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Congress Approves Private Bill To Help Illegal Immigrant

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Last Updated: Mon, 12/20/2010 - 3:44pm

A rare private bill recently approved by the United States Congress will allow an illegal immigrant living in southern California to remain in the country and become a permanent resident.

The secret law on behalf of one individual appears to be a growing trend among some pro-amnesty Democrats who are quietly blocking the deportations of illegal aliens and sponsoring clandestine legislation to keep the violators in the country indefinitely. Just a few weeks ago three federal lawmakers from California and Ohioblocked the removal of a Guatemalan arrested for driving without a license and a Peruvian who benefits from taxpayer-financed discounted tuition at a public college.

A few days ago Congress passed a law to let a San Diego-area man (Shigeru Yamada) who emigrated from Japan at the age of 10 to stay in the U.S. Congressional approval of bills that benefit just one person is highly unusual and hasn’t occurred in years. Usually reserved for extreme situations with strong public backing, the special measures must be sponsored by a member of the U.S. House or a U.S. Senator and community support usually plays a role in the process.

Yamada’s law was co-sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and San Diego Congressman Bob Filner, who is also sponsoring eight other individual laws related to immigration. Feinstein, who lost a powerful committee chairmanship amid a corruption scandal, leads the Senate in using private bills to keep illegal immigrants in her northern California home town from being deported.

A former San Francisco mayor who was elected to the Senate in 1992, Feinstein introduced 40% of last year’s private measures, according to a news report that highlights several of the illegal aliens that she helped evade deportation. Among them is a Philippine woman ordered to leave the U.S. after two decades, a deported family of Egyptians that overstayed a tourist visa by more than 10 years, a Mexican family that has lived in her district for two decades and an Asian couple that entered the country more than 25 years ago as tourists and never left.

Recently, Feinstein used her political power to halt the removal of an illegal alien from Peru who attended San Francisco Community College before getting arrested by immigration authorities. The veteran lawmaker has introduced legislation to permanently shield the 20-year-old man, Steve Li, from deportation and managed to delay his removal with a separate bill.

Feinstein promoted her pro-amnesty, open-border agenda on the Senate floor over the weekend while pushing legislation (DREAM Act) to give illegal aliens who graduate from an American high school and enter college or the military a pathway to citizenship. The measure, which passed the House, failed 55-41 in the Senate. In an attempt to get her colleagues’ support, Feinstein said that the illegal immigrants who would benefit from the DRAM Act are “just like every other American…”

Border Officials Let Millions Enter U.S. Without Proper ID

Last Updated: Tue, 12/21/2010 - 12:38pm

While the Obama Administration is busy controlling the American diet and bringing “environmental justice” to the inner city, it’s failing miserably to protect the nation from terrorists by allowing millions of travelers to enter the U.S. without proper identification.

For more than a year and a half, the Homeland Security agency charged with safeguarding the country’s borders has blown off a crucial measure that requires all travelers to provide a passport or secure identification before entering the United States. The security rule, known as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, was implemented at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to protect the U.S.from another terrorist attack.

As of June 2009 all American, Canadian, Mexican and Bermudian citizens must provide a passport or other secure identification that establishes the traveler’s nationality and identity before entering the U.S. More than 18 months later, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers are not enforcing the law, which was passed by Congress in 2004 as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.

In the first eight months after the law took effect, 2.3 million travelers failed to provide proper paperwork at U.S. land ports of entry, according to a Homeland Security Inspector General report made public this week. It turns out that CBP, which claims to protect the American public against terrorists and the instruments of terror, never really intended to enforce the law even though it’s received $365 million in the last two years to do it.

CBP internal policy divulged by auditors only requires travelers who provide “improper paperwork” multiple times to undergo added inspection. In fact the agency has not yet finalized the operating procedures its officers will use to verify the identity and citizenship of noncompliant travelers, according to the Homeland Security Inspector General. CPB officials claim that “other priorities” have precluded them from completing the operating procedures.

Checkpoints in Texas have the country’s lowest compliance rate, with more than 1.1 million people—one out of ten—arriving without proper identification. California was second with nearly 500,000 during the eight-month audit period and New York third with almost 190,000. This sort of government negligence is simply unacceptable and should outrage all law-abiding Americans.

Investigators state the obvious by writing that, until the document requirement is fully enforced, CPB, also known as “America’s frontline”, continues to “incur risk” that travelers falsely claiming to be citizens of the four countries will be admitted into the U.S. CBP officials say they are “evaluating methods” to enforce the security measure though they expressed concern about scrutinizing the “legitimate” traveler who is “uninformed, forgetful or impoverished.”

TSA Misses Guns, Bombs In Tests

Last Updated: Mon, 12/20/2010 - 12:48pm

While the government agency responsible for securing the nation’s transportation system harasses honest citizens with invasive, genital-groping personal searches, guns and bombs regularly get past inept Homeland Security screeners.

At major airports throughout the United States undercover agents have slipped a shocking number of weapons through security checkpoints during covert exercises conducted randomly since the devastating 2001 terrorist attacks. Reports on the so-called “red team tests,” are kept secret by the government, but a major news agency got wind of some results and they are downright scary.

In secret tests at major airports such as Los Angeles International and Chicago’s O’Hare, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers missed loaded guns, bombs and other types of explosives in dozens of cases. The recent lapses indicate that little has changed since a 2007 government audit revealed that airport security screeners missed hundreds of fake bombs during tests at three major airports. In those runs, TSA agents in Los Angeles, among the world’s busiest airports, missed 75% of the bogus bombs and screeners at O’Hare missed 60%.

Just last fall an Iranian-American businessman (Farid Seif) boarded an international flight in Houston with a loaded Glock pistol in his computer bag. TSA missed it even though the bag was x-rayed. Upon returning to Houston Seif informed Homeland Security officials of their failure—and his “honest mistake”—and a TSA spokesman confirmed it in the news story, saying the agency “had taken steps to address it.” ASouth Dakota political news site published a piece titled: “TSA Gropes Children, Misses Iranian’s Gun.”

Unfortunately these types of lapses are not uncommon, according to the nation’s former Homeland Security Inspector General. He confirmed that guns, knives and fake explosives get through airport security checkpoints too often even though they are the most critical layer of aviation security. In fact, the TSA was created specifically to keep American travelers safe after Islamic terrorists crashed commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Instead the 50,000-member Homeland Security agency has repeatedly come under fire for its negligence and shameful lapses. Over the years TSA has approved background checks for illegal immigrants working in sensitive areas of a busy U.S.airport and has failed miserably to ensure the security of tens of thousands of cargo packages transported daily in the bellies of passenger planes.

Just last month a Massachusetts news station revealed that TSA cleared dozens of illegal immigrants to train as pilots in the U.S., despite “strict security controls” implemented after 9/11. Some of the illegal immigrants provided the station with official TSA documents approving pilot lessons through the agency’s alien flight student program. After the story broke, Homeland Security officials promised to “review the process” for clearing foreign nationals to become licensed pilots.

U.S. Ignores Serious Threats Along Northern Border

Last Updated: Tue, 12/14/2010 - 4:26pm

While the U.S. failure to secure the Mexican border is a perpetual headliner, serious national security issues also prevail along the northern border and some of the alarming details are featured in a new government report that’s been redacted to avoid disclosing sensitive information.

It says that the U.S. Border Patrol isn’t adequately guarding a rural and dangerous stretch of the Canadian border that runs from Washington to Montana and is rife with drug smuggling and potential terrorism and gang threats. The area is considered an important entry point for aircraft that smuggle drugs from Canada, according to the findings of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress.

A Montana senator requested the probe to assess drug trafficking and terrorist threats along the mostly unmanned, 1,000-mile stretch of federal land adjacent toCanada. The entire northern border is around 4,000 miles, but the quarter that is federal and tribal land is especially difficult to patrol because the remote and rugged terrain limits law enforcement presence.

The investigation also includes the 800 miles of federal and tribal land situated along the Mexican border, which is equally vulnerable to illegal cross-border activity. Much has been written about that over the years, however, and the media inArizona and Texas regularly covers the crisis while the north is largely ignored.

Because the terrain is inaccessible and Border Patrol resources are limited, the scope of criminal activity is mostly unknown, according to the GAO findings. The Homeland Security agency responsible for protecting the border simply doesn’t have the manpower or tools to do its job in treacherous terrain spanning fromWashington to Montana.

The problem is biggest in the Border Patrol’s Spokane sector, which is a prime entry point for high-potency marijuana from Canada. The sector covers five national forests, two wilderness areas and a national park. Border Patrol officials admit that the level of illegal activity is significantly higher than what’s reflected in the number of drug seizures and apprehensions, which has actually decreased in the last few years.

Smuggling of drugs and other contraband in the area is substantial, according to Border Patrol assessments included in the report, though actual figures may never be known. The agency also admits there are risks related to terrorism and gangs yet most of the sector is a low-level monitored area that remains vulnerable to exploitation.

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