issues
which are d:sr.u«sed briefly below. I understand that discussions on this matter are still in a
preliminary stage, and, accordingly, this memo does^not anempt to explore exhaustively all of the
legal and policy implications such a decision would »ise.
Current Practice — •
0 Newly naturalized citizens, in most instances, already receive a letter from President
Clinton addressed "Dear Fellow American." (See copy attached.) These letters have been
handed out to new citizens by ENS at naturalization ceremonies around the country for a
number of yean, although there is usually a gap when a new administration takes ofBce
until the new president's letter is signed and distributed to INS oflBces.
o Upon request, INS also prepares individualized letters from the President to newly
naturalized citizens. These requests are usually forwarded to INS from the White House
Agency Liaison Office.
Logistics
o In fiscal year 1994, over 500,000 people namralized, and the number will be closer to
600,000 in fiscal year 1995. Projections for fiscal years 1996 and 1997 continue to rise.
Conucnng all of these people would require a substantial investment of resources.
o At present, INS does not have a program to generate a master list of names and addresses
of newly naturalized citizens. Approximately 70 percent of the individuals naturalized
have theu name and address captured in an automated system (NACS), which can be
accessed both by headquaners and field ofiBces The other 30 percent are not part of an
automated system, and their names and addresses are available only through paper records
in INS field offices. Some INS offices where records are automated are experiencing
significant time lags between the date of naturalization and the availability of names and
addresses
Potential Froblenu
0 A proposal for INS to forward the names and addresses of newly naturalized citizens to
1-016571
187
the White House riiaes Privacy Act concerns that would require legal review m the
context ot a specifc plan. INS discontinued providing lists of naturalized cigzens to
appfopnate Memt)efS ot CJongre^^^me years ago b^ause of Privacy Act concerns.
0 A White House initiaiive on contacting newly naturalized citizens, separate firojmjhe
naturalization ceremony, nught be cnticized as campaign politics in antjcipatinrw^ffh*
"ng967i«:tion
Recommendation
Continue the current practice of having INS present letters from the President to newly
naturalized citizens as part ot naturalization ceremonies.
1-016572
188
Mr. SOUDER. I believe the minority had all of those.
Mrs. Thurman. No, Mr. Chairman. Are those from the last hear-
ing? Were they submitted into the record? Do we have copies of
them that were given to the minority at the time?
Mr. SouDER. Have you had copies since August?
Mrs. Thurman. I reserve the right to object.
Mr. SoUDER. We didn't object when the administration asked to
put in things.
Mr. Becerra. I think it is more a matter just making sure that
the minority has a chance to see what documents that the gen-
tleman wishes to submit.
Mrs. Thurman. It is my understanding that there is something
like 30,000 pieces of paper that have been submitted? Well, since
you seemed to have had at least four or five of these, would it not
be possible that you could pull those four or five out for us instead
of us having to go through 30,000?
Mr. Shadegg. This was just handed to me.
Mrs. Thurman. Reserving my right to object, truly I realize that
maybe we have had these. But when you are looking at something
specifically
Mr. SoUDER. I didn't object to Mr. Rosenberg putting something
in the record that I didn't see.
Mrs. Thurman. I withdraw my reservation.
Mr. SouDER. But we should get copies.
Mr. Shadegg. I want to go to the issue of the political nature of
this whole experience, I guess is the best word I can find.
The first letter I have is a letter that goes: Dear Fellow Amer-
ican, and it's signed by the President and it is a congratulatory let-
ter, apparently a standard letter.
The subsequent series I have is an August 15 memo regarding
the Presidential congratulatory letter on naturalization. And it
says:
All district and suboffices are reminded to provide this letter to
each person who is naturalized. Then it goes on to say, a copy of
the letter — each new citizen is to receive a copy of the letter at the
naturalization ceremony, and the White House has established this
as a priority.
The second document in the series is a September 27, 1995, e-
mail. We've had some discussion of e-mail. I want to call your at-
tention to about nine lines down the page it says, the Commis-
sioner's goal is to naturalize 1.2 million persons in fiscal year 1996,
and as you know, the White House is rather insistent that the citi-
zen letter be distributed to each new citizen.
The third is a memo — and this leads to my question — a month
earlier, July 7, 1995, in which there is a discussion of this letter
and a discussion of a proposal that the INS forward the name and
address of each newly naturalized citizen to the White House. And
under the category of potential problems, it is noted that that pro-
posal raises Privacy Act concerns.
I would like to know from either of you what you can tell the
committee about this White House proposal that the INS forward
the names and addresses of newly naturalized citizens to the White
House; what you know about that proposal.
189
Mr. Crocetti. I vaguely recall it. The first thing I'd like to state,
as you referenced, that letter from the President is a standard let-
ter. It's always happened. It's always come from the White House.
So if that's political, then I guess it is political.
With regard to this statement, I recall several months ago the
issue coming up and I opposed it. But I haven't seen anything
since, so I can't really speak in an official capacity because any in-
volvement has been oral.
Mr. Rosenberg. I was not a party to this letter and this is the
first time that I think I've ever seen it. I also recall there was an
interest in — about the provision of names and that INS strongly op-
posed it and it never went anywhere.
Mr. Shadegg. Can either of you identify for me who in the White
House proposed that these names be forwarded by the INS to the
White House?
Mr. Crocetti. I have never had any direct contact with the
White House.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know you have been
generous with the extension of time.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Becerra.
Mr. Becerra. Looking at the memo that the gentleman has been
referring to I want to make sure that I read into the record that
the recommendation by those individuals within the White House
that the INS regarding those comments — regarding letters by the
President the recommendation states, "Continue the current prac-
tice of having INS present letters from the President to newly nat-
uralized citizens as part of the naturalization ceremonies. Reject
any efforts that might be under way to try to send letters beyond
that because it would be difficult and perhaps a problem with the
Privacy Act."
So to the degree that the President is able to send any personal-
ized letters to people he may know or someone in the family may
know, or someone in the administration may know, apparently
there is a problem with the Privacy Act. Apparently the memo also
states of Members of Congress also used to request this informa-
tion some years ago but because of Privacy Act concerns I guess the
process was stopped.
Hopefully there will be a question here. I ask you to be patient.
I will try to search for a question and maybe I will add some inflec-
tion to my voice to make it a question.
I don't think there was any doubt that the system was broken
before Citizenship USA, before the President took over. I can't tell
you how many people, people I know personally because of family
or friend, were just so irritated about the INS because of the inabil-
ity to get their applications processed through.
I want to commend the work that Citizenship USA has done in
the last year alone in trying to get people processed through. I do
hope that some of the problems that may have been raised by some
of the line people at INS are addressed and are addressed quickly
so we can find out if there is anything to substantiate some of the
allegations and if so that you act quickly to remove those impedi-
ments from what I otherwise think is a very noble process.
I don't think people in this country would put up with some of
what these new citizens have had to put up with. I don't care if
190
it is waiting for a refund from the INS or waiting for a passport
from Customs or waiting for your Social Security card from the So-
cial Security Administration or just being out in the marketplace
at the bank, or a grocery store. No one who has paid for a service
would expect to wait 2 or 4 years to have that service provided.
I think it was shameful that the INS allowed this to happen for
so long, and I am pleased that the Citizenship USA is a program
that is trying to accelerate that.
Again, to the degree that we accelerate that, we don't lose sight
of the fact that we want to maintain the integrity of the citizenship
process. So I want to make sure that we thank those individuals
who came forward to bring out some of the problems and concerns
they have with the process as it stands but to articulate that this
is a problem that preceded — preceded Citizenship USA.
By the way, I should also mention that I am one of those who
advocates for you to move as quickly as possible. I have had meet-
ings with Doris Meissner and my regional INS office, and I happen
to represent a part of Los Angeles and I get tired of having people
say to me, I just called the INS and it was 6 months since I sub-
mitted my application and they couldn't even tell me if they had
my application. And fortunately through this process. Citizenship
USA, you have not only been able to give them a receipt that they
have paid their $95 fee, but you have been able to tell them where
their application stands. I think that is a major progress.
And honestly it seems to me that what we have found from some
of these line workers in their testimony is that perhaps Congress
has to do a better job of providing you with the resources to get
the scanners or whatever else it is that you need to do a quick
check for criminal records, whatever else it might be. Maybe we
need to help some of the folks that are out there who feel this is
a cattle call and they are getting pressure to run folks through the
process quickly and they don't have the time to really sit down and
figure out if folks are qualified to obtain the U.S. citizenship that
they are seeking.
But whatever you do, I hope you continue to move quickly and
you take into account the concerns that have been addressed by
some of the folks that have been here and provided their testimony.
And by the way, I would continue to push you to move as quickly
as you can to process people who have waited 2 to 4 years for a
service that they have paid for and something they are entitled to
now that they have stayed in this country and so that they are
qualified.
I am puzzled and disappointed that the committee didn't solicit
testimony of some of the INS field managers who are part of the
Citizenship USA programs in the various cities. I think certainly
if we want to find out what the status of these programs are and
if they are failing or making the grade it would be nice to have the
folks who are responsible. Ultimately, you want to call to the car-
pet those who are responsible for the program.
Mrs. Thurman. Will the gentleman yield? I believe the minority
did make that proposal or was going to ask for that.
Mr. Becerra. ok. Well I'm disappointed, as I said, and puzzled
at this committee in trying to ferret out any particular abuse in
this particular system and program if there were any, didn't call
191
for the line managers of the programs to come before it and ask
those tough questions.
It seems to me that when you come up here again and make a
request for reprogramming that these are questions that will come
before you again, whether the system is working well. I hope that
next time you come before the Congress you'll have the support of
people like Ms. Miller and Mr. Jacobs and the others in the process
because they will be able to say that they are being given the time
they need to make sure that people are being processed appro-
priately. I suspect that if they can't come up here and feel com-
fortable, you're still going to have some headaches from the folks
here in Congress to do so.
But I want to say one other point and then I will let the panel-
ists make any comment. Far too long Congress has treated the
issue of citizenship with a back hand. We didn't give the program
enough money. Sometimes we took the money run through the
process, through the fees that were paid by my people, and used
it for things other than citizenship application processing.
I hope that we take our political fingers out of the process so you
have the dollars you need to do the work and hopefully relieve
some of the burdens that the line people have expressed here, and
perhaps what we will find is that you can accelerate the system
and still provide integrity to the process. Everyone wishes to have
U.S. citizens coming to this country who are entitled to the citizen-
ship because they have earned it.
I know my time has expired, but if you have any particular com-
ment, I request the opportunity for the panelists to make any com-
ment.
Mr. SOUDER. Certainly.
Mr. Rosenberg. Thank you. We will continue to look at how we
can improve the process, and we will be listening to the concerns
that we heard expressed today.
But two quick statements. One is the denial rates that we have
had for naturalization in the year when this has been such a high
volume are higher than they have been in the past, not lower. That
gives some indication that we have not lowered the standards by
which we're doing that. And that is true pretty much across the
board, office by office.
Mr. SouDER. I will ask you to submit that for the record. The
number of people who have come in this year is 1.3 million, what
percentage?
Mr. Rosenberg. Yes, sir.
[The information referred to follows:]
Number
N-400 Naturalization Applications Approved in FY 1996 1,104,329 (82%)
fMOO Naturalization Applications Denied in FY 1996 239,993 (18%)
Mr. Rosenberg. And the other statement is that when we began
the process of looking at the resources that were needed — and the
committee has the planning documents that we developed — we
based it on the fact of examiners doing the same number of cases
192
a year that they did the previous year. We did not build it on an
assumption of a faster timeframe per examiner. We based it on
adding more people.
So it's very important because the premise I think has been here
that this was a speedup operation and it has largely not been so,
although in local offices that certainly can vary as managers make
local decisions.
Mr. SOUDER. I am going to do a second round. We are tight on
time but I had a couple of things I wanted to say for the record
that there were a couple of reasons we didn't have the regional di-
rectors here, one being, hopefully, we can have a 5-hour hearing as
opposed to an 8-hour hearing.
The second is more pragmatic. Some of the people involved al-
ready in the Chicago panel said they felt intimidated. I believe it
is important to get that district office input into, if not the record
here, the future hearing.
But there are limitations we have. Both of you here are rep-
resenting the administration's position and, quite frankly, that's
more often than we had as Republicans when we were in the mi-
nority and I have been lenient in our response time.
I want to forge into a pretty controversial area here and that is
that I don't think it was just us who have been raising some con-
cerns. There is a memo which I believe has been distributed from
Mr. Crocetti to — I won't attempt to — I can't understand what it
says but it's to Mr. Aleinikoff, where you express concern about Mr.
Rosenberg. That you asked: Why is David still out of town — this is
from March — at a time when some of the speedup allegations were
occurring? I never seem to know where he is, why or what he is
doing despite my ongoing effort. You seem to know more about
David than I or anyone else. We need to talk about David's role be-
cause I am getting all kinds of help from people in the field and
New York, and it goes on and asks other questions which I am sure
you are both aware of.
I would like to know a couple of questions. One is, does Mr.
Rosenberg work for you, Mr. Crocetti? If not, you seem to be ques-
tioning who he reports to and what he should be doing. Could you
explain the origin of this memo where you express concerns about
his being out in the field and if his office travel is truly necessary?
Mr. Crocetti. Thank you. Well, first of all, obviously this e-mail
was meant to be internal between my supervisor and I, but now
that it has been exposed
Mr. SouDER. As we all know, in public office there are no secrets.
Mr. Crocetti. This e-mail expressed my frustration primarily re-
lated to the crucial roles, responsibilities, and reporting require-
ments which have since been clarified to the satisfaction of David,
myself, and Mr. Aleinikoff.
Mr. Rosenberg's role is to coordinate and direct a nationwide
backlog reduction and reengineering initiative as well as other pro-
gram initiatives, and he does now report to Mr. Aleinikoff.
Mr. SouDER. So he doesn't report to you?
Mr. Crocetti. Because of these interdisciplinary cross program
area issues.
It is one thing that is very clear with Citizenship USA, is that
we could not have accomplished what we accomplished with just a
193
program-specific approach. We needed the support of every pro-
gram within INS as well as the support of outside entities, admin-
istration, et cetera, and Mr. Rosenberg brings that experience and
talent with him.
Mr. SOUDER. Is Mr. Aleinikofi" a line employee or a consultant?
Mr. Crocetti. I am sorry?
Mr. SouDER. Does Mr. Rosenberg report to Mr. Aleinikoff?
Mr. Crocetti. Right. Initially when I hired David — Mr. Rosen-
berg, I hired him initially as an expert consultant because of his
expertise in developing and managing immigration-related policies
and programs for the Federal and State governments and nonprofit
organizations. He had a broad range of experience closely related
to many of the areas that Citizenship USA needed, such as English
literacy, resettlement, performance-based organizations, anti-
discrimination, and legislative and media relations. He also had
significant experience in community outreach and educationally he
has a master's degree in public administration, many years of expe-
rience as executive officer.
When this was brought to my attention and I interviewed David
and actually had an opportunity to work with him prior to making
the decision. I decided to contract him as an expert and help get
Citizenship USA off" the ground, and then the recent decision was
made because of it, elevating into various interdisciplinary areas
that he would get involved also because of his success with Citizen-
ship USA and other program initiatives outside of Citizenship USA
which is why he now answers to my superior.
Mr. SouDER. Your superior reports directly to the Commissioner?
Mr. Crocetti. Reports directly to the deputy commissioner.
Mr. Souder. Given what we have talked about and the potential
pressures in the Service, would you not as a line person if you were
down at the grass-roots level and you knew that there was a lot
of — I mean, I understand what you said earlier is true; I mean,
when you try to put a new system in, there is going to be resist-
ance.
But how could someone on the line possibly not conclude that
this is a high political priority in the administration when a former
consultant has been now elevated above the line authority to go
through? I understand why in other businesses that happens as
well, but I tell you it sends a signal at the grass-roots level that —
in a retail business if you say, here our No. 1 goal is sales, and you
bring in an outside consultant and that consultant pushes for sales,
you know what you get? You start to get fraud, because people
sense the goal that is matched diff'erently than the historic goal
even if the goal was not incorrect.
The political pressure on that, it is being talked about and they
hear it going back and forth. When you bring consultants in, you
don't know why he is coming into town. You in your own memo
said you were upset. Why wouldn't a person presume that they
needed to do whatever else was necessary to accelerate?
Mr. Crocetti. This was part of the problem and also what re-
sulted in some of my frustrations. First of all, Mr. Rosenberg had
no line authority but that did get lost in the field and the transi-
tion. The perceptions, you're right, were with some that this pro-
gram was politically connected.
194
However, as I have testified, Citizenship USA is a new way of
doing business and it takes time for an organization to accept
change. The INS is no exception. In fact, perhaps we're even more
bureaucratic than some to a certain degree because Mr. Rosenberg
was initially an outsider, contracted as an expert. The field and
even many Headquarters' individuals were resistant to accepting
him and taking direction and coordination from him.
However, once he was given the opportunity to demonstrate how
invaluable he was and is to the program, and how much he has to
contribute, that started to change. And he's a very knowledgeable,
very hands-on manager, so we also had to deal with some of those
issues. We had a very ambitious initiative. We had a job to do and
we had to do it. But I do believe a year later that that has changed
considerably, and it will continue to improve with the next year.
Mr. SOUDER. That was a year — that was March — about 6 months
ago.
Mr. Crocetti. Right. He was in our Office of Policy and Planning
several months before that, which is when I had the opportunity
to get some experience working with Mr. Rosenberg.
Mr. SouDER. Nothing I said questioned the ability of Mr. Rosen-
berg. It is a question of structure.
Mrs. Thurman.
Mrs. Thurman. I'm just going to be real brief.
I, first of all, would like to thank everyone who has come here
today and testified before this committee and maybe to go back to
echo my colleague from Florida, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, particularly on
this issue of whether or not it has been politically motivated, and
also the speeches that have been given at the sites of the swearing-
ins. I have just read the letter from the President that I just re-
ceived, and at no point and at no time does it ask them to register
to vote. In fact, if anything, it talks about the importance of what
their American citizenship means to them.
So I'm glad to see this has been put in the record. I'm also glad
to know that this has been going on from every President, based
on what this letter says. This is a current practice, that individual
letters from the President have continued.
I'm looking forward to whatever kind of report will come out of
here. I hope, Mr. Chairman — I tend to doubt that we are going to
see anything happen between now and the time that we sine die
for this session as we all go home and back to our districts. But
I would put I think, and hope that one of the requests that we
would make from this committee, whomever is in the majority in
the 105th Congress, that we would ask maybe these same people,
as well as the people that are sitting in front of us, to come back
before this committee to see what kinds of changes have been made
and to have that opportunity.
I think that as I've said over and over on this committee, it's not
my responsibility to bang on any one person or to try to make peo-
ple feel uncomfortable, quite honestly, that come before this com-
mittee. It is my job to make this government run better and more
efficient. To that end what I would not like to see is for this to end
here, but certainly to have the opportunity to see, now that we
have some ideas out here, what potentially might need to be cor-
rected, or once we get maybe the other side of the story — and, God
195
knows, we all know what happens when it comes to our office, that
there are always three or four or five stories to this, but to clarify
those pieces of information.
I hope that possibly at the end of this Congress and as we go into
the new Congress and as we see this settle down a little bit that
we will have the opportunity once again to have these folks before
us and to see what kinds of changes have been made so that we
can all come back to the American public and say that the integrity
of this program is in check. To those that are becoming citizens, we
are truly glad to have them here and we appreciate the effort that
they have taken to become U.S. citizens.
So with that, I thank the chairman for doing this, and I will
make my recommendations noted in writing.
Mr. Rosenberg.
Mr. Rosenberg. We certainly thank you, Mrs. Thurman, for that
admonishment or suggestion as well for us to take this all to heart,
and we certainly will, along with all the statements that have been
made by this committee, their cautions to us, their suggestions.
If I sounded passionate in my defense of the program it was be-
cause I believe that while there are serious issues to be addressed,
and I believe the testing issue in particular is one which we ad-
dressed at length last week with the committee and we are moving
on, that this is, by and large, a very high quality program- that the
American public can be proud of, and that the concerns are very
real, very serious, but not major in size. And that was what my
concern is, that it not be portrayed as a widespread problem but
one of very strong significance which we will, in fact, take to heart.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Shadegg.
Mr. Shadegg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I certainly would join the gentlewoman in calling for a continu-
ation of this process. I think we owe that to the Ajnerican people.
I certainly think, as I said before, it is important to have the natu-
ralization process work, and I welcome new citizens to the shores
of this country.
But it is clear to me from this testimony today that we need to
have an ongoing process to help and assist, to make certain that
Mr. Crocetti can get the equipment so we can in fact do this job
the way it ought to be done. I certainly will join you regardless of
the outcome of this election in continuing this process. I think it
is vitally important that we assure the American people that there
is integrity and that they can and should have confidence in the
sy stern.
I want to make a concluding remark but I want to ask another
question before I do. Both of you have stressed, and I think every-
one has made it clear, that Citizenship USA, at least in your view,
was justified and it is important to deal with the backlog of appli-
cations and that INS feels an obligation to catch up on those.
And yet I'm troubled. In many major cities across the country
currently while Citizenship USA is going on, a high percentage of
the applications are coming in from community-based organizations
which are encouraged by INS to bring in those applications. For ex-
ample, in Chicago, 60 percent of the applications are brought in by
these community-based organizations being encouraged by INS to
bring them in. In addition to which INS offices are currently send-
196
ing out form letters encouraging all eligible permanent residents to
naturalize, and they are sending letters to community-based orga-
nizations encouraging them to naturalize, one of which letter says:
Obtaining U.S. citizenship, "Obtaining tjnited States citizenship
has never been easier."
In addition to that, I understand that in many instances individ-
uals coming in to get a new green card are being told by INS em-
ployees that they should, instead, apply for citizenship. I guess last
in the series is that INS has also changed the way it calculates its
backlog and as a result of that calculation, the actual backlog has
gone up by at least — the numbers provided to our committee is by
over 100,000 applications.
I guess culminating that means that of the 1.3 million applica-
tions received this year, more than half of those, 700,000 of them
had come as a result of, quote, an aggressive outreach program by
the INS.
I applaud an aggressive outreach program. That's fine, and in-
deed good. As I said, I strongly support legal immigration so much
so that I tried to put it into the bill that we passed through the
House this year. I guess my question is more one of timing. If, in-
deed, this program is directed to address a backlog, would not it
have been prudent to get the backlog brought down before launch-
ing this aggressive outreach program, rather than launching the
aggressive outreach program at the same time you were trying to
solve the backlog?
Mr. Rosenberg. The answer to your h3rpothesis is yes, but that
is not in fact what occurred, sir. There was no national INS out-
reach campaign to obtain additional applications despite what the
Chicago Tribune has reported. We have encouraged community or-
ganizations to speak to their communities. We think applying for
citizenship is a very positive thing, but INS did not on its own con-
duct any major outreach campaign. That was contemplated in the
previous fiscal year and, in fact, submitted a budget request to
Congress. It was denied.
When you ask why we do it, I do want to cite section 332(h)
which says that the Attorney General shall broadly distribute in-
formation concerning benefits under this title, which is naturaliza-
tion, in order to promote opportunities of U.S. citizenship and shall
seek the assistance of appropriate community groups, private vol-
untary agencies, and other relevant organizations. That was added
in 1990. So we have a statutory responsibility to do outreach
through community organizations, sir.
Mr. Shadegg. I'm getting a mixed message. You have a duty to
do it but you are saying that you have not, in fact, done it?
Mr. Rosenberg. We encourage it but INS did not conduct a
major national outreach.
Mr. Shadegg. If there has been no major outreach program and
there has been a very aggressive program through Citizenship USA
and indeed throughout the INS to get rid of the backlog, how do
you account for the backlog?
Mr. Rosenberg. In fact, the backlog has not gone up. Applica-
tions have continued to come in from all over the country. In Chi-
cago, we do have an active outreach effort and that is what the
Tribune piece took, the activities in Chicago where it is about 60
197
percent of the applications come in that way and extrapolated it
nationally. Nationally, it is only I would say less than 10 percent,
maybe 5 percent, of people go to these organizations.
The fact is there are lots of reasons why people are applying for
naturalization that have been mentioned by people here today: The
legalization program people, green card replacement program, and
various other concerns people have about the political situation.
Mr. Crocetti. If I could add
Mr. Shadegg. I just want to clarify one thing. You said there is
no aggressive outreach program across the INS specifically, but
there is one in Chicago?
Mr. Crocetti. Chicago has been doing it for years, and I think
if you asked any of the panelists, you will see that Chicago has fo-
cused on community outreach for quite some time. It is, however,
now under new management, and that's another point I'd like to
make, is a lot of statements were made but there was no clarifica-
tion as far as whether they were pre-the current management,
which is a change.
The other thing I'd like to do is elaborate on what Mr. Rosenberg
said because I was part of the preliminary development of the Citi-
zenship USA plan and the re-engineering of naturalization. At that
time we had a promotion strategy. We want to promote the pro-
gram and recruit applicants. We changed that because the work
load was beyond what we could handle as it was. We didn't engage
in a promotion campaign. We started working with community out-
reach groups in a way to have them help with the existing proc-
esses getting information but not to promote the program.
Mr. SOUDER. If the gentleman could make a brief comment in
conclusion, they are calling from the committee.
Mr. Shadegg. I think it takes tremendous courage for any em-
ployee to come and speak out. I commend each and every one of
the line employees that testified here and I implore each of you,
gentlemen, to listen to them. One of them talked about labor/man-
agement issues. One of them is a union steward. So I'm not certain
who was expressing these concerns about the operation. I hope you
will pay attention to the testimony that was given.
Mr. Crocetti. I happen to be the INS management national
chair on the Labor/Management Partnership Council and none of
these issues haye ever been surfaced in that council, but I will pro-
mote labor/management relations and I plan on inviting these peo-
ple to participate in work groups that will even make this process
a better one.
Mr. Becerra. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the time. I will just
take a minute.
I thank Mr. Shadegg for pointing out something that I think
most folks don't know and that is that the INS is required to do
outreach but has never done it. And now that you have the Citizen-
ship USA program out there, you can't afford to do it because you
are already so swamped.
So it is intriguing. For the longest time the INS never did its job,
to go out there and let people know of the services that are avail-
able for folks who qualify for citizenship.
I should mention about the civic organizations that seem to be
somewhat under attack, in Los Angeles, the biggest proponent as
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far as civic organizations go is the Catholic Church. And on several
occasions I've had meetings where the Catholic Church has been
insistent on trying to get the INS to move quicker and they are try-
ing, with everything they can, to accelerate the process for the INS,
and that is why you find a lot of these organizations willing to help
the INS process these applications.
For the longest time they found that a lot of the folks they were
serving in their social service programs were saying we submitted
applications to the INS 6 months ago, a year ago, and we haven't
heard a thing. We haven't gotten a letter saying that we applied
and thanks for applying. So the Catholic Church got together with
these folks and said, let us help you.
They worked with INS and the regional office in Los Angeles and
said, we will make sure that when an application is submitted you
will not have to be sure fingerprints are included, because they will
make sure they do that, and we will make sure that they have en-
closed all the information and they have completed the application
correctly, because we don't want these folks to have the process
slowed down for them because of errors that they may have com-
mitted.
In terms of these civic organizations, I hope you will continue to
work with them because many of them were very well intentioned
and, honestly, from what I have heard, the results, the effective-
ness of these organizations has improved the outcome of those ap-
plications being processed through them. Most of the folks that go
through, for example, the Catholic Church, have a very high suc-
cess rate because everything is taken care of ahead of time so that
when you all take a look at it, the application is in pretty good
order.
The final point that I want to make is last week my grand-
mother, who is now 91, became a U.S. citizen. I want to thank the
Citizenship USA program for that. She was able to go through the
process and not have to do what many folks have had to do and
that is wait 2 or 3 days in line in an INS office trying to get an
application and another week or so to submit the application, and
how much more time to get the whole thing through the process
at 91 years of age, even though she still works and takes care of
her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. I am glad
that the INS has put the "S" back in the Immigration and Natu-
ralization Service.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SOUDER. One of the ironies is that people keep coming up to
me and saying, I have been reading about you and the immigration
hearings; can you get me an accelerated process?
I thank everyone. With that our subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 6:11 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
o
ISBN 0-16-054322-3
9 780160"543227
90000
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