Border Security: Measuring the Progress and Addressing the Challenges

Testimony of Doris Meissner, Senior Fellow and Director, U.S. Immigration Policy Program, before the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate.

"Chairman Carper, Ranking Member Coburn, and Members of the Committee:

My name is Doris Meissner. I am a Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and Director of the Institute’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program. Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.

My statement is based on my personal experience with border and immigration enforcement when I served as Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from 1993 through 2000.  It is also based on a recent MPI report that I and colleagues co-authored, Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery. The report describes for the first time the totality and evolution since the mid-1980s of the nation’s modern-day immigration enforcement machinery. [...]"