Immigration union leader says terrorists are crossing U.S. borders

by Sam Rolley / Personal Liberty Digest

 

  The head of one of the nation’s largest immigration-related employee unions warned Americans this week that President Barack Obama’s lax immigration policies are opening the nation up to a terror attack on par with 9/11.

According to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) head Kenneth Palinkas, the inability of immigration officials to thoroughly vet each of the thousands of new immigrants to the U.S. under Obama’s policies could help potential terrorists set the stage for “an even more catastrophic event then what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Palinkas has long criticized lax immigration policies. He joined the heads of several other employee unions whose members deal with immigration back in 2013 to speak out against the bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration plan, which he said would turn his employees into rubber stampers.

“It compels the officer to go on this assembly line, much like Lucille Ball back in the day with those chocolates,” he told NPR at the time. “[It’s] just, ‘Go get this job done.’ You’re not given enough time to adjudicate. We don’t have the manpower. People [are] not properly trained. So we’re not really even ready to take over the responsibility.”

With Obama’s unilateral immigration overhaul, Palinkas’ fears have become reality without the Gang of Eight bill passing.

At a recent Senate hearing Donald Neufeld, the associate director of Service Center Operations for USCIS, said that employees in his union handle “the world’s largest immigration system that includes more than 100 immigrant and nonimmigrant classifications and more than 200 different forms and applications.”

In 2014, USCIS employees handled immigration paperwork for about 7 million immigration petitions and requests. At that volume, immigration officials are increasingly unable to conduct face-to-face interviews with immigrants during the vetting process.

And according to Palinkas, it’s likely that terrorists have already exploited the overburdened immigration system.

“Our current immigration system leaves us vulnerable to terrorist threats and terrorism in general by providing entry avenues for people sworn to destroy America… We must remain diligent and not continue lessening our guard against extremists who seek to destroy this nation,” he said.

“We must not govern based on politically correct clichés about relaxed immigration that only serve to weaken the country."