Knock-knock! Who’s there?

By Michael W. Cutler, Senior Special Agent, INS (Retired)
Senior Fellow, CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization)

So begins what has become one of the most common themes for humor virtually around the world.

The “Knock-knock joke” is universal in its appeal because this commonsense means of determining if a stranger should be allowed into our homes is equally universal. Common sense dictates that a responsible person needs to take reasonable precautions before opening his front door and thus, his home, to a stranger. That is why we ask “Who is there?”

For the first four years of my career with the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) I served as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. You could say that my colleagues and I had our eyes to the peephole on America’s front door.

In addition to simply looking at foreigners (aliens) who walked into our inspection booths at the airport and asking them a very few cursory questions, we had a primitive database in the big blue loose-leaf binder we called the “Service Look Out Book” also known by its initials as the (SLOB)—I kid you not!

Our decisions then, as they are today, were governed by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the legal reasons an alien might be barred from entering the United States could be found in Title 8 of the United States Code, Section 212. Basically stated, the law concerned itself with preventing the entry of aliens into our country whose presence might well pose a threat to our nation’s security or the well-being of our citizens.

Aliens who violated the terms of their admission become subject to removal (deportation). Aliens who circumvent the inspections process by running our nation’s borders, for example, are illegally present in the United States from the moment that they cross our nation’s borders because anyone who circumvents the inspections process that is designed to protect our nation and our citizens is violating our laws. Furthermore, because aliens who avoid being inspected remain unknown to our government and are not inspected, it must be presumed that such illegal aliens may be excludible on the basis of one or more provisions of the immigration laws that were enacted to protect our nation.

Anyone who runs our nation’s borders and makes his way to the interior of the United States is no less illegally present than an alien who is apprehended in close proximity to our nation’s borders. An alien who violates the terms of his admission via the inspections process may also prove to be a threat to our nation’s well-being—all 19 terrorists who attacked our nation on September 11, 2001 had, in fact, violated the terms of their admission into the United States or had committed visa fraud when they applied for visas to enable them to enter the United States in the first place.

Considering all of the foregoing—I have a simple question for our President and each and every official of our government, elected or appointed who and favors “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” or “Sanctuary” policies for local or state governments. “Considering the intent of the immigration laws—that of protecting our nation an our citizens, especially when we know that terrorists have entered our country with the intention of carrying out terrorist attacks and that drug trafficking organizations have set up shop in hundreds of American cities from coast to coast how could you possibly believe that it is no big deal to violate the immigration laws of the United States of America?”

Several weeks ago, members of the United States Congress actually gave Mexican President Felipe Calderon a standing ovation when he called for giving U.S. citizenship to Mexican citizens who are illegally present here in our country and then went on to verbally attack the governor of Arizona and the members of her state’s legislature for passing a law that would require police officers in that state to determine the immigration status of individuals that they come into contact with, provided that the contact was predicated on other violations of law.

And if that’s not bad enough, the Obama administration has announced it will take legal action against the State of Arizona!

The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has actually referred to the arrest of illegal aliens as being “Un-American!”

Un-American indeed! Representative Pelosi is in dire need of rhinoplasty—her nose is growing!

Minimally, illegal aliens take jobs Americans desperately need especially during this era of economic turmoil. Foreign workers not only often displace American workers- something that the immigration laws deem illegal, but foreign workers also seek to send money from the United States to their home countries. Each year it is estimated that illegal aliens from Mexico send more than 20 billion dollars in remittances to their families in Mexico It has been estimated that over 100 billion dollars per year are drained from the United States economy and sent to the home countries of foreign workers who are working legally and illegally in the United States. This is money that is not earned by citizens or resident aliens of the United States. This is money that is not spent in America. This is money that is not invested in America.

Since when is it “Un-American” for our government, on all levels, to enforce the laws that were promulgated with the safety and well being of our nation and citizens in mind, especially in this perilous era?

I wonder if Representative Pelosi asks “who’s there?” when someone knocks on her door.