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tions in 1995 established procedures permitting the speedy

identification and granting of meritorious claims, the

referral of all other claims to immigration court for pro-

ceedings to remove people from the United States, and the

streamlining of asylum procedures to help asylum officers

keep current with incoming applications.20  The INS in-

creased its asylum officer corps and the Department of

Justice hired more immigration judges to adjudicate asylum

applications more quickly.  The 1995 regulations also elimi-

nated the automatic grant of a work permit when an applica-

tion for asylum is filed.  Instead, a procedure was estab-

lished whereby most work permits are not granted until after

a person receives asylum or the application has been on file

with the INS for 180 days.21  Consequently, the prospect of

receiving work authorization, long perceived as a magnet for

frivolous asylum claims, was eliminated.

Those reforms worked.  New asylum applications declined

by more than 60 percent, yet existing claims are currently

being heard in record numbers.22  In 1994, before the re-

forms took effect, more than 123,500 affirmative asylum

applications were filed with the INS.  In contrast, in 1996,

the year after the regulations took effect, there were fewer

than 50,000 affirmative applications.  The approval rate

also increased from 15 percent in 1994 to 26 percent in 1996

for applications filed after the 1995 reforms took ef-

fect.23  Equally significant, since implementing the 1995

regulations, the INS has been adjudicating new claims for

asylum within 60 days of their receipt, a dramatic reduction

from the months (and sometimes years) the INS needed to

adjudicate claims before reform.24  Because there are now

more asylum officers and immigration judges, the number of

asylum cases completed in a year has more than doubled.

Besides keeping current with newly filed applications, the

INS is working through its backlogged cases in record num-

bers.  Thus did the 1995 regulatory reforms respond to and

solve many of the perceived problems with the asylum system.

Facts Colliding with Congressional Acts

New facts and changed circumstances, one might think,

would have led Congress to reexamine its proposed changes to

asylum law.  After all, the INS had already instituted the

necessary reforms.  Problems in the asylum system were

largely solved.  Yet such new information did not interfere

with the desire to pass a law anyway: IIRIRA became law in