The Value Of United States Citizenship
A strong nexus exists between immigration fraud and terrorism
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
By Michael Cutler
NewsWithViews.com
(Getty Images) Westerners have largely played supporting roles in terror activities, but David Headley's ability to travel freely on a U.S. passport, above, to Pakistan, India and Denmark gave him high value and allowed him to play a key role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, a U.S. law enforcement official said.
|
A
news report "Terror
Suspect Failed a Test" appeared in today's edition of the Wall
Street Journal.
To millions
of lawful immigrants, the acquisition of United States citizenship through
the naturalization process represents the realization of a lifelong dream.
That was certainly the case for my mother and for my dad's parents. However,
not all aliens who seek United States citizenship are eager to share the
"American Dream."
A relatively
small but nonetheless, important number of those who seek citizenship
do so with more nefarious goals in mind. These are the terrorists and
criminals who seek to gain easy access to our nation and to the borders
of other nations that United States citizenship and the U.S. passport
that goes with it that they seek.
In point
of fact, the article reports on how a United States citizen, David Headley,
aka Daood Gilani, the name he was given at birth, by his Pakistani father
and United States citizen mother used his passport in furtherance of his
goals as a terrorist.
By virtue
of being a United States citizen who took on a nondescript name, David
Headley, he was able to easily travel around the world without calling
attention to himself. As I have noted on ever so many occasions, this
is what "hiding in plain sight" is all about.
While
Headley was a United States citizen by virtue of having been born in the
United States, the point is that his U.S. citizenship and U.S. passport
provided him with the ability to move freely about the world as he scoped
out possible terrorist targets.
What
is also disturbing to me is the fact that he had a working relationship
with a travel agency that dabbled in providing immigration services. As
an INS special agent I encountered travel agencies and "visa services"
both in the United States and abroad, that became involved in facilitating
immigration fraud schemes to aliens from virtually every country on the
planet for all sorts of reasons. (Let me make this clear, most travel
agencies are law abiding businesses that provide very useful services
to their clients. The problems occur when crooks run such agencies to
provide assist to those who seek to violate our laws.)
A news
report that appears in a newspaper call the Hindu, that details how a
citizen of India made apparent use of the services offered by Mr. Headley's
immigration firm, the Immigrant Law Centre which operated from the AC
Market in Tardeo, Mumbaito, to secure false documents to enable him to
immigrate to Canada and the United States.
This
makes it clear that a strong nexus exists between immigration fraud and
terrorism. This is a point I have been hammering away at since the attacks
of September 11, 2001.
Yet,
our government is not doing nearly enough to combat immigration fraud.
Indeed, the massive "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" program
being touted by the Secretary of Homeland Security as well as the President
and member of both houses of Congress would create millions of opportunities
for criminal and terrorist aliens to gain lawful status and, ultimately,
United States citizenship through fraud.
This
is why I will again state what I have noted on many occasions at many
venues, including when I have testified before Congressional hearings,
"If our nation is dumb enough to enact "Comprehensive Immigration
Reform" those who make it possible should be given the "MVP
Award" by Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations!
How
many more examples can we have of the ways in which terrorists ply their
trades around the world and still have our "leaders" ignore
all of the warning signs?
My dad
used to tell me that in life there are no mistakes but only lessons if
we learn from what goes wrong learn from them. To him, and to me, repeating
those mistakes is utterly unforgivable!
It is
clear that USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services)
has been utterly unable to weed out most of the fraud that infests so
many of the millions of applications for various immigration benefits
that they adjudicate each and every year, even without the deluge of paper
that "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" would cascade upon the
desks of the beleaguered bureaucrats at that inept agency. The Comprehensive
Immigration Reform Act that was defeated in the United States Senate just
over two years ago would have required USCIS to process a minimum of 100,000
applications filed by illegal aliens who had absolutely no reliable way
of establishing their true identity. Therefore there would have been no
way of the adjudicators knowing the true names of those millions of illegal
aliens. There would have been no way to know the true nationalities of
these aliens, their true background, their true criminal histories or
their possible affiliation with criminal or terrorist organizations! There
would not even be any way of truly knowing if the aliens who would have
filed their applications had arrived in the United States 5 years or 5
days prior to filing their applications!
In order
to deal with those millions of applications, the adjudicators would have
no choice but to "fly blind" and simply rubber stamp those applications
with approval stamps each and every day until God know how many applications
are processed!
As I
have previously noted on so many previous occasions, this concern is not
an empty one. Several years ago, USCIS claimed to have lost the relating
immigration files of 111,000 aliens who applied for a wide variety of
immigration applications including some 30,000 who applied to become naturalized
citizens. The adjudicators at USCIS actually adjudicated those applications
without the relating files!
Those
adjudicators were indeed, "flying blind" and over some very
dangerous terrain!
Here
is the link
to an article that appeared in the Washington Post approximately 3
years ago that reported on this outrageous demonstration of nonfeasance,
misfeasance and malfeasance committed by the agency that quite literally
is charged with the responsibility of giving out the keys to America's
front door that United States citizenship represents:
A country
without secure borders can no more stand than can a house without walls!
Any
politician who refuses to work to secure our borders and create an immigration
system that has integrity is either corrupt or too dumb to keep his (her)
job. Any politician, irrespective of party affiliation who favors Comprehensive
Immigration Reform and the outrageous betrayal that this would represent
given the national security implications that this program would have,
should be shown the door at the next election!
If you
find yourself to be in agreement with this commentary, I ask that you
forward it to as many of your friends and family members as possible and
encourage them to do the same.
Next
year each and every member of the House of Representatives is up for reelection.
Next year more than one third of the members of the United States Senate
will have to face their constituents. They need to be reminded that they
work for us, We the People!
However,
the practice of good citizenship does not end in the voting booth, it
only begins there.
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!
Any
American who has lost his job certainly has enough time on his (her) hands
to get involved!
Any
American who fears the loss of his job must make effective use of his
spare time to make certain he keeps his job! (Remember, the job save may
be your own!)
If this situation concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you
to call your Senators and Congressional "Representative. This is
not only your right- it is your obligation!
You
need to politely but pointedly, demand to know what they are doing to
protect our nation. You need to ask them how they are protecting you and
your families. You can also forward this commentary to them.
All
I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as
dumb as they hope we are!
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
Michael W. Cutler graduated from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in
1971 with a B.A. in Communications Arts and Sciences. Mr. Cutler began
working for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in October
1971 when he entered on duty as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John
F. Kennedy International Airport. In August 1975 he became a Criminal
Investigator (Special Agent) for the INS at NYC.
He rotated through virtually every squad in the Investigations Branch. From 1988 until 1991
he was assigned as the INS representative to the Unified Intelligence
Division (UID) of the DEA in New York. In 1991 he was promoted to the
position of Senior Special Agent and was assigned to the Organized Crime,
Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) which required that he work with
members of other law enforcement agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF,
U.S. Customs and local and state police as well as law enforcement organizations
of other countries including Israel, Canada, Great Britain and Japan,
to conduct investigations of aliens involved in major drug trafficking
organizations. He retired from the INS in February 2002, after a career
that spanned some 30 years.
Finally, Michael Cutler has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including
Lou Dobbs, Fox News, MSNBC and many other television and radio news-oriented
programs to discuss the enforcement of immigration laws.
E-Mail: mcutler007@aol.com
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