Border Security Concerns Surface in Intel Reform Debate

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Despite efforts from the Bush administration to push through intelligence reform by the end of the year, legislation in the House of Representatives stalled over the weekend, in part because of concerns that the bill did not do enough to address border security and illegal immigration.

In comments on Fox News on Monday, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that one of the key elements missing from the intelligence reform legislation was that of immigration reform. In particular, Sensenbrenner said that it is far too easy for those who are in America illegally to get driver's licenses.

Sensenbrenner told Fox News that the nineteen hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks had been issued a total of sixty-three valid driver's licenses.

According to reports by Knight Ridder, Sensenbrenner wants to reinsert immigration provisions dropped in earlier negotiations, "such as expedited deportation and unlimited detention of immigrants suspected, but not convicted, of terrorism." Knight Ridder adds that those provisions had been opposed by the White House.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) believes that House members sent a strong message to their Senate colleagues by choosing not to approve the intelligence reform bill because it lacked the crucial immigration reform measures recommended by the 9/11 Commission.

"We sent a message to the Senate ... that this Republican Congress is not willing to pass a bill that is just an empty shell," said Tancredo, Chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. "The Republican Conference in the House made a collective decision not to approve a hollowed out 9/11 bill just to get a ... good sound bite."

"The American people want security, and they know it can never be achieved until we can secure our borders," Tancredo added in a statement. "Rushing through a 9/11 bill that doesn't address border security would have been a disservice to the families of 9/11 victims and to the American people."

Sensenbrenner told the Associated Press on Monday that passage of intelligence reform legislation will "be tougher now because the well got even more poisoned by the senators and their supporters thoroughly criticizing [Rep.] Duncan Hunter and myself by name on the talking head shows."

In an interview with NBC's Tom Brokaw, Sensenbrenner said, "The details of this bill were so incomplete and so onerous that what we would be doing is passing something that looked good on a bumper sticker. The devil is in the details."

Yes, the senate is a problem. Rep. Hoeskstra and Sensenbrenner both said on Lou Dobbs last night, that the senate had their bill and refused to even discuss any immigration/border issues. Reminds me of the farse they put on for a trial for impeachment.

TIM ROEMER (D), FORMER 9/11 COMMISSIONER: We saw intelligence failures, FBI mistakes, border patrol and visa problems leading up to 9/11, and we lost 3,000 people. How many more body bags are we going to need to see?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HENRY: James Sensenbrenner fired back that the 9/11 commissioners should not be satisfied with doing just half the job. He says he wants reform with teeth, not just window dressing.

Sensenbrenner, in fact, points out that the -- the 19 hijackers were able to validly obtain 63 driver's licenses across the country. He says that's a problem he wants to fix. Sensenbrenner says he will stand on principle, even if it brings down the entire bill

DOBBS: Congressman, the idea -- I referred to -- I'd like to start with a quote. Senator Rockefeller, referring to you and to congressman Duncan Hunter, if we could put that up for our viewers to see.

"We've had, frankly, two obstructionists in the House. It's a matter of two individuals who are trying to stop it, the legislation to reform our intelligence community, for their own reasons. And it doesn't make sense." Senator Jay Rockefeller, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Congressman, what's your reaction?

SENSENBRENNER: Congressman Hunter and I are trying to do it right. And it's better to do it right than to do it at a half-baked manner that ends up coming back and endangering the American people.

The 9/11 Commission itself recognized that there were problems in our driver's license system. The 19 hijackers got 63 validly issued driver's licenses. And you can bet they used them to get on the planes on September 11.

We need tough national standards to make sure that people don't game the system, and that includes denying driver's licenses to illegal aliens who cannot prove their lawful presence in the United States.

DOBBS: Congressman, I think to most Americans, and if one looks at the most recent polling in this country, that makes absolute sense to most Americans. Yet you were described by, certainly, Senator Rockefeller and others in the Senate as an obstructionist.

Why in the world would it not have been just a matter of great ease on the part of all the conferees to agree that this country will not issue documents to illegal aliens and to move ahead with the reform legislation?

SENSENBRENNER: Because the Senate was stubborn. The House passed a comprehensive package of law enforcement and immigration reforms, not just on the driver's license issue, when the bill was passed in early October.

A conference committee was set up the second week of October. The senators refused to talk about the immigration and law-enforcement provisions in this bill until Tuesday of last week saying they were extraneous, they were too controversial, we ought to deal with them in separate legislations or study them.

SENSENBRENNER: The other considerations were tightening up the law so that terrorists who had gotten into this country and were identified by our intelligence agencies could be detained and deported before they executed a terrorist act.

And the president agreed that that was something that was necessary and was a legitimate tradeoff. He sent his chief legislative director in to talk to the senators, and they said no to that as well as no to denying illegal aliens driver's licenses. DOBBS: Why in the world would they not agree to that?

SENSENBRENNER: You'll have to ask them. But these are the same senators who have been bitterly attacking Congressman Hunter and myself for standing up for some common-sense reforms that are needed to close the loop.

What the senators are proposing to do is that we would have great intelligence, but, once we got the great intelligence, we wouldn't have the legal tools to use them to prevent terrorists from gaming our legal system and immigration laws to cover their potential terrorist attack in the country.

It's like fumbling the ball on the 10-yard line. Hunter and I want to get the ball across the goal line to do it right.

HOEKSTRA: Well, there may have been hesitancy from various folks within the executive branch, but I can tell you that for the last two to three months, after the Senate passed their version of intelligence reform, with the help of the white house, after the house passed its version of intelligence reform with the help of the White House, after the House passed its version of intelligence reform with the help of the White House the White House has been fully involved in the process, working out this conference report. I think the president is going to continue the work that he has done, and he's going to press hard over the next two weeks to try to get this up for a vote on December 6th so that this 25th attempt to reform intelligence in the last 47 years, that finally after 25 attempts, we will get it done.

DOBBS: Congressman, let me ask you this. We just -- Jeanne Meserve just reported on the massive fraud -- document fraud bust. The U.S. attorney saying point blank that fraudulent documents certainly exploited by terrorists, why in the world -- it should not, it seems to most people, I would think, seem unreasonable that the United States or states should not be issuing driver's licenses to those who are here illegally. Why in the world could not the Senate agree to that rather straightforward, simple statement?

HOEKSTRA: Well, according to the Senate it was much more complex than that. You know, they'll have to explain to you exactly why they couldn't agree to Congressman Sensenbrenner's position on this bill. You know, in the House bill, we dealt with law enforcement. We dealt with immigration. We dealt with foreign policy. On the Senate side, the only thing that was dealt with was intelligence community reform. They felt uncomfortable taking these issues and putting it part of their bill and putting it a part of the conference report.

snip~

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0411/22/ldt.01.html

Did you get to see this article posted a few days ago?

**

Totalization: Sellout of American Workers

by Phyllis Schlafly
Nov. 17, 2004
The Democrats are trying to make a campaign issue out of George W. Bush's alleged plan to "privatize" Social Security, scaring seniors into thinking their checks will be cut off. That is a phony issue; all Bush suggests is to offer younger workers the option (not the compulsion) of transferring a very small part of their Social Security benefit into private investments.

The real threat to Social Security doesn't come from giving young people this opportunity. The threat comes from the Bush Administration's plan to load illegal aliens into the Social Security system, an idea that would skyrocket costs and bankrupt the system at the same time that baby boomers flood into their benefit years.

The code word for this racket is "totalization." The United States has totalization agreements with 20 other countries, which have been reasonable and non-controversial, but totalization with Mexico is TOTALLY different.

The idea behind totalization with other countries is to assure a pension to those few individuals who work legally in two countries by "totalizing" their payments into the pension systems of both countries. All existing totalization agreements are with developed nations whose retirement benefits are on a parity with U.S. benefits, and the affected employees work for companies that have been paying taxes into the other countries' retirement systems.

Workers from the other 20 countries come with documents from their employer verifying that they are authorized to work in the United States. Only a minuscule fraction of Mexicans enter with such documents.

The legitimate goal of totalization with other countries is to avoid double taxation for retirement when employers assign their employees to work temporarily in another country. Reciprocity works because there is rough parity between the number of U.S. workers in the 20 other countries and the foreigners from those countries who work in the United States.

But this goal has no relevance to Mexico. There is no parity whatsoever between the number of Mexicans working in the United States and the number of U.S. citizens working in Mexico, and absolutely no parity in the social security systems of the two countries.

Mexican benefits are not remotely equal to U.S. benefits. Americans receive benefits after working for 10 years, but Mexicans have to work 24 years before receiving any benefits.

Mexican workers receive back in retirement only what they actually paid in, plus interest, whereas the U.S. Social Security system is skewed to give lower-wage earners benefits greatly in excess of what they and their employers contributed.

Mexico has two different retirement programs, one for public-sector employees, which is draining the national treasury, and one for private-sector workers, which is estimated to cover only 40 percent of the workforce. The rest of the workers are in the off-the-record economy (euphemistically called the "informal" sector).

The 10 million Mexicans who have illegally entered the United States previously lived in poverty, did not pay social security taxes in Mexico, and did not work for employers who paid taxes into a retirement plan. If they were working at all, it was in the off-the-record economy.

Illegality is no issue with the countries where we have existing totalization agreements because none of them accounts for even one percent of the U.S illegal population. On the other hand, Mexico provides more than two-thirds of the illegals in the United States.

The Bush totalization plan would pay out billions in Social Security benefits to Mexicans for work they did in the U.S. using fraudulent Social Security numbers, something that Americans would go to jail for doing. It would pay Social Security Disability benefits to Mexicans who worked in the United States as little as 3 years.

The Bush totalization plan would lure even more Mexicans into the United States illegally in the hope of amnesty and eligibility for Social Security benefits. The Bush plan would even cover the Mexicans' spouses and dependents who may never have lived in the United States.

Since few if any of the illegal aliens have built up any equity in the Mexican retirement system, what is there to totalize? Totalization is a plan for the U.S. taxpayers to end up assuming the entire burden.

When George W. Bush became President in 2001, the Mexican government expected the United States to pass amnesty (disguised as a guest worker plan and "regularizing" the entry of Mexicans). After 9/11, Mexico's national policy turned to increasing the number of its nationals working in the United States and getting them to qualify for all the social benefits and privileges Americans receive, from driver's licenses to Social Security and Social Security Disability.

The Social Security commissioners of both Mexico and the Bush Administration signed a totalization agreement in June of 2004, but the text of the agreement has been kept secret. Maybe we will be permitted to see it after the President approves it and sends it to Congress.

Let your Members of Congress know you want them to stop this billion-dollar sellout of American workers and taxpayers.
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2004/nov04/04-11-17.html

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