Business groups and Silicon Valley companies have pushed for more H1B visas for software engineers and other high-skilled employees, for example, while labor unions have warned that too many immigrants would undercut qualified Americans
seeking high-tech jobs in a weak economy.
Unless the group designs a visa program that ensures a robust labor force, Rubio told reporters, “What you’re going to have is people coming into the country illegally or overstaying visas.”
Negotiators also have hit a roadblock on whether the government should keep track of who is leaving the country and how to do so.
Under current law, U.S. immigration authorities do not keep a record when tourists and other foreign visitors leave the country. So the government doesn’t know whether they have overstayed their visas, as thousands do each year.
The Senate group has tentatively agreed to create a system to check visas against an immigration database at international airports and seaports but have not determined whether it is feasible at much busier border crossings. The task is potentially huge: U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada are the most highly trafficked in the world, with 250 million crossings each year.
Some lawmakers warn that checking visas as people leave the country would be expensive to implement, further clog busy border crossings and slow crucial commerce.
http://www.dhs.gov/us-visit-office
Check out this article that bore the title:
Accenture wins $10 billion US VISIT contract
- By Greta Wodele
- June 1, 2004
http://www.govexec.com/defense/2004/06/accenture-wins-10-billion-us-visit-contract/16822/
“By harnessing the power of the best minds in the private sector, we have taken a major step toward accomplishing our goals of enhancing the security of our country while increasing efficiency at our borders,” said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security.
The department awarded Accenture the contract on Friday and announced the deal on Tuesday. It covers the next five years with five, one-year options beyond to resign the deal, and it has a minimum value of $10 million and a maximum value of $10 billion. Accenture would provide a wide range of services including strategic support, design and integration activities, technical solutions, deployment activities, training, and organizational change management, according to a department statement.
The department awarded Accenture, whose parent company is based in the Bermuda, the contract over two other bidders, Lockheed Martin and Computer Sciences Corp.
Here are two more links to two more recent stories about how Accenture formerly a subsidiary of the Arthur Andersen Accounting firm of Enron notoriety, has been awarded an additional 71 million dollar contract because it still has not gotten the job done: (Accenture is, incidentally, an off-shore company that had been headquartered in Hamilton Bermuda when it got its first contract but then subsequently moved to Ireland.)
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20111223-accenture-wins-71-million-contract-for-us-visit
Here is the list of the 6 benefits that the visa requirement provides to national security and that the Visa Waiver Program denies our nation:
1. By requiring visas of aliens who seek to enter the United States, this process helps to screen potential passengers on airliners that are destined to the United States. Richard Reid, the so-called “Shoe Bomber” was able to board an airliner to come to the United States although he had no intentions of entering the United States, his apparent goal was to blow up the airliner and its many passengers somewhere over the depths of the Atlantic Ocean by detonating explosives he had concealed in his shoes. Because he is a subject of Great Britain, a country that participates in the Visa Waiver Program, Reid did not obtain a visa before he boarded that airliner.
2. The CBP inspectors are supposed to make a decision in one minute or less as to the admissibility of an alien seeking to enter the United States. The visa requirement helps them to do a more effective job. Their’s is a tough job I can certainly relate to, I began my career at the former INS as an immigration inspector at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and worked there for 4 years before I became a special agent.
3. The application for a nonimmigrant visa contains roughly 40 questions that could provide invaluable information to law enforcement officials should that alien become the target of a criminal or terrorist investigation. The information could provide intelligence as well as investigative leads. You can check out the application for a nonimmigrant (tourist) visa by clicking on this link:
https://evisaforms.state.gov/ds156.asp
4. If an alien applicant lies on the application for a visa that lie is called “visa fraud.” The maximum penalty for visa fraud starts out at 10 years in jail for those who commit this crime simply in order to come to the United States, ostensibly to seek unlawful employment or other such purpose. The penalty increases to 15 years in jail for those aliens who obtain a visa to commit a felony. For aliens who engage in visa fraud to traffic in narcotics or commit another narcotics-related crime, the maximum jail sentence that can be imposes rises to 20 years. Finally, when an alien can be proven to have engaged in visa fraud in furtherance of terrorism, the maximum penalty climbs to 25 years in prison. It is important to note that while it may be difficult to prove that an individual is a terrorist, it is usually relatively simple to prove that the alien has committed visa fraud when there is fraud involved in the visa application. Indeed, terror suspects are often charged with visa fraud.5. The charge of visa fraud can also be extremely helpful to law enforcement authorities who want to take a bad guy off the street without tipping their hand to the other members of a criminal conspiracy or terrorism conspiracy that the individual arrested was being arrested for his involvement in terrorism or a criminal organization. You can arrest the alien who commits visa fraud for that violation of law and not for other charges that might make it clear that the investigation underway is targeting a criminal or terrorist organization.
6. Even when an alien applies for a visa and his application is denied, the application he filed remains available for law enforcement and intelligence personnel to review to seek to glean intelligence from that application.
CAN WE BAR THE TERRORIST DOOR?
Here is the link to the transcript of this hearing:
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa27480.000/hfa27480_0f.htm
On July 13, 2011 the Washington Times published a news report that drew a clear nexus between visa violators and vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks:
Aim is to find any would-be terrorists
Our nation 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 or members of other transnational gangs or members of al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations!
It is also vital that American workers never be made to compete with foreign workers for their jobs! (This requirement is a component of the Immigration Laws that are not being enforced today!)
If our government’s failures to secure our nation’s borders and effectively enforce our immigration laws that are intended to protect our nation and our citizens 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!
We the People must 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-
Please check out my website:
https://www.michaelcutler.net/
On Friday evenings from 7:00 PM until 8:00 PM Eastern Time, I host my show, “The Michael Cutler Hour” on the USA Talk Radio Network on Blog Talk Radio.
Here is a link to the program:
On March 11, 2013 the website GOP-USA posted a UPI news report entitled:
Gang of Eight Report Progress on Illegal Alien Status
According to this report:
“Once they have probationary legal status, immigrants would be allowed to work but would be barred from getting federal public benefits, including food stamps, family cash assistance, Medicaid and unemployment insurance, the aide said.”
Their plan ignores the lessons that history should have taught them.
First, providing as many as 11 million illegal aliens with employment authorization and lawful status that might eventually include citizenship would encourage millions of aspiring illegal aliens worldwide to head for the United States hoping that they too will be granted work permits. This is not conjecture but what happened as a direct consequence of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act amnesty. Illegal aliens became competitors for jobs millions of unemployed and underemployed American and lawful immigrant workers desperately wanted and needed. The same will happen today.
The biggest issue, however, is that these aliens have no reliable identity documents. That’s what “Undocumented” means.
Comprehensive immigration reform would require that millions of illegal aliens first be granted official identity documents that they can use to get driver’s licenses and Social Security cards. There is no way of determining their true identities or even their true countries of citizenship. Furthermore,there’s no way for USCIS to conduct true background investigations but only background checks. They could not even conduct routine face-to-face interviews.
Aliens using false names provided that they have never been arrested by law enforcement authorities in the United States would be issued such identity documents in whatever fictitious name they claim.
Robert Mueller, the Director of the FBI has repeatedly testified before Congressional hearings about the threat posed by “sleeper agents.”
Additionally, there are terrorist training camps in the Tri-Border Region of Brazil that Iran has established. Terrorists have a growing presence in the Western Hemisphere with regular airline flights from Tehran, Iran to Caracas, Venezuela with Iranian Qodz (shock troops) arriving in Venezuela virtually weekly.
On November 15, 2013 the Congressional Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management issued a report that was entitled:
A LINE IN THE SAND: COUNTERING CRIME,VIOLENCE AND TERROR AT THESOUTHWEST BORDER
The terrorists’ obvious goal is to have their operatives enter the United States and embed themselves in local communities until the day they are called into action against America. This report paints a clear and disturbing picture of how drug trafficking operation, working cooperatively with Latin American terrorist organizations, post a clear and present danger to United States’ security and therefore the well being of its citizens.
This is how the terrorists who savagely attacked the United States on September 11, 2001 operated, according to the key findings of the 9/11 Commission.
Insanity has been defined as doing the same things the same way and expecting a different outcome. Clearly the “Gang of Eight” is ignoring the hard-learned lessons of previous catastrophic failures.