Just yesterday I wrote a commentary about the value of United States citizenship not only to decent law abiding citizens of our country but also to a small group of terrorists and criminals who understand that the coveted United States passport that citizens of our nation are eligible to receive enables them to move freely across our nation, gain access to various jobs that may have national security implications and also provides them with the ability to move freely across our nation’s borders and often easily gain entry into other countries.

“[CIA Director] Michael V. Hayden, [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike]Mullen and others have long said that al Qaeda was recruiting and training Westerners and people familiar with the West,” the military intelligence official said. “U.S. passports are especially prized.”

The enormous value of Americans to al Qaeda means that the group takes extra care with U.S. recruits. However, the military intelligence official explained, this also makes it difficult to determine at what stage of training the group may have been.”

As you read the news article, please pay special attention to the way that terrorists often use false names or alter their names in order to hide in plain sight as they go about their preparations to carry out terrorist attacks.

The use of false names is a component of how immigration fraud is often perpetrated.  I have been doing everything in my power, ever since I decided to speak out about the way that terrorists and criminals have become adept at gaming the immigration system in order to conduct their crimes of extreme violence against their innocent victims.

Immigration fraud was what made the terrorist attacks of 1993 in our country possible, first at the CIA in January 1993 and then, just one month later when terrorists planted and detonated a powerful truck bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center that left 6 innocent people dead, hundred injured and an estimated one half billion dollars in damage inflicted on that iconic jewel of the Manhattan skyline.

As I have also noted, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is the agency of the Department of Homeland Security that is charged with adjudicating all of the various applications for immigration benefits including the conferring of resident alien status upon aliens and even United States citizenship.  That agency has been blasted in a succession of reports of investigations conducted by the GAO (General Accountability Office) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) which is the “Internal Affairs” unit for every government agency.

The picture painted in report after report makes it clear that the only apparent goal of that agency is to move he bureaucratic assembly line ever faster to keep up with the massive deluge of applications that land on the desks of the adjudicators who work for that overburdened and inept agency.  USCIS is a bit like a dog that run in a circle attempting to catch his own tail- pity the dog that finally succeeds in catching up with his elusive tail and sinking his sharp teeth into it!  Pity our nation and our citizens as USCIS emulates that crazed dog!

Anyone with a shred of commonsense knows that there is an inverse relationship between quality control and speed.  The faster you move any assembly line, the more that quality will suffer.  The more that quality suffers at USCIS, the more that alien determined to defraud the system get away with it.  When these aliens succeed in defrauding the system, the more that it emboldens others to do the same.  As more aliens file applications laden with fraud, the more that the system needs to run ever faster to keep pace with the influx of applications.

Since the number one priority at USCIS is to keep up with the backlog of applications, the adjudicators must now work even faster and thus even more fraudulent applications are filed and approved and so it goes!

Now the administration is gearing up for a massive program they call “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”  I have come to refer to this as the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act!”

If USCIS is unable to deal with its current workload, what do you suppose will happen if ten, twenty or even thirty million illegal aliens who have no reliable way of verifying their true identities file for amnesty under Comprehensive Immigration Reform?

The adjudicators will be adjudicators in name only.  They will simply be rubber stamp operators whose mission will be to slap approval stamps on applications as they fly by on the bureaucratic conveyor belt at warp speed!

For all intents and purposes, under those circumstances, our government will have all but declared anyone born on the planet Earth to be a United States citizen!

If you wonder why I have said that perhaps thirty million illegal aliens will file applications to participate in that massive amnesty program, here is my reasoning:  (I challenge our nation’s “leaders” such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Janet Napolitano and even the President to tell me I am wrong- I would gladly debate them, but I assure they would never want to debate me!)

In 1986 when our nation enacted amnesty for illegal aliens, the original estimates of the number of illegal aliens who would avail themselves the opportunity to “come out of the shadows” was pegged at somewhere between one and one and a half million.  By the time the bureaucratic dust settled, an estimated 3.5 to 4 million illegal aliens filed their applications.

Perhaps there was an error in the way that the original estimate was arrived at.  Certainly you cannot rule out the idea that those who were so eager for that program might have intentionally misstated the number of illegal aliens who would jump on the line for amnesty.

Here is another factor, however:  It is my belief and the belief of many of my former colleagues at the INS, as the agency was known back then, that many illegal aliens simply entered the United States long after the cutoff date and fraudulently claimed to have been physically present in the United States for the requisite period of time.  Remember, we are talking about illegal aliens who had no verifiable way of proving their true identities.  There were no resources to have INS special agents head out into the field to conduct investigations to determine when illegal aliens actually entered the United States.

While it is true that the advocates for the Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act (Comprehensive Immigration Reform) tout the fact that the aliens will have to undergo a background check, as I have noted on so many occasions, including when I have testified before Congressional hearings, a background check bears absolutely no relationship to a background investigation.

A background investigation requires that the applicant who requires a background investigation be fingerprinted and fill out a lengthy form that asks many, many questions and then agents interview the applicant at great length, seeking to identify potential investigative leads.  These agents (or investigators) then head out to knock on doors and ask neighbors, colleagues and others all sorts of relevant questions to determine the necessary information in order to complete the investigation,  This process is costly and time consuming, often requiring several weeks to complete.

Today there are at least ten times as many illegal aliens who would avail themselves the opportunity to participate in the Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act (Comprehensive Immigration Reform.)  This would make it impossible for USCIS or ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to conduct any field investigations to seek to uncover fraud.  If the estimated number of aliens who were expected to participate in the 1986 amnesty ballooned from the original estimate of 1 million to perhaps 4 million, why would it not be reasonable to expect that ten million illegal aliens might suddenly become thirty or forty million?!

A background check, on the other hand, simply requires the applicant to fill out a relatively simple form and be fingerprinted.  A government employee or, perhaps, contractor, simply runs the fingerprint card through a computer database and also run the name that the applicant wrote down on his (her) application through a database.  If the applicant’s fingerprints come back as a “No Hit” meaning that he has not been convicted of a serious crime and if the name he gave comes back “clean,” then within 24 or 48 hours that alien would be provided with a temporary identity document that would enable him to immediately apply for and receive a Social Security card, a driver’s license and other such identity documents.  That is why such immigration identity documents are referred to as “breeder documents.”

If the alien in question was a terrorist who made a concerted effort to never run afoul of law enforcement, then it is a virtual certainty that his fingerprints would come back “clean.”

If the alien in question provided a false name because he (she) knew his real name was possibly on a terror watch list, the false name would also come back clean because it is a false name!  Suddenly, by gaming the immigration system that terrorist would have placed himself, in a manner of speaking, into his own “witness protection program!”

If, as I have often noted that the only thing worse than no security is false security, then this program would provide our nation with tons of false security!

Now if that doesn’t do enough to keep you awake at night,  here is something else I am willing to bet most of you did not know about the citizenship process.

When an alien files to become a United States citizenship through the naturalization process, he is able to also legally change his name!

Stop and let those words sink into you head…

If an alien was concerned, for example, that his real name might be on some country’s terror watch list and if we somehow provided him with resident alien status because his application for residency was among the 6 million or 7 million applications that were filed with USCIS when he applied for residency, perhaps by committing a marriage fraud, then that alien might decide that a bright shiny new United States passport in a brand new shiny identity might be the best way to easily travel around the world and gain access to the borders of a variety of countries he might be interested in entering in conjunction with his nefarious terrorist goals.

All that the terrorist would have to do is indicate on his naturalization application that he wants a new name.

Our government would then provide him with a brand new name and a United States passport in that brand new name!

Many years ago, Yakov Smirnoff, a Russian comedian who immigrated to the United States used to tell a bunch of jokes about the difference between Russia and the United States.  He would often end the string of differences with the three word line about America: “What a country!”

What a country, indeed!

Our nation truly appears to be led by the “Not ready for prime time players” or worse!