Reforms designed to target unfit immigration lawyers.

The Bush administration has proposed renovation of the discipline process that aims to crack down on abusive and unskilled lawyers who are practicing before the immigration courts of the nation.

The proposed changes would establish new minimum standards of conduct for the attorneys and it would also aim at providing greater power to the judges to punish wrongdoers.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, an arm of the Justice Department, which circulated the rules for the public comment, said that immigration judges need to have the tools that are necessary to protect the adjudicatory system from fraud and abuse. It also stated that the proposed changes aim to preserve the fairness and integrity of the immigration proceedings and this is necessary to increase the level of protection afforded to the foreigners in those proceedings.

Under the current rules, immigration lawyers are subject to sanctions when deemed in the public interest. The proposed rule also implements more specific grounds on which lawyers could be sanctioned. Lawyers will also be subject to discipline for conduct that is detrimental to the administration of justice or damages the integrity of the adjudicative process.

The proposed rules will replace a system that has for long delayed to state bar regulators in the establishments of professional discipline. Since the year 2000, the immigration review office has taken action against more than 400 immigration lawyers. However, most of these actions piggybacked on moves by the state regulators. Critics say that the process have been very time taking and in most cases has failed to protect clients form abuses.

A professor at Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco, Michele M. Benedetto said that they have acknowledged crisis in the immigration courts and what is needed to focus on ethical values is a step in the right direction.

The Bush administration launched a review of immigration courts after it received reports on judges wrongly deporting people or denying asylum based on certain false evidences or incompetence. In August 2006, the Justice Department announced a series of reforms for improving the quality of judging, which included proposals to subject judges to performance evaluations and law exams.

Critics say that the department has been working slowly to implement the changes. The reform effort was also dealt a blow after it was disclosed that the department assistants had used political and ideological criteria to select immigration judges under Alberto R. Gonzales, the former attorney general.