Posted on 05/23/2007 8:20:30 PM PDT by Valin
The transcript of my interview with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is posted here. The audio will be here later.
I had hoped to get some answers from Secretary Chertoff that would have allayed my concerns about the draft immigration bill. I was not persuaded by his answers on a number of questions, and was mystified why it was so hard to get to the bottom line on the fence: 75 new miles are under construction and none have been completed thus far. The Department hopes that the 75 miles will be done by the end of September. Getting to the bottom line wasn't easy:
HH: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. We’ve got just a few minutes left, and we’ll get you back, we hope, soon. Before we go back to security issues, how may new miles, new miles of double fencing have been constructed on the border since Congress passed the bill last year authorizing the additional 800 miles, Mr. Secretary?
MC: We’re going to have 150 miles…first of all, there’s 700 miles, but we’re going to have 150 miles of what we call pedestrian fence, meaning fence that keeps people on foot out, not just vehicles, by the end of September.
HH: Is that all new?
MC: That’s cumulative. That’s everything we have, total.
HH: And how many…
MC: Congress authorized approximately 700 total miles of fence, pedestrian fence.
HH: And how many miles of new fencing since that bill passed have been put up?
MC: We will have 150 miles by the end of September.
HH: I know that, but I’ve been getting different reports.
MC: Yeah, Hugh, here’s what I’m going to tell you. When you build fence, you don’t build mile by mile. What you do is you take a strip of miles, for example, what we’re doing at the Barry Goldwater Range. We’ve got about 35 miles we’re building. But we don’t build one mile at a time. We survey it, we grade it, we move the equipment in, we drive the pilings in, and then the fence, that 35 mile stretch of fence will get done. For example, that will be one of the stretches that gets done by the end of September. Right now, there’s no fence there.
HH: But of the 150, in September, how many of those will…
MC: What I’m saying to you is we’re underway now doing about 75 miles of “new fence.” But it is being built from the ground up.
HH: Sure.
MC: It’s not being built mile by mile.
HH: Sure. And is any of it finished?
MC: Well, some parts of it are finished, but here’s the piece, the kind of misunderstanding here. Nobody in their right mind builds a mile of fence, start to finish, and then starts the next mile.
HH: Oh, sure. I agree with that completely.
MC: It’s like building a brick wall. You start from the ground up. Very few miles are completely done.
HH: We understand that, but Mr. Secretary, people doubt that the Department is committed to the fence construction. What I hear you saying is that you’ve got 75 miles of new fencing under construction, and that’s all.
MC: Correct. Now…and then after this 75 miles is done, we are on track to get 370 miles of fencing completed by the end of calendar year 2008.
What is very frustrating is that the Administration is arguing that security is going to be better served by getting fingerprints of all the illegal aliens in the country, but doesn't have an answer for how many illegals from "countries of concern" are here illegally, and denies that providing a Z Visa to jihadists with good covers is a problem. Key excerpt:
HH: But I’m going to those who entered illegally. Do you believe that some of these special interest aliens, as the San Antonio Express News has been calling them, have entered the country in the last few years?
MC: I think back over time, we’ve had, yes, special interest aliens, or aliens from special interest countries who have entered, and some of those may very well be sympathetic to terrorist groups.
HH: And so, the new draft law that we’re talking about calls for millions and millions of background checks and interviews of would-be Z visa holders, which would include that, however many there are, of sympathizers. Who’s going to conduct these millions of background interviews?
MC: Well, let me begin, Hugh, by making this point. Right now, if someone is in the country illegally, and is sympathetic to terrorists, we’re going to have to hunt for them while they’re out hiding out. So the question is does this proposed bill make it easier for us, and the answer to that is yes, because by bringing into a regulated, visible system people who can pass a background check because we don’t have an indication that they’re a terrorist, it allows us to focus on those people who are not going to come forward, who are probably the people where the danger lies.
HH: But if a jihadi has a good cover, and comes forward and gets the kind of visa, Z visa, doesn’t that assist them in their movement around the country?
MC: Well, I mean, the problem with that argument is it applies to anybody who was able to come in under false pretenses. I mean, people come in with student visas, people come in with business visas. These are all people who we scrub and check in the same way that we would check the Z visa holders. There’s no guarantee that someone with a very good cover isn’t going to get by us, but the point is, if someone does have a good cover, there are a lot of ways they can get a visa. I think this program actually would reduce vulnerability, because it limits, it brings most of the people who we don’t need to worry about into a visible system, so we can hunt for the people we do worry about.
HH: We’ll come back to that in a second, but you mentioned the background scrub. Who’s going to do that, the millions of background checks and the millions of interviews?
MC: Well, we have the tools that we use with respect to anybody who wants to come into the country, the 80 million people who come in every year by air, and the hundreds of millions who come in across our land borders legally on tourist visas. We use our watch lists. One of the things that’s occurring as we collect fingerprints overseas is we’ll be able to run fingerprints for anybody who applies for a visa against latent fingerprints that we pick up in battlefields and safe houses all around the world. So that’s going to give us, and that’s just the fingerprint check. That’s an automated process. That’s going to give us a real opportunity to catch somebody who’s in the country, however they want to come in or have gotten in, that we’ve picked up fingerprints for on any of the operational activities we’ve conducted overseas.
HH: I know it’s a little more prosaic what I’m getting to, Mr. Secretary, which is you’ve got 12 million applications.
MC: Right.
HH: Who’s physically going to pick them up and handle them? Which department’s going to do that?
MC: We’re going to use…DHS will collect the applications, collect the fingerprints. The process of background checking then will occur in cooperation with the FBI and its databases, our databases, and all the databases that are currently kept in the terrorist screening center.
HH: And have you allocated staff time? I mean, an 11 million, if it’s on the low end, 12 million investigations, 12 million interviews, have you got an analysis of where that’s going to funnel to, and who’s actually going to do that work, because from my time in the government as deputy director of OPM running the securities investigation, it takes days to do a decent investigation, and this is all going to hit at once. I don’t know where the people are.
MC: Well, it’s not going to hit at once. It will hit over a period of time, because there will be an enrollment period. And as I know you know, Hugh, obviously, we’re not going to be doing background checks of the kind that you do for a top security clearance. What we’re going to be doing is running fingerprints and names against various databases, which is a process we currently use, for example, in screening people who get visas to come into the country for all kinds of purposes. So we already do millions of these through our existing processes. There’s no question we’re going to need money to increase the staff and the capability for these 12 million. But I want to put it in perspective by saying that we process 80 million air travelers every year coming through our airports, so we already deal with a very large volume of people that we are screening to let them come into the country legally.
HH: Now the law does not make a distinction, does it, Mr. Secretary, between Mexican and Central American immigrants on the one hand, and immigrants of interest from countries with jihadist networks, does it?
MC: That’s correct. I mean, the law will apply to people who are here in the country, whatever their ethnic background or origin.
HH: And so, if there are, I’m going back to my original set of questions, if there are good cover jihadis, terrorists, sympathizers in the country illegally that you don’t pick up through your watch lists or your fingerprints, because they’re good, they’re going to be legitimized under this process, correct?
MC: Well, I think, Hugh, I guess I have to come back to this point. If there’s somebody who’s got a good enough cover to beat the system with respect to Z visas, they’re also going to have had a good enough cover to come in through our visa waiver program with Western Europe, or to beat the visa system with respect to Asia. I mean, in some ways what you’re asking me is, is there a foolproof method to keep a terrorist out? And the answer to that is quite obviously no.
HH: Well, the San Antonio Express News this week said that there have been 5,700 arrests since 2001 of special interest immigrants from countries of concern, meaning those with jihadi networks. They estimated between 40,000 and 60,000 other illegal immigrants from those countries in the country. I’m not worried about people who enter legally. I’m worried about those who’ve come in, in massive numbers…I mean, do you agree with those numbers, Mr. Secretary?
MC: I don’t have…I can’t verify those numbers. I don’t know where the paper got them from. I want to underscore a couple of things that which I think are kind of embedded in your discussion, which might cause people to be a little confused. First of all, a special interest country merely means a country where we’ve previously found training camps or evidence of training activity, or really kind of core terrorist behavior. But I also have to point out if you simply open a newspaper, that we are increasingly seeing jihadi terrorist behavior in places like Great Britain, Western Europe, countries that you wouldn’t normally think of as countries where we have to fear the possibility of al Qaeda linked individuals. So I think trying to focus on certain countries as if that’s the way to close the vulnerability is to not recognize that the terrorists are quite consciously seeking to infiltrate, using people that don’t match that profile…
___________________________________________
The first e-mail received after the interview, from Janet in Minnesota:
You know, he’s not answering your question. Where is he coming from? How stupid does he think we are? They really play us for chumps. Hello – we aren’t that stupid – we just want our fence. I don’t believe him.
I don’t like his answers – he’s avoiding the issues – he’s not answering your questions. I’m so tired of this “slick Willie” talk. I know computer systems. We can’t track voters (though we can track pigs and cows) so how are we supposed to track illegals.
I’m not buying his “trust me” attitude.
Janet B__________
AM 1280
An Interview With Senator Kyl
Posted by Hugh Hewitt | 7:40 PM
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/g/8aff6805-b325-4f66-9197-94313051a0de
I just concluded a three segment interview with Senator Kyl, and though he is much more engaging than Secretary Chertoff, he didn’t persuade me at all on my four major issues:
(1)Why not build all of the fence first and not just 370 miles? An amendment has added some miles of vehicular barriers, but why not 330 more miles of real fence? This is an easy fix: Finish the fence before the first Z Visa issues.
(2)Why not take the Border Patrol to the level it needs to be now? An amendment has added some additional agents, but not the nearly the full strength that will be needed. And if recruitment is tough, raise their pay.
(3)Where are the resources to do the background checks and interviews on a minimum 12 million people? This is the biggest hole in the bill by far, and the idea that the government is going to be able to ever handle 12 million fingerprint checks and criminal record checks followed by investigations and interviews is just absurd.
(4)Why in the world are we treating illegal immigrants from countries with known jihadist/terrorist networks the same as illegal aliens from Mexico and Central American countries? Why not carve out and leave “in the shadows” illegal aliens from countries with known terrorist networks? If the compromise sponsors’ are correct, after the probationary cards are issued no one will be able to find work without such a probationary card, and thus the most dangerous subgroups of illegals will be isolated if they are excluded from the probationary program. I know there are criminals and gang members among the Spanish speaking illegal populations, but none —as yet— have been suicide pilots or bombers. And I know that the vast majority of illegal aliens from countries with jihadist networks are not jihadists.
What I am proposing isn’t “fair” to the illegals from countries of special interest who are themselves law abiding economic immigrants, but the security of the country comes before fairness to the people who entered it illegally. The idea of handing a well covered jihadist a “move around the country freely” pass, which allows him to not only work but also to leave and return to the country strikes me as beyond any possible defense.
The transcript of the interview with Senator Kyl will be here later in the day. The audio will be here.
It’s amazing how many words some folks can take to say nothing of importance.
I think Chertoff just says whatever happens to pop into his head at any particular moment.
Bush stooge parrots the Bush open border, pro-illegal position. The little fence that wasn’t.
It's amazing that anything can survive in such a vacuum.
Chertoff came off as a geniune phony on Hughs show.
Hugh held his feet to the fire though.
Chertoff needs to look into bridge sales when he retires. Could make some good money.
And more
Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe on the problems with the new immigration bill.
The Hugh Hewitt Show
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=a7d9cffe-9d91-4350-b7d4-34ae5a3e2df0
(snip)
HH: Senator, today there were some amendments offered to the immigration bill. I gather that the temporary workers program has been cut in half to a maximum of 200,000 a year. Is that what happened today?
JI: Well, yeah, that’s what happened, but there’s going to be more to come. There probably are, oh, four or five more amendments filed concerning that program. Hugh, I know you’re going to have Chertoff on, you’re going to have my best friend, Jon Kyl on, and it’s very rare that Jon and I are not together on virtually every issue, and this one, there’s a disagreement. But I’d like to put it in perspective, because those of us who were not involved…Jon was involved, Chertoff was involved, I was not, and the majority in this were not.
(snip)
Now the reason I was hesitant to go along with someone’s word with how all these things are so good is because I have one area that I have offered an amendment several times before. So when I got the copy of this bill, that’s the English language amendment, when I got the copy of the bill, I looked up to see how that draft that we were working from, starting on Monday, treated English as the national language. Well, to recall to your mind, because you and I talked about a year ago on this same subject, I had an amendment making English the official language of…the national language. It was nothing more than saying that you don’t have an entitlement to have anything that you want from government in any language other than English. That’s your only entitlement. Well, right after I passed mine with a vote of 62-35 on the floor of the Senate, the Salazar amendment came in and totally ripped mine apart. Now you know, and your listeners are pretty sophisticated, they know that what happened here was a lot of Democrats, primarily, were covering themselves by voting for mine, then turned right around, three minutes later, and voted for Salazar. When I looked up in this to see how that was treated in this bill, Section 702, is the Salazar language, and not my language. So that made me a little suspicious of what else is in there that we didn’t really know about, and still to this time, haven’t had a chance to thoroughly investigate.
HH: Yeah, Section 701 provides that English is the common language of the United States, followed by the announcement that this status does not diminish or expand any existing rights under the laws of the United States relative to the services or materials provided by the government. It’s humbug.
JI: Yeah, well, all it says is it doesn’t diminish or expand, so it’s the same, But I think what you did not read is the most significant part, if I can real quickly do that.
HH: Please.
JI: Under definition, it says for the purpose of this section law, now that’s what we’re defining now, law is defined as including provisions of the United States Constitution, the United States Code controlling judicial decisions, regulations, and listen to this now, presidential executive orders. In other words, you’re taking the very famous now, Bill Clinton executive order of 13166, which gives an entitlement to anyone receiving federal funds, to have a translator there available in the language of your choice.
HH: Right.
JI: Now that codifies something that was not codified before, so this bill actually made that situation worse.
HH: Wow.
JI: And now what I’ve got is an amendment, and I’m hoping that people, it’ll be on the floor tomorrow morning, they’ll think of every reason in the world not to…to oppose it. My amendment strikes section 702, and any of your listeners…look, there’s a new poll that came out just today, a new Zogby poll that actually had 83% of all Americans, and 76% of the Hispanics in America indicate that they support my language. These are Hispanics we’re talking about.
HH: Yeah, I love that provision. We’ll watch that amendment tomorrow. But you also have expertise, Senator, I want to tap into, with regards to the fence, because you know the Endangered Species Act, you know the Clean Water Act.
Hugh held his feet to the fire though.
It’s one of the reasons I really like his show.
I listen every night. He is one of the best at actual thinking!
MC: It’s not being built mile by mile.
HH: Sure. And is any of it finished?
MC: Hugh, pull my finger!
Maybe it’s due to my thorough disgust with the bill he’s trying to sell, but I’ve just never noticed what a dour, soulless, emaciated person he is ... positively Grim Reaper-ish.
just for once when these idiots pop off about the cost of deporting the illegals I wish some one would ask them the total cost including all future social program benefits of the Amnesty Bill of 2007.
$2 Trillion Dollars as estimated by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation.
This I know, but none of the people pushing the bill have yet to have to answer the question. Making them answer it on network TV could go a long way toward killing this thing off.
Yet one more problem with this bill, the CBO has not seen it yet, so (officially) no one knows what the cost will be.
One mans opinion (freely given, and worth almost that much) This bill is dead, or soon will be.
“$2 Trillion Dollars as estimated by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation.”
Do you have a link? Thanks
Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow - The Heritage Foundation
Bill Bennett
Bennett digs into the hard facts behind the latest push for immigration reform, with Robert Rector.
Length: 00:12:16
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