WASHINGTON: Overseas stations of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) have reported that the ease with which illegal immigrants enter and exit the USA become “a crisis” that has reached ‘out of control levels.”
To ease the shortage of agricultural workers, Congress allowed their easy entry. Taking advantage of this loophole, thousands of immigrants, even those holding a master’s degree and professionals were suddenly transformed into semiliterate, agricultural workers.
In one instance a Pakistani lawyer was caught having brought a thousand “agricultural workers” to work on his “farm.” When the authorities checked his claim, the “farm” turned out to be his small patch of lawn.
A cable from the US Immigration and Naturalization Office in Rome was quoted by The Washington Times as saying that “alien smuggling” through New York’s John F. Kennedy airport “has passed the crisis level, with hundreds of aliens with bogus documents or no documents at all arriving and claiming asylum.”
The Washington Times said in Pakistan “the problem of illegal alien smuggling into the USA is abetted by the government and aided by some foreign airlines, according to US officials here and abroad”.
“What is particularly worrisome,” said an INS official working overseas, “is that a disturbingly high percentage of people arriving by air with no legitimate documentation are people from areas where there is a terrorist environment”
The official said “the chances of slopping any terrorist from entering the USA right now are zero. “
In addition to those arriving illegally at the airport, there are rings operating from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean, which smuggle thousands of people into the USA across the western border and Florida.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 26, 1993
