I have attached a copy of a news report that appears in today’s edition of the Washington Times and raises an important aspect of the health bill that is currently wending its way through the legislative process on Capitol Hill. The issue is whether or not illegal aliens would be entitled to receive health care under the auspices of this legislation.
As the article notes, during the speech that President Obama gave about the need to pass health care legislation, his promise that illegal aliens would not gain coverage was greeted by an outburst from Republican Congressman Joe Wilson who exclaimed, “You lie!”
Of course this breach of decorum and protocol was shocking, but it is worth noting that while the President promised the bill would not provide health care coverage for illegal aliens, it is quite obvious that this is not the case. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House who has on a number of occasions staked out opposition to the enforcement of the immigration laws, is attempting to justify the fact that illegal aliens will, indeed gain health care coverage under the legislation currently being debated. Here is how her aide explains it:
“It’s possible an employee could deceive an employer with a fraudulent document, just as under current law, to gain employment, just as it’s possible for all sorts of criminal activity to occur, and why we have law enforcement,” said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, who wrote the final House bill. Here is the interesting thing to consider- under the current administration, the emphasis on the investigation of employers who hire illegal aliens is to penalize the employers but not arrest the illegal aliens who are illegally present in our country and, adding insult to injury, working illegally and, doing so with the use of phony or stolen identities.
Ms Pelosi’s spokesman is simply acting as her voice in stating that the potential for criminal activity is “why we have law enforcement.” Pelosi has on previous occasions referred to the enforcement of the immigration laws as being “Un-American.” She actually equated the arrest of illegal aliens at Wal-Mart in 2003 as being akin to an “act of terror” against the illegal aliens who were arrested by special agents of ICE when she spoke at Mexico City. Stop and think about that one! Mexico is the country that sends the United States more illegal aliens and more narcotics across a border that neither political party, in the name of “Free Trade” (NAFTA) is willing to really secure!
As you may know, when I made one of my first appearances on national television to discuss illegal immigration, I used the expression, “No one would break into an amusement park if they could not get on the rides.” I made that point on Lou Dobbs’ program on CNN more than 6 years ago. That simple sentence explains just how wrong-headed it is to provide health care insurance for illegal aliens. Health care would provide yet another incentive for illegal aliens to enter our country in violation of law. Clearly the politicians who favor this lunacy are sending a clear message to those aliens who are deciding on whether or not to seek to violate our nation’s borders and laws. The message is that in the United States, you can expect to not just get away with violating our borders and our laws, you can expect to be rewarded for violating our borders and our laws.
This is especially true when you couple this legislative train wreak with the clear statements made by the President, members of his administration and members of both houses of Congress who have made it clear that their goal is to enact legislation to provide millions of illegal aliens with lawful status even though their entry into our country was in violation of our borders and our laws.
Philosophically this is insane, but what is even more disturbing is that, as I have noted on so many previous occasions including when I have testified before Congressional hearings on the issue of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” that there would be absolutely no way of determining the true identities of these millions of illegal aliens. There would be no way of verifying almost everything we need to know about these people. Their true names, countries of citizenship, criminal histories in foreign countries, potential involvement with criminal or terrorist organizations, their intentions, or even when, where, or how they entered the United States will all remain shrouded in a veil of uncertainty because there is absolutely no way that USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) would be able to conduct field investigations of these millions of people who have made it their objective to acquire and use fictitious or stolen identities in order to gain unlawful employment in the United States and hide in plain sight in communities from coast to coast and border to border.
Here is where the lunacy of this entire program becomes painfully apparent. consider the last two sentences of the news report I have attached below:
A Congressional Research Service report notes that the House Democrats’ bill does not expressly prohibit illegal immigrants from getting health insurance and, in fact, would mandate that they obtain insurance if they meet the “substantial presence test.”
That test calculates U.S. residency based on the number of days per year a person is in the country.
If you are dealing with hundreds of thousands or millions of illegal aliens who have used multiple false identities on a number of jobs, how would you even begin to attempt to honestly determine how long that illegal alien was present in the United States?
You must also take into account that the last time that the Senate attempted to enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform, two years ago, USCIS would have been required to process a minimum of 100,000 applications for amnesty each and every working day in addition to dealing with all of its other responsibilities!
You could be just as accurate in determining the true amount of time by putting a bunch of numbers in a hat (a very large hat with lots and lots of numbers) and simply pull out a number and claim that the number was the actual length of time that the illegal alien in question had resided in the United States!
This farcical requirement would make it clear to every illegal alien in the United States and every aspiring illegal alien that the United States is utterly unwilling and utterly incapable of creating an immigration system that has a shred of integrity!
Could you imagine if the Internal Revenue Service conducted its business in a comparable fashion?
My concern is not based on conjecture but on my 30 years of experience with the INS.
The “leaders” in Washington who are gearing up for the next round in the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” battle are touting the fact that every applicant for a pathway to United States citizenship would have to undergo a “security check.” Let us take a moment to understand precisely what this means.
A security check is not to be confused with a “background investigation.” To compare a “security check” with a “background investigation” is a bit like comparing a person who has his temperature and blood pressure checked by a nurse as compared with a patient who undergoes a complete physical exam at a hospital. A “clean bill of health” provided by that nurse would certainly mean virtually nothing when compared with the findings of medical specialists at the hospital.
As a senior special agent of the INS I held a “Top Secret” clearance. Every five years my clearance had to be renewed. This meant that I submitted fingerprints and that I would be interviewed, at length by one or more investigators. The interview might last a couple of hours. I would have to provide them with people they could talk to substantiate the information I provided in my application. (The application consisted of many pages and dealt with a broad spectrum of issues ranging from my finances to addresses where I may have lived to providing information about any encounters I might have had with law enforcement, i.e., speeding tickets I might have received, etc., etc.)
Those investigators then went out to interview the people I told them to contact and, if they decided it was warranted, they could interview my neighbors and anyone else they deemed necessary to interview if their investigation turned up any issues that needed to be resolved. This process could, and often did, take several weeks or months to complete.
The “security check” that aliens applying for a pathway to United States citizenship would bear no resemblance whatsoever to the background investigation I detailed above. Under the security check, an employee of USCIS or, perhaps, a private contractor, would simply run the fingerprints provided by the alien applicant through a computerized database. They would run the name the alien provided on his (her) application. The alien might have to provide a rent receipt or other such documentation to attest to his identity.
If the name did not set off any alarms when the computers were queried, the alien would receive a temporary identity document within 24 or 48 hours that the alien could immediately use to obtain a driver’s license, a Social Security card, open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, library cards, seek employment and otherwise establish a normal life for himself in our country.
Now here is the thing to remember: If the alien provided a false name on his application and provided bogus supporting documents, the likelihood is that there would be no way for the adjudicator at USCIS to know this. If the name was fictitious, the computer would, no doubt, show that the name was “clean.”
This means that any alien who lies about his identity is all but certain to get through the process provided that he had never been arrested by law enforcement authorities in our country. Terrorists and members of organized crime groups understand that their ability to function inside the United States requires that they keep a low profile. As I have noted on previous occasions, it has been said that a successful spy (or terrorist) would not attract the attention of the waiter, or waitress, at a “greasy spoon” diner. In point of fact, it might well be that a spy or terrorist *is* a waiter or waitress!
This is not just an idle concern. Consider the case of a Lebanese citizen by the name of Nada Nadim Prouty who entered the United States in 1989 with a student visa and then became an illegal alien when she failed to attend school and accepted a job at a restaurant as a waitress. She acquired resident alien status (became a lawful immigrant) by marrying the brother of the owner of the restaurant for a fee. They never lived together as husband and wife. Ultimately she became a naturalized citizen as a result of that marriage fraud and was able to parlay her freshly printed naturalization certificate and her fluency in Middle Eastern languages into a job with the FBI as a special agent!
That was bad enough, but she was not content with this – she then went to work for the CIA. She was discovered to be using her security clearance to access FBI and CIA databases to apparently spy on those agencies where ongoing investigations into Hezbollah, a pernicious terrorist organization, were being conducted. She was caught because while she had the proper clearance to access the databases she accessed, she did not have a demonstrable “need to know.”
What is of additional interest is the fact that her employer at the restaurant who helped arrange her “marriage” is now a fugitive, wanted in conjunction with his alleged transfer of millions of dollars in funds he skimmed from his restaurant chain in Michigan to Hezbollah! It is believed he is now back in Lebanon, free from the reach of United States law enforcement (for now).
Of course government officials claim that they weren’t certain that she was “spying” but why else would she have accessed databases on that terrorist organization given the totality of the circumstances in this case?
Here is a link to a news report that appears on the CBS News website about Ms Prouty:
Ms Prouty is one of a number of spies and terrorists who were found to have committed immigration fraud as an embedding tactic.
The mechanism that the pro-amnesty advocates are touting would be utterly ineffectual at preventing additional such subterfuges from being carried out against our nation by those who pose a threat to national security.
But even from the perspective of the massive numbers of illegal aliens who have no such nefarious intentions, the cost of the health care for at least a million illegal aliens, coupled with the message it would send to millions of desperate people around the world, especially at a time when so many Americans are unemployed, underemployed and barely able to feed themselves and their families would further undermine Americans and lawful immigrants who are desperate to seek employment or hold onto the jobs they may now have.
The fight is on and The politicians who are attempting to enact health care for illegal aliens are preparing to slam us with a veritable one-two punch.
First will be health care for illegal aliens to be quickly followed by amnesty and a pathway to United States citizenship!
Finally, I once again have to commend two members of the United States Congress who do understand the issues completely and are willing to stand by their beliefs and stand up for our citizens. I am referring to Representative Lamar Smith, the Ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and Representative Steve King, the Ranking Republican on the Immigration Subcommittee. Consider their comments:
Here is what Steve King had to say:
“This is a complete cover-all-the-gaps federal health insurance for illegals, whether it be under Medicaid, the refundable tax credit or whether it be under their employers who would not be able to verify their employers unless we fix E-Verify,” said Rep. Steve King of Iowa, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee.
Here is Lamar Smith’s quote:
“If it was not bad enough that illegal immigrants take jobs that rightfully belong to citizens and legal immigrants, now they will get health care benefits that should go to Americans,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “If they were not in the country, we wouldn’t have to worry about emergency room or health insurance costs at all. And Americans would have these jobs.” Can you imagine, Congressional representatives who actually represent their constituents and, in fact, all Americans!
It is now less than one year until the next federal election, do you know where *your* representative stands on these critically important issues?
Where illegal aliens and health care are concerned, all too many of our “representatives” apparently favor a policy we have heard about before on another matter- it was called, “Don’t ask: don’t tell!”
A country without secure borders can no more stand than can a house without walls!
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 health care for illegal aliens and/or Comprehensive Immigration Reform 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.
Next year each and every member of the House of Representatives is up for reelection. Next year 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!
Any American who has lost his job certainly has enough time on his (her) hands to get involved!
Any American who fears the loss of his job must make effective use of his spare time to make certain he keeps his job! (Remember, the job save may be your own!)
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! You need to politely but pointedly, demand to know what they are doing to protect our nation. You need to ask them how they are protecting you and your families. You can also forward this commentary to them.
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!
Health bills fail to block illegals from coverage by Stephen Dinan
