President Obama has been frustrated in his attempt to find a single issue that can be tackled in a bipartisan way. Seems that no matter what he proposes, opposition is swift and certain. The Republicans have been shrewd in calculating that if they can stall anything and everything at every turn, the American people might forget how we came to these dire straits and blame him instead. No matter that this will cause the country to suffer even more, in fact the more pain the better for their hopes of regaining power.
Is there anything that Obama can propose that might help us and gain support from those who are consumed only with his destruction? Yes! We have a huge problem today that needs thousands of new federal employees. It is so important that even the Republicans will have to get behind the effort. Of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States today, half, or six million, are here on expired visas (one is Obama”s aunt) but we have only about 6,000 agents working at Immigration Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. Simple math reveals that each agent is responsible for 1,000 expired visas, an impossible case load, especially in light of the fact that these same agents are consumed with issuing new visas every day, leaving little or no time to follow up on expired visas.
The consequence of six million guests in our country on expired visas has already been catastrophic. Of the 19 terrorists that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, all were here on visas and six of them were expired. In 2006 (the last year I could find data for) a grand total of 8,000 of these folks were caught, almost all by accident as they had committed some other offense that brought scrutiny their way.
The other branch of Customs is assigned to border protection. There are about 12,000 of these agents, also a fraction of what we need to actually secure our borders. While a couple of hikers wandering a few hundred yards into Iran are still in prison and the young girls who walked across a creek into North Korea were detained for months, thousands of people cross our borders illegally every day with almost no chance of being turned away. Only a tiny fraction of containers arriving at our ports are inspected, also.
Any talk of national security while these conditions exist is nonsense. We need to hire tens of thousands of agents immediately and those coming home from multiple tours of duty in combat zones should be well qualified and very deserving of these jobs. We need them and we owe them a chance to find good jobs that pay a living wage.
Another profession woefully understaffed is that of parole officer. The recent horror of Jacee Dugard”s 18 years in captivity could have been avoided if parole officers had done a competent job monitoring her captor but their case loads are so high only a moment or two can be devoted to any one paroled felon. This is not just a California problem, but nationwide and thousands of good jobs here would serve us all well. Again, this is just the type of job that suits returning veterans.
There are other jobs that no one could possibly object to as well. How about food and drug inspectors to check for counterfeit drugs or tainted produce coming across our borders? Only a tiny fraction of imported foods are tested, same with all manner of imports. Our intellectual properties in the form of copyrights and patents are being knocked off by pirates who flood our markets with fakes; the iconic Zippo lighter has become a symbol of this theft. These are all positive steps that should be taken quickly with full cooperation.
Lowell Grant is a regular columnist for the Record-Bee.
