Thread: Why Does Reid Want to Ram Immigration Amnesty Through Senate

Published: June 07,2009Send to a friend
Op-Ed Contributor
Why Does Reid Want to Ram Immigration Amnesty Through Senate?
By Michael Cutler



Senator Harry Reid's stance on "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" is reported in two recent news articles. The first of the two articles appeared on June 6th in the Washington Post.

What an irony!

This June 6th was the 65th anniversary of the massive offensive coordinated by then Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight D. Eisenhower under what he called "Operation Overlord." It is most commonly remembered as "D-Day!"

How many American soldiers and their allied comrades were killed or grievously wounded defending our country and our allies?

It is important to never forget those sacrifices and never forget what they were fighting for!

It is absolutely clear that Reid is determined to ram Comprehensive Immigration Reform through the legislative process notwithstanding the great resistance that this proposal met two years ago from the citizens of our country. As I will also make clear in this commentary, Comprehensive Immigration Reform would create incredible risks for our nation.

Let us consider Harry Reid's own words: Passing immigration reform is "going to happen this session," Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), referring to the 111th Congress. "But I want it this year if at all possible."

At a press conference with Hispanic leaders touting the Supreme Court nomination of the Sonia Sotomayor, Reid said that he wants Congress to pass a bill with tougher border security measures, improved employer sanctions, a guest-worker program and a path for citizenship to the country's illegal immigrants - a policy critics have called "amnesty."

"We have to have a pathway for legalization," Reid said. "I believe what we need to do is have penalties, fines, I think they have to learn English, stay out of trouble, pay their taxes, and then they don't go to the end of the line, they go to the back of the line. But at least it keeps them so that they are not subject to arrest and that they are more productive than they are."

If you have read my commentaries, listened to my statements in the media or know of my testimony before Congressional hearings on the issue of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform, you know that I am adamantly and unequivocally opposed to Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

There are many reasons I oppose Comprehensive Immigration Reform but first and foremost, my concerns can be summed up by two words:

"NATIONAL SECURITY!"

Reid stated that improved employer sanctions and tougher border security measures are what are needed to justify a path to United States citizenship for illegal aliens. This statement ignores the two most important issues.

First of all, at present, USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) is utterly unable to cope with its workload today. Without the addition of potentially 20 million or more applications to be presumably filed by aliens who cannot prove their identities and hence their date of entry into the United States. Furthermore, because they are "undocumented" there will be no way for the adjudicators at USCIS to know anything about the backgrounds or affiliations or intentions of millions of illegal aliens whose presence in the United States represents a violation of law.

Fraud permeates the entire bureaucracy at USCIS. There have been a succession of reports issued by the GAO that make it clear that most aliens are easily able to commit fraud successfully and acquire resident alien status and United States citizenship even though they lied on their applications. Marriage fraud is as commonplace as snowflakes in a blizzard, perhaps, in part, because each and every day a veritable blizzard of applications are filed with USCIS by aliens seeking all sorts of immigration benefits including resident alien status and United States citizenship.

In fact, each year, more than 6 million applications are filed with USCIS.

In all too many cases, immigration fraud enabled terrorists and spies to acquire security clearances and jobs in sensitive positions. A young Lebanese woman by the name of Nada Nadim Prouty entered our country on a student visa in 1988. She overstayed her authorized period in the United States, failing to depart from the Unite States when required and then took a job as a waitress in a restaurant in further violation of our immigration laws. She then acquired resident alien status by entering into a marriage fruad and subsequently naturalized. She went on to parlay her certificate of naturalization and her language skills in Middle-Eastern languages into a job at the FBI as a special agent and then, at the CIA.

When it was discovered that she was accessing sensitive databases on Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, her superiors became alarmed. She had no "Need to Know" the information contained in those databases. As the investigation ran its course, it was discovered that the man who had arranged for her marriage is now a fugitive and wanted for allegedly funneling millions of dollars from his chain of restaurants in Michigan to Hezbollah.

Of 94 terrorists who were identified as operating in the United States in the decade leading up to the attacks of 9/11, some 59 of those individuals were found to have used immigration fraud to either enter the United States and/or embed themselves in the United States.

The situation of rampant fraud also emboldens more aliens to file more applications that contain fraud. As more applications are filed, the bureaucracy is made to run ever faster, further eroding any effort at quality control.

Yet, even after the publication of so many of those GAO reports that are supposed to be used by members of Congress to alert them to problems within the agencies over which they are supposed to exercise oversight, Harry Reid and the other "usual suspects" on Capitol Hill absolutely never, ever discuss the many problems at USCIS and a lack of integrity of the system that they would have process millions of applications that would undoubtedly filed by millions of illegal aliens who will do just about anything to remain here.

Also you must realize that at a time when so many opinion poles have made it clear that virtually all Americans, irrespective of political orientation believe that our immigration levels are far too high, a massive program to place so many millions of illegal aliens on a "pathway to United States citizenship" would also furnish those millions of aliens with the absolute right to petition the government, once they become citizens, to enable their parents and their siblings and their siblings nuclear families with green cards.

Stop and let that sink in.

If an alien naturalizes (acquires United States citizenship) he (she) is immediately entitled to file an application to provide resident alien status for his mother, his father and each of his brothers and sisters and their spouses and children!

To provide a hypothetical case - if such an alien had 6 brothers and sisters, not unusual in many countries around the world, especially "Third World" countries, and if each of these siblings were married and had an average of 5 minor, unmarried children, on the day of naturalization, this alien would be able to file applications for a total of 60 family members. If his mother and father were alive, then he would have the absolute right to petition the United States government to permit 62 relatives to enter the United States as lawful immigrants.

Now multiply that possibility by the millions of illegal aliens who may well want to have their parents and their siblings all join them in the United States if Harry Reid has his way and provides them all with a "pathway to United States citizenship!"

The open borders crowd has a name for this multiplication chart - "Family Reunification."

Those of us who want an immigration system that has even a modicum of integrity calls this "Chain Migration."

In 1986 Senator Ted Kennedy and his cohorts who jammed the first amnesty through the process, told their colleagues in the Congress, and the citizens of our country, that the program was essential to finally clear up the immigration mess and create a system with integrity. They stated that at most some 1.1 million aliens would avail themselves of the opportunity to come out of the "shadows."

By the time the bureaucratic dust settled, somewhere between 3.5 and 4 million aliens applied for amnesty.

There are two possible reasons for these much greater than predicted numbers.

First of all, there may have been an underestimate of the true number. Second, and I can assure this was a significant part of the problem, aliens falsely claimed to have entered the United States prior to the cutoff date that the program established. The amnesty of 1986 created a "cottage industry" of fraud document vendors who prepared and sold bogus supporting documents to enable the additional 3 million illegal aliens to claim that they had resided in the United States for the requisite period of time.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that if our nation enacts an amnesty program now, that the same sort of fraud and chicanery will run rampantly through the system.

Harry Reid links improved employer sanctions to his Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Here is the fallacy of this. With a massive Comprehensive Immigration Reform program, virtually every illegal alien will no longer be illegal in the eyes of the law. Millions of illegal aliens will suddenly be legal and they will have the necessary documents to get any job in any industry that they want! This at a time when the unemployment rate has soared to 9.4%.

Reid's claim about improved employer sanctions is the same as saying that he will put stronger locks on our doors and then make damned certain that everyone who wants one, will get a key to the front door!

He also stated that the aliens would have to pay a fine.

This is the way that proponents of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" deflects the criticism that this program would constitute an "amnesty."

Here is my response to that.

The issue of whether or not Comprehensive Immigration Reform constitutes amnesty is not the real question. The real issue is whether or not this program would deter future illegal immigration.

As you may know, I have said that no one would break into an amusement park if they could not get to go on the rides. I have also said that no one would stay in the amusement park at the end of the day when they shut down the rides and turn off the lights. In order to understand the impact of the fines, you need to consider the amusement park analogy one more time.

What do you find when you go to the amusement park? You find long lines of people standing for hours in the hot sun, willing to fork over lots of money simply for the purpose of getting to go on the rides! If the amusement park patrons are not deterred by the long lines and the expensive fees, why would illegal aliens be deterred by having to pay a fine?

Many of them have already placed their lives in grave danger by trekking through the desert with smugglers who may have raped the women and forced them to carry drugs or other contraband on their bodies at great expense for the "services" provided by the smugglers.

I am not certain what Harry Reid had in mind when he said that the aliens would have to "stay out of trouble."

Many of these illegal aliens have already committed identity theft and may have violated other laws along the way. Reid and company are, from what I have been told, pushing for a confidentiality provision that would shield the illegal aliens from the scrutiny of law enforcement authorities the way that the 1986 Amnesty did. You may not know this, but under the 1986 amnesty, the applications that were filed by the millions of illegal aliens could not be shared with any other law enforcement agency even if the alien was a suspect in a murder or other felony. We were not supposed to share those amnesty applications and relating material with the FBI, DEA or local cops. Those illegal aliens were shielded by our own government in a way that if we attempted to do this where a lawful immigrant or United States citizen was concerned, we would have been charged with a felony - obstruction of governmental administration! If we divulged the amnesty files the agents of the INS could be subject to the loss of their jobs and a criminal prosecution!

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, that I had re-named the "Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act" would have required the United States government (YOU the taxpayer) to pay the legal fees for those illegal aliens!

Who pays for your accountant or tax preparer when you file your income tax returns?

Additionally, that piece of legislative detritus would have required the beleaguered adjudications officers at USCIS to process a minimum of 100,000 applications for amnesty each and every day - in addition to their other work that they cannot even keep up with now!

The idea of the "Witness Protection Program" is to have the government provide an informant with a new identity to enable him to hide from those who would do him harm for assisting law enforcement and prosecutors. This makes perfect sense to protect those who assist law enforcement.

However, Comprehensive Immigration Reform is, in essence a "Witness Protection Program" for illegal aliens whose intentions and affiliations are unknown and unknowable. What exactly would Harry Reid and company reward these illegal aliens for?

As we saw with the 1986 amnesty - when the government rewards those who violate the law with a green card and a pathway to citizenship, the message is heard loudly and clearly: Violate our borders, violate our laws and you will not only be allowed to get away with it - you will be rewarded for doing this!

Finally, let us consider this statement from Mr. Reid: But at least it keeps them so that they are not subject to arrest and that they are more productive than they are."

The entire benefit of hiring illegal aliens (for the unscrupulous employer) is to be able to exploit them. Exploitation is possible only when the person being exploited can be threatened for not cooperating.

Once an illegal aliens is "legalized" that alien can no longer be exploited. As an INS agent during the amnesty of 1986 I saw ever so many instances where illegal aliens were legalized. They then approached their employers and told them that they wanted to continue to work for that employer but wanted prevailing wages and appropriate compensation for working overtime and on weekends.

They demanded that safety standards be met and that money be paid into the Social Security.

Most of them were fired and their employers simply hired the next wave of illegal aliens.

It is impossible that even members of Congress could be this foolish as to not understand the situation as I have explained it above. Clearly those politicians who favor Comprehensive Immigration Reform are eager to place their selfish political goals ahead of what is best for Americans and America! Ours is supposed to be a representative form of government.

What I want Mr. Reid and his cohorts to tell me is who, exactly, do they represent? In less than two years, more than one third of the seats in the United States Senate will be up for election. In less than two years, every single seat in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs!

The politicians have become accustomed to expecting that the power of the incumbency is on their side. We only have ourselves to blame for this. We the People need to take every opportunity to confront those who were elected to represent us and make it clear that if they fail to represent us, we will find someone who will!

The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups.

There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do - we must stop sitting on the sidelines! The collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to the politicians. I implore you to get involved! We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.

This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue - simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue! You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem! Democracy is not a spectator sport! Lead, follow or get out of the way!

http://newsblaze.com

The politicians have become accustomed to expecting that the power of the incumbency is on their side. We only have ourselves to blame for this. We the People need to take every opportunity to confront those who were elected to represent us and make it clear that if they fail to represent us, we will find someone who will!

THIS is what I tell my Senators and Representatives on a daily basis! THEY were elected to represent ME, not hispander to the illegal population which is growing daily here in NC.

I was a notary public from 1986 to 1993 and at the beginning of that time I put up an add at the restaurant in my apartment building and I was immediately approached by a Nigerian who offered to make me rich if I set up a documentation mill. They wanted me to help them get papers that would allow illegal aliens to stay and other financial crime. I refused and can remember what that period was like.

We The People do have control but most,for varied reasons,do not use it.Some are naive and too trusting of our Congress and others simply don't care since they do not think it effects them,which will someday come back to bite them.

With the advent of the internet it gives us hope since the Politicians War Chests provided by special interests no longer gives them as much advantage or control.

We can simply go online to find who is running in an election and what their politics are then make our voices heard by voting..

Why Does Reid Want to Ram Immigration Amnesty Through Senate?

Because, with McCain, he has all of the votes he needs to invoke cloture. He may not have them after the next election cycle.

Originally Posted by kniggit

Why Does Reid Want to Ram Immigration Amnesty Through Senate?

Because, with McCain, he has all of the votes he needs to invoke cloture. He may not have them after the next election cycle.

I don't think McCain will be enough since a couple of Dems oppose mass amnesty. Of course McCain can probably talk Graham and a couple other traitors to vote for it.

Of course then it will go to the House, I don't think any Republicans there will vote for it, same for the Blue Dog Dems. So unless they have the Blue Dog Dems in this meeting it's all for show.

one of the things Reid is looking at is all the casinos in nevada that knowingly employees illegal aliens instead of americans

Reno
Phone: 775-686-5750

Washington DC
Phone: 202-224-3542
Toll Free for Nevadans:
1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343)

Carson City
Phone: 775-882-REID (7343)

Las Vegas
Phone: 702-388-5020

http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm

I said in another thread (not sure which) that I believe the 'RUSH' is because without an amnesty within a year or two self deportation will become so frequent that advocates of 'Attrition' will be proven CORRECT!

Bowman wrote:

Of course then it will go to the House, I don't think any Republicans there will vote for it, same for the Blue Dog Dems.

Unfortunately some of those so-called "Blue Dog Dems" do support amnesty.