Washington Lobbyist Leading Key Immigration Agency - Misplaced Focus Will Endanger Security

By Michael Cutler

It is now official: USCIS, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the branch of the Department of Homeland Security that is charged with adjudicating applications for a wide variety of immigration benefits has a new chief, Emilio T. Gonzalez. Like his predecessor he lacks immigration experience and has a background that includes his having been a managing director at a consulting firm, Tew Cardenas, LLP, which by its own description is a lobbying organization, as noted on its website states, in part:

"Our bilingual, bicultural law firm delivers unparalleled services to clients combined with the invaluable cultural knowledge needed to make effective and innovative connections between governments and businesses. Our international expertise helps clients, including foreign governments, navigate the political and policy corridors of Washington, DC. The Tew Cardenas Global and Government Affairs Practice also provides direct lobbying through personal contacts with key decision makers in the White House, Congress, and federal and regulatory agencies to either create opportunities or solve problems."

I am concerned that a former lobbyist with no immigration experience is now being put in charge of a highly significant component of the Department of Homeland Security. To the uninitiated, it may seem that a service-related agency that deals with immigration is not related to national security, but most assuredly, it is. The terrorists who killed 3,000 innocent victims on September 11, 2001 were all aliens who needed to embed themselves in the United States prior to that devastating attack. In order to do this they gamed the immigration system to be able to hide in plain sight.

When terrorists manage to obtain resident alien status or especially United States citizenship, we make it easy for them to maintain a low profile in our country and travel freely across our nation's borders and the borders of many other countries. The problem becomes even more severe when terrorists or other criminals are able to obtain officially issued identity documents in false identities. In fact, the 19 terrorists of the attacks of 9/11 used a total of 364 false identities in order to hide in plain sight. It is the USCIS that bears the responsibility of adjudicating these applications for resident alien status, United States citizenship and other such benefits. That is why I believe that this bureaucracy has such a great impact on our nation's security.

Having made this point as clearly as I can, I am therefore apprehensive that virtually all stories about USCIS seem to focus on clearing up the backlog of the applications while I cannot recall a single story that even raised the issue of establishing a secure system that possesses integrity. Even our government seems far more fixated on the massive backlog rather than the need to restore integrity to the missions of USCIS especally where the issuance of identity documents and the conferring lawful status upon aliens is concerned. As we have seen, these responsibilities are a matter of national security. While I do not like to see people being made to wait for a long time to have applications adjudicated, I am even more concerned that, as USCIS focuses on the problem of clearing the massive backlogs of applications, that many aliens will receive benefits to which they are not entitled, including potentially terrorists and criminnals, thereby endangering our security. It is also worth noting that during the ill-conceived program known as "Citizenship USA" the program that was implemented by the Clinton Administration to clear up the huge backlog of naturalization applications that thousands of aliens who had serious criminal histories were naturalized. Many of them should have been deported from the United States to remove them and the threat that they posed to our safety from our midst, were instead granted United States citizenship and hence, permitted to remain here forever. The Office of the Inspector General issued a report about this fisasco and CNN ran a story about that report.

I would pose a simple question to Mr. Gonzalez, "Now that you are in charge, how will you restore integrity to the processes by which your adjudicators render decisions where the granting of immigration benefits is concerned? How will you make certain that aliens don't receive immigration benefits such as resident alien status by fraud or deception?" I don't expect an answer to that question because virtually no one else seems willing to ask it and the administration appears to be unwilling to deal with it.

TrackBack