WHY ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE A DANGER TO AMERICA
PART 1 of 2
by Michael Cutler
February 20, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

I have included an link to a "news article" that was published by the Catholic New Agency: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11806 I have placed the words news articles in italics because in my judgement, this is not a news article but rather a piece of propaganda masquerading as a news article.

I generally do not comment on items written by religious organizations especially when the religious organization does not relate to Judaism because I am Jewish and I don't normally feel comfortable getting into religious discussions outside my own religion. However, the CNA article does not deal with religion but rather with immigration and law enforcement. Consequently I believe that this story should be of great concern to all Americans irrespective of religious orientation.

When I recently testified before the Indiana State Senate on a bill (SB 335) that would enable the state of Indiana to revoke the business license of any business that had repeatedly hired illegal aliens and provide other measures to enable the state of Indiana to do the job the federal government won't do, where immigration is concerned, I heard a representative of the Church talk about the need to honor the dignity of the "undocumented immigrants."

For the Catholic Church to take a stand on an issue that has such extreme implications for national security is outrageous! What is also outrageous is the simple fact that while the Church decries the lack of dignity that the arrest of illegal aliens represents (in the Church's judgement), why is the Church conspicuously absent at those factories and other work-sites where illegal aliens are horribly treated. Why is the Church not showing up to protest the illegal conditions under which illegal aliens often live and work?

As I noted during my testimony in Indiana, I have arrested thousands of illegal aliens in my thirty year career at the former INS. I have, on all too many occasions, found many illegal aliens living in abject squalor. I have seen 20 adult men "living" in an apartment that was intended for a family of four. These men slept on mattresses laid next to each other and placed end to end. They shared a single bathroom. They shared the apartment that had no furnishings with vermin that scampered across the floor and with bugs that encrusted the walls to the extent that when you flipped on the light switch, those bugs would scatter in all directions creating what we used to refer to as a "moving wall."

The stench was so awful and pervasive that it would sometimes remain in my nostrils for a week!

I have raided factories that essentially recreated the horrific conditions found in the Triangle Shirt Factory. The Triangle Shirt Factory, for those who are not aware of it, existed 100 years ago. On March 25, 1911 a fire broke out on a Saturday afternoon in New York City while many young immigrant women toiled in the factory. The fire that broke out caused the death of 146 young women. There was no way for them to escape the flames.

I have seen conditions in factories in which fire exists were blocked by boxes of fabrics and other supplies, while the owner of the factory might have his air conditioners cranked up to maximum output on a hot summer day, the workers on the factory floor had no air conditioners. Often the windows were barely open and between the heat from the summer sun and the steam presses running full tilt, and the only breeze was provided by filth-laden fans on tall stanchions. These workers sat shoulder to shoulder and the dust from the fabric mixed with the hot humid air that was being re-circulated by those fans.

I have seen restaurant workers sleeping on hammocks that were strung up between the pipes in the basement of a diner providing the appearance of a slave ship.

There were days that I found it difficult to go to sleep after a day at work and seeing the wholesale abuse and mistreatment of human beings at the hands of unscrupulous employers.

I have also known aliens who participated in the Amnesty of 1986. In some cases these aliens had been my informants. When they received their official documents from the INS they approached their bosses and, with the new immigration cards in their hands, they asked for minimum wages. They asked to be paid time and a half for overtime and for working on weekends. They simply wanted to be treated the way the law required that they be treated. Most of these aliens were quickly fired by their unscrupulous employers. Those employers did not have to wait long for new employees who would not make such demands. They simply hired the next wave of illegal aliens.

The issue is that lawful immigrants cannot be exploited but illegal aliens can easily be exploited.

The officials of the Church have to understand how this all happens. Why then would the Church talk about the need to treat illegal aliens with dignity but yet they never show up to protest the undignified way that they are all too often mistreated by unscrupulous employers? At best the Church is being naive. At worst they don't care about this exploitation because their interest ends with the recruitment of more members for the Church.

The article below parallels that sentiment and even goes so far as to recommend that the economic stimulus package that has just been approved by the President should also apply to illegal aliens. I feel compelled to respond to this commentary.

Let us start out by making it clear, as I did when I spoke in Indiana, that we must first get our language straight. Illegal aliens are not "undocumented immigrants." The difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is the equivalent of the difference between a houseguest and a burglar. When an individual runs our nation's borders and enters surreptitiously he (she) may have a number of motivations to violate our nation's border in that fashion. He may simply be desperate to get a job and send money home. He may be on the run, evading law enforcement authorities because he is wanted for a heinous crime in his own country or in some other country. He may be entering our country to commit a crime. He may be entering our country to carry out a terrorist attack, either by having a direct role in conducting such an act of terror or he may be here to provide support for such an attack. It is also possible that this alien had been previously deported from our country for having committed a violent crime such as murder, rape, arson or assault. The problem is that in the case of the illegal alien who runs our borders, we have no idea as to identity and consequently, we do not know why he entered our country illegally.

This is why I compare illegal aliens with burglars. If, God forbid, you came home and found a total stranger who had broken into your home, sitting in your living room, sipping your iced tea and watching your television, I do not believe your first thought would be to offer him a job and the keys to your apartment unless you suffered from some sort of debilitating mental illness!

A nation's primary responsibility is to provide for the safety and security of its citizens just as a family's primary responsibility is to provide for the safety of the members of that family, especially the children of the family. Inviting an utter stranger who broke into your home to move into your guest room would make about as much sense as it would for our nation to provide lawful status to aliens whose identities and backgrounds are unknown and unknowable.

The "background checks" that the proponents of open borders and a Guest Worker Amnesty program claim will properly identify the millions of illegal aliens who would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to participate in the amnesty program really will not work. This is why: A background check simply means that the overworked adjudicators at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) would run the name that the illegal and undocumented alien provides on the applications for amnesty through a computer database. They would also run the fingerprints of those illegal and undocumented aliens through a database. If the name shows up as not matching any known criminal or terrorist and if the fingerprints similarly come back as not relating to anyone with a criminal history, then USCIS would issue a temporary identity document that the alien in question would be able to immediately use that document to obtain a Social Security Number, a driver's license from the state in which he lives and other such documents.

While this may sound reasonable, let me tell you what is wrong with this process. If a terrorist or criminal provides a false name on the application, there would be no way of knowing that the name is a false name. If the alien in question is a person who is wanted in another country but has no criminal history in our country, then his fingerprints may well come back as having no criminal history. In this situation a criminal or even a terrorist would most likely receive a temporary identity document and go on to receive the other identity documents, all in an assumed identity to enable him to embed himself in our country.

If you believe I am not being reasonable, I want to remind you that according to the 911 Commission, the 19 terrorists that attacked our nation on September 11, 2001 used a total of 364 false names and variations of identity among them! This is the reason that the Real ID Act was enacted- to try to address a serious vulnerability that was identified by the 911 Commission.

It is also essential to understand that USCIS is unable to cope with its current workload. To expect an agency that according to the GAO "lost" 111,000 immigration alien files relating to aliens seeking a variety of immigration benefits including 30,000 who applied to become naturalized citizens and others applied to acquire resident alien status and then adjudicated all of those applications without the relating files should keep every American awake at night!
http://www.newswithviews.com/Cutler/michael24.htm

For part two click below.
Click here for part -----> 2: http://www.newswithviews.com/Cutler/michael25.htm