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HOW TO BE AN ILLEGAL ALIEN
It worked for me! Six steps for crashing George Bush’s
America in two weeks flat
3/31/05
by Mimi in New York
About the author, from the author:
After five years and 40 countries, it’s time to sit tight, get back in the real world, and do normal things like shagging and positivity seminars and kneeing men in the groin. Or is it? I’ve been in New York now for four weeks, and gotten an apartment, a job, an internship—alongside a lot of controversy. So for every major decision I have to make in the coming few months, I want people’s advice on what to do and how to do it. Read my blog, Mimi in New York, help me out. . . . An English chick in New York trying to make it big, and treading on a lot of sensitive Yankee toes in the meantime.
Illegal immigration? It won’t happen here! cry the Republicans. We’re making America a SAFE PLACE, free from all you filthy non-American potential terrorists, especially you well-known Bin Laden supporters, the Mexicans. . . .
On March 2, 2005, I entered this country from the U.K. on a tourist visa. I’d never been to New York before. It seemed like a fun place to be. The friendly immigration official gave me a cheery wave as he stamped my passport and sent me off with a polite “Have a good day, ma’am.”
I was in the United States of America, without papers, without friends, without a job. Yet in two weeks, with a little help from my fellow illegals, I was ensconced in a loft apartment in Brooklyn, with a full-time waitressing job, a Social Security number, a bank account, and a new boyfriend.
But it’s easy for someone on a U.K. passport, you say. You’re white, you dress like us, you speak the same language (debatable). Wasn’t your Prime Minister that cute guy who helped ol’ George out with the whole Iraq debacle? You’re our friends!
In actual fact, though I have a degree from one of the best universities in the world and a glittering career in publishing, the tightening of immigration laws and the reduction in the number of H1 work visas available after 9-11 have forced me to become an illegal if I want to stay, work and make my life in New York City. Prior to 9-11, I could have rolled up on a tourist visa, applied for a job, and three months later been sitting pretty in my Park Avenue office space playing with the back massager on my comfortable office chair and ordering the secretary off the phone to go and fetch me a Frappuccino.
As it is, if I go the legal route to a new life in New York, I have to find a job willing to sponsor me, apply for a visa by April 1, and, because of government restrictions, wait until October at the very earliest before being able to officially take up my position as a paid employee of an American company. If I miss the April 1 deadline, it’s likely that the soonest I could take up legal employment would be October 2006.
For those would-be immigrants out there who lack the first-world privileges I grew up with, the prospect of coming here legally is growing increasingly remote. Under President Bush’s “Guest Worker Program,” the idea is that employers will be matched up with workers for a three-year period, but afterward, the workers will be no further along the path to gaining permanent resident status or citizenship. Bush’s hazy program has given false hopes of an amnesty for illegals, and in the days after he made the proposal in January 2004, the number of illegals attempting to cross the border actually increased.
And is border control the real issue at stake? The vast majority of illegals I’ve met have merely overstayed their tourist visas, meaning they entered this country in a perfectly legitimate fashion.
I think you’re missing the point, Mr. Bush. I and my fellow illegals—whether Mexican, Slovakian, Haitian, Italian, Nigerian, Indian, Australian, British—we’re not here to make your taxes increase, leach off your welfare system (I’d stay in the U.K. if I wanted to do that), or make “your” America an unsafe place. We’re just here to live our lives the best we can, and to do that, we’re working 60-hour weeks on minimum wage, dodging immigration officials, and devising any way possible to stay in this great country of yours.
Here’s what I’ve learned about how to be an illegal alien in New York.
1) Get into the city. There are numerous routes—planes, trains, automobiles, or boats. I came in on Flight 101 with American Airlines. My friend Sergio rowed over from Mexico on a little boat with his family. What was it like? I ask him. “Aburrido,” he says, and shrugs. Boring. Another girl I know, from the Ukraine, made friends with a lovely, kind American doctor, who promptly invited her over—some Eastern European passport holders aren’t allowed into the country without an “invite” or sponsor. The girl promptly overstayed her tourist visa and decided to . . .
2) Get married. Marriage to a U.S. citizen gets you a green card in three months. After three years you can get permanent residency, which means you can live and work here without a U.S. passport. You will need to find someone stupid enough to take on financial responsibility for you for five years after the marriage. If you run up the credit cards and disappear, they get the bills. I like the way this country works sometimes. You also have to put up with the IRS nosing in on your bank accounts, rent payments, mortgages, etc., to make sure you really are financially co-dependent. An Italian bartender I know entered the U.S. eight months ago, and for the first three months lived solely off tips earned from bar tending. In month four, he met a Puerto Rican Baptist from Queens, 10 years his junior. In month five, he started passing on pay checks to his new Puerto Rican girlfriend to cash on his behalf. In month nine, they are intending to get married with a pleasant little ceremony in a church on the East Side. It can be done, mis amigos, and in a mere five years, you can be pledging your allegiance to the U.S., or, if going tandem’s not in the cards . . .
3) Find work. Not so easy when it comes down to it. How can an employer pay you if you don’t have a Social Security number? If they pay you cash, it means they’re screwing themselves over by not declaring the expenditure. And why would anyone want the trouble of an illegal foreign employee, with all the fresh opportunity inherent in America’s youth? This was the dilemma I found myself in when starting work at a restaurant in Soho. The prospect of living off my tips—on a weeknight in the slow month of February an average of $40 per 10 hour shift—was not a seductive one, and without a Social Security number, I couldn’t claim my shift pay. Which was why my co-workers, a Hungarian student and a Mexican chef, took me aside one night and let me in on a little secret technique that’s really quite simple . . .
4) Assume someone else’s identity. Give your nice, kind, and sympathetic American boss your roommate’s name and Social Security number to put on the weekly paycheck. Then give your weekly paycheck to your roommate, who will cash it and give the money back to you. The other option is to assume a deceased U.S. citizen’s identity and take over their Social Security number. There is a mystical place somewhere off Times Square that will go to all this trouble on your behalf for a minimal fee. Or find a place that pays cash-in-hand—the going rate for an illegal alien as a bartender or waitress in this city is currently $4 an hour. The charge that illegals are making your taxes higher seems slightly ridiculous when you consider that we’re pouring tax dollars into the IRS with no expectation of future benefits, or that any job paying cash-in-hand is not the kind an American citizen would be willing to perform anyway.
5) Open a bank account. I opened a bank account perfectly legally in Florida, where a number of aliens work on luxury foreign-owned yachts and the bank staff are used to nonresident clients. One Dominicano friend seduced his latest lustful American maiden into opening a bank account for him at Chase Manhattan. The account is in her name, but he has the debit card and access to it. The account will, I feel, last longer than the relationship.
5) Seek out your own kind. If you can’t speak English, go to Queens, ask around, seek out the small Italian restaurants, the falafel bars, the strip joints, the dumpster truck businesses, the jobs no self-respecting American would touch with a barge-pole. Then do so well at your job that your boss realizes it’s definitely more in his/her interest to employ a friendly Mexican/ Korean/ Slovakian/Hungarian than an overweight, whining American teen.
6) DON’T LEAVE. Once you’re here, stay put. Nicaraguans and Cubans who have lived in the United States illegally since 1995, along with their spouses and unmarried children, were automatically granted legal resident status under NACARA, as long as they applied by April 1, 2000. A little reward for being wily enough to slip past Customs and Immigration. Hey, it could happen again.
Everyone is illegal in New York. Your cab driver, your doorman, the lady who does your pedicure, the kid who makes you a cappuccino, the girl in the street who looks like a model—we’re all immigrants, all displaced people, trying to find a place to settle, wrestling with laws and obstacles and dangers and strange customs. The Mexican chefs in my workplace speak of their homeland with a wistful sadness. Why are you here, then? I ask Gonzalo, a round, tubby-faced lad of 19. “I want to be a periodista”—a journalist—”but university is expensive in Mexico.” He says he can earn more money here in one week than in a month back home. He’s saving up for school. None of the chefs at my job can speak English. They all want to learn, but they don’t have the time or the money for lessons. They live with other Spanish speakers, and they work mainly with non-English speakers. Maybe in the future, they say. Maybe when they get American girlfriends.
Renatka, a slim, elegant, blond Romanian, frequently comes into the restaurant with her boyfriend, an older American schoolteacher. Renatka came over to New York five years ago, and at first lived in an apartment with 20 other Romanian illegals. Gradually, she started a night-class college course, learned English by watching TV, and became qualified in picture framing. She now works for a highly specialized Manhattan firm, dealing with the most exclusive collections of art in New York City, and shares an elegant Soho apartment with her boyfriend. She is still not a permanent resident, and when I ask her what type of visa she has, she sighs, and waves a slim, manicured hand impatiently. “I have problems with my visa right now. They don’t want to renew it. I don’t want to talk about it. But I’m not going back to Romania.” Her boyfriend slips a tender arm around her waist and hugs her close.
In the taxi home, the Indian driver, finding that I’m acquainted with his homeland, starts to talk endlessly about the Himalayas, about how much he misses it, how he can’t wait to return and see his family. “I went to Ohio, to see the mountains there,” he says, “but they just weren’t the same.”
This is what I find so endlessly fascinating—that this city is made up of people like my bartender friend and Gonzalo and Renatka and me, all invisible people. In some ways we are more New York than people who’ve lived here 20 years. We’re how New York started. We’re how it will go on, with or without immigration reform.
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ACTIVISTS TO FLOCK TO BORDER, SET UP CITIZEN PATROLS
By Chris Strohm
3/31/05
Jim Gilchrist simply got fed up with the federal government when it came to addressing illegal immigration.
The California resident and former Marine who took a bullet during the Vietnam War says the Bush administration and Congress have failed to provide enough resources to the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau to stop millions of illegal migrants from flowing into the United States from Mexico.
A few months ago, Gilchrist put out a call for citizens to peacefully gather on the Arizona-Mexico border during April to monitor and report illegal immigration. Since then, the Minuteman Project - as it is called - has snowballed with national media coverage and international attention. More than 1,000 people, including 30 pilots with private aircraft, have pledged to set up camps along the border starting this Friday.
“I struck the mother lode,” Gilchrist said. “It has already accomplished what we want to accomplish: nationwide awareness. And we haven’t even started the project yet.”
Many experts and government officials agree the nation’s immigration system is broken. Estimates on the number of illegal immigrants in the country range from 8 million to 20 million, the vast majority of whom enter through the Southwest border. For fiscal 2004, the Border Patrol, which is part of the Customs and Border Protection Bureau in the Homeland Security Department, apprehended more than 1.1 million illegal immigrants trying to cross the Southwest border. Comparatively, 20,000 people were stopped at the Canadian border and the country’s coasts.
T.J. Bonner, president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ National Border Patrol Council, estimates that the Border Patrol catches only between a quarter and a third of all illegal crossers. “We’re just overwhelmed,” Bonner said. “We don’t have enough people to keep up with the volume of traffic.”
CBP is on the verge of issuing a new national strategy for guarding the borders, said Border Patrol spokesman Jeff Benadum. It will call for more electronic monitoring with sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as flexibility to deploy agents more rapidly to weak spots.
Benadum said the Border Patrol’s mission has changed since the 9/11 attacks from stopping contraband to preventing terrorists and their weapons from getting into the country.
“What the national strategy does is implement the change in our mission,” he said. “It’s a big picture view of our operational expectations for the next few years.”
A Call to Action
Members of The Minuteman Project say their goal is to draw attention to illegal immigration and gaps in border security, while helping to secure the areas they monitor. Participants pledge not to make contact with illegal immigrants, only watch and report their activities to the Border Patrol.
Participants plan to set up 50 outposts - one for each state - from Douglas, Arizona, through parts of the Coronado National Forest and north to Tombstone. The main area of observation will be a 20-mile stretch of lowlands across the San Pedro Valley in Southeast Arizona.
Participants are expected to stay at their camps and monitor any movement of illegal aliens. If they see or hear people moving, they will attempt to identify their exact location using global positioning system equipment. They will also try to observe whether illegal aliens are carrying anything. They will then use shortwave radios or walkie-talkies to report activity to other outposts and central command centers located in the towns of Tombstone and Hereford. The command centers will notify the Border Patrol of the activity.
Additionally, long-range reconnaissance patrols - made up of small groups of mainly former military and Iraq war veterans—will stay in the desert for days at a time with walkie-talkies
Many of the Minuteman volunteers are expected to be armed, although organizers have prohibited them from carrying rifles. Only those people with a license to carry a handgun will be allowed to do so. Gilchrist said he expects participants to abide by all laws and regulations.
Participants say they support the Border Patrol and ICE, and do not oppose legal immigration. Rather, they argue that the agencies responsible for border security and immigration enforcement are understaffed and don’t have enough resources.
“We hope that during the month of April, the number of apprehensions where we are dramatically declines,” said Chris Simcox, one of the main organizers. “If that happens, we’ll prove that an obvious presence of personnel on the border limits illegal immigration.”
Gilchrist said the budget for ICE and the Border Patrol should be tripled, while more buffer zones, towers and personnel need to be placed along the border. He said he also wants Congress to put a 10-year moratorium on illegal immigration, and cap the number of legal immigrants allowed at 200,000 per year.
An International Affair
Last week, President Bush stepped into the controversy over border issues, saying he opposed the Minuteman Project.
“I’m against vigilantes in the United States of America,” Bush said during a meeting in Texas with Mexican President Vincente Fox and Canadian Prime Minster Paul Martin. “I’m for enforcing law in a rational way. It’s why we’ve got a Border Patrol, and they ought to be in charge of enforcing the border.”
Simcox said Bush’s statement was disrespectful to citizens who simply want to help solve border problems. “We challenge the president to join us and come down and see for himself what’s really going on,” he told CNN.
Fox has also expressed concern over citizen border patrols. He told reporters he was watching the Minuteman Project carefully and would take action in U.S. courts or international tribunals if any activists break the law.
“We totally reject the idea of these migrant-hunting groups,” Fox said. “We will use the law—international law and even U.S. law—to make sure that these types of groups ... will not have any opportunity to progress.”
“We don’t have any evidence or any indication either that terrorists from al Qaeda or any other part of the world are coming into Mexico and going into the United States,” Fox said, countering recent statements made by senior Bush administration officials. “If there is any of that evidence, we will like to have it. But as I said, it does not exist.”
Inside the Numbers
The Border Patrol has about 10,800 federal agents. Of that number, almost 10,000 are responsible for securing about 2,000 miles of land along the Southwest border.
Of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol last year, 52 percent crossed into the country in Arizona, according to the agency.
The area with the most apprehensions is the Tucson sector, which is where the Minuteman Project will take place. Nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended in the Tucson sector last year, up from 350,000 in 2003. The total caught in the Tucson sector now surpasses the total caught in New Mexico and Texas combined.
“A lot of resources have been given to the Arizona area because that has been the hotbed for the last two years,” said Border Patrol spokesman Benadum. For example, the agency has increased the number of agents in the Tucson sector from 1,700 to about 2,100 over the last 18 months.
A year ago, DHS launched the Arizona Border Control Initiative, which provided increased personnel, aviation assets and security systems for the region. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles, however, has been halted pending congressional review.
Benadum said the initiative is one of the primary reasons why apprehensions have increased in the Tucson sector. He said more resources would be added for the effort this fiscal year, but declined to elaborate.
Bonner, however, noted that as the government clamps down in one area, illegal immigration tends to spill into others. He said the surge of illegal immigration in Arizona began when the government cracked down in San Diego, and now the flow appears to be heading toward New Mexico and Texas.
In response to those concerns, Congress made available more border and immigration resources. The 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act authorized hiring 2,000 more Border Patrol agents each year for five years; hiring 800 additional ICE investigators each year for five years; and increasing the number of detention beds by 8,000 per year for five years. ICE currently has about 4,500 investigators and 19,500 detention beds.
The Bush administration’s 2006 budget, however, only requests 210 additional Border Patrol agents and 143 new ICE special agents. That earned the administration a rebuke from Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the chair and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Collins and Lieberman introduced an amendment this month calling for $140 million to be added to the budget to hire 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents.
Michael Cutler, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and former immigration agent, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee earlier this month that he was at a loss to understand why the administration did not request more money for border and immigration security. He said ICE and CBP agents often put themselves in jeopardy to prevent illegal aliens from entering the country.
“They are not succeeding in this vital mission, as evidenced by the millions of illegal aliens who currently live within our nation’s borders,” Cutler said. “This is not because of failings for which the employees of ICE or CBP bear the responsibility, but rather because our government has consistently failed to provide them with the resources they need to make certain that this basic job gets done.”
The Desert Heats Up
While the leaders of the Minuteman Project have pledged to be nonviolent and nonconfrontational, some observers are concerned that other groups will not abide by such rules.
Ray Ybarra with the American Civil Liberties Union in Arizona said that hate groups, such as white supremacists, have indicated they are also going to set up camps along the border during April. Ybarra and others, such as immigrant rights advocates and human rights activists, fear the other groups will carry out crimes against migrants.
“When you get possibly a thousand people in the same place, if there are five or six people who disagree with what the leadership says, the possibility of them going off and doing their own thing is something to definitely be concerned about,” Ybarra said.
Gilchrist acknowledged that other groups have indicated they are coming to the border. According to a report in The Washington Times Monday, members of the violent Central America-based Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, have issued orders to teach “a lesson” to the Minuteman volunteers.
The ACLU had planned to place legal observers along the border to monitor interactions between citizens and migrants. Ybarra said the ACLU now is reconsidering because of the amount of hate mail and phone calls that it has received. Although a decision has yet to be made, Ybarra has submitted his resignation from the organization, saying he’s going to do legal monitoring no matter what.
Ybarra said he expects to have about 20 observers at a time. They will take videos of any mistreatment and post them on the Arizona Independent Media Center Web site. “We’re not there to be law enforcement,” he said. “We’re there to deter any abuses, document abuses, and highlight the real problems on the border.”
Ybarra and other activists hope to raise awareness of another problem at the border: the death of migrants trying to get into the country. Last year, he said, 221 people died trying to cross the Arizona border.
“It’s not that our society is being ruined,” Ybarra said. “It’s that our society isn’t outraged that human beings are dying in our backyard.”
Caught in the Middle
The Border Patrol is caught in the middle of the controversy. On the one hand, say patrol officials, people have the right to assemble on the border. On the other hand, the desert is a cruel, unforgiving place where citizens could encounter smugglers with weapons.
“I think community involvement from a law enforcement perspective is quite useful,” said Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora. “But when one person or a group of people try to take law enforcement into their own hands, or try to enforce any law, that is where we have concerns.
“We are going to be treating this with a very cautious ... approach,” he added. “We want to ensure that they, as citizens of the United States, have the right to gather. But we have to also ensure that no other rights are violated—even an undocumented alien’s right to not be detained illegally.”
Jose Garza, spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, said federal agents have experience working with citizen groups and handling many difficult situations. He said the agency is not planning to change any operations as a result of the Minuteman Project.
Garza acknowledged, however, that agents might have to spend more time with each case. When an agent responds to a scene where a U.S. citizen has had any interaction with an illegal alien, the agent has to notify local law enforcement and wait for a response to see if a civil rights violation has occurred. Then, the agent has to transport the illegal immigrant to a holding area and contact a consular office from the immigrant’s native country.
But Garza downplayed arguments the Border Patrol is overwhelmed. “We’re never going to say we’re fully staffed,” he said, “but we are working with the office of Border Patrol headquarters to address these issues.”
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LOGAN HASN’T LEARNED POST-9/11 LESSONS:
AIRPORT SWEEP UNCOVERS LAX SECURITY, NETS 14 ALIENS
By O’Ryan Johnson
3/31/05
In what amounts to the largest security breach at Logan International Airport since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more than a dozen illegal immigrants with unfettered access to the terminal - and possibly beyond - were arrested at the airport yesterday, according to a source and federal officials.
Relatives and loved ones of victims killed in 9/11 called the security lapse a “disgrace.”
“They’re putting everybody at risk,” said Mary Bavis, the mother of Mark Bavis who was on United Flight 175, one of two planes hijacked out of Logan and crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York. “I just can’t understand how that can happen. We’re supposed to have so much more security.”
The 14 Brazilian nationals - 12 men and women, and two juveniles - worked as airport janitors for Hurley of America, a company with offices in Stoneham, officials said. One of the men was wanted on a fugitive warrant for evading deportation.
State police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested the aliens in a sweep early yesterday morning as part of an ongoing investigation by Homeland Security into an illegal worker scheme at Logan International Airport, said Jane Zuieback, spokeswoman for ICE.
In an arrangement with the airport, Hurley issued its own temporary security badges to employees, side-stepping checks on workers’ documents and backgrounds, an immigration source said.
But Hurley disputes the claim, saying all of their workers showed documents to prove they are eligible for work, including Social Security cards, though they could not explain how they hired one man who had been ordered deported.
“I welcome them (ICE) to come look at our files,” said Janet Walsh, director of human resources and labor relations at Hurley.
Hurley has roughly 140 janitors working at Logan. Walsh said the 14 with temporary badges arrested yesterday had all worked at the airport for between one and two weeks, and adhered to TSA rules that they not be out of sight of a worker with a permanent badge.
Investigators said just how much of the airport the cleaners had access to was unknown, though one law enforcement source said, “Use your imagination,” and did not rule out the possibility that the cleaners got as far as airport towers.
Zuieback said she did not know how the immigrants arrived in the United States. She said 13 of the group will face deportation hearings.
Zuieback said depending on what their investigation uncovers, charges could be lodged against Hurley for hiring the immigrants.
She said since 9/11 ICE has detained about 1,000 illegal immigrants who were working service jobs at airports nationwide, a sweep that also has seen 775 indictments against the companies who hired the workers.
“Hopefully, this will wake up a few people out there,” said Rob Landrum, whose girlfriend, Betty Ann Ong, was killed on American Airlines Flight 11. “We’re still a far cry from where we need to be.”
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KYL’S WORDS AND ACTIONS ON BORDER SECURITY DON’T ADD UP
3/31/05
When It Comes To Jon Kyl, Watch What He Does, Not What He Says
Despite Jon Kyl’s efforts to tout his commitment to securing our borders, his record shows that he has consistently voted against efforts to ensure that authorities have the resources they need to protect us. Just today, Kyl wrote an op-ed in the Florence News with a headline that screamed: “Homeland Security Job No. 1 must be to protect our borders.” So why has Kyl consistently opposed efforts to take the steps necessary to secure our borders?
“The gap between what Jon Kyl says and what he does is bigger than the Grand Canyon. It takes more than words to protect America, it takes muscle. But Jon Kyl has consistently opposed efforts to make sure that our border security efforts have the muscle they need to be effective,” DSCC spokesman Phil Singer said.
Despite His Rhetoric, Kyl Has Consistently Opposed Efforts to Secure Our Borders
Why did Kyl vote against an effort to increase overall homeland security spending for port and BORDER security, aviation security, maritime and land transportation security, the Coast Guard, and the Office of Domestic Coordination and Preparedness? [HR 4567, 9/14/04, #179]
Why did Kyl oppose an effort to increase overall homeland security spending by $1.75 billion, including $238.5 million for port and BORDER security, $100 million for aviation security, $532 million for maritime and land transportation security, $70 million for the Coast Guard, $729.5 million for the Office of Domestic Preparedness and $80 million for information analysis and infrastructure protection? [HR 2555, 7/22/03, Roll Call #291]
Why did Kyl vote against an effort to increase overall homeland security spending by $2 billion, for a range of programs including explosives detection devices at airports, firefighter grants and radiation devices? [HR 4567, 9/9/04, Roll Call #169]
Why did Kyl vote against an effort to increase overall homeland security spending in the bill by $300 million for port security? [HR 4567, 9/9/04, Roll Call #171]
Phil Singer
Communications Director, DSCC
202-485-3123 (office)
202-528-1462 (cell)
singer@dscc.org
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STOLEN NATION HARBORS DEN OF THIEVES
By Diane M. Grassi
3/31/05
If you think that all of the brouhaha about illegal immigration only concerns the powers-that-be in Washington, D.C., think again. Non-enforced immigration law is portrayed beyond the beltway as no more than political shenanigans to curry favor with specific voting blocks and an effort to deflate wages. But inaction by a head-in-the-sand style government has created a new type of terrorism for the American people.
Since September 11, 2001 we have had to deal with not only the tragedy of terrorist attacks on our own soil but the aftermath of our government creating additional bureaucracies all in the name of security. All the while the black market remains strong with respect to counterfeit as well as stolen Social Security numbers and Green Cards being sold to illegal aliens upon entry to the United States. With an immigration policy in limbo and immigration laws largely arbitrarily enforced if at all, thieves and law breakers on behalf of people who should not legally be in the U.S. in the first place, are miles ahead of the behemoth U.S. government, always quick to create new agencies, with little thought given to their operations or funding.
Prior to 9/11 we as citizens and legal residents of the U.S. were already forced to deal with a wrath of criminal activity to which we lay victims, with a large portion of it stemming from the sophistication of computer technology and the growth of personal use of the internet. Identity theft and tax evasion had already reached astronomical proportions. But add to that the black market documentation theft rings at the behest of illegal aliens, who have but disdain for the word legal, we now have found ourselves in dire straights as personal identities are being stolen with no mechanism or political will to put a stop to it. As a result of their blind ignorance our elected officials could never have imagined that the Social Security administration would be shaken down by a different kind of terrorist, leaving individuals no protection and fending for themselves. But it continues to happen every day with ramifications which can haunt victims until they die.
We are no longer describing something as “simple” as fraud as the result of a stolen bank account or a line of credit due to theft of a Social Security number. That is nightmarish enough. But the Social Security card shark rings festering in the illegal alien community have given new meaning to the term “identity theft” which neither the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service or the Federal Trade Commission have any intention of investigating in an effort to correct such a critical problem. After all, the newly created Transportation Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the most recently created cabinet post of Director of Central Intelligence provide more than ample opportunity to plant blame.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans unknowingly have lent illegal aliens their Social Security numbers with the average victim having had it shared between 30 and 50 times. Sadly, while government agencies and private corporations are often aware of the rightful owners of the stolen Social Security numbers they purposely do not notify them, but do not hesitate to contact them for back taxes owed or unpaid loans racked up by the imposter a.k.a. illegal alien. And their buying of counterfeit cards, suppliers who steal them or others manufacturing them use a base of real people accounting for 90% of them. In fact a newborn baby with a Social Security number could already have bought a house by the time he is 6 months old!
The federal agencies are not involved in trying to tackle the problem because of their derived benefit from it in addition to corporate America’s. Therefore the perpetuation of the problem leads to additional taxes collected by the IRS and the SSA, while bank lenders sell more loans and employers get inexpensive labor. In one case an illegal alien was able to obtain a dozen credit cards, buy a car and take out an FHA loan using a stolen Social Security number and his own name. All agencies had a record of the abused Social Security number but refrained from notifying the victim.
The biggest travesty is that most consumers discover their breach of security by accident. Victims may not be told there is a problem unless the imposter misses a loan payment for example, as a victim’s credit report will not show a Social Security number used by someone else’s name. And credit applied for by a Social Security number thief will also not appear on the credit report. However, if the rightful person applies for credit not knowing there are several additional credit cards attached to his Social Security number, he may well likely be denied credit due to the extent of the credit line, albeit a perfect credit rating.
But it does not stop there. Victims can have trouble in receiving Social Security Disability Benefits, unemployment benefits or even their Social Security retirement funds. Others are harassed by the IRS looking for payment of income taxes for earned wages by their imposters who do not properly file income taxes. Why would they? Everything in America is free, isn’t it? But the problem does not go away. It resurfaces every April 15th for as long as the illegal is shaking down the system. The IRS is specifically responsible for enforcing the requirement that employers collect accurate Social Security numbers, but has never once levied a fine against a corporation for failing to do so.
And as the Bush administration looks to “fix” the funding of Social Security there is $420 billion sitting in accounting limbo. For every worker paying FICA taxes toward their Social Security fund, millions of payments are made to the SSA with mismatched names and numbers. Since the SSA has no idea who deserves credit for the taxes paid by those wage earners, no one gets credit for it. And that amount is in the hundreds of billions of dollars referred to as the Earnings Suspense File. About 50% of the fund comes from industries such as agriculture, restaurants, construction and various service-oriented businesses. You connect the dots.
James Huse, Jr., the former inspector general of the SSA stated, “It is unlikely the agency will ever inform potential victims……the politics of immigration get involved in this. This is the schizophrenia of the federal government. The Homeland Security people are screaming about the accuracy of records and you have the IRS taking money from wherever it comes.” So is there need for immigration reform or more laws, rules and agencies? I think not.
Some say that financial crimes are more numerous than terrorist related crimes. But in this case one would have to argue that the stealing of one’s lifetime earnings, Social Security retirement funds, rights to unemployment benefits, while breaking tax laws and committing bank fraud by way of false documentation more than qualifies as terrorist related. Embedded in our interior, never knowing when they will strike, like most terrorists they also have no regard for the public-at-large. But most distressing of all is that these nouveau-terrorists have carte blanche to continue to personally terrorize us as they invade the U.S., with a government which continues to walk the fine line of betraying the public trust.
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MEXICO ACCUSED OF ABUSING ITS ILLEGALS
3/31/05
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The State Department says that the Mexican government, angry that a thousand American volunteers will begin an Arizona border vigil next month, consistently violates the rights of illegal immigrants crossing its southern border into Mexico.
Many of the illegals in Mexico, who emigrate from Central and South America, complain of “double dangers” of extortion by Mexican authorities and robbery and killings by organized gangs.
The State Department’s Human Rights Practices report, released only last month, cites abuses at all levels of the Mexican government, and charges that Mexican police and immigration officials not only violate the rights of illegal immigrants, but traffic in illegal aliens.
Although Mexico demands that its citizens’ rights be protected when they illegally enter the United States, immigrants who cross illegally into Mexico “are often ripped off six ways until sundown,” says George Grayson, a professor at the College of William & Mary and a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
Mr. Grayson, who wrote a report for the center on Mexico’s abuses of aliens, says “very little” is being done by Mexico to protect the welfare of the Central Americans and the others who cross into Mexico.
Mexican President Vicente Fox said last week that his government will sue in U.S. or international courts if the volunteers — part of the Minuteman Project, which is designed to protest the Bush administration’s lax immigration policies — break the law.
“We totally reject the idea of these migrant-hunting groups,” Mr. Fox said prior to yesterday’s Baylor University summit in Waco, Texas, with President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, at which the countries agreed to improve security and unify business practices.
“We will use the law, international law and even U.S. law to make sure that these types of groups ... will not have any opportunity to progress,” Mr. Fox said last week.
In response, Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, urged Mr. Fox to respect America’s right to defend its borders and “demonstrate perhaps a little less disdain for the rule of law north of the border.”
Mr. Kyl said Mr. Fox’s “pre-emptive threats” to file lawsuits on behalf of those crossing the border unlawfully “is hardly helpful, since it presumes that illegal aliens have more of a right to break American law than American citizens have to peacefully assist authorities in enforcing it.”
Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, says Mexico had “raised the bar on chutzpah” by criticizing efforts by the Minuteman volunteers to protest immigration enforcement by the U.S. government.
“Since when are ‘Neighborhood Watch’ citizens ‘vigilantes’?” Mr. Tancredo asked. “President Fox thinks we should tear down the fence that keeps illegal aliens out? Then why doesn’t he put up a welcome sign on his southern border with Guatemala instead of using his military to keep poor Guatemalans out? Such hypocrisy about borders defies historic parallel.”
In a press conference yesterday in Waco, President Bush described the Arizona volunteers as “vigilantes.”
Alfonso Nieto, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, said the presence of “vigilantes” on the border “will only exacerbate a climate of unease and provide sources of confrontation that will not contribute to solving the flow of economic migrants demanded by the U.S. government.”
Mr. Nieto would not comment on suspected immigrant abuses in his own country, but Mexican government officials earlier said Mr. Fox created a national program on human rights to address problems.
James Gilchrist, one of the Minutemen organizers, who expects to send 30 private planes aloft to patrol the border, said the volunteers will not confront the aliens, but report them to the Border Patrol. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona said it will post legal observers to monitor the Minutemen.
Mr. Grayson says most of Mexico’s abuses occur along its 600-mile border with Guatemala, and that three groups — criminals, local police and immigration agents — account for most of the mistreatment. He said Mexico’s efforts to promote professionalization among its own border officials “thus far have achieved limited success.”
About 200,000 immigrants were detained last year on Mexico’s southern border, most of them from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Most of them were trying to reach the United States.
Mr. Bush, to criticism by both Democrats and Republicans, proposes to hire 210 new Border Patrol agents instead of the 2,000 set out in the intelligence-overhaul bill that he signed in December. The Senate voted last week to provide additional funding for the 2,000 agents in next year’s budget, signaling a willingness to challenge Mr. Bush on immigration security.
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