Posted on 02/28/2003 12:20:59 AM PST by JohnHuang2
On March 1, the Immigration and Naturalization Service will officially cease to exist. But the same disastrous mix of political correctness and political cronyism that plagued INS will preside over the new "customer service" branch of the old agency.
Case in point: President Bush has nominated banker Eduardo Aguirre to head the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Rank-and-file employees from New York to Arizona many of them loyal but dispirited Bush supporters are livid at the prospect of another clueless financier taking over the reins.
So much for boosting post-Sept. 11 morale.
Aguirre will oversee the administration of all immigration benefits, from citizenship applications to asylum requests to work permits. He will be in charge of preventing any more terrorists from exploiting amnesty, student visas, marriage, "adjustment of status" delays, and other processing backlogs as dozens of al-Qaida operatives, including the Sept. 11 hijackers, have done over the past decade. And he will be counted on to stamp out an entrenched cover-your-rear culture based on the self-serving motto: "Big cases, big problems, small cases, small problems, no cases, no problems."
So, who is Aguirre? What makes him qualified to hold this important position? Like President Bush's failed former INS chief and Paine Webber executive James Ziglar, Aguirre is a politically connected banker with zero experience in immigration law.
To compensate for his alarming lack of professional experience, the White House is touting Aguirre's personal history. It is indeed a compelling story. As a teen-ager, Aguirre was airlifted out of Cuba under Operation Pedro Pan. Between 1960 and 1962, some 14,000 children were sent to America unaccompanied by their parents to escape Fidel Castro's fledgling communist dictatorship. Aguirre became a naturalized American citizen and embarked on a successful career in banking in Houston.
An INS spokeswoman who declined to be named told me enthusiastically that Aguirre "is a living product of our immigration system." He may not have any experience studying or administering immigration law, the spokeswoman argued, "but he has lived it."
Well, so did the 13,999 other refugees who came here under Operation Pedro Pan. So, for that matter, have many millions of other people who have proudly become American citizens like Aguirre. That doesn't make them qualified to run a beleaguered immigration bureaucracy with 15,000 employees, a $2 billion budget, and an abysmal history of lax law enforcement.
Oh, but not to worry. The INS spokeswoman tells me the banker's management experience 24 years at Bank of America, two years at the Export-Import Bank, and a stint as a University of Houston regent under then-Gov. George W. Bush will "inspire loyalty."
Moreover, she tells me, he's a "can-do guy" from the private sector who "won't be heavy-handed, you know, won't be firing people, not like on a control mission." Just what we need in the new Homeland Security department: another bureaucrat who won't be cleaning house.
But not to worry. Aguirre understands the need to promote "multicultural richness." (Every biography of Aguirre notes that he was named "one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the nation" by Hispanic Business Magazine.) He is "uniquely attuned to the Hispanic community" and is "sensitive" to the immigrant community.
Karl Rovian pander-strategizing aside, it would be more helpful to know what Aguirre's sensitivities are with regard to critical immigration enforcement issues.
What, for example, will he do to combat rampant immigration benefit fraud, such as asylum and marriage fraud by individuals from terror-sponsoring and terror-friendly nations?
What does he think of the matricula consular card an insecure identification document for illegal immigrants being pushed by the Mexican government, House Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Aguirre's colleagues in the banking industry?
And how, exactly, will Aguirre turn around the quantity-over-quality mindset among adjudicators processing citizenship applications a mindset that led to the reckless granting of American citizenship to thousands of criminal aliens under Clinton-Gore and the inexplicable naturalization of at least one known Hezbollah terrorist after Sept. 11?
Unfortunately, Aguirre can't speak for himself due to "Senate protocol." But not to worry. After his nomination is approved, the spokeswoman promised me, he'll be happy to tell us what he knows and where he stands.
What message do you believe Bush is sending the majority of American citizens that are concerned about massive, illegal immigration that continues unabated 2 1/2 years into his first administration? ;^)
All very disappointing. The one glimer (glint? hint? hallucination?) of hope is that the INS has been relieved of the responsibility of border enforcement under the Homeland Security re-alignment.
However, if we get another soft-borders political appointment to run the Border Patrol, I can't imagine Amnesty won't be far behind.
Back in the days when that was routine it didn't help much. Most were back on the job within hours after a bus trip back to mexico.
Today they are from all over the world. There is still almost no penalty for sneaking into the country.
It appears Congress doesn't care. They are too busy doing more PC tasks.
And 8 years of president Hillary not far behind that.
Maybe Hillary won't run in 2004, but Bush is toast, anyway.
Al Gore almost beat him in 2000. Now that the conservative constituency of the Republican Party know how Liberal Bush is, anybody can beat him.
Even in 2004 and even if the war is still going on.
1. Her comments are not anti-Hispanic.
2. Her criticism is only as predictable as the President's do-nothing policies in this area.
Oh, it must be the way I read her articles upside down.
2. Her criticism is only as predictable as the President's do-nothing policies in this area.
No matter what he does regarding immigration, she keeps complaining.
Malkin's issue is with Illegals. What has the President done about that?
It's getting late, so I won't get into anymore MM tonight, but you get the idea
if you can.
Did you read any of MM's essay?:
So, who is Aguirre? What makes him qualified to hold this important position?...Aguirre is a politically connected banker...[who hasn't any] any experience studying or administering immigration law, the spokeswoman argued, "but he has lived it."
Does this man's underwhelming qualifications sound as if Dubya is at all serious about cracking down on illegal immigration?
Quite frankly, Michele Malkin is only telling it like it is -- this is neither the time nor place for the President to be political pandering (and it appears it indeed is) at the expense of our national security.
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