Explain to Me Again About Doing Background Checks on Amnesty Applicants

by FAIR Media Director Ira Mehlman

One of the many criticisms of last year's Bush-Kennedy illegal alien amnesty bill was the concern that criminals, terrorists and other undesirables might get on that great "pathway to citizenship" along with your otherwise harmless illegal aliens. Nothing to worry about, we were assured by the White House and congressional amnesty supporters. All of the amnesty applicants would have to undergo a rigorous background check carried out by the FBI before we welcomed them into the fold.

Assuming - and this is a very big assumption - that there wasn't massive fraud, the FBI would have been charged with doing about 15 million background checks on the illegal aliens estimated to be in the country. How do you do background checks on 15 million people, you ask? Good question, because it seems the FBI is so far behind with background checks on 150,000 backlogged immigration cases that the Department of Homeland Security has decided to go ahead and issue green cards to those applicants without security checks. If problems are discovered later, DHS assures us, those green cards will be revoked.

For those in the White House and Congress who did not major in math, fulfilling the promise that all 15 million or so illegal aliens would have to undergo background checks would have increased the FBI's caseload a hundredfold. In other words, instead of handing out green cards to 150,000 people whom we don't have the resources to do background investigations on in a timely fashion, we'd have 15 million applicants passing through the process without being checked. Of course, as the FBI carried out the background checks - which would probably be completed by some time in the 22nd century - they could always revoke the green cards later on.

Update 2/12: The Washington Post has more coverage today about the background check waiver that immigrants are getting.