Safety First

On July 27, 2006 I testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration Border and Security Claims on the topic:

WHETHER THE ATTEMPTED IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REID-KENNEDY IMMIGRATION BILL WILL RESULT IN AN ADMINISTRATIVE AND NATIONAL SECURITY NIGHTMARE

I began my prepared testimony by saying:

“The principle by which most responsible and sensible people live their lives could be summed up by the phrase, ''Safety first.'' Yet this fundamental and common sense approach is clearly lacking among all too many of the senators of our nation. They voted for a bill that utterly ignores the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission at a time when our nation is threatened by acts of terrorism.”

I referred to Senate Bill S. 2611 that would have created a so called comprehensive immigration reform that was in fact amnesty. My testimony referenced the Government Accountability Office findings in its report with the understated title:

''Immigration Benefits: Additional Controls and a Sanction Strategy Could Enhance DHS' Ability to Control Benefit Fraud''

This March 2006 report is but one of a long succession of such reports that make it clear that USCIS has failed to bring integrity to the immigration benefits program by which aliens are granted lawful immigrant status and eventually United States citizenship. This woebegone agency's deficiencies continue today. Yet the administration and Congress continue to incongruently claim that the solution to the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies' failings is to pass a massive amnesty that would provide amnesty to at least 11 million aliens and possibly more even though their identities cannot be verified. 

What's unfathomable is that even as the amnesty debate continues to reverberate in Congress' halls and in the media, the administration continues to process applications filed by deferred action for childhood arrivals without doing in-person interviews. Most recently, DHS has released unknown thousands of illegal criminal aliens from custody without providing clear answers as to which official(s) have determined which aliens to release, what the criteria are, or even the identities of the criminal aliens' that have been returned to the communities that they originally endangered. 

While the administration is adamant about its intentions to get as many guns off the street as possible, it's unconcerned about the consequences of criminal aliens who may seek to illegally acquire firearms and other weapons and therefore put innocent citizens at risk. 

It has been said that “Guns don't kill people but people kill people.” Yet according to published reports, a number of these freed criminal aliens have committed murder. Nevertheless, and acting without accountability, the administration has taken the reckless, unjustifiable  action of endangering still more victims by engaging in what Texas Governor Perry has correctly called a “federally sponsored jailbreak.”

America's immigration laws were enacted to achieve two primary goals—protect innocent lives and American jobs. Americans need to remind the White House and Congress that pushing a political agenda obstructs the nation's safety and security.