Hi Gang:
Here is my most recent commentary for the CAPS website.
Immigration is not a single issue but a singular issue. While many journalists, politicians and others discuss immigration as though it was a single, relatively unimportant issue, the great majority of our fellow Americans certainly understand just how important the immigration issue. Far from being an isolated issue that is primarily the concern of extreme political conservatives as it has been portrayed for a number of years, the various components of the immigration issue, including border security, are intrinsically involved in just about every challenge and threat that confronts our nation today.
Stop and give this a bit of thought. How can our nation defend itself and our citizens from international terrorists and transnational criminals including members of the extremely violent Mexican drug cartels, gangs such as MS-13 and other such gangs and criminal organizations from the four corners of our planet with millions of illegal aliens living in cities, towns and communities in every state from coast to coast and border to border? How can our nation defend itself and its citizens from the threats posed by the terrorists and drug trafficking organizations when our borders serve as little more than speed bumps to smugglers and those who would enter our country with all sorts of contraband including narcotics and potentially weapons of mass destruction?
While record numbers of American workers are unemployed or underemployed and are losing their already tenuous grip on their thin slice of the “American Dream” millions of foreign workers are entering our nation and taking millions of jobs. Not all of those jobs are at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, either! Thousands of “temporary” foreign workers with H-1B visas and similar nonimmigrant work visas are working in high-tech jobs while American computer programmers, engineers, scientists and technicians are losing their jobs to these foreign interlopers who have been admitted into the United States at the behest of corporations who have, through the use of effectively applied pressure, convinced the administration and members of Congress to permit these foreign workers to take those jobs so desperately needed by our highly qualified fellow Americans!
For years, the open borders advocates have been very good at the use of language to obfuscate the truth. They have all but stricken the term “Alien” from our vernacular, insisting that this totally innocuous term is comparable to the “N” word- an effort that began with the Carter administration in the late 1970’s when INS employees were threatened with disciplinary action if they used the term “Illegal Alien” to describe aliens who were illegally present in the United States. Back then I was an INS Special Agent and I still recall the anger and frustration my colleagues and I felt when we were given those insane orders by our superiors in the New York District Office where I spent my entire career.
I became so enraged that I began referring to illegal aliens as being “Pre-Citizens!” Many of my colleagues borrowed my terminology and I was quite gratified when months later I answered a phone call from a Border Patrol agent who asked if I could provide information contained in a file relating to a “Pre-Citizen” he had just arrested, attempting to run the border!
As you may know, the term alien is a legal term that is defined simply as being any person who is not a citizen or national of the United States. I defy anyone to explain how that definition is a slur or denigrates anyone. The problem that this term is that it provides clarity. Those who oppose the enforcement of our immigration laws know that the law is against them, the facts are against them, commonsense is against them and even morality is against them. Their only recourse is to resort to Orwellian use of language and twisting the facts to confuse the issue. An additional tactic is to engage in name calling, accusing anyone who wants are nation’s borders to be secured with being racist and xenophobic. The fact that our immigration laws are completely and utterly blind as to race, religion and ethnicity is of no matter to them- they simply make accusations and in this era of two minute sound bites on supposed television news reports, our citizens are quick to seize on a ten word phrase or accusation.
One of the ways that the immigration issue has been all but ignored has been the result of the constant repetition of the claim that immigration is simply a concern to the Tea Party and the right wing of the Republican Party. In other words, only very narrow “fringe” group are concerned about immigration! This is an example of “marginalizing” their opponents.
This has two consequences.
First of all politicians and journalists have become convinced that not enough people are really concerned about this issue and so it not worthy of dealing with it.
Second, many of our fellow Americans lack a spine! This is sad but true! They don’t want people to think badly of them and so between the perception that immigration is about racism and that only a handful of extremists are really concerned about it, they decide to steer clear of the entire issue. This is the precise opposite of the “bandwagon” approach to convince people to join a movement or even buy a product! Think about the commercials where the announcer talks about how many people use a particular product.
Unfortunately, for the creature that is supposedly atop the intellectual food chain- many of our fellow humans are easily herded, not unlike a flock of sheep or grazing cattle!
The immigration crisis did not start last week, last year or even ten years ago- it has been decades in the making!
Politicians from both sides of the political aisle have created this nightmare.
Americans across the entire political spectrum have been hammered by the betrayal of our elected “representatives.”
It is time for all Americans to come together an make their voices heard by their elected representatives. This is starting to happen but time is of the essence!
Contrary to the false claims of the immigration anarchists- it is not compassionate to entice vulnerable, desperate people from Third World countries to violate our borders and our laws to be exploited- often horrifically!
It is not compassionate to deprive hard working Americans of all races, all religions and all ethnicities of their fair share of the American Dream by having them fired from their jobs so that foreign workers can replace them at lower wages!
It is insane for our citizens to find their expectations of freedom and privacy to be whittled away continually, in the name of “National Security” while the Visa Waiver Program continues to expand and millions of illegal aliens who evaded the inspections process that is supposed to protect our nation and our citizens from the presence of aliens who pose a threat to our well being are being promised a “Pathway to United States citizenship!” Furthermore their covert entry into our country means that there is no record of their being here!
As you listen to the GOP candidates debate the issues, are you convinced that they really care about this crisis? Most have spoken about the need to secure the border but then most would, in fact, provide lawful status, to those millions of illegal aliens! Remember that our nation has a northern border as well as a southern border. Also remember that every day aliens enter the United States along our nation’s 95,000 miles of coastal region and international airports scattered across our nation. Any state that has a seaport or an international airport is a border state!
Furthermore, there is virtually no integrity to the process by which aliens are granted lawful immigrant status and even United States citizenship. A number of terrorists who have been arrested in the United States had been granted resident alien status and even United States citizenship.
It is not mean-spirited to want to have our nation’s borders secured and our immigration laws enforced. We live in a particularly perilous era where the safety and security of our nation and our fellow Americans are threatened by the threat of additional terrorist attacks and the infestation of ever more American cities by the various violent transnational gangs. Failure to secure our nation’s borders and the effective enforcement of our immigration laws may well have catastrophic consequences!
To borrow a phrase from Gene Kranz, the NASA Flight Director who achieved so many successes including the safe return of the Apollo 11 astronauts after their spacecraft suffered a massive explosion en route to the moon, “Failure is not an option!”
A country without secure borders can no more stand than can a house without walls!
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our country is to survive and if our children and their children are to get their share of the “American Dream” the citizens of this nation must take their citizenship seriously!
We the People must be the best citizens we can be, citizens who are worthy of the gallantry demonstrated by our valiant men and women in the military, law enforcement and firefighters, who routinely go in harm’s way in defense of this nation and our citizens.
My goal in writing this and other commentaries is to point out our nations many failings before more victims pay the ultimate price for the incompetence and ineptitude of our government.
The first step in problem-solving is to first identify the problems and vulnerabilities and then devise strategies to overcome them.
If you find yourself to be in agreement with this commentary, I ask that you forward it to as many of your friends and family members as possible and encourage them to do the same. We need to create a “Bucket Brigade of Truth!”
The practice of good citizenship does not end in the voting booth, it only begins there.
The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups. There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do- we must stop sitting on the sidelines!
The collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to the politicians. I implore you to get involved!
I believe our nation’s is greatly benefited by the rich diversity of our people which is why I could never imagine living anywhere except New York City, arguably the most diverse city in our nation if not, in fact, the world. However, my idea of diversity most certainly does not include members of MS-13, the Mexican drug cartels or members of other transnational gangs or members of al-Qaeda!
If our government’s failures to secure our nation’s borders and effectively enforce our immigration laws concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you to call your Senators and Congressional “Representative. This is not only your right- it is your obligation!
All I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as dumb as they hope we are!
We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.
This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue- simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue!
You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem!
Democracy is not a spectator sport!
Lead, follow or get out of the way!
-michael cutler-
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“
By Michael Cutler, Senior Special Agent, INS (Ret.), CAPS Senior Fellow, September 28, 2011 (7 hours ago)
For
years journalists and others have claimed that only extreme
conservatives want our nation’s borders secured and our immigration laws
enforced.
This false claim is also used by open border advocates to attempt to
marginalize and intimidate anyone who is concerned about the myriad
failures of our nation to effectively address what is a full blown
immigration crisis.
In point of fact, the massive influx of illegal aliens and foreign
workers who are admitted into the United States on “temporary” work
visas are displacing American workers and driving down the wages for all
workers. This is not rocket science it is an example of the classic
economic principle of “Supply and Demand.”
Under this principle if the quantity of a particular commodity
increases and the demand remains the same, the value and the price of
that commodity decreases. Flooding the labor market with foreign
workers causes wages to decline and provides unscrupulous employers with
extra leverage- any worker who balks at taking pay cuts or complains
about unfair or even dangerously substandard working conditions is just
fired and easily replaced by a worker from a huge and growing labor
pool.
U.S. News and World Report issued a disturbing report on September 13, 2011 that was entitled, “More Americans in Poverty than Ever Before.”
This concept of supply and demand is the reason that companies that
mine diamonds for jewelry maintain tight control over how many gem
quality diamonds are released onto the market. The executives of these
companies understand that if a large quantity of diamonds were suddenly
dumped made available for sale, the value of all diamonds would plummet.
Liberals are generally associated with concerns about wages and
working conditions of America’s blue collar workers and America’s
working poor. Yet somehow the truth about the impact of the massive
influx of foreign workers on wages and working conditions eludes so many
liberals and centrists.
What makes illegal aliens so attractive to unscrupulous employers is
the fact that illegal aliens are easy to exploit. Is the concern about
exploitation a traditionally “Conservative” issue or is it traditionally
a “Liberal” issue?
Furthermore, America’s minority workers are suffering more from the current economic crisis than non-minority members.
Members of the immigrant communities of all ethnicities are also at
much greater risk of the violence perpetrated by transnational ethnic
criminal gangs. This is not just about immigrants from Latin America
but from all over this planet!
The open borders advocates make all sorts of scandalous accusations
claiming that anyone who wants our borders to be secured and our
immigration laws enforced are xenophobic and are against Latinos. In
point of fact our nation’s immigration laws are absolutely neutral where
race, religion and ethnicity are concerned.
The claims that it is unfair to not permit foreign workers to enter
the United States and take jobs “Americans aren’t doing” is yet another
bit of propaganda that evaporates when held up to the light of truth!
There have been many articles recently put “out there” that make it
clear that Americans would certainly do those jobs if they were paid
reasonable wages so that they can actually support themselves and their
families when they get their paychecks at the end of the week. The
“American Dream” cannot be attained by working on a job that pays $8.00
per hour!
Every politician claims to have created jobs. Yet by encouraging and
inducing foreign workers to enter the United States and join the labor
pool, American workers find that they are competing with more workers
for the already scarce jobs- jobs for which the wages are in a continual
state of decline!
In effect, any politician who is an advocate for Comprehensive
Immigration Reform, increased numbers of visas such as the H-1B
nonimmigrant visas for high-tech workers and the creation of a “pathway
to citizenship” for unknown millions of illegal aliens is really making
it far less likely that unemployed and underemployed Americans will
benefit from any jobs that may be created!
Is this a “Conservative” concern or a “Liberal” concern?
One of the problems with aliens who evade the inspections process is
that they leave no record of their entry into our country and their true
identities (including even their nationalities) are unknown and
unknowable. Consequently there is no way of knowing if these
individuals are criminals, fugitives from justice in other countries,
affiliated with criminal or terrorist organizations. When an employer
hires an illegal alien there is no way of knowing if that employee is a
violent criminal or in some other way poses a threat to the people he
works with or interacts with when he (she) is at work.
Consider how serious problem workplace violence is. This is not
conjecture on my part, when I was an INS Special Agent I arrested a
number of illegal aliens who were convicted felons who were working at
various jobs. In one particularly unusual case, an illegal alien who
spoke flawless English claimed to have been a naturalized citizen. When
I was unable to verify the information he provided I decided to take
him into custody as a suspected illegal alien. As it turned out, he had
been previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter, had served years in a
state prison for that crime and was deported from the United States.
Shortly after he unlawfully reentered the United States, he was
apprehended and prosecuted for that felony under the Immigration and
Nationality Act. While serving his prison sentence he escaped from a
federal correctional facility and managed to get the job where I found
him!
Would only a “Conservative” be opposed to working with a convicted
felon who had been convicted of committing a crime of violence and had
escaped from jail?
Recently Texas Governor Rick Perry said that anyone who would not
provide illegal alien students with instate tuition was “heartless.”
Is it not heartless to ignore the plight of American kids who want to
go to college but for the economic plight of their families may not be
able to afford to go to college? Consider how depriving an American
student the opportunities a college education may provide can harm that
student for the rest of his (her) life! So many American students of
every race, religion and ethnicity are now unable to attend college and
build their futures and unable to maximize their contributions to our
nation.
Is it also not heartless to seek to have more foreign high-tech
workers enter the United States to compete with American high-tech
workers?
Our immigration laws are unique in that they are the laws that were
promulgated to protect our nation and our citizens from aliens whose
presence in our country would be problematic and potentially harmful.
Commonsense should make it clear that these laws are among the most
important that the government should enforce yet it is these very laws
that a disturbingly large proportion of our politicians eschew and seek
to ignore at every opportunity- and these politicians can be found on
both sides of the political aisle!
These politicians come from the Left and they come from the Right and they are wrong!
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