The Legacy of the IRCA Amnesty

      By Rick Oltman, SF Immigration Examiner (Part II of VI)

The Western Region ultimately processed more amnesty applications than was estimated for the entire country.

They allowed illegals to mail-in their amnesty applications to prevent their offices from being swamped.  When the applications were received, the applicant was given a date and time to appear. 
Morale was good at the beginning of the process even though, “Those managers that they brought back, like myself, were not in favor of amnesty,” King says, “I don’t think any full time employee of INS thought it was a good idea, but we all agreed to make it work.” 

King stayed with the process for 5 years into the early 1990s. “1.7 million applicants was surprising,” he says, “3.1 million applicants overall, blew our minds.”  2.7 million received amnesty.

“The fraud in that program was out of sight,” said King.  “The biggest fraud in California was establishing the five year residency.  Fraudulent documents, rent receipts, food receipts anything needed was for sale on Los Angeles streets…There were document vendors all over the place and fraud was rampant,”

Some of the fraud was so obvious that 400,000 applicants were rejected during the interview.  Some applicants would claim to be farm workers and would say they had picked strawberries from trees and were immediately rejected.  Fraud in the agricultural program exceeded 30% because of a lack of investigative resources.  Final decisions for approval or denial were made at the Region Processing Offices. 

The one resource King was short of was an investigative team.  He told Western Region Director Ezell that they needed a “sanitized group of investigators” to work the amnesty program solely to clear up the fraud.  Current investigative staff was offered to help, but never produced the kind of investigations required to deal with the fraud.  King had one investigator in his regional office for the 36 offices in 5 states and remarks wistfully that they currently have more people in Headquarters than he had in a sector.

“The illegals actually thought the 5 year requirement was real and at first, didn’t come,” King remembers.  That thinking didn’t last long.

David J. Stoddard was a USBP supervisor in the Tucson Sector in 1987.  His experiences of the amnesty were from the enforcement point of view.

Stoddard remembers that the government was stunned because not many people began applying right away.  The IRCA was signed on November 6th at a time when many illegal aliens, most harvests over, had returned to Mexico for the Christmas holidays.  And, he believes, that many didn’t immediately return because they couldn’t prove 5 years continuous residency as required by the Act. 

That means, ironically, that many of the illegal aliens actually thought that there was integrity to the process, that the United States actually would enforce the law.  If that is what they thought, they soon got over it.

The Spanish language press in Central and South America began reporting sensational news stories about the United States giving amnesty to everyone without a criminal record.  “It was like gasoline on a flame, it just burned up the Press,” says Stoddard. And from the Mexican border to the tip of South America people began to return to the USA to apply for amnesty.  And, many decided to bring their wife, kids, brothers, sisters, cousins and other relatives back to the United States to apply for the amnesty, too.

“Prior to IRCA of ’86 I encountered illegal aliens working who gave the employer a Social Security number of 000-00-0000 and it was accepted,” Stoddard recalls.  “There were probably tens of thousands of illegal aliens who were using that Social Security number.  When they were asked, some of them would pull up a nine digit or a five digit number, or whatever would come to mind; numbers belonging to a friend or a relative.  They were obviously fictitious… Some of them were real numbers because in the ‘60s and ‘70s the USA would send Social Security numbers to applicants applying from foreign countries.”

 

The Legacy of the IRCA Amnesty

     

      By Rick Oltman, SF Immigration Examiner Part I of VI)

November 6, 2011 marks a dubious anniversary in the history of America.  On that day 25 years ago President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act, IRCA.  Also known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, it was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the effects of which we live with today.

IRCA was the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952.  In 1981 the Reagan Administration asked Congress to pass a comprehensive legislative package that included employer sanctions, other measures to increase enforcement of immigration laws and the legalization of illegal aliens. The Employer Sanctions program was supposed to be the key element that would remove the incentive for illegal immigration by eliminating the job opportunities which was, and is, the number one reason that illegal aliens come to our country.

Whatever its intention, it is undeniable that the IRCA Amnesty of millions of illegal aliens failed to solve the problem of illegal immigration.  Instead, the legalization of people who broke our laws and sneaked into our country and were allowed to jump the line in front of legal immigrants only encouraged more illegal immigration by creating a worldwide expectation that if you could just get to the United States, that you too would eventually get amnesty.

The plan was controversial at the time.  There were doubts that it would work.  It was remarked by some that the bill was proceeding amid massive confusion about how it would work, how much it would cost and how many people it would amnesty.

In June of 1984, amidst the Presidential campaign, three candidates for the Democrat Presidential nomination; Walter Mondale, Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson opposed Simpson-Mazzoli.

Cesar Chavez, who had his union members calling the INS to report illegal aliens working in the fields so that they could be deported, encouraged the U.S. government to include provisions in the Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986) applying sanctions against employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens.

How many would apply for, or qualify for, amnesty was never known, nor even closely estimated.  In 1981 the estimate was one million illegal aliens in the country.  By 1984 that estimate had been raised to 1.6 million.  Depending on the cutoff date, prior to which the illegal alien could apply, some estimates were raised to 2.2 million.

In 1984 it was believed that the total number of illegals in the country, not all of whom would qualify for the amnesty, was, “somewhere around 6 million.”  Some experts, according to TIME Magazine (June 2, 1984), estimated that the real number of illegals in the country in 1984 could be as high as 12 million. 

If the number 12 million seems familiar, it is.  It is the number that is most used in discussions today by those who want to mask the reality of the immigration anarchy that our government’s failure to enforce our laws has wrought.

This anecdotal chronicle of the 1986 IRCA Amnesty contains points of view from three men who were involved with the amnesty process and immigration enforcement during the amnesty period.

Bill King ran the amnesty program in the Western Region.  His service to the country includes; Chief Patrol Agent of the Border Patrol Academy, Acting Chief of the Immigration Academy and Chief Patrol Agent of the El Centro, CA sector.

He remembers that the original talk about an amnesty began in early 1981.  It was determined early on that whatever the number of illegals was, they were going to need a bureaucracy to adjudicate the amnesty and people to run it.  The INS reached out to retired Border Patrol and INS supervisors, including King, who began to huddle up in 1985 to figure out how to do it.

Bill King, Ed Wildblood, Bill Zimmer and Jim Bailey, one for each INS Region, began discussing the process in late 1985 and went to the Central Office in Washington, DC in early 1986 to begin planning what it would take to make it work.  With an estimated 1.5 million applicants, they decided that they had to open 112 offices and hire over 2,000 people. They brought back into the Service a number of retirees and had to develop training programs and establish liaisons with cities and federal law enforcement.

By law, they had 180 days after President Reagan signed the bill on November 6th  to be up and running to begin accepting amnesty applications.  All the offices in the country opened on May 5, 1987.  It was a Herculean effort. 

The INS ran the operation.  Harold Ezell, Western Region Director and Bill King did seven press conferences in seven cities in two days on the amnesty.  “The people we hired did a hell-of-a job,” says King.  The Immigration and Naturalization Service in those days was a stepchild in the federal law enforcement community and was perennially underfunded by the Department of Justice.  “It was believed to be the greatest undertaking ever by INS.”

“We were going like a group of madmen,” says King, who remembers many back-to-back-to-back 16 hour days.  “Ezell was adamant that the program would work properly.  The Western Region had 36 offices in five states and 15 offices in the greater Los Angeles area and we ultimately processed the most applications, 1.7 million.” 

A Class on Compassion Part II

IS IGNORING ILLEGALS COMPASSIONATE?

By: Bob Lounsberry (Part II of II)

Further, it is a false principle to assert that compassion is done through government action. Compassion is an individual virtue, chooseable and expressable by individuals. A society can only be compassionate as the consequence of individual choices in the aggregate. Governments cannot have compassion, they can only exercise compulsion.

Compassion is the choice of one person to feel and give credence to the feelings of another. It is an act of moral agency. Governments – which regulate such things as illegal immigration – cannot have compassion. They can engage in generosity, or pass laws favorable to a group of people, but they can only do so by compelling that “generosity” from others.

To extend a benefit to illegal aliens, for example – like in-state tuition or free health care – the government must use compulsion to tax its citizens in order to pay for those benefits. And that's not compassion, that's socialism. Individuals do not use their agency to benefit illegal aliens; the government uses its power to take from one group the money it proposes to give to another group. That concept has been attacked for two hundred years by defenders of our Constitution.
It is also a false premise to assert that giving benefits to illegal aliens is compassionate. It is, rather, broadly hurtful. There are some 12 million illegal aliens in this country. There are almost 300 million citizens and legal visitors or immigrants. That means roughly 4 percent of our population is here illegally.

Is it compassionate, then, to damage the interests of 96 percent of the people in order to facilitate the interests of 4 percent of the people?

Is endangering the institutions, law, governmental stability and prosperity of 96 percent truly compassionate? Isn't it actually hurtful? Doesn't continuing to ignore illegal immigration – and rejecting efforts to curtail it – show a stunning lack of compassion for the interests of some 300 million people?

It is not compassion to take food from your children's mouth and give it to your neighbors; it is betrayal of your children.

And finally, accommodating illegal aliens in this country shows a lack of compassion to their compatriots in their home countries. When soft-hearted politicians give more benefits to illegal aliens, they provide an incentive for illegal immigration – they make the choice to come here all the more tempting for people in other countries.

And that draws people into the decidedly dangerous and exploitative process that smuggles people into this country and houses them in our communities. When a state's generous treatment of illegal aliens convinces a family to come north across the desert, and that family faces tragedy at the hands of either the weather or of an unscrupulous smuggler, that compassion has actually been a curse. It has not helped these people, it has hurt them.

If you give a panhandler money, you are not showing him compassion, you are causing him and society problems.

The duty of an American is clear; it has been explained by every true leader since George Washington. If you don't like a law, you work to change the law – you don't encourage the ignoring of it.

That is a true principle.
That is a foundation of our Republic.

A man who encourages the ignoring of our law is not a friend to us, our freedom or our country. A man who encourages the violation of law in the name of compassion understands neither law nor compassion.

Yes, illegal aliens are children of God. Yes, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. But defense of our country, our home, our families, our liberty and our law is also a divine principle and commandment.

All we ask of immigrants is that they do what we do: Obey the law.

All we say to those who condemn us for lacking compassion is: You don't know us or what this country is about.

We are Americans. We defend the Constitution and we uphold the rule of law. We welcome all who come here legally.  And we will not silently suffer those who do otherwise.

Many of us once swore an oath of enlistment or commissioning that obligated us for the rest of our lives to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

We intend to keep that oath.  Even if the domestic enemies we face point the self-righteous finger of condemnation at us.

A Class on Compassion

IS IGNORING ILLEGALS COMPASSIONATE?

By: Bob Lounsberry (Part I of II)

When you counsel someone to be compassionate, you make an assumption.
It is an assumption of moral superiority. You presume that they are, in fact, not already compassionate. You presume that their position is inherently one that lacks caring and human concern but that your position, on the other hand, is somehow morally superior and enlightened. And that's a pretty arrogant thing to do.

Because in presuming that others disagree with you because of some lack of intellect, understanding or humanity on their part, you run the very large risk of doing exactly what you accuse them of doing. You end up condemning people whose motives you fail to understand.
I'm talking about illegal immigration.

Specifically, I'm talking about the assertion that those who oppose illegal immigration somehow lack compassion, that they fail to see the human element of the issue, that they lose sight of the fact that illegal aliens are children of God, that if they only knew an illegal alien and his family their view on the issue would change.

I think that viewpoint represents both arrogance and ignorance. Specifically, it represents a failure to understand the people who oppose illegal immigration.
So let me explain.

People who oppose illegal immigration don't hate illegal aliens, they love America. And they understand America and its reliance on constitutional order and the rule of law. They know that liberty is rooted in and protected by law. They know that it is the moral duty of all Americans to uphold the law. In fact, they join with Abraham Lincoln in declaring obedience to law our “national religion.”

People who oppose illegal immigration have no objection to immigration, but they can never accept “illegal” as a way of doing things in this country. The Lord said that his house is a “house of order,” and so must the affairs of this nation be. Unchallenged illegality – of any nature – is a threat to our Constitution and – consequently – to our country.

When the laws do not matter, then the Congress that passed them does not matter and the executive who supposedly enforces them does not matter and the courts that interpret them do not matter and our entire Republic does not matter. When the laws do not matter; our Constitution twists in the wind, dangling by a thread.

It is the duty of Americans to defend the Constitution.
It is the duty of Americans to defend the law.
It is the duty of Americans to demand the enforcement of law.

It is traitorous of Americans to countenance, encourage, facilitate, induce or ignore the breaking of law.

People who oppose illegal immigration are not being bad Christians, they are being good Americans.

The law may change, we have a system for that, and the people through their representatives may choose new laws. But until that time, there is no excuse for ignoring, disobeying or skirting current law. Abraham Lincoln, again, in discussing the cursed Dred Scott decision said that though it was a noxious piece of case law, which he would never quit working to overturn, he was duty bound to obey it until it was changed.

That is the duty of any American.

MS-13 Mara Salvatrucha Most Violent Gang in the U. S.

Latin American Gangs Are Taking Over Our Streets
By Dave Gibson (Part II of II)

The U.S. Justice Department now believes that many gangs never before associated with traditional Mexican gangs are now distributing drugs on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. These gangs include the Bloods, Crips, and even many Asian and white supremacist gangs.

The National Drug Intelligence Center recently reported that Mexican gangs now have drug distribution operations in North Carolina as well as Georgia to support drug sales along the East Coast.

In addition to the sale of illegal drugs, prostitution, assault, rape, and robbery, Latin American gangs are now apparently acting as paid assassins, with the target being U.S. law enforcement.

In 2007, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reported that they had obtained a confidential Department of Homeland Security memo. The function of the document was to issue an Officer Safety alert to U.S. Border Patrol agents that human smugglers were bringing MS-13 gang members into the country for the sole purpose of murdering the agents.

The alert reads: “Unidentified Mexican alien smugglers are angry about the increased security along the U.S./Mexican border and have agreed that the best way to deal with U.S. Border Patrol agents is to hire a group of contract killers.”

A Border Patrol agent speaking on the condition of anonymity said: “It’s not just people coming over here to pick lettuce. These gang members, criminals, are endangering American lives.” He went on: “Our vests won’t stop a rifle bullet, and many of us feel like sitting ducks.”

A few facts concerning the impact of illegal immigration on crime in this country:

-In 1995, a California Department of Justice study concluded that the 18th Street Gang works directly with the Mexican Mafia, and commits a robbery or an assault every day in Los Angeles alone.

-Two-thirds of fugitive felony warrants issued in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

-95 percent of warrants issued for murder in L.A. are for illegal aliens.

-83 percent of warrants issued for murder in Phoenix, AZ are for illegal aliens.

-86 percent of warrants issued for murder in Albuquerque, NM are for illegal aliens.

-53 percent of burglaries in Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Texas are committed by illegal aliens.

-According to police, there are at least 53,000 Latino gang members in Los Angeles (that is the equivalent of three Airborne Divisions).

-Mexican drug cartels produce 80 percent of the methamphetamine sold on U.S. streets.

-In 2007 alone, U.S. Customs agents confiscated over 2,000 lbs of methamphetamine at the six official border crossing stations in California.

Latin American gangs are just another reason to vigorously defend our all too porous border. If our government does not soon become serious about border enforcement, we can expect our nation's streets to run red with blood.

MS-13 Mara Salvatrucha Most Violent Gang in The U. S.

Latin American Gangs Are Taking Over Our Streets
By Dave Gibson (Part I of II)
At one time, violent crimes attributed to Mexican and Central American gangs were largely confined to the American Southwest. However, just as illegal aliens have spread across this country, so too has a veritable crime wave. Large cities and small towns across the country are now experiencing the early stages of the most violent gang epidemic we have ever seen.

One of the most violent gangs is known as MS-13 The gang perpetuating the death and destruction is known as MS-13. Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 is based in El Salvador.

According to the FBI's National Gang Task Force Director Robert Clifford, MS-13 is following the same paths as do Mexican illegal workers. Clifford said: "The migrant moves and the gang follows. If you follow the construction trade, that is where a lot of these immigrants go."

A March 2005 nation-wide sting operation which targeted members of the notoriously violent MS-13, nabbed 103 gang members. All 103 were in this country illegally. The arrests were made in Baltimore, New York, Newark, Dallas, Los Angeles, as well as the District of Columbia. The arrests made clear the fact that illegal immigration is no longer simply a regional crisis.

In 2005, two MS-13 members were convicted in an Alexandria, Va. United States District Court for killing a 17-year-old pregnant girl. A rope was placed around the neck of Brenda Paz, she was then stabbed repeatedly. Her body was then left along the muddy banks of Virginia’s Shenandoah River. The murder was retribution for the girl’s cooperation with a federal investigation into the gang’s activities.

The FBI now estimates that there are between 8,000 to 10,000 MS-13 gang members inside the United States. The Salvadoran gang is infamous for machete and grenade attacks. They have also been known to behead their enemies.

On January 3, 2008, police in Fort Worth, TX arrested several members of the Latino gang known as Varrio Central for forcing young girls into prostitution. Some of the girls being victimized were as young as 12 years old.

Diego Rodriguez, 19, and Martin Reyes, 17, with aggravated kidnapping, trafficking of a person, and engaging in organized criminal activity. The names of three minors arrested were not released

Varrio Central members would typically befriend the girls, get them high, and then take them to their regular customers. They would also drive them through apartment complexes, approaching men with the offer of sex with a teenaged or pre-teen girl for a fee of $50.

According to Fort Worth Police, if a girl refused to comply, gang members would beat and sexually assault her and threaten her family with violence.

Fort Worth Police Lt. Ken Dean told the Associated Press: “The age of the victims and suspects is the surprising part of it. To have such young individuals in a somewhat organized business, a forced prostitution ring, is somewhat alarming and such a horrendous crime against the 12 to 16 year old girls.”

As I stated earlier, Latin American gang activity is no longer isolated to large cities. A look at one relatively small city reveals the severity of the problem.

According to 2007 U.S. Census Bureau statistics, the city of Porterville located in central California has a population of 51,467. While reporting a rather modest population, Porterville police report the existence of no less than 23 active gangs in the city.

The known gangs in Porterville, CA are as follows:

-Brown Pride Surenos            -Barrio Sur Trece                                -Court Stret Locos

-Mexican Gang Bangers         -North Side Varrio Boys

-Tierras-Terra Bella                -Tiny Maltido Surenos                         -Varrio Central Poros

-Wicked Ass Surenos             -Young Mexican Gang Bangers          -Barrio “H” street

-Big Time Locos                     -North Side Varrio Youngsters            -Sultra 14

-Varrio Campo Linnel              -West Side Poros                               -Catela Norte

-East Side Poros                    -East Side Varrio                                 -Sureno Life Style

-Richgrove Varrio Trece

(Stay Tuned For Part II)

Once Again Washington County Takes The Lead!

Another E-Verfy Local Ordinance

By Ronald W. Mortensen, October 23, 2011

On October 18, 2011, the Washington County (Utah) Commission passed an ordinance that requires "businesses that receive a business license from the county to use E-Verify…."

The ordinance was crafted based on a recent Supreme Court decision, Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, 131 S. Ct. 1968 (2011). In that case, the Court declared that states may require businesses to use E-Verify and that the states can use their licensing authority to enforce employment verification requirements.

According to the Findings section of the Washington County ordinance, illegal aliens are working in the Washington County in violation of federal law, taxes paid by American citizens are used to provide benefits to illegal aliens thereby depriving citizens of Washington County who pay the taxes of the intended benefits of their tax dollars, and that steps to ensure that businesses hire only authorized workers are an important part of resolving the negative effects of illegal immigration.

The ordinance, therefore, requires each place of business covered by the ordinance to verify the employment eligibility of all new hires by using the federal government's E-Verify system. If a place of business fails to comply, it shall be ordered to comply and its business license shall be suspended for up to 10 days for the first instance, 10-20 days for the second instance, and 30 days to permanent suspension for a third instance.

Each time a person applies for a county business license, the person shall certify that the business is operating in compliance with the ordinance. The Clerk/Auditor's office may request that a place of business show compliance and the certification of compliance must be made on a form provided by the Clerk/Auditor's office.

If there is reasonable suspicion that the place of business is not complying with the ordinance, the Clerk/Auditor shall conduct an investigation and when sufficient evidence of non-compliance is found, the evidence shall be turned over to the county attorney's office for action.

In addition, citizens may submit complaints which will be the basis for Clerk/Auditor beginning an investigation. It is a Class C Misdemeanor to file a frivolous complaint and complaints cannot be based solely on an employee or employer's race, religion, gender, ethnicity, and/or national origin.

The County Commission shall appoint a member of the community to act as a hearing officer for complaints. The hearing officer determines whether the county attorney has met its burden of proof. If a business license is suspended, the written decision of the hearing officer shall clearly state the dates the suspension begins and ends.

Appeals of the hearing officer's decisions may be heard by the Washington County Commission. The County Commission will only overturn the hearing officer's decision if it finds that the hearing officer abused his/her discretion or made a clear error in reaching a conclusion.

The ordinance takes effect 60 days from the date it was enacted and is a direct benefit of the legal challenge brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and civil rights groups to state E-Verify requirements. That challenge resulted in the Court determining that state and local governments can require employers to use E-Verify and that they can use their licensing authority to ensure that employers comply with the law without the fear of being sued.

The Washington County ordinance may provide the impetus for other Utah counties to enact similar ordinances, especially since there are ongoing efforts in a number of other counties to enact E-Verify ordinances through the citizen initiative process.