Immigration and Subprime Mortagages

Exclusive: How Many Subprime Mortgages Were Awarded to Illegal Aliens?

Michael Cutler

This short news report might have been a bit longer if it had been written a couple of weeks later than it was. This story is dated September 5th and deals with one of the key issues about immigration that virtually no one is willing to talk about - especially politicians and others who subscribe to the open borders philosophy and to the idea of providing the millions of illegal aliens who are in our country with a Guest Worker Amnesty Program and a "Pathway to United States Citizenship." It deals with illegal aliens using stolen Social Security numbers and false immigration documents to apply for a home loan.

The challenges confronting our nation in dealing with the millions of illegal aliens who are in our country are numerous and significant. In my opinion, the most daunting challenge, and one that is fraught with national security implications, deals with accurately identifying millions of illegal aliens who have no reliable way of proving their identities. Our officials cannot be certain as to the true names of these millions of people. There is no way of determining their true nationality. There is no way of knowing when, where or how they entered the United States. Therefore, there is no way of truly knowing if they are wanted for crimes in other countries. There is also no way of determining if they are affiliated with criminal or terrorist organizations.

Absent all of the information I noted above, there is absolutely no way of knowing with any certainty, the intentions of these millions of aliens who have shown utter contempt for our nation's borders and our nation's laws.

Certainly the majority of illegal aliens are desperate people. They are not able to live decent lives in their own countries and consequently they are willing to take incredible risks to enter our country and take jobs Americans would be happy to do for living wages under reasonable conditions.

The problem is that there is no way of separating the illegal alien who is simply seeking illegal employment and the alien whose goal is far more nefarious. And regardless of their goals, neither of them should be here in the first place.

Hope is not a strategy. Hoping that the illegal alien who appears to simply be determined to get a job and send money home is no guarantee that he is not involved in a more sinister plan. Many years ago, in the early 1980s, I was involved in a raid conducted at a diner in Staten Island, New York. We arrested nine illegal aliens from various countries, including several from Latin America. Among them was a couple from Greece (they had worked on a ship and jumped ship upon arrival in New York). One alien, a citizen of Egypt who had been employed as a dishwasher, attempted to escape arrest by running through the parking lot at the rear of the diner. He ran across the roofs of cars and it took a major effort to finally arrest him. When we were finally able to corral him and place him in handcuffs he agreed to allow us to take him to his apartment to get his passport. The passport was important to properly identify him and to facilitate his deportation from the United States.

When my partner and I entered his apartment (located a short distance from the diner), we found about a half dozen large shopping bags filled to the brim with coupons for various items we were certain he had no use for. Among the products for which he had coupons were diapers, dog food and women's sanitary products. He was a single man with no wife or girl friend, no kids and no pets.

He also had no explanation for the coupons except to lamely claim that kids in the neighborhood "played with the coupons." When we asked him which kids and how they might play with them, he shrugged his shoulders and refused to discuss the coupons.

He was ultimately deported and then, several months afterwards I watched a televised news report about how terrorists from the Middle East had been coming to the United States to engage in coupon fraud to fund terrorist attacks around the world! The "dishwasher" we had arrested was obviously one of them. I have often wondered where he is now and what role he might have played in the terrorist attacks I have read about, including the first attack on the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993 and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The story that prompted this commentary demonstrates that illegal aliens may also be involved in criminal activities that can literally reverberate through our nation. While the news article provides the names of the couple that was arrested, I wonder what their true names and nationalities might be. This is why when police arrest a suspect they fingerprint him (her) because bad guys use changes of identity the way that a chameleon uses changes in coloration, to hide in plain sight among his intended victims!

Identity theft has been defined as being the "fastest growing white collar crime in America." It is my belief that illegal aliens contribute greatly to this epidemic that can make the honest person whose identity is stolen miserable.

I suggest you ask yourself how many of the sub-prime mortgages that have contributed greatly to the financial crisis that threatens our country may have been awarded to illegal aliens who committed identity theft as did the couple who were arrested.

In the name of national security, citizens of the United States are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain driver's licenses and other identity documents. While this inconvenience is unfortunate, I believe that these measures are necessary, especially in this perilous era. The point is that the continuing entry and presence of illegal aliens in our country whose identities are unknown and unknowable represent a threat to national security and to the safety of our citizens. That is why I wrote a commentary for the Washington Times last year as the Senate took up the issue of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform," in which I appropriately renamed that fatally-flawed legislation the "Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act of 2007."

Any sort of wide-spread legalization process for those millions of illegal aliens would simply provide terrorists and criminals with an opportunity to create false identities for themselves and would simply create the illusion of security. What's worse than no security? False security. Any Guest Worker Amnesty Program for illegal aliens certainly represents false security. This is unacceptable.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a recognized authority who addresses the implications of immigration on national security and criminal justice. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.