Gatekeepers They
Are, Sleepers Are We, Part 7
“Quis
custodiet ipsos custodes?” is a Latin phrase
variously translated as "Who will guard the guards?",
"Who watches the watchmen?", "Who shall watch the watchers
themselves?",
or
similar.
Decimus
Iunius Iuvenalis,
known
in English as "Juvenal," was a Roman poet active
in the late first and early second century CE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenal
This is an addendum
about gatekeepers. I was going
to start a new essay, but something happened today at the office which led
me to extend this essay.
Our business is a
paralegal office, sometimes like a real-life soap opera or telenovela.
Today the owner, a paralegal for sixteen years, had three clients who
told her that their papers which she had helped prepare had been returned by
the immigration service because the filing fee had been wrong.
For a number of
immigration forms, there had been a significant fee increase at the end of
July of this year. The papers
for these clients had been put in the mail before the deadline.
The paralegal called the
office of a member of Congress to report this.
She was told that each client should report this to the member in
whose district the client lived. The
paralegal then called an advocacy organization.
What is wrong here?
With all her experience in dealing with the immigration service, the
paralegal says that the service abuses its discretion, deceives applicants,
and violates the law. Those are
strong charges.
Interestingly, one of
the three clients chose to pay the increased fee, rather than assert his
right and possibly stir the ire of the immigration service. Note that: fear
of reprisal from the government. Justified?
That there is no way to
rectify this injustice other than by a call to a member of Congress or a
class-action suit by a dedicated or debt-ridden attorney is cause for
concern.
The system
is not working. Either there is
too much injustice which goes uncorrected or it takes too much time to fix
the injustice. What can be
done?
Every agency of government
should have an oversight council of constituents to monitor, report, and in
some cases, rectify. So, for
every office of the immigration service, there would be a group of local
citizens and immigrants, unrelated to any employees, who would sit on such a
council. The same would apply
to the IRS, a state’s department of motor vehicles, a municipality’s
economic-development department, and so on.
Significantly, constituents would elect from among themselves;
elected officials would not appoint.
Thus, “diversity” would be created to ensure, to the extent that
anything could be ensured, that the council of constituents be watchful and
not co-opted.
October 4, 2007