Why Illegal Aliens are
a Danger to America
Part 1 of 2
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
By Michael Cutler
I
have included an link to a "news
article" that was published by the Catholic New Agency. 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!
For part two click below.
Click
here for part -----> 2
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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