June 08, 2006

The Biggest BIG LIE of S.2611 – "Immigration Litigation Reduction"

The Senate’s immoral and treasonous "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006" (S.2611) peddles the Big Lie that an illegal alien non-deportation amnesty and massive foreign worker importation program is somehow "necessary" in order to "secure the border."

I'd have thought nothing could be further from the truth. That is, until I read the bill’s "Immigration Litigation Reduction" section (Title VII, Subtitle A). Despite its title, this is in reality an obscene pork barrel project of the federal immigration litigation bureaucracy.

The final "engrossed" version [ PDF] of S.2611 passed by the Senate on May 25 is now posted on the Thomas web site. The strikingly dissimilar "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005" (H.R. 4337) [PDF] passed by the House of Representatives on December 16 contains no such provisions.

The supposed "Immigration Litigation Reduction" text (Title VII, Subtitle A, Sections 701 to 703) calls for hiring at least 1411 new government attorneys and an accompanying phalanx of support staff scattered throughout the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security through the year 2011.

And the bill allows them seemingly unlimited funding to hire even more! The sky’s the limit!

All of these government legal eagles, including taxpayer-funded public defenders in the federal district court system, will be working full-time to CREATE EVEN MORE federal immigration litigation, not REDUCE immigration litigation.

More lawyers create more litigation. That’s what they do.

"Immigration Litigation Reduction" is the biggest of the BIG LIES of S.2611. These sections are in reality a brazenly mislabeled "federal immigration litigation bureaucracy full employment act of 2006" for both government attorneys and the Treason Lobby’s legal wing in the private bar – the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Maybe I’m new to analyzing garbage legislation emanating from the Senate . . . but I have never seen such an outrageous lie in labeling legislation. Is there no limit to such double-speak?

Hiring at least 1411 more government attorneys to feed the already bloated federal immigration litigation monster is NOT "immigration litigation reduction." It’s bureaucracy-building opportunism at its worst!

So here’s the tally. If S.2611 were to become law, each year from fiscal years 2007 through 2011, the federal government will hire at least 1411 attorneys:

At least 100 new attorneys each year for the "Office of General Counsel of the Department who represent the Department [of Homeland Security] in immigration matters." (Curiously, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch that actually represents the government in U.S. Immigration Court proceedings before the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) isn’t mentioned in the legislation. The DHS "Office of General Counsel" located inside the Beltway is entirely separate from ICE attorneys in the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor who actually appear before the EOIR at Immigration Court locations nationwide.)

At least 50 new attorneys each year for the Department of Justice’s Office (DOJ) of Immigration Litigation (OIL) who will defend immigration cases on behalf of the government brought up from the EOIR process to the federal circuit courts of appeal

At least 50 new Assistant United States Attorneys each year to " litigate immigration cases" in the federal courts

At least 20 new immigration judges each year for the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) in its nationwide Immigration Court system. The bill will also limit the terms of EOIR immigration judges at the discretion of the Attorney General.

At least 10 new staff attorneys each year for the DOJ/EOIR’s appellate body called the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), located at the EOIR’s headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia

Increasing the number of EOIR/BIA board members from 11 to 22 robed government lawyers, plus a "chairman," but limiting their terms at the discretion of the Attorney General

At least 50 new Federal Defenders Program attorneys each year to defend "criminal immigration cases in the federal courts" on behalf of criminal aliens, of course, all paid for by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts

Are you mad enough yet? The very thought of funding more attorney pork for the federal immigration litigation monster is a textbook example of throwing good money after bad for a litigation-based [non]-deportation system that should be abolished outright!

If you haven’t yet read my Absolutely Definitive Essay on the subject, now is the time!

Hiring more attorneys to supposedly deport illegal aliens and criminal alien residents through drawn-out federal litigation is not the answer. Using federal appellate litigation in the hope of removing every single illegal alien in these United States one-by-one flies in the face of reason and common sense.

Summary removal, not more litigation and lawyers is the answer! Just ask the experts:

Peter Brimelow, editor of VDARE.com, writing in his 1995 book, Alien Nation—Common Sense about America’s Immigration Disaster (page 260): "Deportation procedures, for both legal and illegal aliens, should be streamlined, and criminal aliens automatically deported. . . . "

Michelle Malkin, the first journalist to call for the EOIR to be abolished, writing in her 2002 book, Invasion (pages 232-33): "End deportation delays: Abolish the EOIR and BIA—The most under-recognized obstacle to deporting illegal aliens is the shadowy immigration court system and it unaccountable appellate body, which routinely puts aliens’ rights over citizens’ safety. . . . [A]bolish the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Board of Immigration Appeals and transfer their functions to existing law enforcement officers within the immigration bureaucracy."

WHISTLEBLOWER #2, writing on May 30 on VDARE.com: "Lately I have been wondering what it is costing the government to handle the current scheme of removal proceedings and endless appeals through the circuit courts, DOJ / Office of Immigration Litigation, EOIR, and the DHS/ICE legal programs. With that figure in hand, I think anybody with any brains would see that expedited removal is the only way to go. [Juan’s Comment: Huzzah!]

VDARE.com reader Cynthia, commenting via e-mail on June 2: "[W]hy is there not an easy system to deport people who are breaking the law over and over again when for a legal citizen like most (for now) of us it is fairly easy to get into trouble for breaking any law? [The current system] is the stupidest fashion of law enforcement I have ever seen. Yet there is not a thing anyone can do about it but send e-mails and report illegals which will do absolutely nothing at all."

The bottom line: prosecuting criminal aliens in federal court for real live crimes is one thing (not a bad idea, in fact). But when it comes to the deportation system . . . stop the EOIR immigration litigation madness!

I’ll leave dissecting the many other nation-destroying provisions of S.2611 to similarly-outraged patriots. But mark my words: the brazenly-labeled "Immigration Litigation Reduction" text of S.2611 is the biggest lie of all.

Juan Mann [email him] is an attorney and the proprietor of DeportAliens.com. He writes a weekly column for VDARE.com and contributes to Michelle Malkin’s Immigration BLOG.