Photoshop courtesy of the Stein Report

My syndicated column today follows up yesterday’s post about Arlen Specter’s Gold Card program for illegal aliens.

Buy now, pay later:

This proposal is a gargantuan political and bureaucratic disaster. It’s a slap in the face to millions of naturalized Americans who followed the rules to follow their dreams, and to millions more legal applicants who are waiting in line to get here. Open-borders activists talk dreamily of bringing illegal aliens “out of the shadows” and into the American mainstream, while snubbing all the legal immigrants who have never hid from the law, disguised their true identities, or otherwise deceived authorities to live and work in the U.S.

Which side is the party of law and order on, anyway?

Amnesty-pushers argue that the Gold Card plan for illegal aliens is the only way to “deal with reality,” and that immediate mass deportation is “not practical.” Phony arguments. The reality is that the massive chasm at Ground Zero was facilitated by lax immigration enforcement. Business as usual is a recipe for another gaping hole. The policy decision is not between mass amnesty or mass deportation. It is a matter of prioritizing: Will Washington put enforcement first or not? Will it clean house, strengthen the borders, support rank-and-file interior enforcement employees, investigators, detention and deportation officers, and Border Patrol agents? Or will it undermine them?

Will it punish employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens? Or will it abet them? Will it enforce the laws on the books and make sure there are sanctions for immigration law-breaking? Or will it ignore those laws and create more incentives, rewards, and chaos instead?

***

Surprise, surprise. The Washington Times reports that USCIS director Emilio Gonzalez–who was appointed to his position despite having zero immigration law or enforcement experience–has had a sudden change of heart…

The director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said yesterday that the agency is now ready to run a guest-worker program, just five months after he told a Senate hearing that the agency was not prepared.

Emilio Gonzalez said the agency can handle whatever program Congress sets up, in part because much of the workload would be outsourced to contractors.

“We have the tools, we have the personnel, and I believe we have the structure to adequately handle a guest-worker program if and when we get one,” he said. “Obviously, we’ll need some additional tools and some resources, but we’re ready.” In October, at his confirmation hearing, Mr. Gonzalez told the Senate Judiciary Committee that USCIS wasn’t ready because “the systems that exist right now wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

Mr. Gonzalez said that “a lot of things have happened” in those months. He was sworn in as director early in January and said he has begun a reorganization that will leave a “leaner, more effective” staff. He also said technology upgrades were in the works. As for the workload — a concern for many in Congress, given an existing backlog of immigration-benefit applications — he said outsourcing to contractors will help. “We do that now, so this would be nothing new; it would just have to be done on a larger scale,” he said.

Yes, we all remember how well former INS/DHS contractors handle massive backlogs:

Meet the shredders.

***

Meanwhile, here’s the lowdown from someone who, unlike Gonzalez, actually has a clue:

Many immigration officers handling requests for green cards, citizenship and other immigration benefits do not have access to key law enforcement and national security databases, said a top federal security official who quit over the issue.

The officers’ access to the databases, which would allow them to check whether an applicant had a criminal record or was on the terrorism watch list, was cut off because the government has failed to complete required background checks on the immigration adjudicators.

Michael Maxwell stepped down last month as director of the Office of Security at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and sought protection under the federal whistle-blower protection law. He claims that senior agency officials had been retaliating against him for telling Congress about what he described as serious national security vulnerabilities that persisted despite his warnings to those running the agency.

In addition, Maxwell claims the agency lacks the resources to handle some 500 allegations of criminal misconduct against agency employees, including allegations of espionage and acceptance of bribes…

…Maxwell has warned about problems that keep vital information about applicants walled off from CIS employees who decide whether to grant immigration benefits.

That information is held in a database controlled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a separate part of the Department of Homeland Security, which has strict policies intended to keep the information from falling into the wrong hands.

Adjudicators for Citizenship and Immigration Services are given access to the database only after they have received a security clearance. But Maxwell has told Congress that the agency has been unwilling to pay for background investigations that Customs and Border Protection requires, his lawyer said.

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