“We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know and What We Don’t Know Can Get Us Killed!”

Hi Gang:

I have provided CAPS (Californian for Population Stabilization) with a commentary I expect will be posted on their website shortly.  Rather than have you wait for it to be posted there, I am providing my article today at the bottom of this e-mail.  The title of my piece is:

The predication for my article was the hearing conducted by the House Immigration Subcommittee this past week, on July 23, 2013.

My concern is that all of those who testified ignored a fundamental question that is just about never asked when the issue of the DREAM Act or Comprehensive Immigration Reform is the subject of discussion or even Congressional hearings.  The question is a simple one:

“How will our Adjudications Officers determine the truthfulness of information and claims made in the applications that would be filed by millions of illegal aliens, many of whom are euphemistically described as being ‘undocumented?’ ”  

The term undocumented literally means that they have no reliable identity documents that verify their names, their dates of birth or even their countries of citizenship.  It also means that there is no reliable way of determining when, where or how they entered the United States in the first place.

Because of the huge number of aliens and hence applications that they would file, there would be no way for the beleaguered Adjudications Officers at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to even conduct routine face-to-face interviews with these applicants.

There would be no way of conducting actual field investigations to determine that the information that they provide is truthful and accurate.

This is not an insignificant issue and creates serious national security vulnerabilities for the United States.

Here is something for you to consider.  How would a 30 year old adult verify that he (she) attended a particular high school?  Diplomas do not contain any biometric identifiers.  Diplomas only contain the name of a student.  Many diplomas would be easy to counterfeit and even when an actual diploma is provided, there is no way of being certain that the person who provides the diploma is actually the person to whom the diploma was issued.  Identity theft is a huge problem in the United States and one that has taken on new significance because it has been established that terrorists and transnational criminals not only seek to steal their victims’ identities to steal their money, and even, on occasion, their houses, but to create new identities that enable them to hide in plain sight.

The point is that whether or not it makes sense to provide the children of illegal aliens with lawful status- the underlying issue is the inability of USCIS to verify the truthfulness of the applicants who would participate in any such program.

On September 10, 2012 CAPS posted my commentary:

Problems still abound in student visa program

My article was prompted by an article that appeared in Government Executive Magazine on July 18, 2012.  In fact, the title for that article serves as the title for my commentary.  The Government Executive Magazine article was itself predicated on a GAO report that was issued in June 2012 and bore the title:

DHS Needs to Assess Risks and Strengthen Oversight Functions  

The GAO report focused on the legal visa program that was supposed to track and monitor hundreds of thousands of foreign sutents who were admitted into the United States and the GAO found a serious problem with the integrity of this program involving foreign students who had been admitted into the United States via the inspections process.

The problem is that the entire immigration system lacks integrity.  Yet the legislative remedies that the Congress is discussing at present would impose huge demands on an already crumbling and largely dysfunctional system.

On April 16, 2013, AIM (Accuracy In Media)posted my commentary that was entitled:

The unobtainium that I referenced in the title was verification for information and claims made by aliens who would seek to participate in Comprehensive Immigration Reform or in other such programs designed to provide undocumented aliens with identity documents and lawful status. 

On April 28, 2013 CAPS posted my article:

 The Immigration Bon Bon Factory

I took the title for my piece from a classic  episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and Ethel get a job at a candy factory wrapping morsels of candy bonbons that are delivered to them on a conveyor belt. They have a tyrannical boss who threatens to fire them if they miss any candy

At first they have no problem dealing with the candy but, in short order, the belt picks up speed and the candy begins hurtling at them at warp speed. No matter how fast they work, they cannot keep pace. Out of desperation, they begin stuffing the bonbons down their dresses and try eating them, but to no avail.

Today there are hapless adjudications officers who work for USCIS, a division of the DHS that adjudicates applications for a variety of immigration benefits including the granting of political asylum and the conferring of resident alien status and United States citizenship upon aliens.

Not unlike Lucy and Ethel, the hapless adjudications officers at USCIS are under great pressure to approve nearly every application that is put on their desks. It only takes minutes to approve an application but can take hours of days to deny an application.

The problem is that the current circumstances has greatly compromised the integrity of the process.  If USCIS would suddenly have to deal with a veritable tsunami of additional applications that would result from the enactment of Comprehensive Immigration Reform or even the DREAM Act, any last vestiges of integrity, meager as it is now, would be utterly eradicated.  Our government would inevitably wind up providing criminals and terrorists with immigration benefits to which they are not entitled and identity documents that would mask the true identities of these individuals.  

On July 27, 2006 I testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims on the topic:

WHETHER THE ATTEMPTED IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REID-KENNEDY IMMIGRATION BILL WILL RESULT IN AN ADMINISTRATIVE AND NATIONAL SECURITY NIGHTMARE

In a video of a segment of my testimony before that hearing provides crystal clarity about my grave concerns about the nexus between any such amnesty program and national security.

I am convinced that at least some of those who testified at the hearing are well-intentioned, however misguided.  They don’t seem to grasp that without the resources and mandate to make the integrity of the process the priority, fraud will permeate any program that would seek to provide potentially millions of undocumented aliens with lawful status and identity documents.

“We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know and What We Don’t Know Can Get Us Killed!”

Michael W. Cutler, Senior Special Agent, INS (Ret.)

Senior Fellow, Californians for Population Stabilization

On July 23, 2013 the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security conducted a hearing on the subject:

Addressing the Immigration Status of Illegal Immigrants Brought to the United States as Children

Americans have rightfully acquired a world-wide reputation of being the most compassionate people on Earth, and our compassion becomes even greater when children are the focus of our concerns. This is a wonderful attribute that all Americans should be proud of.

Advocates for open borders and massive amnesty programs for illegal aliens have used a variety of tactics to push their agendas including the use of Orwellian “Newspeak,” where the very term “Alien” has been all but stricken from the vernacular where immigration is concerned, even though the Immigration and Nationality Act defines an alien as simply being, “Any person, not a citizen or national of the United States. There is no insult in that definition- only clarity. Clarity is something that they avoid at all costs.

In point of fact, America’s immigration laws do not make any distinction about the race, religion or ethnicity of aliens who seek to enter the United States but are focused on preventing the entry of aliens who would pose a threat to the safety and well being of America and Americans.

Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182 codifies the various categories of aliens who are to be excluded from the United States.

It is also important to note that the most likely victim of crimes perpetrated by transnational criminals from around the world, are the members of the immigrant communities where these criminals live and ply their “trades.”

While the term “Alien” has all but been declared “hate speech” by the immigration anarchists, it is nothing short of astounding that in order to conjure up the image of the “American Dream” the term “Alien” appears in the DREAM Act which is an acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors!

Upon scrutiny it is apparent that the DREAM Act represents a cynical way to see in the kindness of Americans weakness that can be exploited. While it is touted as being about the “children” the age cutoff is 31. Who would consider a 30 year old to be a child? Because of the huge number of illegal aliens who are present in the United States, USCIS lacks the resources to conduct in-person interviews of those who would apply, let alone be able to conduct field investigations. Consequently aliens would be able to game the process to falsely claim to have entered the United States when they were children and even lie about their identities including even, their countries of citizenship and receive official identity documents in whatever name they claim is theirs.

The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel detailed numerous examples of instances where terrorists not only made use of visa and immigration benefit fraud to enter the United States but to also embed themselves in the United States. Page 47 of this report noted:

Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.

What is also being ignored is that most terrorists are under the age of thirty. Ironically, this coincides with the age range of the “DREAMERS!” This is not to say that all DREAMERS are likely to be terrorists, but think what just 19 terrorists did on September 11, 2001.

A final thought- while the politicians are quick to bemoan the life threatening risks being imposed on children by those who smuggle them into the United States, not one of them has called for taking the commonsense approach of prosecuting those who would smuggle a child into the United States, thereby endangering that child’s life and well-being.