RELEASE: Attorney General Gonzales' pro-amnesty speech
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

STATEMENT OF TONY DOLZ ON ALBERTO GONZALES AMNESTY SPEECH

SANTA CLARA, CA (July 21, 2006)—Tony Dolz, a Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (“MCDC”) volunteer in California and naturalized American citizen, released the following statement at a press conference on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s pro-amnesty speech today in Santa Clara, California:

“Speaking to you today as a Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteer here in California and as a LEGAL immigrant to America, I have personally met the obligations and standards of becoming a naturalized citizen of these great United States.

“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today has made a mockery of the millions like me who have stood patiently in line waiting our turn, and endured the burdensome legal process to become a citizen. He is saying to me today that I and all those like me who honored the rule of law are chumps, fools, losers—for faithfully showing our respect for America’s ordered liberty, and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

“While the Attorney General is today advocating preferential amnesty to excuse millions of serious felonies committed by non-citizens, he is also ignoring gross violations of the law by the very agency he would entrust to police that amnesty. Attorney General Gonzales remains utterly neglectful of addressing the rampant corruption exposed by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its devastating report released March 14th of this year. The GAO charges the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—the agency of the Department of Homeland Security that would oversee any guest worker amnesty program—with failed organizational infrastructure, and massive mismanagement and corruption. Yet the Attorney General wants to expand the duties and responsibilities of this organization to process millions more illegal intruders through the system.

“This GAO report was commissioned by the U.S. Congress and it was part of an investigation that started immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attack.

“Among the GAO's most alarming findings were that 33 percent of “religious worker” visas were issued fraudulently. The GAO documents evidence that radical Islamists, with ties to terrorist organizations, have used the religious worker visa category to gain admission to the United States.

“The Copley News Service reported on March 7th, 2006, that ‘Michael Maxwell stepped down last month as Director of the Office of Security at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and sought protection under the federal whistle-blower protection law. He claims that senior agency officials had been retaliating against him for telling Congress about what he described as serious national security vulnerabilities that persisted despite his warnings to those running the agency.’

“In addition, Maxwell claims that the agency lacks the resources to handle some 500 allegations of criminal misconduct against agency employees, including allegations of espionage and acceptance of bribes.

“The GAO report documents that immigration benefit fraud was pervasive and significant and the approach to controlling it was fragmented. In one of the largest labor—that means guest worker—certification fraud schemes ever uncovered by the GAO, federal investigators found evidence that a single prominent immigration attorney in the Washington, D.C., area submitted at least 1,436 and perhaps as many as 2,700 fraudulent employment applications between 1998 and 2002.

“The GAO found that the USCIS is completely unprepared to handle their present 7.5 million case work load with their 3,000 employees. Few if any of the present 500 allegations of criminal misconduct against agency employees will ever be prosecuted.

“And the GAO also conclusively found that the agency as it stands will be unable to handle the proposed guest worker amnesty proposals bandied about by the Bush administration, the Senate and now the nation’s premiere law enforcement officer.

“Attorney General Gonzales would be well advised to focus his attention on his own back yard—clean up the rampant fraud and corruption in the USCIS—and prosecute those who have broken our laws in the immigration system before crossing the country with a charm offensive to promote mass amnesty. Amnesty places millions ahead of the REAL citizenship queue—the one that waits years and years OUTSIDE of the promised land of America. It is patently inequitable and unjust to reward those illegally jumping that line with “sweetheart citizenship” papers that lets them cut ahead of the law-abiding in becoming Americans.

“These illegal migrants have not only broken laws including document fraud, identity theft and income tax evasion, but they have enjoyed the benefits of being in America years ahead of law-abiding applicants waiting for visas and earning citizenship as my wife and I did. The Attorney General has no moral ground to stand on to talk to me and millions more like me about American immigrant values, hard work, and fairness. Whatever happened to equity under the law?”

[See Full GAO Report here: http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/g ... s31006.pdf]

STATEMENT OF AL GARZA ON ALBERTO GONZALES AMNESTY SPEECH

SANTA CLARA, CA (July 21, 2006)—Al Garza, National Executive Director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (“MCDC”), released the following statement at a press conference on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s pro-amnesty speech today in Santa Clara, California:

“As this nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement officer, it is inexcusable that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would promote a blanket amnesty for people who have committed such felonies as document fraud, identity theft and income tax evasion, and all based solely upon some special status that their illegal entrance into this country and their national origin has somehow allegedly conferred. Their very first act on American soil was to break federal law by entering this country illegally.

“This selective amnesty being proposed by Attorney General Gonzales to excuse millions of NON-CITIZENS from their commission of serious felonies, while American CITIZENS continue to be held accountable under applicable statutes, is unconstitutional. Mr. Gonzales’ familiarity with 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause means he understands that point of law. There is no amnesty being offered to those American citizens who have committed document fraud, identity theft or income tax evasion—apparently only illegal border crossers. But Lady Justice is represented wearing a blindfold for a reason, and that reason is the equality of all persons before the law.

“Furthermore, any proposal for amnesty in the guise of ‘guest worker permit path to citizenship’ is a national security risk that is already causing a human tsunami across our unsecured borders for those seeking to ‘get in under the wire.’ In some of the areas the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has stood watch, the numbers of people crossing the borders illegally have increased tenfold since the talk of amnesty began last year. This wave of illegal migrants is exploiting the black market document underground in anticipation of new amnesty programs—and conceals in its sea of humanity all sorts of criminal and even terrorist elements. I am sure in these days of Middle Eastern violence, our wide-open borders are a fact that has not escaped the notice of Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

“The critical need is to secure this nation's borders with federal troops immediately. There is no conflict in doing so with the Posse Comitatus Act, as the war zone that is America’s southern frontier and the wide-open northern border do not represent a law enforcement matter—but a clear matter of national security.

“Mexico’s government has created a majestic disconnect between the wealthy and the peasant by deliberate design. Their failure to organize, demand and promote fair and balanced economic and social opportunities has led to Mexican citizens fleeing their homeland for America by the millions.

“With already overburdened public services, medical facilities, welfare programs, criminal incarcerations and public education systems, Attorney General Gonzales demands his fellow Americans ignore his direct assault on the rule of law and our national security, become complicit in Mexico’s degradation, and subsidize an unending flow of slave-wage labor into this country. Caesar Chavez had it right when he fought so hard to stop this exploitation.

“We are a compassionate nation and believe in fairness, and in that fairness American citizens are first demanding enforcement of our laws. Illegal migrants should not be given preferential rights and liberties after knowingly committing felonies. Special treatment, in such a case, is simply unacceptable, with laws that apply only to some and not to others because they share an ethnicity with our Attorney General.

“Neither should the poorest of the poor be enticed to come here illegally or legally to be exploited like pack-mules. We are a nation founded on human equality, not indentured servitude. The current ‘guest-worker’ proposals are an affront to American principles of social justice and the rights and duties of citizenship.

“We have had promises of border security tied to amnesty after amnesty after amnesty. The American people no longer trust our government to secure the borders. Congress and the Bush administration first need to prove that they have competently secured our borders against foreign incursion and are protecting America’s security and sovereignty. Only then we will deliberate about what to do with those millions already here illegally.”