Particularly since the 1990s, INS has come under increasing attacks from a number of fronts. Civil liberties and human rights organizations have charged that such measures as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act have been used not to streamline the organization, as INS claims. Rather, they say, such laws have allowed INS to exercise its authority to deny due process to innocent aliens. A number of articles have appeared that explore the plight of an immigrant who had led a productive life while in the United States, only to be detained and threatened with deportation on account of a minor infraction committed many years earlier. While it would be unfair to characterize the entire INS by cases such as these, it is fair to say that efforts to streamline the agency fell short of expectations.

Charges of INS inefficiency have been exacerbated by the growing sense of unrest and anti-American sentiment throughout the world. The destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon in September 2001 drove home the point to Americans of all political persuasions that immigration issues demand better scrutiny. Among other concerns, many Americans worried that INS had been unable to keep the hijackers out of the country; the primary fear was that more such criminals could be living in the United States without the knowledge of INS.

A push to reorganize the functions of INS to make the agency run better resulted in Congressional action in the spring of 2002, when the House of Representatives voted to authorize significant changes to the agency. (Those seeking updated information on current progress at INS can obtain comprehensive information from the agency’s website, http://www.ins.usdoj.gov.) A streamlined organization will be better equipped to handle the huge number of illegal immigration, exclusion, and deportation hearings that will continue as long as the United States is seen as a country in which opportunities are so much more abundant than in other parts of the world.