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Balance to Maintain

NCJ Number
173933
Date Published
1998
Length
0 pages
Annotation
This video portrays the work of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS's) Task Force on Victims Services and the efforts of the INS to provide victim services to illegal aliens who are victimized while in the United States.
Abstract
The video first portrays through interviews with INS agents and through video footage of INS agents at work the kinds of criminal victimization that aliens experience while in the United States. They include child abuse, domestic assault, assault and battery, fraud, slavery, and threats of harm. Such crimes may be committed by the parents of alien children, spouses, transporters of illegal aliens, and the crew chiefs who abuse aliens in the fields where they work. The video portrays and explains the work of the INS Task Force in its efforts to guide the INS in providing appropriate services to alien crime victims. The video notes that one of the most significant barriers to help for alien victims is their perception that the INS is only a punitive agency intent on frustrating their dreams and sending them back to their home country. The video emphasizes the importance of changing this image of the INS in the perceptions of aliens, so that they will view the INS as a helping agency that not only provides help when they are victimized but offers guidance on how they may obtain legal residency in the United States. The video notes that if the INS is to be effective in providing victim services, agents must overcome language barriers and gain the trust of alien crime victims by showing knowledge of and sensitivity to their culture and customs.