Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Op-Ed Piece for Harford Business Ledger, September, 1996

ROBERT L. EHRLICH, JR. Congress of tf it (LliuteO States ftoitec of 3Rcpr tsmtatib ей OTaSfjington, 2ЭС 20515-2002 Op-Ed Piece for Harford Business Ledger By Congressman Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. September 1996 SOMETHING’S WRONG AT THE INS There’s something fishy going on at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Last week, the House Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice (where I serve as vice chairman) held a hearing into Citizenship USA, a controversial Clinton Administration program designed to accelerate the naturalization process for new citizens. In the course of reviewing some 30,000 pages of INS documents, we found serious evidence of fraud in the testing process for new citizens. An immigrant must pass a test in English and civics in order to become an American citizen. Through 1991, INS was the only authorized administrator of these tests. Since then, INS has licensed six private organizations to perform this testing. Five of these six organizations are non-profit entities with a long history of administering standardized tests such as the SATs. However, the sixth organization, Naturalization Assistance Services (NAS), is a for-profit company with no experience in English or civics testing. In fact, before it was selected by INS in July 1994, NAS was an obscure drivers’ education school in Florida! NAS is the largest of the six testing organizations, administering as many citizenship tests as the other five firms combined. Since June 1995, NAS has been plagued by revelations of fraud and abuse at many of its testing sites. The implications of this problem are enormous. Tens of thousands of applicants who do not speak or understand a word of English, and who could not possibly pass a legitimate English and civics (