You've seen their mugs plastered on TV: Abid Noraiz Ali, 25;
Mustafa Khan Owasi, 33; Iftikhar Khozmai Ali, 21; Adil Pervez, 19; and Akbar
Jamal, 28.
According to intelligence sources, these five Middle Eastern or
South Asian men are illegal aliens who recently snuck into America from
Canada. They are allegedly part of a much larger group of invaders wanted by
the FBI for questioning. Law enforcement agencies want the public's help to
track them down, but both U.S. and Canadian officials are refusing to tell
us exactly how and where they might have entered.
Heaven forbid they give us enough specific information to start
holding anybody accountable for the continuing infiltration of immigration
outlaws into our country.
So how did the Christmas quintet get in? Here's my invasion
scenario:
The journey begins in Pakistan, the operations base
for an international smuggling ring that exploits one of Canada's most
notoriously insecure documents -- the IMM 1000 immigration form. These
forms, the Canadian equivalent of U.S. green cards for legal permanent
residents, contain no photos. Just the name and age of the holders. The
smugglers buy genuine IMM 1000 forms from Pakistani immigrants in Canada,
then illegally peddle them in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Using false identities and bogus passports along with their IMM
1000 documents, the invaders board planes in Pakistan, transit through
Dubai, travel through Britain or another European country, and touch down at
a Canadian air port of entry in Montreal, Vancouver or at Toronto's Pearson
International Airport.
Even if they land without documents, the smugglees can simply
claim refugee status and be automatically released. Barely a month after the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Pearson airport officials allowed 50 Pakistanis
and Afghanistanis to invoke the magic "r-word" and walk free. More than a
year later, nothing has changed.
From Canada, the invaders can waltz across our northern border.
On the West Coast, they'll pass orange rubber cones that substitute for
Border Patrol agents and flimsy signs that ask them to check in at the
nearest inspection station. Or they may walk in full view of the useless,
broken cameras installed by International Microwave Corporation under a $200
million federal contract. Or they'll be apprehended -- only to be "caught
and released" by agents who don't have access to terrorist databases and who
are under orders not to clog up detention space with "harmless"
border-crossers.
In remote areas along the northern border with Minnesota and
Michigan, the invaders can stuff themselves in cars owned by special permit
holders who are allowed to drive from Canada into the U.S. and avoid
official ports of entry. The program is called CANPASS; the motto is "Saving
you time at the border."
On the East Coast, the invaders can follow the route of
countless other illegal aliens across the St. Lawrence River and through the
St. Regis Mohawk reservation at Akwesasne, N.Y. The reservation has been a
hotspot for criminal alien smugglers assisted by tribal members. Immigration
officials estimate that between 300 and 500 illegal aliens a month have
entered the U.S. through the reservation in recent years. One Mohawk,
Charlie Little Tree, estimated that between 1,000 and 8,000 tribal members
currently on the reserve are involved in the alien smuggling trade.
From the reservation, invaders are packed in vans and driven
through the backroads of the Adirondack Mountains before pulling onto the
Thruway and straight into Manhattan to "do the jobs no one else wants to
do."
Canada's Immigration Department was warned of the Pakistani
smuggling ring and its roots in Montreal and Cornwall by former immigration
officer Valeriu Diaconescu last fall, but the agency did nothing. Thanks to
the inaction of liberal Citizenship and Immigration Minister Denis Coderre,
"terrorist networks may be using these forged forms to smuggle people into
Canada," noted Canadian Alliance MP Rahim Jaffer last spring. "Will it take
a terrorist attack here in this country before the minister starts to act?"
As the continuing failure of America's immigration officials to
stop the invasion from the north shows, even that is not enough.