http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/ho ... ?id=650364

Author: Michael Cutler
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc
Date: January 25, 2007


Were the recent arrests of 24 illegal aliens at one of America’s military bases a success for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or a sign of its failure? FSM Contributing Editor Michael Cutler explains.



Illegals on ICE at Fort Benning

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has announced that it has successfully apprehended numerous illegal aliens who used false or counterfeit documents in order to secure employment at a U.S. military base, Fort Benning, in Georgia, which is the home of the United States Army infantry school. ICE reported 24 illegal aliens were arrested after an extensive 7-month investigation conducted by several agencies working together.



ICE did not, however, make it clear whether or not these illegal aliens, 21 of whom are also being charged with identity theft and the use of fraudulent identity documents, had actually been working on the base at the time that they were arrested. If they had been working on this base, the article also does not mention how long they had been employed there. It is also interesting that one of the illegal aliens who was arrested is a citizen of Italy, a country that is participating in the infamous Visa Waiver Program. Also not mentioned is whether or not the citizen of Italy entered the United States legally or illegally. The article did, however note that three of the illegal aliens had been admitted into the United States and then violated the terms of their admission.



I have attached a chart provided by the United States Department of State on that agency's website, below:



Currently, 27 countries participate in the Visa Waiver Program, as shown below:

Visa Waiver Program - Participating Countries.

Andorra
Iceland
Norway

Australia
Ireland
Portugal

Austria
Italy
San Marino

Belgium
Japan
Singapore

Brunei
Liechtenstein
Slovenia

Denmark
Luxembourg
Spain

Finland
Monaco
Sweden

France
the Netherlands
Switzerland

Germany
New Zealand
United Kingdom



How Does a Country Qualify for Visa Waiver?

Select Visa Waiver Program - How a Country Qualifies to learn more.

This article is worth considering because it makes it clear that the need to enforce the immigration laws from within the United States should be a clear national security priority. Yet, there are relatively few special agents who are dedicated to this absolutely critical mission. The arrest of 24 illegal aliens who were working or seeking to work on a U.S. military base took a significant effort to be carried out. It is, indeed, a labor intensive job to conduct investigations of aliens who embed themselves in our country. It is particularly noteworthy that these illegal aliens did not take just any job, they found work on a military base. Now that takes real chutzpah!

The question of the day is, how many more illegal aliens have managed to embed themselves in similar positions: on military bases, nuclear power plants, airports, chemical factories, oil refineries or other critical infrastructure sites? How many were simply looking for a job and how many have positioned themselves in such critical locations so they could carry out an attack?

When you realize how labor-intensive these sorts of investigations are, you begin to understand one of the major issues confronting the guest worker amnesty program that has been championed by President Bush nearly since his first day in office. If our nation is foolish enough to implement such a program, how will the beleaguered bureaucrats at USCIS and ICE be able to effectively screen the many millions of illegal aliens who undoubtedly would show up at immigration offices around the United States?

Every immigration office will resemble the Verrazano Bridge on the morning of the annual New York City marathon, with tens of thousands of people lacing up for their papers. Overworked and overwhelmed agents will check the names these aliens claim relate to them and run their fingerprints through various computer databases. It is highly unlikely that a fictitious identity would show a criminal history. It is equally unlikely that a fictitious identity would show up on any terrorist watch list or so-called "No Fly" list. USCIS would undoubtedly do what they did when they naturalized 30,000 aliens last year in spite of the fact that they had lost their immigration files: They approved the applications in the blind.

This guest worker program would make an excellent haystack in which terrorists would be able to hide and obtain new and clean identities, aided and abetted by the bureaucrats at DHS. The identity documents USCIS would issue would make ideal "breeder" documents, enabling those who received them to build an entire new identity including Social Security Cards, driver's licenses, credit cards, library cards and EZ-passes for this nation's toll roads. Al Qaeda would undoubtedly throw a party to celebrate our stupidity.

As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, we used to play many ball games in the street after school on any fairly warm day. When there was a dispute about a particular play many kids would yell. "Do over!" and the play in question, after much yelling and complaining, might be done over. Where the guest worker amnesty program is concerned, most assuredly, there will be no "Do Overs!" When the bureaucrats realize that they have opened Pandora's Box and that they have many more applications than they predicted, probably because many more illegal aliens ran our nation's border after the program was implemented and then claimed to have been here for the requisite period of time, they will have no way to undo the damage of this dangerous and insane program.

There will be no way of call for a "Do Over!" even if it turns out the fraud is so rampant as to make a mockery of the entire program. Their will also be no way to call "Do Over!" if our nation is attacked and the number of casualties eclipse the number of victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001, many times over.

If you read the press releases that ICE and DHS publish in an effort to convince the citizens of our nation that all is well, you quickly realize that the successes are relatively miniscule and the risks are absolutely huge! We are a nation at war and the security of our nation is on the line. It is time to make the security of our borders and the integrity of the immigration system the priority.

Lead, follow or get out of the way!