Our Immigration Crisis: Treating All of the Symptoms
By Mike Cutler

A recent article from the Washington Times ( http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? )AID=/20070723/METRO/107230055/1001describes a success story of how our nation’s laws can be effectively enforced to punish those who would enter into various schemes in order to enable aliens to circumvent our nation's immigration laws. It is a prime example of how it is not the laws that are broken, but rather a lack of resources available for the enforcement of the critical immigration laws that will accomplish a number of goals. First of all, this prosecution has the immediate impact of identifying and punishing individuals who are involved in a fraud scheme that had, as its alleged goal, the securing of visas for aliens who would not otherwise be able to enter our country. Often when the average person thinks about illegal immigration, the obvious image of aliens running our nation's borders comes to mind. Indeed, aliens who run our nation's borders without being inspected by our CBP inspectors do enter our country on a regular and routine basis.

However, aliens also enter our country by committing visa fraud. Visa fraud simply means that an alien lies on an application for a visa. It should also be understood that there are two broad categories of visas that aliens apply for in order to enter the United States. Immigrant visas provide an alien who is the recipient of such a visa with a "Green Card." Such an alien is said to be “Lawfully Admitted for Permanent Residence.â€