Exclusive: ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’ Back from the Dead?


Author: Mike Cutler

Date Published: 2008-03-06


‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’ Back from the Dead?

Michael Cutler

 

According to Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), an immigration bill will likely be passed that is very similar to the one that was defeated by the American public last summer.

 

If our federal government passes an immigration reform package that includes a path to legal status for the 20 million or more illegal aliens, the hard work done by legislators throughout the United States on all levels to address the illegal immigration crisis would become irrelevant. Why? Virtually every illegal alien would be eligible to remain in the United States irrespective of how they entered our country (and possibly even if they violated other laws along the way).

 

Please consider a few reasons why I have been adamantly opposed to a guest worker program for illegal aliens.

 

First of all, our nation's borders are anything but secure. The virtual fence that has cost so much money is not functioning effectively. Even when does, there is still a shortage of Border Patrol agents to respond to its alerts. 

 

Additionally, at present, the border that separates the United States from Canada is not secured and is relatively easy to cross without detection. While most illegal aliens come over the Mexican border, the Canadian border has been used quite effectively by alien smugglers who bring Asians into the United States, often using Indian reservations as a staging area. And liberal Canadian policies for applications for political asylum have enabled a number of terror cells to be established in Canada. 

 

Finally, it is currently estimated that 40% of the illegal aliens in the United States did not run our nation's borders, but rather entered the United States through ports of entry. Then, in one way or another, they violated the terms of their admission by remaining long after their authorized time period had expired, accepted unlawful employment, or were convicted of committing felonies

 

Even if our government established a cutoff date for aliens who are already here, there is no way to prevent more from coming and, as I will show, there is no way to determine when illegal aliens entered the United States. If our government enacts this legislation, we would witness a human tidal wave of unprecedented proportions!

 

USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) would be utterly incapable of doing anything but rubber stamping what may easily become tens of millions of fraudulous applications filed by illegal and undocumented aliens who would apply to participate in this program.

 

Numerous reports by the GAO and the Inspector General paint an alarming picture about the incompetence, ineptitude and corruption of USCIS now. How would the USCIS fare with the onslaught of applications that the massive number of illegals would file? 

 

The total number of terrorists who have used immigration benefit fraud to enter the U.S. is unknown, but I can tell you that one report indicated that some 94 terrorists have been identified as operating in our country in the decade leading up to the attacks of 9/11. Of those 94, about two-thirds of them used immigration benefit fraud. 

 

The 19 terrorists who attacked our nation on 9/11 used a total of more than 300 false names and variations of false names. 

 

A woman by the name of Nada Nadim Prouty used immigration fraud to acquire United States citizenship and then became first an FBI special agent, then a CIA agent, so that she could spy for Hezbollah! 

 

Another naturalized citizen working at a U.S. military base in Iraq as a translator on the counter-insurgency program was found not only to have committed immigration fraud, but USCIS ultimately conceded that they were not certain of his name or his nationality. Yet they provided him with citizenship…and he repaid our stupidity by spying on our military for al Qaeda!

 

Don’t forget, just a couple of days ago the headlines of newspapers blared that thousands of aliens have been illegally attending flight schools in the United States! The ABC headline read: "9/11 Redux: 'Thousands of Aliens' in U.S. Flight Schools Illegally."

 

On June 22nd of last year I wrote a commentary piece that appeared in the Washington Times entitled Immigration Bill a 'No Go,’ in which I discussed my great concerns about "Comprehensive Immigration Reform." I deemed that legislative nightmare the "Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act of 2007."

 

Here is the bottom line:

 

Any amnesty bill that provides lawful status for millions of undocumented and illegal aliens will result in many consequences – none of them in the best interest of our nation or our citizens. Untold additional millions of illegal aliens would be emboldened to enter our country and game the system. Among them would undoubtedly be criminals and terrorists, eagerly and easily seizing the opportunity. The much ballyhooed "background checks are all but meaningless. All it means is that USCIS officials would be required to run an applicant's fingerprints and name through a series of databases. Since the aliens would be undocumented, they have no official identity documents to ascertain their true names or nationalities.

 

If a terrorist, for example, was careful to never be fingerprinted, all he would have to do is furnish a false name, which would not show up in the database for obvious reasons. Because his fingerprints were not on file, he would get a clean record and USCIS would immediately issue him (her) a temporary identity document he could use to get a Social Security Card, a driver's license and then open bank accounts. This is how terrorists and spies seek to embed themselves in communities around our country. This is precisely how a sleeper agent operates.

 

Meanwhile, those aliens who acquire lawful status and are simply attempting to work in the United States would most likely not be kept on as employees by unscrupulous employers who only value the illegal aliens because they are easy to exploit by virtue of their illegal status. This happened as a consequence of the last amnesty. 

 

As more illegal aliens pour into our country, the impact on everything from health care and education to criminal justice, national security and the environment would wreak havoc on our nation with many more billions of dollars being wired out of the United States to the countries from which the illegal aliens come.

 

The value of labor would plummet since labor is a commodity not unlike gold, diamonds or petroleum and the average blue collar worker will find himself in a headlong race for dwindling paychecks. The only way of preventing this is for citizens to begin to make their voices and demands heard loudly, clearly and regularly.

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FamilySecurityMatters.org contributing editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a well-respected authority on immigration and border security issues.

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