Jeanfromfillmore
04-07-2010, 01:59 PM
Both Philosophical and Practical Problems Plague ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’
Guest Column | By Michael Cutler | April 7, 2010
This Washington Times article should be of interest because it underscores the basic fact that politically savvy politicians are apparently aware of just how unpopular a massive amnesty program, under the aegis of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform," is to the majority of the citizens of our nation.
My question for those who favor Comprehensive Immigration Reform is, "What part of no don't you get?"
Philosophically I am opposed to the granting of amnesty to millions of aliens who have never had the right to even be in our country, let alone work here and do other things that represented a violation of laws ranging from immigration laws that were promulgated to protect our nation and our citizens from foreign nationals whose presence in our country, in one way or another, would be harmful. Generally these illegal aliens also violate other laws in order to accomplish their goals, including crimes relating to the use of false identity documents - including identity theft.
But the problem is not just philosophical, but practical.
Some in Congress are now touting the proposal of the creation of a new Social Security card which would include biometric components to make it a more secure document. Notwithstanding some of the complaints I have read about the use of biometrics in conjunction with such documents, I believe that the inclusion of biometrics on Social Security cards would be a good thing - making it that much more difficult for the bad guys to commit identity theft. However, in the case of millions of illegal aliens whose true identities are unknown, it makes absolutely no sense to provid millions of individuals who have no way of authenticating their true identities with an official identity document that would bear any name that they would claim relates to them.
We know that bad guys use multiple false identities in order to conceal their true identities and to "cover their tracks" as they commit various crimes along the way. We know that the terrorists, such as the 19 who attacked our nation on 9/11 used multiple false identities to achieve their horrific goals in slaughtering 3,000 innocent victims and injuring so many more.
The problem is not just to create secure identity documents but to know the proper names to put on those documents.
The Real ID Act was intended to remove the bureaucratic foliage the bad guys conceal themselves in. By providing massive numbers of illegal aliens whose identities are unknown and unknowable, with official identity documents under names that may or may not truly relate to them, we would facilitate the process by which terrorists and criminals have traditionally embedded themselves in our country. This would be a wrong headed approach at any item, but is especially disturbing in this particularly dangerous era in which our nation and our citizens are in the crosshairs of terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda and Hezbollah and criminal organizations such as the sophisticated and extremely violent Mexican drug cartels. Yet this is precisely what the proposed plan would require our nation to do.
We have been told that each alien seeking to legalize himself under the provisions of Comprehensive Immigration Reform would undergo a security check. This sound wonderful, but, once again the proposal fails to take reality into account.
A security check would simply require that the fingerprints and the name an alien would provide on his application be run through a computer database to determine if his name is on any terrorist watch list or is otherwise known to law enforcement or intelligence agencies. It is also important to remember that most of the names on the government's "No Fly" lists are often based on names only and that all too often there are no biometrics to further identify an individual on that "No Fly" list.
A terrorist or criminal who had never been fingerprinted in our country would pass the fingerprint component of the process. If the name he provided was a false name, even if that person's true name is on every terror watch list in the world, the false name would come up clean. Within 48 hours that alien would be granted a temporary identity document that could be immediately used in order to obtain a driver's license, a super-duper secure Social Security card including a biometric identifier such as the one some senators would have our government create, and other such official documents. These documents would provide terrorists and criminals with a number of immediate benefits. They could secure jobs, including jobs of national security significance, they could travel freely around our country in any way they would want, including by boarding airliners, and they could open bank accounts and own property - all under their newly assumed identities. These individuals would also be able to easily enter all sorts of government and corporate buildings - having secured for themselves a level of credibility to which they are not entitled - aided and abetted by these programs.
If there is no way of truly identifying the millions of illegal aliens who would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to participate in Comprehensive Immigration Reform, then there is no way of knowing if the alien applying for inclusion in this wacky program entered the United States five years ago or five weeks ago. Further complicating the adjudication process for this ill-conceived program is the fact that many illegal aliens use multiple false identities. As an INS special agent, I often encountered illegal aliens who had as many as ten sets of false identity documents hidden in his apartment.
Proponents for Comprehensive Immigration Reform are quick to claim that the system is "broken." I could not agree more - the system is, indeed, broken. A succession of GAO and OIG reports have made it clear that immigration fraud is a huge problem at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). This agency has clearly proven itself to be incapable of dealing with its massive workload now, where each year the beleaguered adjudicators at that agency process more than 6 million applications. Comprehensive Immigration Reform would require that inept and incompetent agency to suddenly have to deal with a minimum of an additional one hundred thousand applications each and every day. (This was a component of the last version of Comprehensive Immigration Reform of nearly three years ago.)
Click here to see several GAO issued reports on various aspects of immigration benefit fraud and other failings of the immigration system.
It has been said that you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. For millions of people around the world, the first impression that they have of the United States is derived from the way that the United States secures its borders (barely) and adjudicates applications for visas and various immigration benefits including the conferring of resident alien status and United States citizenship upon aliens. By not aggressively seeking to uncover fraud and punish those who would defraud our government by gaming the immigration system, that first impression is a dangerous one. In the United States, law violators cannot only expect to get away with violating our borders and our laws, in the United States our "leaders," from the White House on down to various senators and members of the House of Representatives, are fighting hard to reward those who commit those violations of law.
A final thought: When an alien runs our nation's borders there is no entry of his entry into our country. There is also no way of knowing if that alien is simply desperate for a job and paycheck - a violation of law, in and of itself, or if that alien is fleeing law enforcement authorities in another country for committing serious crimes. There is no way of knowing if the intentions of that illegal aliens are relatively innocuous of if that alien is seeking to enter our country to pursue criminal or terrorist goals. There is simply not enough known about that illegal alien. Comprehensive Immigration Reform would not, as its proponents claim, bring millions of illegal aliens out of the shadows but rather would provide them with the camouflage of new identities and lawful status to which they are not entitled.
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.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
http://www.aim.org/guest-column/both-philosophical-and-practical-problems-plague-comprehensive-immigration-/
Guest Column | By Michael Cutler | April 7, 2010
This Washington Times article should be of interest because it underscores the basic fact that politically savvy politicians are apparently aware of just how unpopular a massive amnesty program, under the aegis of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform," is to the majority of the citizens of our nation.
My question for those who favor Comprehensive Immigration Reform is, "What part of no don't you get?"
Philosophically I am opposed to the granting of amnesty to millions of aliens who have never had the right to even be in our country, let alone work here and do other things that represented a violation of laws ranging from immigration laws that were promulgated to protect our nation and our citizens from foreign nationals whose presence in our country, in one way or another, would be harmful. Generally these illegal aliens also violate other laws in order to accomplish their goals, including crimes relating to the use of false identity documents - including identity theft.
But the problem is not just philosophical, but practical.
Some in Congress are now touting the proposal of the creation of a new Social Security card which would include biometric components to make it a more secure document. Notwithstanding some of the complaints I have read about the use of biometrics in conjunction with such documents, I believe that the inclusion of biometrics on Social Security cards would be a good thing - making it that much more difficult for the bad guys to commit identity theft. However, in the case of millions of illegal aliens whose true identities are unknown, it makes absolutely no sense to provid millions of individuals who have no way of authenticating their true identities with an official identity document that would bear any name that they would claim relates to them.
We know that bad guys use multiple false identities in order to conceal their true identities and to "cover their tracks" as they commit various crimes along the way. We know that the terrorists, such as the 19 who attacked our nation on 9/11 used multiple false identities to achieve their horrific goals in slaughtering 3,000 innocent victims and injuring so many more.
The problem is not just to create secure identity documents but to know the proper names to put on those documents.
The Real ID Act was intended to remove the bureaucratic foliage the bad guys conceal themselves in. By providing massive numbers of illegal aliens whose identities are unknown and unknowable, with official identity documents under names that may or may not truly relate to them, we would facilitate the process by which terrorists and criminals have traditionally embedded themselves in our country. This would be a wrong headed approach at any item, but is especially disturbing in this particularly dangerous era in which our nation and our citizens are in the crosshairs of terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda and Hezbollah and criminal organizations such as the sophisticated and extremely violent Mexican drug cartels. Yet this is precisely what the proposed plan would require our nation to do.
We have been told that each alien seeking to legalize himself under the provisions of Comprehensive Immigration Reform would undergo a security check. This sound wonderful, but, once again the proposal fails to take reality into account.
A security check would simply require that the fingerprints and the name an alien would provide on his application be run through a computer database to determine if his name is on any terrorist watch list or is otherwise known to law enforcement or intelligence agencies. It is also important to remember that most of the names on the government's "No Fly" lists are often based on names only and that all too often there are no biometrics to further identify an individual on that "No Fly" list.
A terrorist or criminal who had never been fingerprinted in our country would pass the fingerprint component of the process. If the name he provided was a false name, even if that person's true name is on every terror watch list in the world, the false name would come up clean. Within 48 hours that alien would be granted a temporary identity document that could be immediately used in order to obtain a driver's license, a super-duper secure Social Security card including a biometric identifier such as the one some senators would have our government create, and other such official documents. These documents would provide terrorists and criminals with a number of immediate benefits. They could secure jobs, including jobs of national security significance, they could travel freely around our country in any way they would want, including by boarding airliners, and they could open bank accounts and own property - all under their newly assumed identities. These individuals would also be able to easily enter all sorts of government and corporate buildings - having secured for themselves a level of credibility to which they are not entitled - aided and abetted by these programs.
If there is no way of truly identifying the millions of illegal aliens who would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to participate in Comprehensive Immigration Reform, then there is no way of knowing if the alien applying for inclusion in this wacky program entered the United States five years ago or five weeks ago. Further complicating the adjudication process for this ill-conceived program is the fact that many illegal aliens use multiple false identities. As an INS special agent, I often encountered illegal aliens who had as many as ten sets of false identity documents hidden in his apartment.
Proponents for Comprehensive Immigration Reform are quick to claim that the system is "broken." I could not agree more - the system is, indeed, broken. A succession of GAO and OIG reports have made it clear that immigration fraud is a huge problem at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). This agency has clearly proven itself to be incapable of dealing with its massive workload now, where each year the beleaguered adjudicators at that agency process more than 6 million applications. Comprehensive Immigration Reform would require that inept and incompetent agency to suddenly have to deal with a minimum of an additional one hundred thousand applications each and every day. (This was a component of the last version of Comprehensive Immigration Reform of nearly three years ago.)
Click here to see several GAO issued reports on various aspects of immigration benefit fraud and other failings of the immigration system.
It has been said that you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. For millions of people around the world, the first impression that they have of the United States is derived from the way that the United States secures its borders (barely) and adjudicates applications for visas and various immigration benefits including the conferring of resident alien status and United States citizenship upon aliens. By not aggressively seeking to uncover fraud and punish those who would defraud our government by gaming the immigration system, that first impression is a dangerous one. In the United States, law violators cannot only expect to get away with violating our borders and our laws, in the United States our "leaders," from the White House on down to various senators and members of the House of Representatives, are fighting hard to reward those who commit those violations of law.
A final thought: When an alien runs our nation's borders there is no entry of his entry into our country. There is also no way of knowing if that alien is simply desperate for a job and paycheck - a violation of law, in and of itself, or if that alien is fleeing law enforcement authorities in another country for committing serious crimes. There is no way of knowing if the intentions of that illegal aliens are relatively innocuous of if that alien is seeking to enter our country to pursue criminal or terrorist goals. There is simply not enough known about that illegal alien. Comprehensive Immigration Reform would not, as its proponents claim, bring millions of illegal aliens out of the shadows but rather would provide them with the camouflage of new identities and lawful status to which they are not entitled.
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.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
http://www.aim.org/guest-column/both-philosophical-and-practical-problems-plague-comprehensive-immigration-/