Last night, talk-radio host Steve Malzberg, of WOR, interviewed Debra Burlingame about the current immigration bill:

Steve Malzberg: “I heard Trent Lott earlier today basically unable to explain why, when we’ve already passed legislation that has been signed into law by the President and the money has been appropriated to build the fence and hire more border agents… why we need another bill to address border security. He said, “I don’t enforce the laws; we just make the laws.” What kind of answer is that, from Trent Lott?”

Debra Burlingame: “Well, that is the answer; the answer is they have no intention of securing our borders, none whatsoever. Even if they wanted to… no one believes they can.

“They have a backlog of 636,000 fugitive deportee cases; they don’t know where these people are. They had a backlog, in 2002, of 4 million applications for Green Cards; it has to be twice that now. They have a backlog, the FBI, of background checks for legal immigrants — on people who are following the law — of 329,000… Remember, they are supposed to being doing background checks, under this bill, for 12 to 20 million people in twenty-four hours. [laughter] It’s laughable. The Department of Homeland Security has lost 111,000 applications for Green Cards; they’ve simply misplaced them.”

Steve Malzberg: “You can’t find any of these people because you are not allowed, as law enforcement in a city, to ask or check out anybody that you think might be illegal… They can’t even get American citizens passports. They had to postpone their program of citizens needing a passport reentering the country from certain countries like Mexico [and Canada] so how will they ever do these 24-hour background checks… They batted down an amendment that said an exception to the Z-visas … any illegal that has been ordered deported by a judge for committing a felony … while they were here, that [amendment] was voted down. They want the felons to be able to get Z-visas and stay also. I wish somebody would ask that of Trent Lott and let him explain that one.”

Debra Burlingame: “They’ll sidestep it; that’s how they do. This bill also does not end a program called ‘catch and release,’ for a category of people called OTMs, ‘other than Mexicans,’ they are treated differently. ‘Other than Mexicans’ are the ones we worry about in terms of terrorists. But only 15% of those show up for hearings. 85% of them blend into the population, they embed.

“Here we have a classic case of where John McCain, during the last Republican debate, said we need this bill so conspiracies like the Fort Dix conspiracy won’t happen. He’s turning that on its head. Three of those six men were illegal aliens who walked across the border at Brownsville, Texas, with their families, when they were children. They have been living in the country illegally ever since… “Terrorists, they don’t care about becoming citizens. If that Circuit City clerk hadn’t called the FBI … all three of them would be getting Social Security cards under this bill.

“The 9/11 Commission said, very clearly, “For terrorists, travel documents are as important as the weapons they use to kill people,” and the Holy Grail of documents in this country is a Social Security card.”

You can listen to the rest of the interview by clicking here.

Fed up? Call 1-202-224-3121, ask for any Senator, and politely tell them how you really feel. If you do not know what to say, start with: secure our borders first.

Editor: A tip of the hat to our good friend, the Jebster, for providing the audio.