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March 30, 2009
Exclusive: Government Failure to Arrest Illegal Aliens Fails American Citizens
Our nation's economy is in deep trouble. The administration cannot deny this fact because the President, himself, has imposed all sorts of never before attempted tactics in the name of "jump-starting" the economy.
Among the symptoms of the struggling economy is the loss of many jobs, leaving many American families in jeopardy of losing their homes and unable to support their families. It seems that just about every week the headlines announce new reports of more jobs being lost.
In the name of jump-starting our economy, our government his given hundreds of billions of dollars it does not have to failing banks and major corporations such as auto manufacturers. Again, the stated rationale is to preserve the important jobs of beleaguered Americans.
Now we see where the administration has settled upon a strategy of not seeking to arrest illegal aliens who have, in effect, stolen the jobs that Americans would do for reasonable wages. Somehow the term "disconnect" may be accurate but does not do justice to this monumental example of lunacy.
First of all, illegal aliens are illegally present in our country. You don't need a law degree to understand this basic principle!
Additionally, the goal of illegal aliens is to send their paychecks, or at least as much of their paychecks as they can, back home to their country of citizenship. Last year it was reported that more than $69 billion in remittances were wired from the United States to Latin America, predominantly by illegal aliens. This is money that was not earned by United States citizens and lawful immigrants. This is money that, because it was sent out of the United States, was not spent or invested inside the United States. This is money that may as well have been fed to a shredder for all the good it did for the economy of the United States.
This makes about as much sense as turning on the faucets to your bath tub while leaving the drain of the tub open.
To impose the financial burden that the budget approved by the government will create for our citizens, our children and most likely their children, to ignore the deleterious impact that illegal aliens have on our nation's economy calls into question (yet again) the sanity, the intelligence and the integrity of the "leaders" who will find any excuse possible to avoid enforcing our nation's immigration laws.
I spent many years as an INS special agent. For nearly a decade I was assigned to the squads that were charged with arresting illegal aliens who were working illegally in the United States.
I can tell you, with complete confidence that, notwithstanding Nancy Pelosi's outright lies and fabrications, agents do not arrest illegal aliens at their residences in the middle of the night. When arrest warrants are executed, they are never executed during the middle of the night unless a federal magistrate issues a so-called "night time" warrant. This is only done under extraordinary circumstances and usually involves literally life and death circumstances. Without such a warrant, agents will not attempt to make an arrest at a residence before 6:00 AM.
While it is a great idea to go after the unscrupulous employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, I would love to know how many such employers have been thus far fined or otherwise penalized for the practice of knowingly hiring illegal aliens. I would also love to know how many of the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) special agents who are supposed to conduct employer sanctions investigations have been reassigned to the Mexican border or are about to be assigned to augment the Border Patrol.
The point is that it is important to go after both the illegal aliens as well as their unscrupulous employers.
The constant harping on the issue of separating illegal aliens from their children may be done to evoke an emotional response. During my years with the INS, I did not enjoy arresting an illegal alien who was with his or her kids at the time that we made an arrest. I can also tell you that I have arrested drug traffickers and violent felons when they were with their children. Believe it or not, I did not find these arrests to be less difficult because of my concerns about how this would upset their children. However, the bottom line is that many people – including American citizens – are arrested in front of their kids. I wonder if Mrs. Pelosi would like to stop the arrest of American citizens who committed white collar crimes if those arrests might be made in front of the families of those criminals. I would also like to know if she would like to provide American citizens with a list of crimes that she would like to see go unpunished for fear that someone might be arrested in front of their children. How about it, Mrs. Pelosi? Should those who fail to pay income tax not be arrested?
Since it is obvious that Ms. Pelosi does not want to see illegal aliens arrested for violating our nation's borders, perhaps committing identity theft along the way and taking a job that should go to Americans, what other crimes would she have our nation's law enforcement officers ignore?
Here is another question that I would love to have Mrs. Pelosi and Ms. Napolitano answer: How badly do you feel for Americans who may wind up homeless because the lost their jobs through no fault of their own?
The problem with all too many of our nation's leaders is that they do not know what it is like to fear losing their homes or losing their ability to support themselves or their families. I remember my dad coming home from work as a construction worker (he was a plumber), with that look of despair in his eyes. My mother would only have to glance at him to know that my dad had lost his job. Tears would well up in her eyes. My dad normally carried himself with a ramrod straight, square shouldered manner. On those dreadful days when he came home without a job, his usually proud posture was replaced by slumped shoulders and a sort of shuffle I can never forget.
My dad was so proud of his trade and his ability to support my mother and me. That pride was lost on the days he was laid off from work.
I remember the many sacrifices that came with the loss of my dad's job. We used to have a steak dinner on Sunday nights. Mostly we got by on tuna fish and cheese and noodle dinners when my dad was out of work. The tough part of it was not knowing if he would be out of work for a week, a month or five months.
When I was 19 years old, both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer within three months of each other. My dad died of lung cancer at the age of 57 that his surgeons believed was caused by his three-pack-a-day cigarette habit that was exacerbated by his exposure to asbestos, not only when he worked on construction sites, but especially when he worked in the navy shipyards during the Second World War. Because of health issues, the military would not allow him to enlist, so he felt compelled to contribute to our nation's defense and for him, his training as a plumber (pipe-fitter) provided him with the opportunity to make his contribution to our nation's war effort working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and also in the shipyards in New Orleans.
One of my worst memories was the day he called me to ask me to pick him up from work. He was too ill to finish working that day and I literally had to help him walk off his job. My dad and his friends displayed emotion I almost never saw from any of them before, they were all teary-eyed on that rainy late winter afternoon.
By the time I was 21 years old, both of my parents had passed away and I was forced to take care of myself and somehow still get my degree. I cannot tell you how scared I was, dealing with the loss of my parents and supporting myself and keeping my promise to my folks and getting my degree. To them, a degree meant so much and they both made me promise them I would graduate from college. My mother legally immigrated the United States as a teenager and lived in a rooming house and worked in an umbrella factory for $3 a week around the time of the Depression. She never graduated from public school but made learning English her number one priority. Before she met my dad, she had become the chief buyer for a dress factory in New York.
My dad was born in the United States but his family had legally immigrated to the United States from Russia shortly after the turn of the last century. My dad was unable to complete his education and got no higher than the 8th grade because he needed to help support his family.
When I see those long lines of Americans desperate for a job, any job, I find it all too easy to relate to them and their fears and their desperation and think back to some truly tough times of my own.
Homer Hickam has written a number of wonderful books. One of his first books The Rocket Boys became the basis for a movie every American kid should have to see. This movie was entitled October Sky. It chronicled Hickam's early life as the son of a coal miner in a coal mining town in West Virginia. Mr. Hickam grew up in the 1950s and the launch of Sputnik inspired him to become involved in building rockets and learning about science. Back then, the only way out of Coalville, the town of his birth, was to get a football scholarship. Otherwise, just about every able-bodied boy in that town went to work in the coal mines.
By the end of the film you find out that by winning a science fair, Hickam and his buddies went on to college even though they lacked the ability to play football. Hickam, in fact, became an engineer at NASA and worked on the Space Shuttle program.
Because of his background as the son of a coal miner and his eloquence as a writer, Hickam was invited to deliver a eulogy at the church services conducted in the wake of the Sago Mine cave in more than three years ago. I watched him deliver the eulogy on television and was struck by one phrase in his eulogy. He said, "There is no water holier than the sweat off a man's brow." That simple sentence choked me up and caused me to think about my own dad and his buddies on those constructions sites who have built our nation. For them no job was impossible. No job was too arduous, dirty or dangerous. They were equal to any challenge you could throw at them.
Stop and consider the reverence that Homer Hickam demonstrated in that one sentence for the hard-working Americans who built our nation. Now I ask you to contrast that reverence for Americans who have, for generations, embodied the "can do" spirit that built this country with the politicians who can look down their noses at honest working people and declare that "illegal aliens do the work Americans won't do."
Here is a job all Americans must do: We must keep the politicians accountable!
When you go to a restaurant I am certain that you don't tell the waiter to throw anything they like on your plate and you will eat it. Generally we are very specific about what we want to eat and how we want it prepared. We must be no less specific in dealing with our elected officials, starting with Nancy Pelosi and others of her ilk, regardless of political party.
Consider the true leadership demonstrated by Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat and Rep. Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and former chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee:
Rep. Lamar Smith (Tex.), ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the administration "appears to be using border violence as an excuse" to undercut immigration enforcement in the nation's interior.
"It makes no sense to take funds from one priority (worksite enforcement) to address a new priority (the growth in border violence). This is just robbing Peter to pay Paul," Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee for homeland security, said in an e-mail.
Led by Byrd, Congress this year ordered ICE to spend $127 million on workplace operations, $34 million more than President George W. Bush had requested. Reducing those amounts, even in ICE's overall $5 billion budget, would provoke a fight, senior aides in both parties said.
My parents used to tell me “talk is cheap” when I made promises they thought I might not be able to fulfill. They were honest, hard working Americans who instilled their values in me at every opportunity.
It is one thing to promise more and better jobs. It is all well and good to talk about protecting our nation against terrorists and criminals such as the Mexican drug cartels. The reality is that until our nation secures its borders and creates an immigration system that has real integrity, none of those lofty and essential goals can be attained.
Todd Beamer, the heroic passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 who was heard on a cell phone, exhorting his fellow passengers on that ill-fated flight to rise up against the hijackers with a simple phrase, “Lets Roll!”
We the People must similarly rise to the occasion and become involved in the political process. This is the work all Americans must do!
Lets Roll!
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Mike Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a recognized authority who addresses the implications of immigration on national security and criminal justice. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
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