Speech #1090140723

Mr. Chairman. I bring this amendment to the House today to focus the attention of the House. of the White House. of the country on an urgent and very serious problem with the Citizen Immigration Service. CIS is responsible for reviewing and approving any application for citizenship. for green cards. for visas. for 190s for people entering the United States temporarily or permanently. Yet this agency is so incompetent and so poorly run. all of us know. those of us representing border States. that the level of illegal immigration in the country is overwhelming. We have got people entering the country literally at will over our borders. Based on my own investigation. what I have learned from visiting the border firsthand. it is possible for terrorists to enter the United States just walking over the border. or frankly they can come right through the front door at the Citizenship and Immigration Service offices. the CIS offices. because the agency is not running criminal background checks on people applying for visas or green cards or I90s or citizenship. The agency. when they do run background checks. the Inspector General reports. that among people who are applying to enter the United States temporarily. there is a 90 percent error rate in security checks being run on these folks. If you are entering as a refugee. there is a 64 percent error rate. Now. this is on running criminal background checks on foreign nationals seeking to enter the United States. at a time when we are at war with terrorists who we know are seeking to enter the United States to hurt us. The terrorists who attacked us on September 11 were using dozens and dozens and dozens of fraudulent drivers licenses. phony IDs. they were. many of them. visa overstays. This agency is so incompetent. so poorly run that in fact they even hired an Iraqi spy and swore him in as an officer of the United States to interview foreign nationals applying to enter the United States. This was reported first in the Washington Times on April 6.