Mike Cutler:

The President is attempting to do something that is physically impossible- he appears to want to be, or at least appear to be, in two places at one time. On the one hand, he claims he want to see the immigration laws enforced and talks about the need to remove illegal aliens who are caught near the border. He noted that the administration wants to implement "expedited removal" for aliens caught anywhere on the border. He also talked about the effort to repatriate illegal Mexican aliens to the interior of Mexico to make it more difficult for those aliens to attempt to try to run the border. Yet, his guest worker program would reward those illegal aliens who succeed in getting to the interior of the United States. These illegal aliens would be eligible to participate in his guest worker program.

While he did address the issue of the enforcement of the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States, what he did not say, however, is how many new special agents he would want to hire to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. During his speech yesterday, a portion of which I have attached below, he talked about doubling the resources dedicated to immigration law enforcement from within the interior of the United States. It is also worth noting that in March of this year, I testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims about the issue of resources dedicated to the interior enforcement of the immigration laws. Congress had authorized the hiring of 800 new special agents, in conjunction with recommendations made by the 911 Commission. Inexplicably, the administration indicated that they only wanted to hire 143 new special agents who would be dedicated to the enforcement of the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. I was very disappointed that Congress was only willing to hire 800 new special agents. You can imagine my reaction to the President's ultimate decision to hire only 143 new special agents! Many of the new agents that the President was apparently happy to talk about have been hired over his objections!

What he did not talk about is how would he deal with the many illegal aliens who don't run our borders and evade the inspections process but rather, enter through ports of entry and then after being admitted into our country, violate our immigration laws by overstaying the period for which they were admitted, accept illegal employment, commit felonies, or otherwise become deportable. What would prevent an alien who entered the United States via the established lawful procedure of being inspected at a port of entry and then seeking employment under the auspices of his guest worker program? Since it is estimated that some 40% or more of the illegal alien population did not run the border, would he include them in this program?

The President was right when he said that "We understand that border security and interior enforcement go hand in hand." His lack of enthusiasm to actually create an effective interior enforcement program leaves me underwhelmed. To speak about the "successes" including the arrest of hundreds of illegal aliens when we know that there are millions of illegal aliens who are working within our country is absurd. He touted the arrest of nearly 1,400 gang members when the truth is that it has been estimated that there are more gang members in the United States than there are sworn police officers throughout the entire country! It is, of course true, that not all gang members are aliens, however, it is estimated that there are at least tens of thousands of illegal aliens who are currently present within our nation's borders. Last year, only three employers of illegal aliens were notified of the intention of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs

Enforcement to levy fines against them. These numbers do not constitute a deterrent against illegal immigration and does not act as a deterrent against those who would hire illegal aliens.

And then the President spoke about his real objective, the implementation of a "Guest Worker Program." He repeatedly has made the point that this program is not "Amnesty." Many other politicians such as Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy also are eager to state that their guest worker programs do not constitute amnesty. They do this because everyone knows that the Immigration Amnesty of 1986 was an absolute abysmal failure. It was supposed to bring an estimated 1.5 million illegal aliens out of the 'shadows.' Ultimately, some 3.5 million availed themselves of the opportunity to be given lawful status in the United States. Perhaps there was some undercounting of the true numbers of illegal aliens involved in this program, but it must also be understood that fraud was a major problem because of the huge number of aliens and the small number of special agents and other personnel who were involved in administering this program. It is all well and good when politicians decide on a mission for the civil servants of our nation. They must understand the limitations of an agency that has meager resources that are simply inadequate to do the job effectively. In any event, the 1986 amnesty which was implemented as a one-time program to finally restore integrity to the immigration program lead to the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our nation. Today it is estimated that there are anywhere from 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens.

The President is now touting his plan to give them the opportunity to participate in a Guest Worker Program that would enable them to remain for an initial period of 3 years, renewable for another 3 years, whereupon they would have to go home. Simply stated this program is wrong for two basic reasons. First of all philosophically, it rewards illegal aliens who have violated our nation's sovereign borders and our nation's immigration laws by permitting them to work in the United States. If you came home tonight and found that someone had broken into your house would you offer the intruder a job or call the cops? This will only encourage more illegal immigration as did the 1986 Amnesty. It will also penalize those millions of aliens who are waiting their lawful turn to enter our nation and participate in the "American Dream." Second, this program cannot be effectively managed. Just as we are currently unable to remove the millions of illegal aliens who are currently living in our country, I would love to know by what mechanism the President plans to make certain that these aliens will leave the United States when their authorized period has expired. I don't believe he knows how to do this either, but then, it is probably not a coincidence that he wants their initial period of authorized employment to run for three years. Three years from the date that any such legislation could possibly be enacted would be after he has left the Presidency! Talk about leaving a mess for someone else to clean up! The next President of the United States would be left holding the proverbial bag. The next President will not only have to deal with all of the aliens who participated in the guest worker program, he/she will have to deal with the millions of illegal aliens who will have succeeded in entering our country during the next three or four years as well.

It is also worth noting that the President addressed the issue of document fraud but did not talk about immigration benefit fraud. What would prevent these "guest workers" from getting married and then having applications filed for them by their United States citizen spouses? How many of such marriages would be arranged marriages set up to simply enable these aliens to remain permanently in the United States? With only a couple of thousand special agents and millions of aliens to deal with, these beleaguered special agents will be totally unable to cope with the avalanche of applications and other issues that would be their responsibility. Add to this the merger of the former United States Customs Service with the former INS wherein the great majority of the managers who are now running ICE have come from Customs and have little experience or, frankly, inclination to deal with immigration issues. This is not simply my opinion, it is the opinion of the OIG which recently issued a report on the disastrous situation that was created with the merger of these two very dissimilar agencies into ICE.

And now, here is the final issue to be considered. We are waging a "War on Terror." The President and his administration remind us of this constantly. He stated that the guest workers would receive secure identity documents to help employers know who they are hiring. This is simply wrong! With the crush of millions of illegal aliens showing up at immigration offices around the country, it is to be expected that many of them will be undocumented aliens. Think, for a moment, what that term means. These individuals have no identity documents. Absolutely nothing would stop terrorists from showing up at an immigration office and apply for a guest worker permit under a false name. If they managed to stay 'under the radar' so that their fingerprints are not on file, it would be absolutely impossible for the immigration employees to really know the identity of the alien standing in front of him/her. Even if the person had been arrested for a minor charge the name relating to the fingerprints might still not be that person's true name. Whenever you look at an arrest record, or "rap sheet" it is not uncommon for the bad guys to have multiple identities. In fact, according to the 911 Commission, the 19 terrorists who attacked our nation used a total of 364 different identities. The only thing worse than no security is false security. These documents may be tamper-resistant, but if the process by which they are issued is so terribly flawed, they will not enhance our security, only provide the false illusion that they provide secure and accurate identification of the bearer of these documents.