Top DHS Official Slams Security Loopholes in Senate Bill

By Michael Cutler

Emilio T. Gonzalez is the head of USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). He came from a lobbying organization, Tew-Cardenas LLP, where he had held the position of senior managing director of the firm's governmental affairs practice group. When he was selected, I expressed my concern over his lack of immigration experience on this site and have watched his performance closely. Mr. Gonzalez made it clear at his Sennate confirmation hearings that he had grave misgivings about the ability of USCIS to effectively oversee and administer a guest worker amnesty program. Since assuming his current position as the director of USCIS, he has proven himself to be a "team player" and now claims he can get his agency to deal with a guest worker amnesty program (although he says that the agency would need 6-12 months to conduct background checks on aliens applying for amnesty, not 90 days as in the Senate immigration bill). I can tell you from my experience as a former adjudicator and special agent of the former INS that there is no way that USCIS could do this vital job in years. The GAO has made it clear that USCIS is unable to deal with the mission they have now, let alone a guest worker amnesty program.

However, even Mr. Gonzalez, the "Team Player," had to speak against the sheer madness being proposed by Sen. Ted Kennedy, who managed to include a confidentiality clause in the Senate bill which would prevent the sharing of information with law enforcement agencies contained in any amnesty application, even if the applicant is suspected of involvement in a terrorist organization or serious criminal activities. If the proposal advocated by Senator Kennedy and signed off on by a majority of Senators becomes the law of the land, it will constitute an open invitation to aliens to commit fraud with absolute impunity.

Add this provision to many of other provisions in the Senate bill which should never become law, such as the proposal to enable illegal aliens to receive Social Security benefits earned by working illegally. Incredibly, the bill passed by the Senate would even allow illegal aliens to apply for Social Security benefits that they claim they earned under false names and Social Security numbers when they committed identity theft. It would not be difficult for illegal aliens involved with criminal organizations and even terrorist organizations to make false claims to having worked under false and stolen identities in order to loot the already insolvent Social Security system to fund their criminal, indeed, pernicious activities.

On May 1, 2006, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and their supporters took to the streets of our cities and towns, across our nation, waving foreign flags, in some cases tearing down American flags. For people living in the shadows, they certainly appeared to have come out of the shadows. In an obviously defiant mood, these hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens chanted their new battle cry, "Si se puede!" which translates in English to, "Yes I can!" Sen. Kennedy and his colleagues in the Senate who voted for that outrageous bill have emboldened law violators into believing that they can violate our laws and not only get away with it, but rewarded richly for violating our laws.

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