The Melting Pot’s Missing Ingredient
Few tears will be shed at the funeral for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The House of Representatives voted last month to abolish the INS and replace it with separate bureaus charged with protecting our borders and providing services to immigrants under a newly created Agency for Immigration Affairs.
But the INS has a third critical mission that largely has been ignored: to promote instruction and training in citizenship. This includes helping impart basic English language skills and understanding of our history and democratic principles. This oversight becomes all the more critical in light of the unprecedented number of immigrants who have flocked to our shores over the past 30 years. According to the 2000 census, the foreign-born population stands at 28.4 million, or 10% of the total U.S. population. That’s the highest number ever and the highest proportion since 1930, the end of the previous great wave of immigration.
Moreover, also during the past 30 years, the proportion of naturalized citizens in the foreign-born population plummeted from nearly two-thirds to barely more than one-third. The result is that today nearly 18 million of the foreign-born are not citizens. The backlog of citizenship applications to the INS now numbers in the millions, despite the commendable efforts of charitable organizations, many of them religiously affiliated, to assist with the naturalization process.
There are several reasons for this lower rate of naturalization, but one of the most obvious and most easily addressed is government inattention to the essential task of integrating immigrants into our common civic life. This is not simply a matter of providing client-friendly services, essential though that is, but of preparing immigrants to become fellow citizens.
The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform in 1997 gave Congress its final report, titled “Becoming an American.” The report strongly encouraged the revival of instruction for all immigrants on “the common civic culture that is essential to citizenship,” including the English language, which the commission correctly identified as the most basic skill for successful integration into American society and civic life.
Fortunately, the bill the House passed last month was amended to include establishment of an Office of Citizenship, the basic mission of which would be to promote instruction and training. We would be well served if the Senate, when it takes up an INS reform bill this month, includes such a provision. Better yet, the Senate should consider elevating this office into a third bureau within the new Agency for Immigration Affairs. This could serve to underscore the seriousness with which we view this matter of becoming a U.S. citizen and to help ensure that it receives adequate funding to carry out its core educational mission.
As a nation of immigrants, we need to take seriously our responsibility of training future citizens to fully assume the rights and duties that belong to all Americans.
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Luis Lugo, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Cuba, is director of the religion program at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia.
