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[PermaLink] [Top] [Letters Home]
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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From: Jake Jacobsen [e-mail him]
I wondered about the treasonous priorities of my Illinois politicians. Here's the line-up
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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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:
So, to process 10 million immigrants:
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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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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