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June 24, 2006
Saturday’s Letters: A
California Police Lieutenant (Retired) Says Cops Could
Round Up Aliens; etc.
From:
Rich Reed
Re: Joe Guzzardi’s
Column:
To Eliminate Illegal Immigration---Empower The Local
Police
I’m a retired police Lieutenant with 28 years of service
split between two northern
California cities.
During my first assignment in the mid-1960s, I arrested
illegal aliens (mostly Mexicans) in the normal course of
my workday.
There was nothing special about it. I called
Immigration and Naturalization Services. They came
down and took custody.
This was routine from 1966 when I started my career
until around 1975.
Then one day we arrested one, called INS and they said
they weren’t interested.
At the time I was a sergeant. I asked to speak to the
supervisor He confirmed that they handled illegals and
normally pick them up but currently did not have the
time.
I asked him if it was still a
federal violation for an illegal alien to be in U.S.
He confirmed that it was. Then I asked if local police
have the authority to arrest illegals and again he
confirmed that we do.
I then asked, “What’s the problem? We arrested this
guy, we did our job, now do yours and come and get him.”
INS advised us that they would be down to take custody.
But later, INS told us to release them, that they simply
would not respond. At that point we stopped arresting
aliens since
INS wouldn’t take custody.
The controversy about whether or not the local police
have the authority to arrest illegals is nonsense.
Cops in
California have had the authority to arrest them for
years. But recently, it has become politically
incorrect.
As far as I’m concerned, round them all up, line up the
buses and take them back to
Mexico. It can be done.
Reed is married with four grown children. During his
career, he was a hypnotherapist and used that skill on
the job until the California Supreme Court
Shirley Decision disallowed it
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Saturday’s
Letters: A Border Patrol Agent (Retired) Says Local
Law Enforcement Is Key To Immigration Enforcement
From: Charles
Michael (“Mick”) Whittmann
[e-mail
him]
In November 1985, I
was transferred from Mobile. AL. to Gulfport, MS. to
open a one-man inspection station. I remained in
Gulfport for the rest of my 35 years enforcing
immigration law.
That includes the
short period of time I spent in Customs and Border
Protection, where almost no law was enforced.
As a
Border Patrol Agent I apprehended or assisted in the
apprehension of hundreds of aliens and their smugglers.
In cases where the
initial stop was made by a state or local law
enforcement officer for a traffic violation, the defense
attorney generally would claim illegal arrest by local
officer.
On several occasions,
La Raza and/or
American Civil Liberties Union tried to
stir up the media. We were always fortunate enough
to convince the Judge that the police detained the
vehicle for only a short time and that a U.S. Border
Patrol Agent made the determination of illegal status.
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Saturday’s Letters: An
Illinois Reader Is Watching His Politicians Closely…And
Doesn’t Like What He Sees
From:
Jake Jacobsen [e-mail
him]
I
wondered about the treasonous priorities of my
Illinois politicians. Here’s the line-up
 | Attending the Pro-Illegal Immigrant March, Chicago,
March, 2006:
Governor Rod Blagojevich, Senator Dick Durbin,
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. |
The prize for biggest panderer goes to Governor
Blagojevich who made all three events.
See their mug shots and more comments on my blog
here.
Jacobsen lives in Chicago with his wife MJ and their
three cats. He is a chef and a drummer who wants to
bring “a blue-collar perspective to the blogosphere.”
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Saturday’s Letters: A New
York Reader Says Paperwork Associated With S. 2611 Would
Be A Nightmare
From:
N.K.
Re: Joe Guzzardi’s Column:
Joe Feels Good About Immigration Bill
In
reading Guzzardi’s article, he wrote: "S. 2611 is not
administratively manageable. Has anyone wondered how
many hundreds of millions of pieces of paper would have
to be processed to legalize tens of millions of aliens?
Forget it."
I
don't know if Guzzardi understands what is involved in
filing the paperwork to legalize an immigrant. But since
I've recently completed such a task, I thought I'd give
him an idea.
First, the background: My wife came to this country from
Brazil on a
K-1 (Fiancée) visa more than 15 years ago. It took
close to nine years, hundreds of pages of forms and
documents and a few thousand dollars in fees and
expenses to complete her green card applications, and to
finally obtain US citizenship via naturalization.
My
wife wanted to legalize her parents so that they could
visit us (and
their grandkids) whenever they wanted. It is becoming
more and more difficult to obtain a visitor's visa in
Brazil, so it seemed best to get them a green card that
would allow them to travel freely to the U.S.
We
first filed out form I-130, a modest task at a moderate
cost. As the parents of a US citizen, the I-130 is
almost automatically approved.
From there, I had to complete form I-485, which was far
more detailed and required a large amount of supporting
documentation (such as my complete personal tax returns
for the past 3 years).
I
estimate that I spent around 100 hours to complete the
forms and gather the supporting documentation. When I
was finished, my packet of materials to send to the
government totaled 80 pages per person, or 160 pages
total. The filing cost was around $1,000.
If
you wanted to calculate the paper burden to document
millions of illegal aliens, it would look something like
this:
| 30 hours of work to complete the forms (assuming a
professional form filler could work 3 times faster
than I did) |
| 25 pages of paperwork for the forms. A lot of my
paperwork was my tax returns. Since illegal aliens
gaining amnesty won't have a "sponsor" to guarantee
they won't use welfare for the next 10 years --which
is what I had to do for my in-laws—not as much
paperwork would be required. |
| Three hours of
doctor visits, per person, to perform the
required examinations and lab tests. |
So, to process 10 million immigrants:
| 30 hours of work x 10 million = 300 million
man-hours |
| 25 pages of paper x 10 million = 250 million pieces
of paper |
| Three hours of medical time x 10 million = 30
million hours of medical time |
What does this mean?
300 million man-hours represent 150,000 people working
full time for one year.
Once you include management overhead, as many as 200,000
people might be needed at the cost at least $10 billion
in salary a year
The paperwork—250 million pieces of it—stacked up is
about 18 miles high.
The 30 million medical hours, in the unlikely event that
the federal government would insist on
examinations—translates to 15,000 full-time
doctors and
nurses dedicated to aliens for one year - probably
$1-2 billion in annual salary.
Now, keep in mind that the above is simply the cost to
CREATE and FILE the immigration paperwork.
Assuming government’s great inefficiencies, the
processing cost would be much greater
The cost of illegal immigration is already hundreds of
billions per year. I don't see how it is possible to
spend billions more to process amnesty or legalization
papers.
The alternatives are to either
expel the illegal immigrants (and thus remove the
necessity for filing their paperwork), or take the
simple approach and completely gut our immigration
system.
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Saturday’s Letters:
A Pennsylvania Reader
Published A Novel About Immigration
From:
D. F. Whipple [e-mail
him]
Prospective immigrants, legal or otherwise, should read
my well received book, “Shadow
Fields,” wherein the newcomers find out life in
America is not all it is cracked up to be.
At
one point the main character asks himself: “I wonder
why we all came here.”
My
second novel will deal again with immigration, this time
from the perspective of
displaced workers.
Please go to my
website for more information.
Whipple, who worked on Wall Street for 11 years, earned
a B.A. at Washington and Lee University and a M.A. and
M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
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