Senate Judiciary Hearing: Building an Immigration System Worthy of American Values

On March 20, 2013 the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing that should have been of huge importance all the Senate as well as the news media. The hearing should have been reported on to the United States citizens especially since the administration and both political parties may be poised to create the most massive amnesty program ever created for perhaps tens of millions of illegal aliens whose true identities, dates of entry, backgrounds and other vital information cannot be verified.

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act which granted amnesty to more than 3.5 million people would be dwarfed, perhaps by a factor of ten, by the program that the “Gang of Eight” is concocting behind closed doors.

The potential consequences of such a massive amnesty program are supported by the facts.  Consider what just 19 terrorists were able to do on September 11, 2001. The 9/11 Commission, to which I provided testimony, made it clear that the terrorists' goals could not have been realized had they not been able to enter the United States in the first place. They could not have carried out their plans had they not been able to embed themselves in local communities throughout the United States as they went about their deadly preparations. The 9/11 Commission emphasized that border security, the lax visa issuance process and immigration benefit fraud all played rolls in providing terrorists the ability to hide in plain sight.

Today, more than eleven years after the 9/11 attacks and more than two decades after the 1993 terrorist attacks, the White House and Congress are proceeding in a manner that could be described at the least as foolhardy and at the worst as treasonous.

When he first took office, President Obama promised to create the most transparent government in history. Even Superman's X-ray vision could not make this administration “transparent!”

Only three Senators, (Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Christopher Coons (D-DE) and Mazie Hirono, D-HI) attended the hearing intermittently. The obvious question is, “Where were the other senators?”

Just about every seat in the audience was filled, but the dais was essentially vacant but for some staffers. Since there was no media presence, most Americans didn't know the hearing took place.

Immigration impacts virtually every threat and challenge that confronts the United States, yet, you would never know it when you consider who was not there!

Abraham Lincoln described the United States as possessing a government that was “Of the people, by the people and for the people.

That was then, this is now!

I hope that you will take the time to go the Judiciary Committee record of the hearing on its website to watch the video and read the testimony. 

To cut to the chase, here's how I ended my prepared testimony:

     "Law enforcement is at its best when it creates a climate of deterrence to convince those who might be contemplating violating the law that such an effort is likely to be discovered and that if discovered, adverse consequences will result for the law violators. Current policies and statements by the administration, in my view, encourages aspiring illegal aliens around the world to head for the United States. In effect the starter's pistol has been fired and for these folks, the finish line to this race is the border of the United States.

     "Back when I was an INS special agent I recall that Doris Meissner who was, at the time, the commissioner of the INS, said that the agency needed to be 'customer oriented.' Unfortunately, while I agree about the need to be customer oriented what Ms. Meissner and too many politicians today seem to have forgotten is that the 'customers' of the INS and of our government in general, are the citizens of the United States of America."