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November 14, 2008
Exclusive: ‘Immigration’ Lobby to Petition Obama on ‘Reforms’
An article that appeared this week in the El Paso Times makes it clear that even before President Bush leaves office, the lobbyists who advocate for open borders and massive amnesty programs for millions of illegal aliens whose true identities, backgrounds, affiliations and intentions can never be determined with certainty, are heading for Washington to push their dangerous and ill-conceived agenda.
The coalition has prepared a report with a number of recommendations, which includes a recommendation
… to replace border operations such as “Hold the Line” in El Paso, which was instituted by U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, when he was El Paso’s Border Patrol chief, with border community safety and security operations “that can distinguish between criminal activity and immigration violations.”
During my 30-year career for the former INS, I was involved directly or indirectly with the arrest of thousands of aliens for various violations of immigration and other laws. I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is no way that you can look at a person and know whether or not that person has a criminal history unless you have a young child in front of you.
I could recount a long list of various illegal aliens that my colleagues and I arrested who appeared to be simply working illegally in the United States –but who turned out to be fugitives in their own or other countries. I recall arresting a young man, working in a glass factory in Brooklyn, who lied about being a naturalized citizen. He was mild-mannered and polite, but his story about the naturalization process had some serious inconsistencies, so I made the decision to take him to our office to attempt to verify his story. It turned out that he was an illegal alien who had been previously deported from the United States upon being convicted of a homicide and serving his sentence – and subsequently arrested and charged with unlawful reentry into the United States. While serving a five year prison sentence for that violation, he escaped from federal custody.
I also arrested an Egyptian citizen whom we found working in a restaurant in Staten Island as a dishwasher, who turned out to be engaged in coupon fraud and was believed to be sending the proceeds of this criminal enterprise to a terrorist organization in the Middle East.
Someone once said that an effective spy (or terrorist) would not attract the attention of a waiter or waitress at a "greasy spoon diner." I have modified that statement to make the point that it may well be the waiter or waitress who is the spy or terrorist. Consider the case of Nada Nadim Prouty, a student who entered the United States in 1988 on a student visa from Lebanon. She overstayed her visa and then engaged in a marriage fraud arranged by her brother-in-law, who also helped her sister with a similar arrangement. Ultimately, Prouty acquired United States citizenship and parlayed her U.S. citizenship and fluency in Arabic languages into a job at the FBI as a special agent. After a couple of years she left the FBI for a job at the CIA. Meanwhile, her sister became an officer in the U.S. military. Ultimately it was determined that both women had committed immigration fraud and had no right to naturalize since their applications for resident alien status were bogus.
Prouty came to the attention of officials at the FBI and CIA when it was found that she was accessing databases relating to ongoing investigations of the terror organization Hezbollah. She also accessed databases relating to informants. The problem was that in dealing with secure databases, the it’s not enough to have proper clearance, but the operative concept is the principle of "Need to know." She had no such need to know.
It also turned out that the brother-in-law who arranged the marriages was a fugitive who is believed to have funneled millions of dollars in proceeds from his chain of restaurants in Detroit to Hezbollah! It’s thought that Prouty provided intelligence she gained by reviewing those databases to Hezbollah.
Among the gang members we investigated during my career were members of MS-13. By day, many of these gang members worked as day laborers – landscapers and "baggers" in supermarkets. At night they hung out with other gang members and committed a variety of violent crimes.
The use of the language by open borders advocates is remarkable. These folks state:
"A welcome change," he said, "would also be the appointment of a Department of Homeland Security secretary and Immigration and Customs Enforcement assistant secretary who value the contributions of immigrants and immigration."
I don't know of anyone who does not value the contribution of legal immigrants. And when the open borders advocates make the claim that Ellis Island has been closed, my response is that while Ellis Island has indeed been closed for 50 years, our nation still admits lawful immigrants each and every day through all of the various ports of entry. In fact, each year, the United States admits more than one million lawful immigrants who, upon entry into the United States, are on the path to United States citizenship! This is a number greater than all of the immigrants admitted by all of the other countries of the world combined!
Thus, the question: how many more immigrants can our nation admit? As we have discovered, our nation is a nation of finite resources. How many Americans are losing their homes because they are losing their jobs and cannot make their mortgage payments?
Speaking of mortgage payments, how many of the so-called sub-prime mortgages were given to illegal aliens who used ITIN Numbers because they had no Social Security Numbers? And how many additional illegal aliens committed identity theft and used other person's Social Security Numbers in order to secure those sub-prime mortgages?
The mortgage disaster is still being sorted out and I fear that we are about to experience another disaster as student loans, car loans and credit card balances that will be defaulted by more illegal aliens whose identities have never been verified.
Twenty years ago there were several agents in my office who focused on student loan fraud in which aliens from many countries, especially from West African countries, bilked the United States government and banks where student loans and credit cards were concerned. These are not victimless crimes, as identity theft committed by various criminals and even terrorist organizations have made life hell for the people whose identities were stolen. I wonder if there are any advocates "out there" who are concerned about this.
Furthermore I would love to see someone step up and make it clear that the enforcement of the immigration laws is not about racism but that it is about making certain that our government lives up to its obligation of making the well-being of the citizens of our country the primary concern of the government of the United States.
Before the onset of the Second World War, the immigration laws were enforced and administered by the United States Department of Labor. Back them our government had the quaint idea that it was important that our government looked out for the average American! The concern was that foreign workers might displace American workers. Could you imagine such a wild perspective?!
When we hear calls for an end to arresting illegal aliens who are working illegally and taking jobs Americans would do for proper wages, We the People must contact those politicians and make it clear that after we seek to have illegal aliens removed from the workplace, that we will work tirelessly to remove those politicians from their respective workplaces – the halls of Congress and the various town halls and state capitals where they are supposed to represent the citizens of this nation!
The opposition is revving up their efforts to undermine our nation's borders – but the safety of our nation begins at its borders. It is therefore essential that our borders be secured and that our immigration bureaucracy honors those who abide by the laws and seeks to weed out those who would commit fraud.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a recognized authority who addresses the implications of immigration on national security and criminal justice. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
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