U.S. Not Cracking Down on Immigrants With Expired Visas

I just received this news report that was posted on the San Diego Union Tribune website yesterday, “Napolitano: Reform would help border enforcement By Morgan Lee, which addresses the absolutely absurd assertions by Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of an agency, DHS, I have come to refer to as the Department of Homeland Surrender.

My parents died when I was a college student but often I think of words of advice or encouragement they gave me. I like to say that I still stand on their shoulders. One of my dad’s favorite expressions was to say, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!”

My mom liked to say that a fool who gets peed on will believe it is raining!

The point is that for far too many years and in far too many instances our “leaders” have concocted all sorts of ridiculous claims and assertions and expected us to believe them. For far too long, all too many of our fellow citizens bought into the tall tales masquerading as explanations. The patience of the American people is all but exhausted and the political polls in large measure reflect the anger and frustration that most Americans now feel towards politicians in general and the current crop of many of them in power today.

Janet Napolitano must lack what I have come to call “mouth – ear coordination.” It causes me to want to ask her, “Are you listening to the words coming out of your mouth?!”

Consider the absolutely outrageous assertions attributed to her in the news report I have provided you today.

Let us start with this excerpt from the report:

During a wide-ranging, 45-minute interview with the editorial board of The San Diego Union Tribune, the former Arizona governor and state attorney general said strengthening immigration rules also could lead to more high-tech resources that authorities would use to make sure visitors to the United States don’t overstay their visas. “There are areas in terms of visas and visa overstays, again, that should be addressed legally through an immigration reform bill,” Napolitano said. “We need a new legislative framework from which to act. It’s the 21st century. We need a bill that builds for that.”

She did not provide specific details on how an immigration bill would address visas overstays and other enforcement challenges.

Let us stop and consider how insulting it is to say We the People that Janet Napolitano would even consider saying something that is so outrageous!

The laws that deem aliens who violate their terms of admission into the United States have been on the books for decades. What reform is needed to render an alien who is already deemed to be illegal under the current laws illegal? Would she want them to be considered more illegal?

Years ago when then President George W. Bush proposed a guest worker amnesty program for immigrants and said that he wanted to legalize immigrants, I made the point that offering to legalize immigrants is a bit like offering to make water wet! Water is already wet and immigrants are legal! Bush wanted to legalize illegal aliens but understood that if he had said he wanted to legalize aliens who were illegally present in our country he would not be able to get the American people behind his plan so he used deceptive language. Jimmy Carter, as president demanded that INS employees never refer to illegal aliens as being illegal aliens- he demanded under the threat of disciplinary action against errant employees that INS employees refer to illegal aliens as undocumented workers!

So now we have a new version of attempting to make water wet! Janet Napolitano claims we need Comprehensive Immigration Reform in order to make illegal aliens into illegal aliens! What a concept!

Of course she has no concrete answer to any questions concerning how her “plan” would work!

What is needed is not new law but actual resources to track down illegal aliens, arrest them and seek their removal from the United States at time when the administration is seeking to dismiss removal (deportation) hearings against illegal aliens. I recently wrote a commentary about this “plan” that was predicated on a recent news article that appeared in the Houston Chronicle. Here is a link to that article:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7249505.html

Furthermore, as I have noted in a number of my recent commentaries, there are fewer than 300 special agents at ICE (immigration and Customs Enforcement) who have been assigned to seek to locate and apprehend visa violators. One recent news report pegged the precise number of such special agents at just 272 for the entire United States of America! There are varying estimates as to just how many illegal aliens who are present in our country who entered the United States not by running our borders but by entering with visas or via the dangerous and ill conceived Visa Waiver Program and then went on to violate the terms of their admission. The government position is that there are about 5 million but it is my belief there are even more and they are purportedly being sought by 272 special agents!

Certainly some new law that would provide illegal aliens with pathway to United States citizenship could address this problem! Apparently Ms Napolitano would simply provide them with United States citizenship and thus they would no longer be illegal aliens! What an amazing plan!

If we follow Napolitano’s lead we could make our entire country crime free- all that would be needed is criminal law reform- declare no activities to constitute a “crime” and we could then say that there were no crimes committed in our entire country!

The United States would no doubt become the most violent, but crime free country on the face of this entire planet!

Next I want you to check out this nugget of brilliance that I have copied from the news article:

Napolitano tried to show Monday that immigration is also about homeland security, touching on a crucial security issue related to the 9/11 attacks and the perpetrators whose visas had expired. She said the U.S. is doing much more than before to check the background of visa applicants before they enter the country, but that “we don’t have the capacity yet to monitor every visa overstaying and find them.”

Here is the same problem- the extreme lack of resources dedicated to going after the visa violators but let us now consider something else- one of my pet peeves- the infamous Visa Waiver Program that now covers citizens from 36 countries. Aliens who do not even need to apply for a visa nor receive a visa before seeking entry into the United States. Is she in favor of ending the Visa Waiver Program? Don’t hold your breath for the answer to that question.

On May 10th of this year, the Arizona Republic ran a story that addressed the issue of the failures of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to effectively seek to locate and apprehend these illegal aliens. Daniel Gonzalez, the reporter who wrote that news report interviewed me for the story that was titled:

“U.S. not cracking down on immigrants with expired visas.” Here is the link to this news report:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/05/10/20100510illegal-immigrants-overstay.html#ixzz0ndkoS9w

On May 11, 2006 I testified before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on International Relations on the topic:

“VISA OVERSTAYS: CAN WE BAR THE TERRORIST DOOR?”

You can read the transcript of that hearing at:

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa27480.000/hfa27480_0f.htm

However, now that Napolitano has raised the issue of doing a better job of finding out who an alien is before they are granted a visa, how about the fact that Comprehensive Immigration Reform would require the over-burdened and generally inept agency under her command, USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to deal with tens of millions of applications for lawful status in our country that would be filed by aliens who do not have a shred of official or reliable documentation to attest to their true identities? This is, in point of fact, what the term “undocumented” means!

How would a new law enable the beleaguered employees at USCIS suddenly be able to determine the true identities of these millions of illegal aliens whose true names, nationalities, criminal histories in foreign countries or possible affiliation with terrorist or criminal organizations would be unknown and unknowable to know who these individuals are?

I have testified before a number of Congressional hearings about my extreme concerns about the impact of any massive amnesty program on national security.

On July 27, 2006, I provided testimony before a hearing conducted by the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on this very issue. My remarks and concerns back then apply today. Here is a video of a segment of my testimony at that hearing:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4127670560538123883&ei=FlKLSq-4LYLrlQentKnDCw&q=michael+cutle&hl=en&client=firefox-a

Three years ago the proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation would have required the inept USCIS to process a minimum of 100,000 applications for Comprehensive Immigration Reform each and every day in addition to all of the other tasks they were already grappling with and failing to deal with in any meaningful way other than to run the bureaucratic conveyor assembly line ever faster throwing integrity and national security to the wind!

About 3.5 years ago the GAO conducted an investigation and determined that USCIS had claimed to have “lost” some 111,000 immigration files relating to applications filed for various immigration benefits including some 30,000 applications for United States citizenship via the naturalization process!

Here is a link to the Washington Post article about this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801402.html

The GAO has issued numerous reports on various aspects of immigration benefit fraud and other failings of the immigration system. You can see a list of these reports at:

http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/locate?searched=1&order_by=rel&keyword=immigration%20fraud&search_type=publications&o=0&add_topic=&add_type=&add_year=&add_fed_type=&add_fed_desc=&add_year=2000%20-%202009

How would Comprehensive Immigration Reform or new laws fix what is broken at this inept agency that would be in charge of administering Ms Napolitano’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform?

Finally, the Amnesty of 1986 made the intentional employment of illegal aliens by an employer a crime. Again it is not the laws that are lacking but the leadership, the resources and the political will to actually enforce the laws already on the books that are lacking!

I would not buy a used car from Ms Napolitano and I certainly won’t buy her outrageous claims!

It is time for her to find a plastic surgeon that is good at rhinoplasty- her nose is certainly growing!

It is also time for the politicians in Washington to live up to their oaths of office as well!

They must take to heart the statements made by the union leaders who represent the employees of Immigration and Custom Enforcement and do whatever is necessary to address these massive deficiencies as quickly and effectively as possible. The security of our nation and the safety of our citizens must, without equivocation take priority over any political goals or agenda.

Consider the recent damning “vote of no confidence” that the union that represents the enforcement personnel at ICE gave John Morton and the other “leaders” at the Department of Homeland Surrender that Janet Napolitano heads.

Here is a link to the Washington Times news article for which I was interviewed, that reports on the feelings of the valiant agents who want the system to work the way it should:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/9/agents-union-disavows-leaders-of-ice/

It is unacceptable that the citizens of this nation be alienated by their own government especially where border security and the enforcement and administration of our nation’s immigration laws are concerned!

A country without secure borders can no more stand than can a house without walls!

November 2nd cannot come fast enough!

We the People, throughout this nation must seek opportunities to make it clear to our political “representatives” that we understand their game plan and won’t tolerate it!

I believe our nation’s is greatly benefited by the rich diversity of our people which is why I could never imagine living anywhere except New York City, arguably the most diverse city in our nation if not, in fact, the world. However, my idea of diversity most certainly does not include members of MS-13, the Mexican drug cartels and members of al-Qaeda!

If reading this makes it difficult for you to sleep now- perhaps you could do something worthwhile- perhaps you might spend a couple of your sleepless hours writing letters to your elected representatives this evening and remind them that Election Day is just months away!

We the People can add to the consternation of these politicians who are failing to live up to their oaths of office by contacting them and making it abundantly clear that election day is coming and they should think of election day as their personal “Day of Reckoning!”

Our government must live up to its obligation of protecting its own citizens and, indeed, all who are present in our country from the criminals and terrorists who would threaten our lives and the survival of our nation and our way of life. In the end, the government is actually those who are elected to act as our “leaders.” Those who fail to truly lead and look out for those they are supposed to represent, need to be sent packing this coming Election Day!

If our country is to survive and if our children and their children are to get their share of the “American Dream” the citizens of this nation must take their citizenship seriously!

We the People must be the best citizens we can be, citizens who are worthy of the gallantry demonstrated by our valiant men and women in the military, law enforcement and firefighters, who routinely go in harm’s way in defense of this nation and our citizens.

My goal in writing this and other commentaries is to point out our nations many failings before more victims pay the ultimate price for the incompetence and ineptitude of our government.

The first step in problem-solving is to first identify the problems and vulnerabilities and then devise strategies to overcome them.

Any politician who refuses to work to secure our borders and create an immigration system that has integrity is either corrupt or too dumb to keep his (her) job. Any politician, irrespective of party affiliation who favors Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the outrageous betrayal that this would represent given the national security implications that this program would have, should be shown the door at the next election!

If you find yourself to be in agreement with this commentary, I ask that you forward it to as many of your friends and family members as possible and encourage them to do the same. We need to create a “Bucket Brigade of Truth!”

In just under two weeks, each and every member of the House of Representatives is up for reelection and more than one third of the members of the United States Senate will have to face their constituents. They need to be reminded that they work for us, We the People!

However, the practice of good citizenship does not end in the voting booth, it only begins there.

The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups. There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do- we must stop sitting on the sidelines!

The collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to the politicians. I implore you to get involved!

If this situation concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you to call your Senators and Congressional “Representative. This is not only your right- it is your obligation!

All I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as dumb as they hope we are!

We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.

This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue- simply stated; this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue!

You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem!

Democracy is not a spectator sport!

Lead, follow or get out of the way!

Michael Cutler, a former Senior INS Investigator, an expert witness in more than a dozen Congressional Hearings is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and an advisor to the ‘911 Families for a Secure America.’ He writes about the nexus between immigration and national security.