Customs commissioner neglected to file forms on household employees (Bersin)

Washington Post ^ | May 14, 2010 | Ed O'Keefe

[AuntB]

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan D. Bersin said Thursday he didn't know he's required by law to file paperwork verifying that his household employees were authorized to work in the United States.

Bersin told senators that he and his wife tracked the immigration status of a nanny, house cleaners and babysitters "on a piece of paper that was on file in our home."

[the Real fifi]

You do realize that technically one must prepare these even for your next door neighbor’s kid who occasionally babysits for you?

At most, people may do this for full time employees esp in large households which employ more than one fulltime employee but certainly not for part timers .

[kcvl]

As Commissioner, Mr. Bersin oversees the operations of CBP’s 57,000-employee work force and manages an operating budget of more than $11 billion. Bersin formerly served as the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Special Representative for Border Affairs, informally known as the “Border Czar.”

Mr. Bersin is a former Secretary of Education for California, as well as a former superintendent of San Diego City Schools, past federal Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) and United States Attorney for the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, and former Attorney General’s Southwest Border Representative. He previously served as the chair of the executive committee of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

Throughout his career, Bersin has found himself in unfamiliar positions: as a prosecutor when he had little experience with criminal law, as a superintendent when he had little experience with education, and as head of the San Diego airport when he had little experience with aviation.

Bersin, who is fluent in Spanish, will be charged with fighting illegal immigration into the U.S. and will play a crucial role in controlling the escalation of violence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Circumventing the Senate, President Obama appointed Goldstein to the position during Easter 2010 recess; he can serve through 2011.

In 1993, Bersin was recommended by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and nominated by President Clinton as U.S. attorney for San Diego despite the fact that he had no prosecutorial experience and virtually no criminal-law background.

The Network
Bersin has always known some of the right people. He attended Harvard University at the same time as Vice President Al Gore, and met President Bill Clinton at Oxford University, where they were both Rhodes scholars. He then went to Yale Law School with Clinton and met Hillary Rodham Clinton. He played football at Harvard with movie actor and Gore roommate Tommy Lee Jones. His wife, Lisa Foster, is prominent in San Diego social and political circles.

Bersin knew Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano because they were both federal prosecutors in the Clinton administration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But it is money from relatives of Bersin’s wife, Lisa Foster, a superior court judge, that may raise eyebrows. Her mother, wealthy Rancho Santa Fe widow Pauline Foster, gave $2100 to Obama for America. And Richard Silberman, father of Jeff Silberman, who is married to Lisa’s sister Karen, gave a total of $3300 to the Obama campaign in March and August.

The Foster’s personal fortune had expanded dramatically, due in major part to their interests in real estate tied to the border. In a 1991 interview with San Diego Executive Magazine, Foster said he acquired his first parcel in Chula Vista, a tomato field, in 1962, and never stopped buying.

Companies that take space in buildings such as Foster’s are drawn to the area for obvious reasons,” the magazine said, including “border access for businesses with Mexican ties” and “low-cost labor in the South Bay and nearby Mexico.”

The Fosters, their future son-in-law Alan Bersin would be given great opportunity through marriage. Like Foster, he would also prosper in the realm of the border.

In 1991, while still in L.A., Bersin met and married second wife Lisa Foster, a daughter of Stan and Pauline Foster, owners of a large local garment factory and acres of South Bay real estate, with longstanding ties to the Democratic Party and connections along the Mexican border.

In 1992, as Bill Clinton ramped up his campaign for the presidency, Alan Bersin and Lisa Foster left their home in Los Angeles and moved to San Diego. Bersin took a sabbatical from Munger Tolles, ostensibly to manage the local Clinton campaign and teach law part-time at the University of San Diego, a Catholic school financially supported by many of the city’s wealthy Democrats, including the Foster family. To many, it appeared Bersin was being groomed for power.

Critics said Bersin was spending too much time schmoozing with members of the tightly knit Tijuana business establishment and friends of his father-in-law and not enough looking into money-laundering schemes used by the drug cartels. He called for easier border crossings for business people and trade and was a regular draw at banquets and business tributes on both sides of the border.

Though not widely known to the public, Bersin had a personal financial stake in border real estate held with his father-in-law and other family members. According to an agreement recorded October 2, 1996, Bersin, his wife Lisa, along with Stan and Pauline Foster and Marliskar, a family-related partnership, had formed Otay Terminal, a general partnership.

A disclosure Bersin filed with the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., showed that Otay Terminal owned four properties, including a trucking facility at 6930 Cactus Court on San Diego’s Otay Mesa, less than 2000 feet from the border with Mexico.

A trust controlled by Foster and his wife Pauline purchased the land on January 14, 1992, for $880,500, according to county records. Foster built a truck terminal and offices on the parcel, finishing the project on July 20, 1992, a notice of completion says. On January 14, 2003, the partnership sold the property for $3.5 million.

Though the Foster family partnership sold the truck terminal in 2003, Bersin and his wife have since acquired major financial stakes in other border-related ventures. A financial disclosure statement Bersin filed with the State of California in March 2006 revealed that he held between $10,000 and $100,000 of stock in “SafeMex/International Gateway.” He reported the same interest in a similar disclosure made May 9, 2009, with the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

According to its website, SafeMex sells insurance and emergency travel-assistance plans to foreigners going to Mexico.

Much, much more here...

http://tinyurl.com/2bg7jxh

[drpix]

You seem to totally miss the point.

Whatever law we are talking about and the merits of the law aside, should a Commissioner of a government agency enforcing that law against other Americans be expected to FULLY comply with that law?

Then you can add to this that Bersin's a lawyer and his wife is a judge - whose family has made their millions from employing non-citizens in their border sweatshop empire.

[kcvl]

Alan D. Bersin

In February 2009, Bersin was named co-chairman of a new binational task force, sponsored by the Mexico City–based Mexican Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, based in Los Angeles.

Though Bersin’s investment in Silicon Border did not make the papers in the United States, Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper reported in October 2007 that Bersin and Malin Burnham, identified by the paper as “U.S. investors” in Silicon Border, had discussed the project with Mexican economic secretary Eduardo Sojo and representatives of Fernando Maiz, the wealthy head of Maiz Edifications, a large Mexican construction conglomerate based in Monterrey.

In November 2007, Silicon Border announced that Maiz’s company would become the development’s “preferred contractor to design and manage the physical attributes of the Silicon Border Science Park,” said to be worth over $150 million. He was subsequently listed as a member of the project’s advisory board, alongside Elorduy and Burnham.

[AuntB]

BTT

[cpanter]

Again, can’t argue that it actually does any good.

I will argue that he no excuses for not doing it though.

[DoughtyOne]

When I saw Holder say he hadn’t even bothered to read the law, it told me he had, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. And evidently his staff couldn’t either.

Believe me, they’ve been pouring over this thing since it passed. Damned liars is what they are.

[gogeo]

They expect us to believe this. Surely nobody's that stupid, though...

Now, you know some are.

For the rest of us? I can't be civil with those who are rude to me, and insulting my intelligence is rude.

[gogeo]

Read post 22. In his position he should have known but this is peanuts. The I9 form is significant for large employers . For those hiring one or more part time or full time household employees, the filing out of this form and maintaining it seems et another piece of stupid make work...

EL...TORO...CACA!!!!!

This is no different than expecting your Treasury Secretary (and former head of the NY Fed) to file his f$#@ing taxes correctly!

Be as stupid as you want to be, but don't insult my intelligence!

[gogeo]

And how many employers of household employees follow this? And how many ever faced prosecution?

I don't care!

If it's not a big deal, repeal the f#@$ing requirement!

If you don't repeal it, enforce it! This selective enforcement of law is insane and unacceptable! It's what got us to where we are, up to our keisters in illegals.

This is one of the guys who is responsible for enforcing the law!

Again, be as stupid as you want to be, but don't expect the rest of us to follow you there.

[Cyman]

“Throughout his career, Bersin has found himself in unfamiliar positions: as a prosecutor when he had little experience with criminal law, as a superintendent when he had little experience with education, and as head of the San Diego airport when he had little experience with aviation.”

The two signs of a hack political animal; First that he is so rich he doesn’t need to work for a living and second has an ego big and false enough to think he is an expert on every subject from dogcatcher to President. Any one that is even a casual observer of San Diego politics knows this guy better than his wife knows him.

[the Real fifi]

Everyone has to file their tax returns with the IRS. And the head of the Treasury Dept should not be a tax evader.

Bersin may not be the best choice for this position but his failure to put the required information on a specific form that he kept in his own files just doesn’t do it for me. YMMV.

[Man50D]

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan D. Bersin said Thursday he didn't know he's required by law to file paperwork verifying that his household employees were authorized to work in the United States.

He graduated from the Timothy Geithner school of denial and innocence.

[maica]

As Commissioner, Mr. Bersin oversees the operations of CBP’s 57,000-employee work force and manages an operating budget of more than $11 billion.

$$$$$

And just what do these 57000 people do to earn their pay? The numbers in each of the seemingly hundreds of govt agencies are just staggering.

Are the TSA folks under his supervision? Or do we have 57000 border agents and customs officials.

[francky]

When I-9s first came on the scene, in my consulting time I spent many an hour with my clients reviewing I-9s. Another unenforceable law.”According to a memo by the Senate Finance Committee, Bersin has employed 10 household employees since 1993 and failed to complete I-9 forms for all of them. The I-9 form is issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which shares immigration enforcement responsibilities with CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement”.”
What a joke!

[kcvl]

“And just what do these 57000 people do to earn their pay?”

It looks to me like it is an experiment in government ‘diversity’...

CBP Workforce More Diverse Than Civilian Counterparts

Outreach and recruiting programs have helped spread diversity through all ranks of the Custom and Border Protection (CBP) work force, a major factor leading to a rate of Hispanic employment at the agency far higher than the national civilian labor force, according to a new CBP analysis.

The purpose of special emphasis committees (SEC) is to facilitate U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) efforts to create a more diverse, inclusive, and engaged workforce through increased cultural awareness, education and community outreach. Based on the scope of our organizational responsibilities and the size of CBP’s workforce, we must rely on collateral duty staff members (local supervisors, managers and employees) to serve as members of special emphasis committees (SEC) to achieve our goals - which are to maintain a diverse, inclusive, engaged and high performing workforce. Collateral duties are those outside the scope of the position of record. These duties are assigned to achieve a wide variety of goals benefiting CBP as a whole, but do not necessarily directly support a singular office’s primary mission. In this instances, the roles and responsibilities of the SECs include developing and sponsoring local diversity and inclusion events and activities; planning and engaging in outreach to local colleges, universities and community organization; and serving as an advisor to local management and DCR staff. All CBP field locations have SECs to assist local management in their efforts to achieve CBP’s diversity and inclusion goals.

http://tinyurl.com/29e538v

******

U.S. Customs and Border Protection faces substantial challenges in recruiting, retaining and training new officers, maintaining high morale and keeping up with increasing cross-border traffic, a union president, Government Accountability Office researcher and a CBP official told senators at a hearing on Thursday.

The panelists disagreed, however, on which of those is the most critical issue.

But Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, expressed impatience with what he said were a wide variety of CBP failures.

“As a former mayor and governor, I’m fed up with it,” Voinovich said. “For more than four years, CBP hasn’t been able to identify the concrete steps to guarantee they have a skilled workforce in place to meet its mission. . . .

“Twenty-one percent [of the CBP workforce] said they’re not rewarded for high-quality work. Nine percent said pay raises depend on performance,” Stana said. “Only one-third say they have sufficient resources to do their job. When you take those statistics together, it paints a picture of a morale issue that has to be dealt with.”

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said a range of factors contributed to dissatisfaction among CBP officers, including pressure to conduct inspections quickly, a rush to do away with job specializations and lack of consultation with the union.

But she said staffing and retention issues were key components

* veterans make up approximately 25 percent of CBP’s workforce and 54 percent of the workforce are minorities, with Hispanics accounting for half of the agent population

[kcvl]

May 1, 2003, to combine the inspectional workforces ....

The highest percentages of Hispanic officers were found at CBP (36.9%) and ICE (22.0%). ... The largest overall percentages of minorities were found at HUD (30.3%)

[Repeat Offender]

I might have believed that before Nov 2008.... but apparently close to 52% of the voting public is just as stupid, or stupider.

[2nd amendment mama]

That’s a great deal more than most homeowners do with regard to household workers. I doubt anyone even reads these forms for household employees anyway.

But most homeowners aren't looking to be hired to enforce the laws that they are breaking!!! WTF? That would be like hiring a tax cheat to head up the IRS. Oh wait.....Zero already did that.....duh!

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Thank you for the ping! Will add to research later today [links in profile.]