GUEST WORKER AMNESTY PROGRAM: WORST POSSIBLE THING FOR AMERICA

by Michael Cutler
April 14, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

President Ronald Reagan used to show his annoyance during a debate by saying, "There you go again!" I feel compelled to use that expression to show my disdain for the statement that was made by Emilio T. Gonzalez, the Director of USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) when he testified before the House Appropriations Committee yesterday, March 27th.

Mr. Gonzalez started out by listing all of the myriad tasks that are required of his employees at USCIS. I would remind you of all of the highly critical reports that have been issued concerning how flawed the operation at that critical agency is. Fraud is a huge problem and simply saying that they were working to reduce opportunities for aliens to receive immigration benefits by committing fraud is simply not enough.
To call the President's Guest Worker Amnesty Program by the term "Temporary Worker Program" will not make these workers "Temporary" just as saying that the program does not provide "Amnesty" means it does not provide amnesty. Consider, if you will, the inability of the various personnel at USCIS, ICE and CBP to deal with the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal aliens who are present in our country today. If we are unable to remove them now, what will change if they are provided with the opportunity to legally work in the United States? How many special agents or other officials will police this system that the President has been insistent on creating virtually since he was sworn in more than 6 years ago? How will our officials make certain that aliens who participate in this program actually leave the United States when they are required (since this is supposedly a temporary program)? I would remind you that even after the expenditure of over one billion dollars, US-VISIT still lacks the ability to track the departure of aliens who enter the United States for a temporary period of time.

The national security implications of this program are absolutely humongous! The Real ID Act requires the United States citizens and resident aliens provide all sorts of verifiable identity documents to make certain that terrorists are far less able to game this system to obtain driver's licenses in false names as did the 9/11 terrorists who used those documents as a form of camouflage to conceal their true names and make tracking them all the more difficult. When you look at the arrest record of criminals you are almost always struck by the fact that the bad guys generally have a multitude of false names that they, like the terrorists use to hide in plain sight. Because the millions of illegal aliens in the United States are undocumented, how will the adjudicators at USCIS be able to determine the true names of these millions of people? How will they not only be able to determine their true names but how will they be able to determine when they entered the United States since the majority of these applicants will be found to have most likely run our borders in order to enter the United States? How will these beleaguered bureaucrats even determine the true nationalities of these millions of aliens who lack any passports or other official identity documents?

The identity documents that would be issued to aliens who participate in the Temporary Worker Program would enable them to secure driver's licenses and Social Security Cards. They would be able to open bank accounts and obtain library cards on the strength of those ID cards that would be handed out to millions of aliens who have no way of proving their true identities! If you believe I am overstating the potential for USCIS to simply hand out official identity documents to illegal aliens who have no way of proving who they are, you need to read the report that was issued by the GAO about how USCIS naturalized 30,000 aliens without their official immigration alien files that should have been reviewed to determine the eligibility of these aliens to receive the "Keys to the Kingdom" that United States citizenship represents. The GAO report concerning clear evidence of a dysfunctional agency that has clear national security implications can be found here.

You should also read the prepared testimony that Senator Charles Grassley provided when he testified before a field hearing that was conducted in Iowa on September 1, 2006, concerning the reason why an amnesty program would be a huge mistake. I also testified at that hearing. The transcript of that hearing including Senator Grassley's testimony and my own testimony can be read here.
The bottom line is that the President's supposed "Temporary" program would not be temporary unless you consider the fact that no one lives forever! Many of these aliens do not want to be United States citizens they just want to work here and send money back home and also be free to travel across our borders. The President's plan would enable them to do all of these things. It is also important to understand that the only reason that illegal aliens are so valued is the simple fact that as illegal aliens they are easily exploited and therefore will work for substandard wages under substandard conditions. Once these aliens receive legal status, they will demand what their resident alien and United States citizen counterparts have demanded; prevailing wages and fair working conditions. As happened during the Amnesty of 1986, many of these millions of aliens who would have the lawful authority to work in the United States will be fired by their unscrupulous employers and replace them with the next wave of illegal aliens since our border is not secure. As President Reagan would have said, "And there you go again!" History would undoubtedly repeat itself. That is why our nation went from having virtually no illegal aliens in 1986 to the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our nation!

Finally, I want you to think about all of the terror suspects that you have read about getting arrested in countries all over the world. Virtually every one of them was described as having a job. Terrorists embed themselves in communities throughout the world by taking relatively commonplace jobs that makes them virtually invisible. Often their jobs involve the driving of cabs or ice cream trucks or other such vehicles which gives them mobility and vehicles that are nearly invisible to the average person. I often like to make the point that a day or two before a terrorist participates in an attack he is most likely to go to his job!

When you consider all I have stated above, I hope that it is clear that a Guest Worker Amnesty program of any flavor for millions of illegal aliens would be the worst possible thing that our nation could do, starting with the national security nightmare it would create for our nation and our citizens! As you can see, cheap labor is not so cheap after all! Lead, follow or get out of the way!

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