Errol Foster, a Jamaican national, who killed a man with a pistol in 1990. He pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. He was released from prison in 2002. The feds began deportation proceedings while he was still in custody. An immigration judge ordered his removal in 2000, which Foster appealed. The Board of Immigration Appeals rejected his appeal in 2001. Four years later, Foster was still in the country -- appealing the rejected appeal and filing three separate federal lawsuits before getting lucky with the Second Circuit.

And Ho Yoon Chong, a South Korean national, who was sentenced in 1995 for racketeering related to his participation in the "Korean Fuk Ching" crime ring. In 1998, the then-INS moved to deport him. In 2002, an immigration judge ordered him deported. In 2004, the Board of Immigration Appeals sided with the judge. Like his fellow criminal aliens, Chong didn't give up, and now he's won the immigration litigation lottery.

Immigration lawyers representing criminal aliens like these four menaces have gummed up the court system with 11 years of litigation over the 1996 laws banning deportation relief for felons. Meanwhile, when all else fails, deportable aliens can appeal directly to their member of Congress to circumvent immigration laws through special legislation. More than 50 bills have been introduced this year that would grant special, private relief to individual immigrants fighting deportation. Past and present beneficiaries have included smugglers, illegal aliens and a convicted murderer, Mohuiddin A.K.M. Ahmed, who is wanted in Bangladesh for engaging in terrorist activity and participating in a 1975 assassination plot that left the prime minister and dozens of his family members dead.

These individual bills are ripe for corruption. Indeed, the Abscam scandal in the 1970s involved payoffs for the sponsorship of exactly these kind of private immigration laws. Democrats and Republicans alike continue to sponsor these "private relief" bills seeking to sabotage deportation efforts. Every time a private relief bill passes, the number of available visas for that year is reduced by the number of illegal alien/deportable immigrant recipients granted legal status/deportation relief through the special legislation. The bills needn't pass for the recipients to gain benefits. Mere introduction of the bills buys the deportable aliens time that ordinary, law-abiding citizens can't buy in our court system.

Open-borders Democrats led by Ted Kennedy bleat about the lack of "due process" for downtrodden aliens, but immigration lawyers and their clients know the deal. Whether the Bush-Kennedy bill passes or not, it ain't over 'til the alien wins.

This is the real "silent amnesty" that no one in Washington will talk about. Go ahead. Ask them.