News from
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Office of Communications, Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544
Tel 609/258-3601; Fax 609/258-1301
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Patricia Coen 609/258-5764
Date: February 4, 1998
A Conversation with INS Commissioner Meissner at the Woodrow Wilson School
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Doris M. Meissner, commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, will hold a question-and-answer session on such topics as contemporary immigration policy, the future of the INS, and the demands of public service leadership, at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs on Wednesday, February 18, at 12 noon, in Robertson Hall, Bowl 1.
Meissner was confirmed unanimously as commissioner of the INS in 1993, in the early years of the Clinton presidency when a number of White House potential appointments were mired in controversy and eventually overturned. According to Attorney General Janet Reno, Meissner "was everyone's idea of the perfect public servant" and the right woman for the job. An immigration expert, she had served as acting commissioner of the INS from 1982 to 1986 and as its executive associate commissioner from 1986 to 1993. At the time of her appointment as commissioner, she was senior associate and director of the Immigration Policy Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Meissner heads a controversial agency. The INS has, for years, been seen as an agency fraught with problems, and recently a federal advisory committee called for its abolishment. Its main problems stem from its its dual, frequently conflicting roles of battling illegal immigration and fighting for benefits for legal immigrants.
Meissner, however, defends the her agency's record. The number of naturalizations in the United States has tripled in recent years, and her agency has dealt with the increased demands on its services efficiently and effectively. Significantly, the INS has lately tightened the nation's asylum system as well as its border with Mexico, south of San Diego. Meissner, along with Reno, feels that the agency should be retained and permitted to straighten out the internal problems of priority management cited by its opponents.
Last month, the Clinton administration rejected the advisory committee's recommendation to abolish the INS and instead proposed a reorganization of the agency. An outside consulting firm has been retained to review the agency and give their recommendations on the reorganization by March 1.
Meissner's visit is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
0204-meissner.html