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SHIFT IN INS INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT STRATEGY DRAWS CRITICISM
The INS has announced a new interior enforcement plan under which the number of illegal workers found at work-site raids will no longer be considered the primary indicator of the agency’s success. Under the new plan, which is to be phased in across the country over the next five years, there will be five top enforcement priorities: identifying and removing criminal aliens, breaking up alien smuggling rings, building better relationships with local communities to better deal with issues of illegal immigration, stopping document fraud in obtaining government benefits, and sanctioning employers who use undocumented workers.
Supporters of the new plan say it is a wiser use of limited resources than the old plan. During 1998, work-site raids apprehended less that 14,000 illegal workers, less than ten percent of the over 171,000 people deported from the U.S. in 1998. Whereas the Border Patrol has almost 9,000 agents, there are less than 2,000 agents to perform all of the INS’s interior enforcement work. Critics of work-site raids complain the INS raids have racist overtones and INS agents are unnecessarily rough in the treatment of employees are raided work sites. Furthermore, the raids are seldom a surprise, leaving undocumented workers with time to hide before being discovered.
Supporters of the new plan also cite the success of Operation Gatekeeper, the new border enforcement strategy aimed at deterring illegal entry as one of the causes of the need for a new interior enforcement strategy. Because it is so much harder to sneak in, more and more people are turning to smugglers. Alien smuggling is now an  billion a year business, according to the INS. 
Critics of the new plan say it is evidence that the INS is abdicating its responsibility and an effort to divert attention away from its failure to enforce the immigration laws created by Congress. Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform calls the new strategy "just another basket of empty promises that add up to an ineffective set of policies. It’s just intolerable and should be a national scandal." Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, calls the change "disarmament in the battle to stop illegal drugs and illegal aliens.
One possible cause for the shift in enforcement strategy is the unwillingness of both Republicans and Democrats to face the political backlash from key constituents that would result if the INS were to make a meaningful effort to stop the use of undocumented labor. The Democrats fear a backlash from civil rights organizations and labor unions while the Republicans fear angering business and agricultural interests by enforcing labor laws.
There are approximately 5.5 million undocumented aliens in the U.S., with about 275,000 more arriving each year. About one million people a year are caught before making it into the U.S.