This article about 1,200 illegal aliens being fired in Minnesota is important to consider for a number of reasons.

First of all, it is clear that illegal aliens are, indeed, doing the work Americans and lawful immigrants very much want to do. When these 1,200 illegal aliens were fired as a result of a field investigation conducted by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), all of those jobs were quickly filled, presumably by United States citizens and lawful immigrants. This makes it abundantly clear that a job freed up by removing an illegal foreign worker creates a job for an American worker.

While the open borders advocates like to parade a story about some illegal alien family and the tough times they are having, comparable stories about legal immigrants and Unites States citizens are all but impossible to find. Let me make this as clear as I can: When I was an INS special agent, I never saw an impoverished illegal alien who was being exploited by an unscrupulous employer as my enemy. My heart ached to see the abject poverty in which they all too often live and the outrageous treatment they often received at the hands of the exploitive employer.

On a number of occasions, when testifying before state legislative hearings in various states around our country, I heard open borders advocates – including representatives of various churches, chambers of commerce and so-called “immigrant rights” groups – talking about the need to consider the “dignity of the undocumented.” They would never dare use the factually accurate term illegal alien, clarity being something they never want to confront in this debate.

In response, I would relate my first hand experiences of seeing how these illegal aliens live. The squalor I encountered made me ill. I have seen filthy, rat and insect infested apartments that had been designed to house a family of four being used to house 20 or more illegal aliens. In these apartments the floors were covered from one end to the other by filthy bare mattresses that were laid end to end and side to side. Illumination was often provided by a bare light bulb at the end of a wire hanging out of the ceiling. Often we would find a “moving wall” in such apartments. This bit of gallows humor describes a situation where if you turn on a light in an apartment so infested by insects that the bugs scamper across the walls, making it all but impossible to determine the color of the walls because there are so many bugs. Another analogy would be to think about how the stands in the football stadium appear when all of the fans begin doing the “wave.”

The stench to be found in those apartments would often linger in my nostrils for more than a whole week.

Where is there dignity to be found in these situations? These people are so desperate that they will do anything to make some money. They will endure outrageous conditions at work and it is because of that desperation that unscrupulous employers hire them instead of American citizens or resident aliens who would never tolerate the deplorable substandard conditions these illegal aliens are willing to tolerate.

The reality is that those who advocate for open borders don’t care about the plight of the illegal aliens; they simply seek to gain money and political power that they can gain by exploiting the ever-increasing numbers of vulnerable illegal aliens.

These advocates are also oblivious to the fact that among the massive numbers of illegal aliens are many members of violent gangs and drug trafficking organizations who often prey upon the aliens in our country.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is now above 10.2 percent – and the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. Furthermore, that unemployment rate does not take into account those Americans who have given up looking for work or those who have become under-employed. This contributes to houses going into foreclosure and more Americans losing their ability to support their families and feed their children.

As more Americans lose their jobs, they spend less money and pay fewer taxes. As they lose their grasp on the “American Dream” their children face an uncertain future, as does our nation itself.

It is now estimated that one in six Americans now live below the poverty line.

If the vicious spiral of unemployment and mortgage foreclosures is to be stopped, more jobs need to be created or freed up for our citizens and lawful immigrants. That was the way the “Economic Stimulus Program” was sold to members of Congress and to the citizens of our nation. Our children’s and our grandchildren’s futures have been mortgaged to purportedly create new jobs- yet the unemployment rate continues to soar.

Politicians know what the great majority of our citizens want. Survey after survey has made it abundantly clear: The citizens of our nation want our borders secure and want the immigration system to have integrity. The problem is that most politicians know that certain deep pocketed contributors want our nation’s borders to remain open. They want foreign workers to come to the United States to drive down the cost of wages. They want illegal aliens who will work “off the books” and for whom they do not have to pay taxes or Workman’s Compensation. They want to have an unlimited supply of illegal alien workers who won’t demand prevailing wages or expect to be paid overtime or premium pay on weekends.

These same politicians know that they need to create the illusion of meeting the demands of their constituents will making damned certain that they satisfy the people who write those checks to fund their campaigns. The solution is to do whatever is necessary to create the illusion while leaving the borders open and enticing ever more illegal aliens to enter our country. This is the prism through which you should read the article I linked above.

It is, of course, a good thing that 1,200 jobs were freed up for Americans and resident aliens- that is the good news, but here is the bad news:

Mark Cangemi, the former ICE special agent who was quoted in the article, is right when he notes that the aliens had no adverse actions taken against them. They are still “out there,” undoubtedly seeking new jobs that will displace American and lawful immigrant workers at other locations.

I have been hammering away at this issue for quite some time – the situation of the employment of illegal aliens is comparable to the relationship between a hooker and the “John.” If law enforcement wants to eradicate prostitution, cops need to arrest both the prostitutes and their customers. When hookers are arrested but the John’s aren’t, those guys will generally just go elsewhere.

Once again, the goal of the administration is to create the illusion that the immigration issue is being dealt with while they make certain that nothing is done to discourage more illegal aliens from running our borders. I believe that this is, in part, why the politicians are offering health care to illegal aliens (the law passed by the House or Representatives says illegal aliens won’t qualify, but there is no provision to really check the identity of aliens who seek health care.)

Promising to enact “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” serves a similar purpose. Even if the bill for Comprehensive Immigration Reform ultimately fails to pass, the goal of enticing huge numbers of illegal aliens into our country will have succeeded. Millions of aliens are watching the political process and are paying close attention to what is going on (unlike most Americans!)

These aliens have been provided with a huge incentive to run our nation’s borders – the proposal that amnesty is about to be passed.

No matter what ultimately happens with this legislation, the open borders crowd has won – it is only a matter of how much they win. If Comprehensive Immigration Reform is enacted then the open borders crowd gets a grand slam home run, as many millions of illegal aliens would be accorded resident alien status and will ultimately be eligible to file applications for their families to legally immigrate to the United States. If Comprehensive Immigration Reform fails, many additional millions of illegal aliens would have entered our country anyway. With the high levels of fraud in the bureaucratic system at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), many of these aliens will easily defraud the immigration system and become resident aliens by engaging in marriage fraud and other such scams that defraud the immigration bureaucracy every day of the week.

Furthermore, by not arresting illegal aliens and making it known to the general public that illegal aliens will not be arrested, the flood gates remain open and thus the open borders crowd is getting what they want. Where immigration is concerned, the complicity of the politicians are making the open borders advocates dream come true and, at the same time, are creating a nightmare for our citizens!

This is a variation of the famous game of chance: “Heads they win; tails we lose.”

It is time that the citizens of our country actually win when our elected representatives go about their jobs, doing what is supposed to be the “People’s work.”

It is time that our government hired an adequate number of special agents for ICE. Today there are probably no more than 6,000 such agents and many of them are engaged in conducting investigations into violations of law comprehended under our customs laws. Customs laws deal with the movement of goods, money and resources across international borders. As one of my former colleagues at ICE recently lamented when we spoke, there appeared to be more concern that individuals were producing counterfeit brand-named articles than the fact that there are those who are producing counterfeit identity documents and passports.

The enforcement of the immigration laws impacts so many aspects of our nation today yet there are probably no more than 4,000 ICE special agents dedicated to enforcing the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. Meanwhile, the City of New York, the safest big city in the United States, according to statistics compiled in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, can most likely attribute that success to the fact that the NYPD has approximately 37,000 police officers. Let those numbers sink in! ICE has about 10 percent as many agents for the entire United States of America as the NYPD has cops enforcing the laws just for the City of New York.

The military has long understood the principle of “Boots on the ground.” Law enforcement is not different. While the open borders advocates often lament that the “immigration system is broken,” it is broken because there is a severe lack of resources. The great majority of immigration laws already on the books are just fine – what is needed is the political will to get the job done, matched by an appropriate increase in resources.

Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.

Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

About the author

Michael Cutler
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a recognized authority who regularly appears on radio and television programs, in addition to testifying before Congress, addressing the implications of immigration on national security and criminal justice. Cutler is part of AIM's Speakers Bureau. Send inquiries to speakers@aim.org