My Kingdom for a Movie Ticket

U.S. immigration policy is a JOKE.

A few days ago, a local newspaper in California reported what’s been known for quite some time: the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) is giving employees cash and prize bonuses to “fastrack” immigration applications to reduce a backlog, at the expense of properly vetting the documents for criminal background and national security concerns.

In some cases, national security red flags are ignored because investigating, which is what the USCIS is tasked to do, would slow down the process!

If the average government employee worked quickly, and maintained accuracy and quality control, fastracking wouldn’t be a problem. But…need I say it? Most people I know working for the feds care little about what they’re doing and more about the security of a federal job. Add to that the enticement of cash, time off, and movie tickets for moving applications, and you’ve got a disaster in the making.

If you regularly read this blog and actually follow links to sources, this fastracking news won’t be new. In July, I wrote about Michael J. Maxwell, former director of USCIS’s Office of Security and Investigations. He testified (PDF) before the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation in April about fraud and corruption at USCIS. He sent me a link to his July testimony (PDF) about the Senate’s amnesty-for-illegal-aliens bill.

Maxwell exposed ineptitude that reaches the very top. In “The trouble with U.S. immigration policy,” I wrote (emphasis added):

Maxwell testified about USCIS’s policy on applicant background checks. If an employee learns that an applicant is the target of an ongoing investigation by agencies like the FBI or CIA, he must contact those agencies to find out why and wait for an answer. According to USCIS’s official instructions, if an employee hasn’t received a response within 40 days, he may assume the results of the request are negative and continue processing the application. Maxwell added that some employees had been told to ignore potential national security concerns because doing the necessary investigative work slows down processing times.

Paper-pushing trumps safety. Maxwell said that he repeatedly tried to warn USCIS director Emilio Gonzalez (shown above at a citizenship ceremony) about these problems, and Gonzalez repeatedly ignored him. Gonzalez is just another useless, complacent, overpaid government bureaucrat with benefits.

USCIS leadership wouldn’t give Maxwell the funds to do his job and ushered him out the door when he wouldn’t relent from trying to do his job.

Not only is there a backlog in immigration applications, but employee criminal background paperwork piled up, too. The people tasked with the important responsibility of running background checks on foreigners trying to enter the country haven’t been checked out themselves!

As someone who’s gone through a background check to work for the federal government for a position that required a mere “Confidential” clearance, I can attest to how thorough and nerve-wracking it can be. Federal agents went to South Carolina to ask my mother all sorts of questions about me. I was to have access to confidential information contained in sealed case files (surely much less serious than immigration documents, don’t you think?), and the government checked for a criminal record, scoured my financial background, wanted to know where I lived for the past 10 years, etc. After receiving what felt like an enema, I was finally allowed to enter the building at my new job. And this was pre-9/11!

But some USCIS employees who decide who enters the country, who gets asylum, and who becomes citizens haven’t been investigated! In some cases, they don’t have the proper clearance and can’t access national security databases. So with incomplete clearances themselves, they approve applications.

I wonder what sort of background check a likely spy had before he was hired by USCIS? An Iraqi-born man who’d visited several terrorist-sponsoring countries and had been turned down for employment in other federal agencies because of a suspicious background was hired by USCIS to approve asylum applications! The man was finally canned after approving 180 applications. Maxwell said his investigation revealed national security red flags in 24.

The Washington Times covered it. I check the Washington Post regularly, and I don’t remember reading a story about Maxwell’s testimony. This is the kind of crap the Washington Post writes about: sappy human interest stories about illegal aliens gaming the system and reaping rewards for their crimes. The smiling idiot in the photo, with his adorable kids, of course, admitted jumping the border and using a phony Social Security number (So what? says the SSA). I can sympathize with the criminal for wanting to be here instead of the stink hole from which he fled, but my sympathy stops when people decide to break the law to get what they want.

It frustrates me beyond rationality that few people seem to be upset about our lax immigration policy or that mainstream media, so-called public watchdogs, won’t cover it. Nobody really cares about this, really, not the corporations or elite liberals who hire illegal aliens under the table or the media.

It’s just a few conservative bloggers, newspapers, and “fringe” groups (Judicial Watch, Numbers USA, FAIR, CIS…) trying to keep these harrowing details about our dangerously lax immigration enforcement efforts in circulation. Empty election-time gestures appease some folks, I guess.

What are you doing to help?

Update: The immigration posts don’t even generate a lot of comments anymore. I’m not comment-fishing. Just reality-checking.