Michael Cutler sent out this new commentary on the Dream Act and all of its implications on the future of our country, its security and American's opportunity. The failure of the congress to note the national security issues related to amnesty is a failure of paying attention to history. Below is Mr. Cutler's commentary in full.

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IMPORTANT: DREAM Act would provide lawful status to unknown millions of illegal aliens and must be stopped!

by Michael Cutler

The closer you look at the DREAM Act the more it becomes clear that the intention of this legislative betrayal is not simply a "Down payment" on the amnesty that the administration and the other usual suspects such as Schumer, Pelosi and Reid would have you believe it is, but would, in fact, come to encompass a vast proportion of the illegal alien population present in our country today!

If you have a hard time believing this, please read my entire commentary and then, I urge you forward my commentary to as many of your friends as possible.

But reading my commentary is not enough!

I urge you to call your senators first thing Monday morning! I urge you to call as many other senators as possible and let them all know that the DREAM Act would create a nightmare for our nation that we will never awaken from!

The clear purpose of the DREAM Act is to provide lawful status to millions of illegal aliens by deceiving the citizens of our nation through a cleverly designed campaign to mask the intention of the proposal and to also see in the empathy and compassion of the citizens of our nation a weakness that can be exploited.

The very name of the proposed legislation "DREAM Act" was clearly carefully selected to conjure up the image of the "American Dream" that has served as a beacon for immigrants from around the world and also served as an inspiration for countless American parents who, in watching their children sleeping in the cribs an beds at night who dared to dream about the greatness their children might attain in their lifetimes!

The American Dream was the concept that in the United States anyone could grow up to be President or attain other lofty goals that were well beyond the grasp of their parents. The American Dream enabled each generation to aspire to excel beyond the achievements of their parents and then live up to those aspirations!

The American Dream is what made America- America!

First of all, it must be noted that deceptive language has been employed in this legislative nightmare. The DREAM Act is an acronym for:

Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.

Whenever I have spoken about the various aspects of the immigration crisis confronting our nation, my opponents often that I should not use the term “alien” saying that this word is the equivalent of the “N” word. (In point of fact, the term alien is a legal term that is defined by our nation's immigration laws as simply being any person who is not a citizen or national of the United States. There is no insult here, only clarity- something the open borders/pro amnesty advocate attempt to avoid at every opportunity.

However, in order to conjure up the image of the “American Dream” the advocates for this bill dropped their opposition to this term and incorporated it into the acronym. The bill also uses the term “Minor.” This is another bit of verbal subterfuge. According to the version of the bill that the House of Representatives just approved, aliens who would not have turned 30 years of age by the time the bill would be enacted would qualify to participate. How could anyone with a straight face claim that a 29 year old adult is a “Minor?”

It is astounding that even as proponents of the DREAM Act talk about how just it is for illegal aliens to aspire to and ultimately achieve the American Dream for themselves, this dream is becoming ever more unattainable by the citizens of our nation and their children!

It has been estimated that one in five or perhaps one in four American children do not get enough nutrition each day!

It has been estimated that one in six American families now live below the poverty line!

It has been projected that this is the first generation in the history of our nation that will have reduced levels of expectation of success than their parents' generation had!

Meanwhile the advocates for the DREAM Act deceptively talk about how this legislative betrayal is aimed at helping "young immigrants."

In point of fact we must go back to what I noted above, aliens as old as 29 years of age would be able to participate in this program. In fact, it is entirely possible that aliens even older than 29 years of age would be able to benefit from this program and here are the three reasons why:

1. Aliens who acquire lawful status under the DREAM Act would be able to immediately bring the spouses, who may be older than 29 years of age into the United States with their children.

2. There is a provision for broad waivers which would waive grounds of ineligibility for aliens. Here is the language of the waiver as it is contained in the DREAM Act bill that was passed by the House of Representatives last week:

(2) WAIVER- With respect to any benefit under this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security may waive the ground of inadmissibility under paragraph (1), (4), or (6) of section 212(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)) and the ground of deportability under paragraph (1) of section 237(a) of that Act (8 U.S.C. 1227(a)) for humanitarian purposes or family unity or when it is otherwise in the public interest.

3. Finally we come to the real issue of greatest concern- the fundamental fact that there would be virtually no way of verifying the information contained in the applications filed by aliens seeking to participate in the DREAM Act. At present fraud is a major issue for USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), the agency of DHS that would administer the implementation of the DREAM Act and the adjudication of the millions of petitions that would be filed by the aliens who would seek to participate in the DREAM Act. How do you determine if an illegal alien is 29 years of age or 32 years of age or 34 years of age if he (she) claims to have used multiple identities and there are no resources to conduct full field investigations into the facts presented on applications filed by illegal aliens? How would you begin to determine when these millions of applicants actually entered the United States? How would our officials determine if the alien applicant really enter the United States ten years ago or ten months ago?

Furthermore, In nearly every school district across our nation, the policy is to not inquire as to the citizenship or immigration status of the children who attend the schools. How will our government verify anything about millions of aliens who claim to have attended schools in our country?

This is the real issue for the DREAM Act- aliens would easily game this program by filing fraud applications, secure in the knowledge that nothing will be done to verify the information that they provide on the applications!

I recall that as an INS special agent I encountered many illegal aliens who availed themselves of the opportunity to acquire lawful status by lying on their applications for amnesty in 1986. I still encounter loads of aliens who boast about how easily they gamed the system back then!

Here are several specific examples of the sort of fraud I am referring to.

On one case I encountered an alien who had been naturalized. We met him during the course of a narcotics investigation and we were attempting to evaluate if he would be a reliable cooperator. It was decided I should explore his immigration background since that was one of the many roles I played as a member of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force- using my authority as an INS Senior Special Agent in furtherance with narcotics investigations. The individual in question told me he had participated in the 1986 Amnesty because he had worked on a farm. (Under the provisions of SAW Special Agricultural Worker provisions of the 1986 Amnesty, aliens could qualify if they met certain minimum standards by demonstrating that they had done agricultural work). I will never forget interviewing this guy with a number of other federal agents from other federal agencies and police officers sitting with me in an interview room with the individual I was questioning.

I pressed the potential cooperating witness about his immigration status and how he acquired it. Because he had told us he had worked on a farm, I asked him what sort of farm he worked on. He told me he had worked on a farm that grew watermelons. Being the cynic I am I asked him the fateful question, "How high were the ladders you used to get to the top of the watermelon trees to harvest the watermelons?"

Thankfully the other agents and cops in the room kept their poker faces!

The guy I was questioning looked me in the eye and said that he was absolutely terrified to climb those tall ladders because they were in bad shape and he had to climb so high he was convinced he would one day die if a ladder came apart when he was at the top!

As you probably know, watermelons grow on vines along the ground! Everyone in the interview room broke up laughing except for our would-be cooperator. He appeared confused and was stunned when I explained to him how we were on to his lies! I referred his case to the Frauds Unit at the INS for investigation. I have no idea how this got resolved but the point is that he had easily "gotten over" and even became a United States citizen by committing immigration fraud!

Last year I was being driven to a television studio in Manhattan to participate in a program. I don't recall which network had sent the limo to bring me to the studio but I do recall chatting with the driver who had come from the Middle East. He told me he was an American citizen and thought it was amusing how easily he got to be a citizen of the United States by claiming he was a farmer so that he could participate in the Amnesty of 1986. I asked him if he had really worked on a farm and he responded by telling me that almost all of his friends had gotten legalized by claiming to be farm workers but that neither he nor his friends ever set foot on a farm, let alone worked on a farm!

In some instances the fraud that was committed by aliens enabled terrorists to enter our country and/or embed themselves in our country.

Here is an excerpt from one of my previous commentaries about how a citizen of Eritrea by the name of Samuel Abrahaley Fessahazion, aka "Sami," aka "Sammy," aka "Alex" and aka "Alex Williams." Had been granted political asylum even though he had lied on his application and committed fraud, claiming that his life would be in immediate danger if he was forced to return to Eritrea. His application was approved in under one month. It was subsequently determined that when he claimed he was running for his life in Eritrea he was actually smuggling aliens from Africa through Guatemala!

ICE issued a press release about this case on March of this year.

In the excerpt from my commentary about Mr. Fessahazion I noted how terrorists have previously gamed the immigration system with great ease:

In January 1993 a Pakistani national by the name of Mir Kansi stood outside CIA Headquarters with an AK-47 and opened fire on the vehicles of CIA officials reporting for work on that cold January morning in Virginia. When the smoke dissipated, 2 CIA officer lay dead and three other were seriously wounded. Kansi fled the United States and was ultimately brought back to stand trial. He was found guilty and executed for his crimes. He had also been granted political asylum and had been subsequently found to have lied on his application, thereby committing fraud.

Of 94 terrorists who were identified as operating in our country in the decade leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, some 59 or roughly two thirds of them were found to have committed immigration fraud to enter our country and/or embed themselves in our country. Yet Fessahazion, an illegal aliens with an apparent penchant for using false names, ran our nation's border, claimed political asylum and was then rewarded by being granted political asylum and, in so doing was potentially placed on the pathway to United States citizenship!

Yet another sterling example of the competence of USCIS!

Our government has certainly not done anything to truly address this lunacy. Consider, for example, that on November 29, 2006 the Washington Post ran an article entitled:

"Citizenship Agency Lost 111,000 Files"

Incredibly the applications that related to those 111,000 files were all processed without the relating immigration files including the 30,000 aliens who were naturalized by adjudications officers who were not provided with the critically important immigration files relating to the aliens who applied for United States citizenship. This travesty took place more than 13 years after Kansi gamed the system to acquire political asylum and opened fire of CIA officers. Just one month later other terrorists from the Middle East who launched the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and had also committed visa fraud and immigration fraud in order to facilitate their plans to attack our nation and kill our citizens. Those 111,000 files were lost and the application adjudicated more than five years after the Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet the system has never possessed integrity and still possesses no integrity!

Let me briefly tell you about one of the illegal aliens that Amnesty of 1986 brought out of the “shadows.” His name is Mahmud Abouhalima.

On September 1, 2006 I was invited to testify before a field hearing conducted by the House Judiciary Committee at Dubuque, Iowa. The topic of that hearing was:

“IS THE REID-KENNEDY BILL A REPEAT OF THE FAILED AMNESTY OF 1986?” (read transcript)

When I testified at that hearing I raised Mr. Abouhalima’s name. Here is an excerpt of what I had to say at that hearing:

"... A notable example of such a terrorist can be found in a review of the facts concerning Mahmud Abouhalima, a citizen of Egypt who entered the United States on a tourist visa, overstayed his authorized period of admission and then applied for amnesty under the agricultural worker provisions of IRCA. He succeeded in obtaining resident alien status through this process.

During the 5 year period he drove a cab and had his license suspended numerous times for various violations of law and he ultimately demonstrated his appreciation for our Nation's generosity by participating in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 that left six people dead, hundreds of people injured and an estimated one-half billion dollars in damages inflicted on that iconic, ill-fated complex. America had opened his doors to him so that he might participate in the American dream and he turned that dream into our worst nightmare.

The other terrorists who attacked our Nation on subsequent attacks, including the attacks of September 11, 2001, similarly exploited our generosity, seeing in our Nation's kindness, weakness, gaming the immigration system to enter our country and then hide in plain sight among us."

The point is that the only thing that Mr. Abouhalima ever planted in the United States was a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center with deadly consequences.
Yet the advocates for the DREAM Act don't give a damn about the national security implications that the processing of unknown millions of applications for amnesty would have!

The lack of integrity in the system by which applications for immigration benefits are processed has been the focus of numerous GAO (Government Accountability Office as well as the OIG (Office of the Inspector General).

Consider a recent report issued by the GAO in December 2008 entitled:

"IMMIGRATION BENEFITS: Actions Needed to Address Vulnerabilities in Process for Granting Permanent Residency" (PDF)

The politicians who are advocates for the DREAM Act and other forms of amnesty know about the utter lack of integrity to the processes at USCIS, indeed, they are likely counting on the system having no integrity so that millions of alien who don't truly qualify for amnesty would get it anyway!

Many politicians have said that they would not consider any amnesty programs until the border is secure- Why is it that they do not say a word about the utter lack of integrity of the agency that would be called upon to adjudicate the millions of applications for benefits for aliens whose presence in our country represents a violation of law?

Considering the ineptitude, incompetence and corruption to be found at USCIS, It must be presumed that the great majority of applications that would be filed under the DREAM Act would simply be approved! Millions of illegal aliens would be rewarded for defrauding our government by being granted lawful status and quite probably under false names!

This would create incredible national security problems for our nation at a time when our expectations of privacy under the 4th Amendment have been greatly eroded in the name of national security.

Many of these illegal aliens would also likely lose their jobs when they are granted lawful status in our country. This is precisely what happened in the wake of the implementation of the Amnesty of 1986. Unscrupulous employers specifically hire illegal aliens so that they can exploit them by paying them substandard wages and force them to work under substandard conditions. One these aliens acquire lawful status they are no longer subject to exploitation and will naturally demand proper wages and working conditions. They will most likely be fired to be simply replaced by the next tsunami of illegal aliens. This is exactly how our nation wound up with the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our nation after the Amnesty of 1986!

Think of how much members of Congress balked at extending unemployment benefits for American citizens complaining about how it would increase the deficit! Here we can anticipate that many millions of newly legalized aliens would be fired and immediately head for the unemployment lines! They would have also petitioned to have their spouses and children come to the United States to join them and they will be out of work! Think what the welfare and food stamps and other such programs will then cost our nation! Consider how many more children will be attending our overburdened schools across our nation!

Yet not one advocate for providing opportunities for illegal aliens has said a word about the plight of bright, talented and highly motivated American children who have the ability and the "fire in their bellies" to attend college but will likely never see the inside of a university unless they get jobs as janitors in those institutions of higher learning because of the economic situation they and their families are in today!

The supporters of the DREAM Act apparently believe our nation needs a new motto: "The American Dream- Not For Americans Anymore!"

On Monday Morning- we must make those phone calls and make damned certain that this legislative travesty that the DREAM Act represents, not be foisted on us!

The practice of good citizenship does not end in the voting booth, it only begins there.

The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups. There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do- we must stop sitting on the sidelines!

The collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to far too many politicians. I implore you to get involved!

The first step in problem-solving is to first identify the problems and vulnerabilities and then devise strategies to overcome them.

If our country is to survive and if our children and their children are to get their share of the "American Dream" the citizens of this nation must take their citizenship seriously!

We the People must be the best citizens we can be, citizens who are worthy of the gallantry demonstrated by our valiant men and women in the military, law enforcement and firefighters, who routinely go in harm's way in defense of this nation and our citizens.

My goal in writing this and other commentaries is to point out our nations many failings before more victims pay the ultimate price for the incompetence and ineptitude of our government.

If you find yourself to be in agreement with this commentary, I ask that you forward it to as many of your friends and family members as possible and encourage them to do the same. We need to create a "Bucket Brigade of Truth!"

If our nation's continuing failures to secure our borders and create an immigration system that has real integrity concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you to call your Senators and Congressional "Representative. This is not only your right- it is your obligation!

All I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as dumb as they hope we are!

We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.

Border security and the creation of an immigration system that possesses real integrity are neither a "Conservative" issues, nor "Liberal" issues- simply stated, these are most certainly AMERICAN issues!

You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem!

Democracy is not a spectator sport!

Lead, follow or get out of the way!

Michael Cutler

Please check out my website:

MichaelCutler.net

Check out my radio show:

"Bordering on Insanity!"