Fact Checking The “Fact Checkers" on Illegal Aliens-“Outing” Orwellian fake news.

Frontpagemagazine ^ | February 15, 2019 | Michael Cutler

[SJackson]

On Monday, February 11th I was a guest on a radio show, “The Americhicks” on radio station KLZ to discuss a Feb 4, 2019 CBS News article, The facts on immigration: What you need to know in 2019- CBSN fact-check on immigration.

The CBS article ostensibly responded to nine questions about immigration raised by President Trump.  I was asked to weigh in about the honesty and accuracy of the “Facts” published by CBS to discredit what the President had said.

I reviewed the article during the weekend that preceded that show and found that falsehoods permeated this supposed “fact-check on immigration.”

Unfortunately this sort of deceptive “reporting” is all too common. 

By understanding how to unravel the tapestry of lies contained in this article will provide a methodology that can be brought to bear to critically analyze all supposed “news” articles.

To begin with, the late criminal defense attorney Johnnie Cochran remarked at the O.J. trial, “If you can’t trust the messenger, you cannot trust the message.”

Voltaire wisely said, “You should judge a man’s intelligence by the questions he asked.”  The trick is to devise the incisive questions that provide you with the insight you need to determine whether the material you are reviewing is honest or propaganda.

The CBS News article quoted a number of organizations that provided the supposed “Facts” that were used to counter what President Trump said.  The first issue is to find out who these sources (messengers) are.  It is particularly helpful to find the organization’s website online and review its mission statement.  It may be posted under “About” or “About Us” at the top of the website.

The first source quoted in the CBS article was the Center For Migration Studies.  Here is how its mission statement (under “About” on its website) begins:

The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) is a think tank and an educational institute devoted to the study of international migration, to the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees and newcomers.

Simply stated, this organization is not an objective think tank but a biased advocacy group that seeks to increase the numbers of aliens admitted into the United States and is determined to quash any objections about the influx of aliens irrespective of how they enter the United States.

The CBS article used information provided by CMS to answer the question:  How do most unauthorized immigrants enter the United States?

The answer provided in the CBS article was described as a “Fact”

Fact: Two-thirds of the recent unauthorized immigrant population entered the U.S. on valid visas, then stayed in the country after that visa expired.

This supposed “Fact” was provided to oppose the construction of the border wall, claiming that since so many aliens don’t run our borders, we don’t need to build the wall.

In reality, the actual number of illegal aliens in the United States is unknown.  Therefore it is impossible to determine what percentage of illegal aliens entered the U.S. by evading the inspections process at ports of entry vs the number of aliens who violate their visas.

Recently Harvard and MIT conducted studies that showed that although it has been estimated by many organizations that there are about 11 million illegal aliens, the number, according to the university studies may be double that number or even higher.

For more information about this issue, check out my recent article:  Twice As Many Illegal Aliens In US According To MIT.

Additionally, on February 8, 2019 ABC News reported:  Border arrests up 85 percent over same period last year: US Customs and Border Protection.

In fact, on February 11th I participated in a discussion on Fox & Friends First about the latest statistics provided by CBP.

Fox News posted the video under the title, A new report reveals the problem at the border is only getting worse:  Retired INS agent Michael Cutler weighs in on the crisis at the southern border.

No matter what the actual statistics are, given the huge number of illegal aliens present in the United States and the now routine onslaught of a human tsunami in the form of an endless succession of “caravans” of illegal aliens flowing northward from Central America to the United States, the percentage of illegal aliens who enter the U.S. without inspection is certainly great enough to be considered a true crisis that poses a threat to national security and public safety that must be effectively dealt with.

This brings us to the second question in the CBS News article, the actual number of illegal aliens who are present in the United States. 

The sources quoted by CBS in response to this question were the Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute.  Both organizations have historically attempted to downplay the magnitude of the immigration crisis.

In point of fact, Doris Meissner, the Commissioner of the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) under the Clinton administration, joined the Migration Policy Institute about a year after it was formed as a senior fellow.  Meissner, as INS commissioner, was responsible for implementing a massive naturalization program known as CUSA (Citizenship USA) that sought to naturalize as many new citizens as possible and resorted to shortcuts including approving applications for citizenship before fingerprint records were consolidated with the immigration files.  Under CUSA approximately 1.1 million aliens were naturalized and because of the extreme shortcuts and threats of extreme discipline against INS District Directors if quotas were not met, concerned employees of the INS contacted the Office of the Inspector General.

The eye-opening OIG report about the allegations of malfeasance of this program was published and is well worth reading.

INS Commissioner Meissner had an adversarial relationship with the special agents of the INS and was hostile towards immigration law enforcement justice.

On May 4, 1999 the House Immigration Subcommittee conducted a hearing on the Designations Of Temporary Protected Status And Fraud In Prior Amnesty Programs. 

John F. Shaw, the former Assistant Commissioner for Investigations, Immigration and Naturalization Service, testified at that hearing.  His testimony about his frustrations with Doris Meissner provides insight into her hostility to immigration law enforcement.

Here is an excerpt from his testimony:

In its determined efforts to establish control of the border by tightening security on the perimeter, Congress has seemingly ignored the critical, complementary roles and responsibilities of Interior Enforcement . . . and these fall mainly on the shoulders of Investigations.

I believe that the concept of Interior Enforcement, supported by a well articulated strategy document, ought to be as familiar in the nomenclature of immigration enforcement as the concept, or term, Border Control. Although, I must admit that even in-house at INS, the Commissioner has said that Interior Enforcement is a term of usage invented by Investigations and devoid of meaning.

The CBS article also made much of how the majority of drugs are seized at ports of entry and therefore more needs to be done to prevent smuggling through ports of entry and not be concerned about the amount of drugs that are smuggled across the border between ports of entry.

The fact is that we don’t know what we don’t know.  Obviously, DEA has no way of knowing the total amount of narcotics that is successfully smuggled between ports of entry.  There is no shortage of heroin in the United States and therefore with all of the seizures made by CBP at ports of entry, huge quantities are still getting into the U.S.  Clearly open borders must be considered as a serious threat to the integrity of our efforts to interdict smuggled drugs as well as smuggled aliens.

The article additionally asks the absurd question, “Is asylum a form of illegal immigration?”

The article then provides the assertion:

Fact: No. "If you are eligible for asylum you may be permitted to remain in the United States.”  Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

Of course, while filing for any immigration benefit does not constitute “illegal immigration”, lying on such applications and therefore committing fraud is a felony.

The issue of asylum fraud was, in fact, the focus of a November 21, 2013 Washington Times news report, “Mexican drug cartels exploit asylum system by claiming ‘credible fear.’”

That article was predicated on two House Judiciary Committee hearings: Asylum Abuse: Is it Overwhelming our Borders? and Asylum Fraud: Abusing America’s Compassion?

The CBS article ignored that the majority of applications filed by aliens from Central America are denied and that immigration fraud was a key concern of the 9/11 Commission.  That was the predication for my article, Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill-9/11 Commission identified immigration fraud as a key embedding tactic of terrorists.

The CBS article claimed that the majority of aliens who applied for asylum attended their hearings.  They did not, however, divulge how many aliens whose applications were denied subsequently absconded and failed to depart from the United States.

The CBS article also asked (and answered):

Do illegal immigrants commit more violent crimes than legal residents?

Fact: Studies say that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than American-born citizens.

Source: The Cato Institute and The University of Wisconsin.

My article, Illegal Immigration And Crime: The stunning numbers the Left cannot refute includes this excerpt:

President Trump’s Executive Order on Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect relevant data and provide quarterly reports on data collection efforts. On Dec. 18, 2017, DOJ and DHS released the FY 2017 4th Quarter Alien Incarceration Report, complying with this order.  The report found that more than one-in-five of all persons in Bureau of Prisons custody were foreign born, and that 94 percent of confirmed aliens in custody were unlawfully present.

Here is an excerpt from the press release that provides some quick statistics and a paragraph that addresses the lack of information about aliens in city and state facilities.

A total of 58,766 known or suspected aliens were in DOJ custody at the end of FY 2017, including 39,455 persons in BOP custody and 19,311 in USMS custody. Of this total, 37,557 people had been confirmed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be aliens (i.e., non-citizens and non-nationals), while 21,209 foreign-born people were still under investigation by ICE to determine alienage and/or removability.

Among the 37,557 confirmed aliens, 35,334 people (94 percent) were unlawfully present. These numbers include a 92 percent unlawful rate among 24,476 confirmed aliens in BOP custody and a 97 percent unlawful rate among 13,081 confirmed aliens in USMS custody

This report does not include data on the foreign-born or alien populations in state prisons and local jails because state and local facilities do not routinely provide DHS or DOJ with comprehensive information about their inmates and detainees—which account for approximately 90 percent of the total U.S. incarcerated population.

The rest of the material in the CBS News article can be similarly discredited, proving that, as John Adams famously observed, “Facts are stubborn things.”

[Elsie]

 

 

 

Eerily familiar...

 

 

Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.

 

16. Ministry Of Truth

.......

The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below.

The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.

In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs.

There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed.

And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.

 

 

[The_Media_never_lie]

No matter what the actual statistics are, given the huge number of illegal aliens present in the United States and the now routine onslaught of a human tsunami in the form of an endless succession of “caravans” of illegal aliens flowing northward from Central America to the United States, the percentage of illegal aliens who enter the U.S. without inspection is certainly great enough to be considered a true crisis that poses a threat to national security and public safety that must be effectively dealt with.

---

National emergency? Are we oblivious to what happened in Europe?

[del griffith]

It would help if the President was a paragon on honesty vs his use of hyperbole and puffery.

[FamiliarFace]

*It would help if the President was a paragon on honesty vs his use of hyperbole and puffery.*

It would help if the media were were paragons of honesty vs their use of hyperbole and puffery.

[del griffith]

Offsetting penalties? Shouldn’t both honor the truth.

[aquila48]

Bookmark

[schurmann]

“It would help if the President was a paragon on honesty vs his use of hyperbole and puffery.” [del Griffith, post 4]

I’m not so confident. Complaints coming from the Left should remain suspect; citizens ought to quit allowing you to set the terms (moral, professional, practical etc) of the debate.

One could go further: on 10 October 2001, I happened to be watching C-SPAN. David Hackworth (COL, USA (ret)) happened to be on. He made the observation that in a media-saturated culture such as ours, people who use public protests and this or that form of “activism” to degrade, confound, reverse, or otherwise alter national policies they don’t like, could objectively be committing treason.

As some forum members may know already, COL Hackworth was never a subservient lackey of any civilian administration, nor a dogmatic apologist for US policies. He was the stuff of legend in US Army circles, first for the results he obtained in Southeast Asia against irregular combatants, and later for making public critiques of senior US Army personnel and the nuts & bolts of military decisionmaking.

Better control of the southern border of the United States is a good idea - something I’ve been advocating since the mid 1970s. The situation today is worse than 45-odd years ago. If it doesn’t rank as a national emergency, it will certainly serve as one until something more threatening appears on the horizon.

In any case, “overreacting” (read: countermeasures you shrink from) wouldn’t hurt the situation. Neither would responding in a useful manner, after having been stirred to action by hyperbole or puffery.

[del griffith]

I take it your a fan of Dr. Keyes. Your writing style is very similar to his speaking style.

[SJackson]

Yes, it would.

[schurmann]

“I take it your a fan of Dr. Keyes. Your writing style is very similar to his speaking style.” [del griffith, post 9]

If by “Dr Keyes” you are referring to Alan Keyes, conservative activist, occasional candidate for office, and PhD holder from Harvard, I can’t say I’m a huge fan but I don’t bear him any animosity either.

I did spend more than half my time on active duty as a staff officer and supervisor of a number of technical specialties. I spent a lot of time advising senior leaders and various personnel of high rank, explaining options, constraints, and providing background information.

They invariably possessed big egoes, were pressed for time, and frequently harbored the opinion that their strong willpower gave them license to violate the laws of physic and other similar constraints. We had to resort to a great many rhetorical techniques and forensic gambits to get our points across; research of all manner of historic, literary, and scientific details was a facet of the daily grind so we’d no choice save to read widely.

Anything and everything could be called on to bolster the argument, and eventually was. Probably inevitable that each of us would develop styles of writing and speaking that were a mishmash.

None of which addresses the original questions:

1. What makes you think your take on Truth and Morality is the one the rest of us must defer to?

2. Are you assuming that if the President suddenly starts telling the Unvarnished Truth (according to your arbitrary definition), his opponents will be so dazzled by the Cosmic Wondrousness of it all that they will See The Light, stop opposing him, and fall in line as he leads by example?

After watching the Progressive Left operate for the past 50 years, and studying its exploits for the century immediately preceding that, I’m not hopeful.

[steve8714]

Will you ignore the truth coming from Trump, because in your opinion he lies? Hyperbole is not a lie. Puffery is not a lie. Did you note for Hillary because of Trump’s “dishonesty”? Trump is a good salesman. All good salesmen know the difference between a lie and bullshit, else they don’t last in the profession.

[Lakeshark]

What would help more than anything is if a couple of posters here understood the consequences of losing this cold civil war to the leftists.

The idea that waging the war versus the left requires a perfect human being as President is Tomfoolery beyond comprehension.

I get it, let's all join hands, cluck like W did about "the new tone" being important while the left rips the country apart. That's a much better scenario.

[Leep]

President Trump needs to have a press conference.
Without saying what he is doing he needs to say word for word what bill clinton,nancy pelosi and chuck schumer said in support of a wall.
Then when the press ask him questions about it..then he says ask clinton, pelosi and dchumer because they are the ones who said those things.

[buffyt]

AMEN!!!!

[buffyt]

Speaking of Dr Keyes... Alexandria Occasional Cortex is a college graduate, with her degree in Economics... I wonder if she studied Keyesian Economics, rather than REAL MATH economics...

[buffyt]

I was referring to John M. Keynes... keynesian economics

[SJackson]

Good idea. Just mix the quotes in. All the time.

[SJackson]

The idea that waging the war versus the left requires a perfect human being as President is Tomfoolery beyond comprehension.

No one said the Presidency requires perfection, and It would help if the President was a paragon on honesty vs his use of hyperbole and puffery. is rather mild criticism. Also rather accurate, he does use hyperbole and puffery. To some extent to his advantage as it excites his supporters. But it's important not to put off too many independents. He's President by virtue of a number of close races. Several, like WI, MO, NC, PA with Democrat governors and voting traditions. Can't count on a loony tunes Dem nominee.

I'd suggest that the concept of a political leader exempt from criticism is every bit as dangerous as the left. Who hold out their leaders as exempt from criticism. It's the wrong side of today's double standards.

[Lakeshark]

Your statement kind of implied that.

I don't see anything beyond hyperbole for selling purposes, do you really think that's a problem? Kindly name something that is beyond that. Name something we need to stand up to that is so awful that Trump has done. There's a difference between being critical for a purpose that makes sense, and the insane #nevertrumping from our side.

And equating his hyperbole to the nonstop insanity, lies, and deceit of the left, sort of as comparable is sort of like straining at gnats while swallowing camels.

And you really haven't addressed my point about the consequences of losing this war to the left, or at least I didn't see it.