: "A Day in the Life of USCIS"- (Is this any way to protect our nation?)

Letter from Mike Cutler, former INS agent who testifies before congress and appears on various news programs:

I just came across the item I have attached below when I reviewed the latest edition of USCIS Today. The date of this edition was April 6, 2006. Clearly the folks who work for USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) the division of the Department of Homeland Security that adjudicates applications for a wide array of immigration benefits have their work cut out for them.

Last month the GAO issued a report of their findings concerning the critical issue of immigration benefit fraud. While the use of the term "critical" has been used often to describe a variety of issues of varying significance, it is entirely appropriate to consider immigration benefit fraud to indeed, be a critical issue. It is through benefit fraud that two-thirds of the terrorists who have been identified as operating within our nation up to the attacks of September 11, 2001 utilized immigration benefit fraud to either enter the United States or embed themselves in the United States so that they could hide in plain sight as they prepared to attempt to attack our nation and our people. The GAO report can be found at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06259.pdf

The document shows just how much work is being done at this point in time, prior to the implementation of any guest worker amnesty program. There is still a significant backlog and with the pressure on to process as many applications as possible, quality control is the casualty of this process at USCIS. There is no way that the beleaguered employees of USCIS can deal with a guest worker amnesty program that would result in millions upon millions of additional applications being dumped into the over worked system. We are constantly reminded that while the terrorists only need to get it right once, in order to attack our nation, our government must never be wrong if we are to prevent the next terrorist attack. Look at the list of accomplishments attributable to USCIS each and every day and ask yourself if you don't believe that these employees are overworked and if the frenetic paces at which they are now working has to compromise the integrity of the system.

Those who are attempting to ram a guest worker amnesty program through the Senate keep referring to the fact that our government will thoroughly screen each applicant to make certain that he/she is not a criminal or a terrorist. I would remind you that there are fewer than 3,000 special agents of ICE who could be called upon to conduct field investigations in conjunction with these millions of applications, if they were to drop all other assignments to simply focus on this one issue. I would ask that you read page 49 of the report entitled, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel, A Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.” That page contains a sentence that reads, “Thus abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity.” This page incidentally is contained in the chapter entitled, “Terrorist Travel and Embedding Tactics.”

You can find the entire report by clicking on the following link:

http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Monograph.pdf

Considering all of these factors, it strikes me as being utterly outrageous that politicians are willing to risk another terrorist attack to placate their campaign contributors or to pander to what they hope will become a voting block. I am not, however surprised that there are those politicians who are willing to do this. I have raised the issue of the Visa Waiver Program with some of my friends on Capitol Hill who work for both political parties. I explained to them that I am greatly concerned that each year the requirement of biometric passports has been pushed back yet another year while aliens from 26 countries plus Canada are permitted to enter the United States without first applying for and receiving visas. This has a negative impact on national security. Many of these people have told me that while they share my concerns, I need to understand that various businesses would not tolerate a visa requirement for aliens seeking admission to the United States! Think about it, while those of us who take commercial airline flights have come to expect to have to remove our shoes as we go through the pre-boarding security process at airports because Richard Reid, the so-called "Shoe Bomber" had concealed bombs in his shoes, the fact that as a British subject he could have entered the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program has been ignored and that program continues on.

So many of our politicians have apparently sold out our nation's security to appease their campaign contributors! Peter Gadiel, one of the founders of an organization to which I serve as an advisor, "911 Families for a Secure America," lost his young son as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. When he and I have discussed this outrageous situation, he simply said to me, "Mike, to those unscrupulous people, the death of those who were killed on 9/11 is viewed as the cost of doing business!" Sadly, indeed tragically, he is right. I fear that the "cost of doing business" will take many more lives if our nation allows the greed of the corporations to apparently call the shots for all too many of our nation's alleged leaders.

I commend those members of Congress and the Senate who have demonstrated they possess courage and the conviction of their beliefs in what is right. They are not willing to compromise our nation's security and the security of our citizens to satisfy the various interest groups who are pushing so hard to dismantle our nation's borders and compromise our safety. They are demanding that we secure our borders and not provide another amnesty program to the millions of illegal aliens who have violated our borders and our laws, posing a threat to our nation's safety.

Lead, follow or get out of the way!

-michael cutler-

http://uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/DayinLife_050629.pdf (click here to see orignial document)

Some of the DAILY work of USIS according to their own document:

* Conduct 135,000 national security background checks

* process 30,000 applications for immigrant benefits

* Issue 7,000 permanent resident cards (green cards -PER DAY)

* Welcome 2100 new citizens.

* Welcome 3500 new permanent residents.

Does this look like we are not allowing enough "Legal" entries?