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MONTPELIER, Vt. – Six months after Congress authorized tripling the number of federal agents on the northern border, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is launching its biggest hiring push ever.
By the end of the fiscal year in September, the INS hopes to have 8,000 new employees with 6,000 headed to work on the borders. By the end of September 2003 the INS hopes to hire an additional 4,000 people.
The new employees will increase the size of the INS by about a third.
Most of the new employees will end up working on the northern border and will approximately double the number of Border Patrol and immigration inspectors working on the U.S.-Canadian border.
“We are looking forward to increased manpower and other resources up here,” said Chuck Foss, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol in Swanton, which oversees a 211-mile stretch of border in upstate New York, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Since Sept. 11, the Border Patrol, which is part of INS, has helped increase its presence along the frontier by working longer hours and getting help from agents temporarily assigned from the Mexican border.
Currently there are about 345 Border Patrol agents patrolling the 4,000-mile U.S.-Canadian border. Foss said plans call for hiring about 245 new Border Patrol agents this year.
“We’ll take anything they give us,” Foss said.
U.S. Customs, which is separate from INS, is also in the midst of a big hiring push, although it’s not as large as that of INS.
The new hires will go a long way toward easing the staffing shortages caused by the security enhancements imposed after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Some border officers have been working regular 12- and 14-hour days.
Once complete, the new hires should eliminate the need for the 1,700 National Guard soldiers who are assisting INS and Customs agents on both the Canadian and Mexican borders, officials said.
But the hiring falls short of tripling the number of INS and Customs agents along the northern border that was authorized last year by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Any staffing increases above the current number will have to be paid for in later congressional appropriations.
The INS hiring is for a range of jobs, including uniformed Border Patrol agents, officers who will help people with INS paperwork, and those who will oversee the deportation process, said INS spokesman Temple Black.
“There are a wide variety of jobs available at INS for all kinds of people,” he said.
U.S. Customs, meanwhile, is in the process of hiring about 1,200 inspectors for major U.S. seaports and the Canadian border, said Customs spokesman Jim Michie.
“That’s the first increment,” said Michie. “Future hiring depends on the fiscal 2003 budget.”
Federal law enforcement duties along the border are shared by the INS, which is responsible for the people who cross the border, and U.S. Customs, which is primarily responsible for goods that enter and leave the country.
While the Sept. 11 attacks highlighted the need for greater border security, the hiring spurt was only partially motivated by the attacks, said INS spokesman Temple Black.
“INS has always needed good, qualified career oriented people to accomplish the great numbers of important tasks for which we are responsible,” Black said.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, helped write an anti-terrorism bill that authorized INS and Customs to triple their staffing levels on the northern border. But the law, passed in October, did not include funding for those positions.
The $445 million for the new hires and technology enhancements for INS and Customs on the northern and southern borders was contained in a supplemental spending bill passed by Congress in December and signed by President Bush in January.
Currently, the INS employs about 36,900 people. Once the hiring process is complete it will bring the total to about 49,000, an increase of about 33 percent.
Craig Jehle, the Customs port director for northwestern Vermont, said he expected to receive between 25 and 30 new employees by the end of the year. The border crossings he supervises currently has about 50 Customs employees.
“It’s a substantial number,” Jehle said. “We are still covering a lot of extra shifts.”
New Border Patrol agents always start work on the U.S. Mexican border. But the addition of new agents down south will free up that many veteran agents to move north and start patrolling the U.S.-Canadian line, said Foss.
Even veteran agents need time to get accustomed to the different demands of working on the Canadian border, he said.
“We want to see how effective these agents can be,” Foss said. “We don’t want to get them so quickly that they can’t assimilate.”
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