Immigration “Reform” Will Be National Security Disaster

Counterterrorism Blog

By Bill West

Last year it appeared we dodged the bullet when proposed immigration reforms died on “The Hill.” Unfortunately, the mad rush to “do something” has taken over the common sense of too many of our political leaders and we may actually see some form of immigration reform become law in the near future. Most unfortunately, if this “reform” includes the proposed legalization and guest worker provisions currently being touted, whatever euphoria the politicos and the media may experience won’t last long because nothing passed in that context will work in the real world. In a nutshell, here’s why.

The Federal immigration bureaucracy that will be tasked with administering any of these reforms will be the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CIS is already unable to effectively deal with its existing benefit adjudication missions. Virtually all internal and external Government reviews of CIS performance have established significant problem areas, including lack of resources and management performance. The bad ghosts of the old INS, from where CIS sprang, linger in a big way. To expect an already overburdened and poorly managed Federal agency to properly deal with a sudden huge increase in mission workload is a fantasy.

CIS has indicated it would need to bring in private contractor personnel to help deal with the monumental workload increase from reform legislation. Such contractors will invariably be quickly hired, poorly trained, probably low-bid, barely vetted and far more subject to bribery and corruption than permanent Government employees.

Not that bribery and corruption will necessarily be that necessary. In short order, the system will be overwhelmed. Whatever minimal fraud detection and prevention safeguards might be erected won’t last long in the face of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of applications and petitions to be adjudicated. What that means is the information provided on those applications and petitions, and whatever supporting documents they may have (if any), will essentially be taken at face value. Whatever the applicant alien tells the adjudicator will essentially be taken at face value. There will be little time or process available to verify anything, perhaps beyond running the applicant’s name through a standard battery of computer databases (and, even that may become so time consuming some will slip through the cracks).

And those names of the applicant aliens...those aliens who, for whatever time period they have been “undocumented” (illegal) in the United States, wherein so very many have procured and utilized false and fraudulent identification documents often in false identities...suddenly the Government will accept as true whatever those applicant aliens tell the Government on those applications and in those interviews. An undocumented alien who procured and used false documents would lie? Well, not when applying for genuine status in the US...right? So, we can be absolutely certain of who all these newly legalized persons truly are, correct? Their statements will be truthful and their support documents not fraudulent and false, right? So, when the overburdened CIS personnel...to include those minimally trained contractors...quickly process all those applicant aliens, with the primary mission of reducing the huge case backlog, the American public can feel confident in the integrity of that process that no foreign criminal or terrorist will possibly slip through the system and be granted legal status...a “path to citizenship”...like so many others have during normal immigration times.

Add to the inevitable processing breakdowns will be the inevitable “me too” class action lawsuits. Large segments of excluded illegal alien populations will invariably obtain savvy legal counsel who will initiate Federal Court legal challenges to the law, claiming their clients should also be entitled to the benefits extended to others under the statute. This happened as a result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the other supposed one-time only legalization/amnesty, and those lawsuits lasted more than a decade resulting in many tens of thousands more illegal aliens ultimately being allowed to remain in the US. It will surely happen again.

The devil truly is in the details. Conveniently for the politicians on both sides of the aisle pushing for a feel good bill, they are ignoring real world details in all this. If what is being proposed on the Hill becomes law, contrary to what some political leaders claim, there will be significant security risks emanating from the process.

By Bill West on May 17, 2007 3:12 PM