STATEMENT OF MICHAEL W. CUTLER, SENIOR SPECIAL AGENT, INS (RET.) FOR INCLUSION INTO THE RECORD OF HEARING “OVERSIGHT OF U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES” CONDUCTED BY THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE ON MAY 11, 2010
(For Part 1 of this statement, click here; for Part 2, click here)
On a personal note, my own mother legally immigrated to the United States as a teenager several years before the onslaught of the Holocaust that caused the slaughter of so many people including members of my own family- my mother’s mother among them and for whom I was named. My mother lived in a rooming house and worked in an umbrella factory when she first arrived in the United States and was paid just three dollars per week. She never had the opportunity to gain an education. She never completed public school. My dad was born in Brooklyn to an immigrant family that came from Russia at the beginning of the last century but because of his family’s situation, he never went beyond the 8th grade. My parents, however, made certain that I went to college. This was the way, they told me, that I would secure my thin slice of the “American Dream.”
Therefore I was greatly disturbed to watch and listen to Alan Greenspan’s testimony when he testified before a hearing conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration on April 30, 2009 about Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Mr. Greenspan made a statement that included the following excerpt:
“The second bonus would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.”
In reviewing Mr. Greenspan’s testimony I was compelled to review the portion of the INA that deals with the issuance of temporary work visas.
Under the INA, the law excludes aliens seeking to immigrate “for the purpose of performing skilled or unskilled labor,” except that such aliens may be eligible for a visa if: the Secretary of Labor has determined that (A) there are not sufficient United States workers who are able, willing, qualified and available at the time of application for a visa and admission into the United States and at the place where the alien is to perform the work, and (B) the employment of the alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of the United States workers similarly employed.”
Clearly what Mr. Greenspan had called for- the significant increase in quotas or perhaps even the elimination of quotas for temporary work visas to address the “income inequality” between America’s skilled and unskilled workers and thereby stop making a “privileged elite” to use his terminology, out of American workers who have skills or education. Mr. Greenspan’s stated goals would appear to run contrary to the letter and spirit of the immigration laws concerning foreign workers. His goals would reduce the salaries of American middle class workers.
If our government was to take Mr. Greenspan’s advice, there would be no reason for an American student to attend a trade school or even college. USCIS is charged with adjudicating applications filed by aliens seeking to change their status to that of an H-1B visa holder and other categories of temporary nonimmigrant workers.The fact that Senator Charles Schumer who chairs the Immigration Subcommittee in the Senate would hold that hearing and have Mr. Greenspan provide testimony that included such troubling language that reflected a mindset that appears to seek to end the concept of the “American Dream” has left me greatly concerned.
In view of this, I believe it would be of great importance to understand what measures are being taken at USCIS to combat fraud in the H-1B Program not only in terms of the potential impact that this may have on national security but on the way it may well impact the ability of the average American to support himself and his family, especially in this era of double digit unemployment where a record number of Americans are losing their tenuous grip on their position in the “middle class.”
It is now estimated that one in six Americans lives below the poverty level and foreclosures are at extremely high levels. Meanwhile in the name of an economic stimulus program our nation has run up a national debt that to my knowledge far and away exceeds any previous national debt level. Foreign workers have one fundamental goal in seeking employment in the United States- to send money back to their families in their home countries. This results in the wiring of tens of billions of dollars out of the United States each and every year. This is money that is not earned by Americans or resident aliens. This is money that is not spent in the United States. This is money that is not invested in the United States. This is money that is utterly removed from our nation’s beleaguered economy.
It reminds me, in fact, of an analogous situation where someone turns on the faucets on his bathtub but by leaving the drain open, he never has enough water in his tub to take a bath.
How much effort, therefore is given to making certain that artful attorneys don’t aid client companies and foreign workers in locking Americans and lawful immigrant aliens out of jobs they desperately need to stay afloat financially so that the attorneys can get their fees and companies can reduce labor costs to the detriment of the citizens of our country?
The mission of USCIS is comparable to the job of the locksmith who provides the keys to our country to aliens from around the world. The fact is that our nation is a “nation of immigrants” but it is absolutely essential that the process by which aliens seeking a variety of immigration benefits be treated fairly and with dignity. Yet combatting fraud must be a major part of the effort of this agency that has serious national security implications.
Combatting fraud requires that USCIS and ICE have an adequate number of special agents who can actually locate, investigate and arrest aliens and those who conspire with them to commit immigration fraud. Simply taking down an occasional large scale fraud ring may generate a headline but in order to really have the desired effect, USCIS and ICE must create a program such as the one I participated in more than 35 years ago. Today it would appear that there is little chance that an alien who engages in a marriage fraud or labor certification fraud will be detected. There is even a slimmer possibility that such criminal activities will result in the prosecution of those involved. This emboldens more aliens and more citizens to enter into criminal conspiracies to game the system. Immigration fraud is certainly not a victimless crime but it is a virtually prosecutionless (sic) crime that encourages ever more aliens to game the system and encourages ever more citizens to participate in these schemes to make a quick profit.
It has been said that you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. For hundreds of thousands of aliens who enter our country each year, the first impression they get of the United States of America comes from their contact with the enforcement and administration of the Immigration and Nationality Act. When it becomes virtual common knowledge that our government has no real interest or capability to secure our nation’s borders or enforce or administer the immigration laws effectively, the lesson is that in the United States you can expect to not only get away with violating our laws but you can be expected to be rewarded for violating our laws.
In my humble opinion this is a very dangerous first impression especially in this perilous era where the immigration benefits program administered by USCIS has been gamed repeatedly by criminals and terrorists as an embedding tactic.
It is this concern that compels me to touch on another issue. Today so many of our nation’s leaders are openly advocating for a program under the banner of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” that would provide aliens whose presence in our country represents a violation of law with a pathway to United States citizenship.
There is no way to know the true names or nationalities of these millions of aliens. Consequently there would be no way of determining when, where or how they entered the United States. There would be no way of determining whether these aliens had involvement with criminal or terrorist organizations.
The fact that each application would undergo a “security check” would only catch those aliens whose fingerprints were on file for having committed a criminal offense or had been previously encountered by the immigration system.
An alien who had never been fingerprinted and who provided a false name would easily acquire lawful status and official identity documents under that false name that would immediately enable him (her) to obtain a Social Security Card, a driver’s license and all other sorts of identity documents. The identity document that would be provided to an alien under the auspices of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” would be the ideal “breeder document” and would create a national security nightmare of unprecedented proportions.
The 1986 Amnesty that was supposed to encourage one million to one and a half million aliens to step out of the proverbial “shadows” resulted in approximately four million aliens coming forward to seek legalization including several terrorists among them.
There are a couple of reasons that we wound up with about 3 times as many aliens seeking legalization than were originally estimated. First of all there was apparently some undercounting- either intentional or unintentional. Second- and most importantly- there was absolutely no way of knowing how long an alien has been present in our country if they entered the United States without being inspected. There was no record of that person’s entry into the United States.
Today the estimated number of illegal aliens in our country range from a low of 12 million to a high of more than 30 million. If the lowest estimate is correct and if, as happened in 1986 we wind up with 3 times as many aliens stepping forward, then it must be presumed that more than 36 million aliens plus their families will line up for lawful status in our country, making an absolute mockery of the visa program by which aliens have traditionally sought to immigrate to the United States to begin their lives anew in our country. If the actual number of illegal aliens is closer to 30 million, then we are looking at a veritable human tsunami. There is absolutely no way I could imagine that the system could even begin to cope with the onslaught of so many aliens, all of whom are “undocumented” meaning that they do not possess even a shred of reliable official identity documents to attest to their true identities.
As for the current situation at USCIS, if fraud could be deterred in a meaningful way then perhaps the agency that has for decades been fixated on chasing the ever increasing backlog to the detriment of the integrity of the process might find the backlog actually shrink as fewer fraudulent applications were filed. This would be, to my thinking, a far more effective way of reducing the backlog of applications while actually increasing the integrity of the process and actually reducing the waiting time for those who file legitimate applications for various benefits including those who seek to share the American Dream and become a part of the tapestry of this magnificent nation.
Michael W. Cutler
Michael W. Cutler spent thirty years with the INS, including eleven as a senior special agent. An authority on the nexus between immigration and national security, Cutler has testified before more than a dozen Congressional hearings since 9/11/2001. He appears frequently on radio and television programs, including Lou Dobbs Tonight, Your World With Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck and the O’Reilly Factor. michaelcutler.net
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