Homeland Security Pick Opposes Securing Nation

Barack Obama’s choice to head the agency that keeps the nation safe from foreign threats is a governor who vetoed several key laws to curb illegal immigration and advocates expanding a fraud-infested visa program for foreign workers.

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano’s credentials make her a rather bizarre pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, the massive agency that encompasses Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Citizenships and Immigration Services and the Transportation Security Administration. Combined they work to preempt terrorist attacks by protecting the country from outside threats.

Napolitano’s record indicates that perhaps she doesn’t take that mission very seriously. The two-term Arizona governor has vetoed bills to help curb her state’s immigration crisis by cutting illegal alien benefits like public assistance and in-state tuition as well as a measure allowing cooperation between local police and federal immigration officials. Napolitano also nixed a crucial law that would have officially rejected the easily forged Mexican Matricula Consular card as a valid form of identification. 

On a national level Napolitano has pushed hard to expand a corrupt visa program (H-1B) that allows U.S. employers to hire educated foreign workers for specialty occupations. The government annually grants 65,000 H-1B visas and Napolitano wants to increase it by 20,000 despite the fact that the program is rife with the sort of corruption that undoubtedly compromises national security. 

Just last month a report published by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services revealed that foreign workers forge documents, provide fake degrees and even nonexistent U.S. companies with bogus locations. Serious violations are so rampant that one in five visas is affected by either fraud or other technical violations, yet the nation’s soon-to-be Homeland Security chief wants to expand it.