PrintJune 19, 2007
Flashback: Immigration fraud and the Presidency
Do you remember the name Doris Meissner? Ms. Meissner was Bill and Hillary Clinton's Administrator of the INS (Immigration & Naturalization Service). Before Clinton ran for his second term in 1996, Meissner ensured that hundreds of thousands of illegals were fraudulently legalized, just in time to vote for the Clintons.
Among those intimately involved with this massive Democrat immigration fraud were Rahm Emanuel, the architect of the 2006 Democrat Congressional takeover, and Al Gore, currently playing Planetary Prophet of Doom to loud acclaim around the world. Hillary must have known all about the immigration scam, since the Clintons were running for re-election. Oh, and by the way, Mohammed Atta was found and released twice by the INS for immigration violations. Before he knocked down the Twin Towers and killed 3,000 Americans.
According to David Schippers, one of the few honest Democrats left in the country, writing in the Wall Street Journal,
"In the end, the (Clinton-Gore) White House got their one million voters and re-election. The U.S. got 75,000 new citizens who had arrest records when they applied; an additional 115,000 citizens whose fingerprints were unclassifiable and were never resubmitted; and a final 61,000 who were given citizenship without even having their fingerprints submitted so that no check was possible...In June 1998, we undertook to again pick up the investigation of the program. Our interest intensified when we heard that a similar plan may be in the works for the 2000 presidential election. Among other things, we wanted to find out if the criminals who were given citizenship in 1996 were continuing their criminal activity in the two years since. My staff pulled out about 100 of the most violent or serious crimes that were committed by aliens prior to naturalization and documented by arrest records...Of those 100 records, some 20% showed arrests for serious crimes after the subject was given citizenship. The charges included murder, rape and child sexual abuse. Based on those results, we resolved to ask for updates on every arrest record. Had we been given enough time to put together evidence and witnesses, Citizenship USA might even have figured in Mr. Clinton's impeachment trial."
The 1995-6 Clinton INS fraud is critically relevant today, with the Senate immigration bill playing Godzilla Returns, not to mention Hillary running for eight more years.
Here's a guess: The USG immigration bureaucracy is rife with corruption. Why? Because with immigration from Mexico come huge amounts of drugs, with drugs come billions of dollars, and with massive amount of money comes pervasive corruption. The Doris Meissner saga says as much. That doesn't mean everybody in the Border Patrol and INS is tainted. You don't have to corrupt everybody. It does suggest that the US Government is getting Mexicanized, long before Mexican immigrants can become Americanized.
That means that we need to do more than defeat the present pathetic immigration bill before the Senate. We must elect a new president in 2008 who can change the bureaucracy.
I'm impressed by Mitt Romney and Rudi Giuliani, because they have been administrators in Democrat-populated governments, Rudi in New York City and Mitt in Massachussetts. Both were strikingly successful in making their turgid bureaucracies finally work on behalf of ordinary citizens. Fred Tompson also looks like a man of integrity - but he may not have the mojo to win over the bunkered bureaucracy, just as George W. Bush has not been able to move the set-in-concrete establishment in Washington.
(Needless to say, Hillary is hopeless from an immigration point of view; my guess is that Obama is, too.)
Only a new president with guts, integrity, managerial skills and the determination to solve the problem can handle this one.
It can be done, because it has been done before.
In an important piece in the Christian Science Monitor John Dillin described "How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico."
Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond.President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol.... In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph "Jumpin' Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner.Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.
Sounds familiar? Yes.
By mid-June of 1954,
Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas (in California and Arizona) with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country. ... By mid-July, the crackdown extended northward into Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, and eastward to Texas. ... By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily.
This was the World War II generation in action. We might do it differently today, as suggested by New Gingrich and Mitt Romney. There are many ways to make the system work again.
The point is that immigration enforcement has worked before. It can work again.
Today, entrenched establishment interests want to subvert the border again. We are back in 1954. Corruption is part of the picture.
The one advantage we have today is an aroused citizenry with the blogosphere as a megaphone with a million voices.
Electing an effective president next year is at least as important as defeating the pathetic immigration bill today.
And we need to keep up the pressure.
It can be done.
James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com/
