Jose Herria emigrated illegally from Mexico to Stockton, Calif., in 1997 to work as a fruit picker.

He brought with him his wife, Felipa, and three children, 19, 12 and 8 – all illegals. When Felipa gave birth to her fourth child, daughter Flor, the family had what is referred to as an "anchor baby" – an American citizen by birth who provided the entire Silverio clan a ticket to remain in the U.S. permanently.

But Flor was born premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator and cost the San Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, oldest daughter Lourdes married an illegal alien gave birth to a daughter, too. Her name is Esmeralda. And Felipa had yet another child, Cristian.

The two Silverio anchor babies generate $1,000 per month in public welfare funding for the family. Flor gets $600 a month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. While the Silverios earned $18,000 last year picking fruit, they picked up another $12,000 for their two "anchor babies."

While President Bush says the U.S. needs more "cheap labor" from south of the border to do jobs Americans aren't willing to do, the case of the Silverios shows there are indeed uncalculated costs involved in the importation of such labor – public support and uninsured medical costs.

In fact, the increasing number of illegal aliens coming into the United States is forcing the closure of hospitals, spreading previously vanquished diseases and threatening to destroy America's prized health-care system, says a report in the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

"The influx of illegal aliens has serious hidden medical consequences," writes Madeleine Pelner Cosman, author of the report. "We judge reality primarily by what we see. But what we do not see can be more dangerous, more expensive, and more deadly than what is seen."

According to her study, 84 California hospitals are closing their doors as a direct result of the rising number of illegal aliens and their non-reimbursed tax on the system.

"Anchor babies," the author writes, "born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income."

In addition, the report says, "many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease."

While politicians often mention there are 43 million without health insurance in this country, the report estimates that at least 25 percent of those are illegal immigrants. The figure could be as high as 50 percent.

Not being insured does not mean they don't get medical care.

Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985, hospitals are obligated to treat the uninsured without reimbursement.

"Government imposes viciously stiff fines and penalties on any physician and any hospital refusing to treat any patient that a zealous prosecutor deems an emergency patient, even though the hospital or physician screened and declared the patient's illness or injury non-emergency," says the report. "But government pays neither hospital nor physician for treatments. In addition to the fiscal attack on medical facilities and personnel, EMTALA is a handy truncheon with which to pummel politically unpopular physicians by falsely accusing them of violating EMTALA."

According to the report, between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because half their services became unpaid. Another 24 California hospitals verge on closure, the author writes.

"American hospitals welcome 'anchor babies,'" says the report. "Illegal alien women come to the hospital in labor and drop their little anchors, each of whom pulls its illegal alien mother, father, and siblings into permanent residency simply by being born within our borders. Anchor babies are citizens, and instantly qualify for public welfare aid: Between 300,000 and 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens because of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside."

Among the organizations directing illegal aliens into America's medical systems, according to the report, are the Ford Foundation-funded Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Bar Association's Commission on Immigration Policy, Practice, and Pro Bono, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the National Council of La Raza, George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Migration Policy Institute, the National Network for Immigration and Refugee Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Because drug addiction and alcoholism are classified as diseases and disabilities, the fiscal toll on the health-care system rises.

When Linda Torres was arrested in Bakersfield, Calif., with about $8,500 in small bills in a sack, the police originally thought it was stolen money, explained the report. It was her Social Security lump sum for her disability -- heroin addiction.

"Today, legal immigrants must demonstrate that they are free of communicable diseases and drug addiction to qualify for lawful permanent residency green cards," writes Cosman, a medical lawyer, who formerly taught medical students at the City University of New York. "Illegal aliens simply cross our borders medically unexamined, hiding in their bodies any number of communicable diseases."

Many illegals entering this country have tuberculosis, according to the report.

"That disease had largely disappeared from America, thanks to excellent hygiene and powerful modern drugs such as isoniazid and rifampin," says the report. "TB's swift, deadly return now is lethal for about 60 percent of those infected because of new Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. Until recently MDR-TB was endemic to Mexico. This Mycobacterium tuberculosis is resistant to at least two major anti-tubercular drugs. Ordinary TB usually is cured in six months with four drugs that cost about $2,000. MDR-TB takes 24 months with many expensive drugs that cost around $250,000 with toxic side effects. Each illegal with MDR-TB coughs and infects 10 to 30 people, who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later.

TB was virtually absent in Virginia until in 2002, when it spiked a 17 percent increase, but Prince William County, just south of Washington, D.C., had a much larger rise of 188 percent. Public health officials blamed immigrants. In 2001 the Indiana School of Medicine studied an outbreak of MDR-TB, and traced it to Mexican illegal aliens. The Queens, New York, health department attributed 81 percent of new TB cases in 2001 to immigrants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ascribed 42 percent of all new TB cases to 'foreign born' people who have up to eight times higher incidences apparently, 66 percent of all TB cases coming to America originate in Mexico, the Philippines and Vietnam."

Other health threats from illegals include, according to the report:

Chagas disease, also called American trypanosomiasis or "kissing bug disease," is transmitted by the reduviid bug, which prefers to bite the lips and face. The protozoan parasite that it carries, Trypanosoma cruzi, infects 18 million people annually in Latin America and causes 50,000 deaths. The disease also infiltrates America's blood supply. Chagas affects blood transfusions and transplanted organs. No cure exists. Hundreds of blood recipients may be silently infected.
Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, was so rare in America that in 40 years only 900 people were afflicted. Suddenly, in the past three years America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy. Leprosy now is endemic to northeastern states because illegal aliens and other immigrants brought leprosy from India, Brazil, the Caribbean and Mexico.
Dengue fever is exceptionally rare in America, though common in Ecuador, Peru, Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Mexico. Recently, according to the report, there was a virulent outbreak of dengue fever in Webb County, Texas, which borders Mexico. Though dengue is usually not a fatal disease, dengue hemorrhagic fever routinely kills.
Polio was eradicated from America, but now reappears in illegal immigrants as do intestinal parasites, says the report.
Malaria was obliterated, but now is re-emerging in Texas.
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons report includes a strong prescription for protecting the health of Americans:

Closing America's borders with fences, high-tech security devices and troops.
Rescinding the U.S. citizenship of "anchor babies."
Punishing the aiding and abetting of illegal aliens as a crime.
An end to amnesty programs.

THE VICTIM

Sam, 20, doesn’t love grifters. He especially doesn’t love the man he came to know as John Brown. “If I saw him today, I would either avoid him or attack him,” Sam says. “I like to think I would attack him. The police said avoid him, but this guy has caused me hell, and I’d like to give that back.”

Sam’s problems started last summer. He and his older brother, Kevin, had been hanging out on the porch of Sam’s Redwood City apartment when a stranger approached and introduced himself. “John Brown.”

John What?

“Well,” says Sam, “some people’s names are John Brown.”

To be fair, Sam had no cause for suspicion. John Brown was well turned out: white shirt, white pants, loafers. He was affable and well-spoken. He was also black; Sam and Kevin are white. The specter of racial stereotyping hung over the proceedings. “He asked to use the phone, so I let him,” Sam says. “I would hope that a stranger would do that for me.”

John Brown made his call: “Where are you? I need you to come get me.” As a thank-you, he insisted on buying the guys a case of beer. Before long, they were having a rare old time, drinking and chatting about movies and music. “We were just bullshitting,” says Sam. “We had stuff in common.”

John Brown said he owned a record label, and invited Sam to come down to his studio in Waltham and hang out. “He said he was into hip-hop, and that’s what I’m into,” Sam says. “We were getting along really well. I liked him.”

By the time John Brown said his goodbyes that night, he had stolen Sam’s checkbook and his Social Security number. Within a week or two, he had written more than $3000 worth of bad checks. Sam’s life went haywire. The police suspected that he was involved in the scam. His finances were crippled. Unable to pay his rent, he received an eviction notice.

Even today, months after the fact, Sam suffers from the fallout. “I’m probably going to have to change my Social Security number,” he says. “I don’t know what else he’s doing under my name. I’m still dealing with this.”

THE BIG SWITCH

Can we even call a light-fingered lowlife like John Brown a grifter? According to mythology, scam artists are the mad schemers of the crime world who sell the Brooklyn Bridge to deserving suckers and unload wagonloads of snake oil on the dimwitted denizens of dusty Western towns. Or they are Gypsy mystics pulling bajours, convincing superstitious saps that their money is in need of “cleansing.” Grifters are not thieves. They are creators. They are artists.

It would be a stretch to call John Brown an artist, but he is a flimflam man of sorts. There are set pieces in the con game, techniques the con man uses to soften up his mark, and John Brown employed them to great effect: he used charm; he established rapport (through hip-hop music); he appealed to his victims’ good nature; and he displayed generosity (as Jake says, “Doesn’t matter if you only have $6 in your pocket, you buy the drinks”).

John Brown even had the smarts (and the moxie) to follow up on his scam, calling Sam a few days later to renew his invitation to visit the recording studio. “They do that,” says Blair. “They recontact you to see if the jig is up. If not, it’s over to CompUSA to see about getting a new computer.” John Brown’s may not have been a Yellow Kid–caliber con trick, not a Sting, but it was a con trick all the same.

But then, as Detective Blair Getz puts it, “The con game is changing dramatically.” According to Blair, John Brown–style ID theft currently accounts for about 80 percent of his caseload. “I get so many per day it’s unbelievable,” he says. “It’s a living nightmare for detectives. An identity gets stolen in Colorado, it’s used to buy goods in Texas by someone in California. Trying to prosecute is next to impossible.”

But it’s not just the logistical hassles that bother him. Blair has thrived in his job because he enjoys it. ID thefts are threatening to make things a lot less fun.

It must have been difficult to take much joy, for instance, in the case of the administrator at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, who allegedly stole patients’ records, using the information to rack up thousands of dollars in charges. “These poor people are dying,” says Blair, “and now they have me calling them telling them they’re the victim of identity fraud.”

“We used to have pigeon drops,” he adds, regret in his voice. “Now this.”

SCUM ARTISTS

The best con games punish a mark’s greed and vanity; the worst prey on fear, loneliness, religious beliefs, or altruism.

One of the most painful cases last year — and the most media-saturated — was that of Kristen Clougherty, the South Boston woman who duped an entire neighborhood into believing that she had ovarian cancer. The $50,000 donated by the community didn’t go for radiation treatments — it paid for liposuction and a new car.

Equally crummy was Cheryl Koniewicz, who was arrested earlier this year for writing lonely-hearts letters to more than 100 men, enclosing photos of more attractive women, and promising undying love — oh, and asking for cash, $57,000 in all. And then there was the Plymouth woman who befriended an 80-year-old widow, only to bilk her out of her life savings: over half a million bucks.

There were a number of classic affinity scams last year. Edward Ruff scammed the congregation of the Woburn-based Lord’s Gathering Church out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by posing as a true believer. Glenn Elion, a Cape Cod scientist, took his own family. The affinity scam is a sort of con-trick shortcut, a way to establish instant trust through ethnic, political, or religious identity. It’s a creepy, miserable way to pull a scam.

Just this month, Lewiston, Maine, fell victim to an affinity-scam/pyramid-scheme combo — with grim consequences.

The pyramid scheme is an insidious scam to begin with, pitting friend against friend, co-worker against co-worker, brother against sister. The way it works: you pay a buy-in fee — say, $5000 — to someone already involved in the pyramid, usually someone you know. When that person has found 10 people willing to pay the fee, he or she gets out $45,000 richer. Once in, you need to find 10 people. And each of those 10 people must find 10 people, who must find 10 people, who must find 10 people ...

By the 10th set of investors, you’d need 10 billion people for everyone to be paid off. Invariably, the pyramid collapses, leaving hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people out of luck. (The Albanian pyramid schemes of the mid ’90s affected so many people that they sparked an honest-to-goodness revolution.) The only people to make money on a pyramid are those who got in early — namely, the scam artists who initiated it.

The scheme in Maine — called “Women Helping Women” — was a particularly nasty example. As a local district attorney told the Globe, “Someone they know and trust is telling them, ‘Here’s how you can leave that abusive man in your life. Here’s how you can make that down payment on a house.’”

This sort of thing pisses off Robert Jay Nash no end. “The grifter today has very limited ambition,” he says. “They’re limited in the fortitude of their profession. They have little courage in and of themselves. They are cowards.”

COMPUTER GAMES

Technology has been good to scam artists. It has not, however, been good for the art.

First came the telephone, which increased exponentially the number of potential victims a con artist could reach. The most common phone games — so-called boiler-room scams — essentially involve rooms full of aggressive telemarketers shoving phony investment schemes down people’s throats. The more people you can reach, the less finesse you need.

The telephone did not entirely do away with the quick-thinking, fast-talking aspect of the con game, however. The following phone scam, for instance, is a brilliant trick — not to mention a lucrative one.

A guy calls someone up, claiming to be a stock analyst. “Look, I don’t want any money,” he says. “I just want to demonstrate how good I am at predicting stock prices.” If the mark doesn’t hang up, the guy’s in. “Watch the stock of company X,” he’ll say. “By Friday, the price of that stock will have risen.” Come Friday, the stock has indeed gone up.

The next week, the guy calls again: “On Friday, Y’s stock will have fallen.” Right again. Over the next few weeks, the guy calls back with similar tips, all of them right. By the fourth week, the victims believe they are dealing with a financial wizard — they are primed to invest money with him. How did he do it?

The first week, the guy calls 500 people, telling half of them that a certain stock will rise, and half that it will fall. With 250 of those people, he had it right. The next week he calls those 250 people back, telling half of them that a stock is going to rise, and half that it is going to fall. The next week he calls 125 people, and so on. After a month, the guy’s down to about 60 people, perhaps half of whom are willing to part with $10,000. That’s $300,000 for a month’s work. Ka-ching!

But now we have the Internet, a far less labor-intensive medium. Identity theft, in particular, is thriving online. When his office began keeping track of the crime a few years back, says Hugh Stevenson of the Federal Trade Commission, they received a couple hundred complaints a week. Today, the weekly tally is about 2000. Last year, ID theft made up almost a quarter of all fraud complaints to the FTC.

ID theft is by no means the only Web-driven scam. The age-old Spanish Prisoner con, for instance, has found new life on the Internet. This scam — even the high-tech version — invariably follows a classic model: you are contacted by someone claiming that a rich relative is being held in a foreign country (traditionally Spain). If you help provide a ransom, or funds to bankroll an escape, the prisoner will share his or her massive fortune with you.

These days, for some reason, the scam originates mainly in Nigeria, and the “prisoner” is the bank account of a dead dignitary. The cash you put up is supposed to go toward paying an attorney to thaw the dead guy’s account. There is, of course, no dignitary, no bank account, and no windfall for anyone but the grifter.

Work-at-home scams — “Earn $15,000 a month!” — are particularly well suited to the rapid-fire nature of Web technology, as are classic Ponzi schemes. The Ponzi actually originated in Boston. It is named after Carl Ponzi, a local scam artist who, in the 1920s, conned more than 10,000 people (including members of the Boston Police Department) out of millions of dollars with a fraudulent investment scheme that promised 50 percent profits every 45 days.

The brilliance of the Ponzi, as opposed to other investment scams, is that there are indeed real profits to be made, at least for those who get in early. And the people who get those early returns go around waggling wads of cash, singing the praises of the product or business they were smart enough to invest in. But the Ponzi is actually a variation of the pyramid scheme. There is no product, no business; all profits come from other investors. The Ponzi, like the pyramid, robs Peter to pay Paul — at least until there are no more Peters left to rob. Then the whole thing goes splat.

The Ponzi and the Spanish Prisoner are old-wine-in-new-bottle scams, but there are plenty that have emerged directly from Internet technology. The most prevalent of these is webjacking: you’ll get an email offering “free sexy pics!!!” When you access the site, your modem hangs up and dials a number in Moldavia, resulting in huge bills. Or you’ll just get yanked to one of these sites without any choice in the matter — with similar, costly results. There are many more Internet-based scams — too many, in fact, to list here.

These days, many grifters work exclusively online. According to Jack Christin Jr. of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, Internet scammery has “exploded” in the past few years. “The con artists are using it,” he says, “because it allows them to reach people quickly, cheaply, and with relative anonymity.”

This is a good thing for scam artists, maybe, but not for those of us who delight in their antics. When a grifter can press a button and reach 20,000 potential marks, there’s little need for imagination and wit. This game is all about numbers. It has nothing to do with art.

HOPE

For all its current high-tech gleam, grifting may be the world’s second-oldest profession. There are records of ancient Egyptians pulling the shell game. Sixteenth-century flimflam men roamed Europe with pockets full of loaded dice. The Wild West was crawling with snake-oil salesmen and crooked cardsharps. And 21st-century America is already shaping up to be a very good place for the game. Thank God, because life would be pretty boring without grifters.

Of course, our appetite for the con persists only as long as we don’t fall victim to it. This seems to imply a nation of smug finger-pointers, a cult of schadenfreude. But our love of scammery has its roots in something more humane. It comes from an appreciation of the artist rather than a contempt for the victim.

Con artists are true creators. They are one-person theater troupes: writer, director, set designer, and leading actor. The grifter produces something out of nothing, and that, by any standard, is an admirable thing. But we don’t only admire grifters, we envy them: their flair, their nerve, their ability to reinvent themselves, to reinvent the world. What a kick that must be.

And we love the game because we are Americans. It appeals to our democratic sensibilities — all you need to grift is a good idea and a stout heart. We love the game because it is crime with a dash of enterprise, a comical subversion of the American Dream.

“Everybody’s susceptible to the con,” says Robert Jay Nash. “We are told from childhood onward that this is the Land of Opportunity — seize the day, carpe diem. As Americans, you are entitled to opportunity.... or at least, "It seems to me".

Dock

"WHICH WOLF WILL WIN" ....

"One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all.

One is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Dock

300,000 people who have been ordered deported are still in the country because their deportation orders were not enforced. In many cases, after being ordered deported by a judge, the immigrant simply walked out of the courtroom. 2. Fred Alexander, a deputy district director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service publicly told a group of "undocumented" day laborers that "It's not a crime to be in the U.S. illegally, it's a violation of civil law."

3. The Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General did not find any evidence that the INS is capable of locating visa violators still in the country.
4. The INS had Mohammed Atta in custody because he tried to enter the U.S. on an improper visa, but let him go anyway. 5. The Greyhound bus attacker was on a 30 day visa that had expired 2 years ago.

6. Until passage of the PATRIOT act, political ideology was not grounds for deportation or inadmissibility. The language in the PATRIOT act alone may not even go far enough to fix this problem, though. Court cases have extended the First Amendment outside the country to the point that consular officials do not have the authority to stop someone who makes threatening statements from obtaining a visa.
7. The INS spent $31.2 million on a computer system to track whether visa holders overstay their visas. The system still does not work, and the INS says that it needs an additional $57 million for the system.
8. According to several universities, the INS routinely takes 6 mos. to respond to notifications from their registrars that foreign students are not attending classes.

9. One of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers was given legal status in the 1986 amnesty.

10. Each of the 19 hijackers had Social Security numbers, which they obtained legally.
11. Former Clinton INS commissioner Doris Meissner says that the amnesty program that President Fox of Mexico is pushing could make 27 million people eligible to move to the U.S.
12. According to the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies "In a newly released report, the Census Bureau estimated that perhaps 115,000 people from Middle Eastern countries live in the United States illegally."

13. The INS brought a psychologist to its Newark, NJ office to try to resolve problems in the "dysfunctional" office that employees nearly unanimously declared "poorly led" and "very unhealthy." Employees described the office's climate of "conspiracy and secrecy," and believed that awards and promotions were based on favoritism, not job performance..
14. Border Patrol agents at the Juarez/El Paso border sometimes ask border crossers to step through the "drug sniffing door," which is simply a wooden door frame on wheels.

15. In October and November 2001, 7,000 visas were issued to men from countries in which Al-Qaeda is known to be active.
16. From the founding of our nation until about 1965, the average annual number of immigrants and refugees to the United States was about 200,000 people. Since 1990, this number has been running at about one million people each year ­ and that does not include the annual population gain from illegal aliens.

17. There are a total of 4 political appointees at the INS.

18. Through the diversity visa program, the U.S. encourages people from each of the seven countries on the State Department terrorist watch list to apply for visas to come to the U.S.
19. Four states ­ Utah, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee ­ have a policy of issuing drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants with no questions asked. Read how at least five of the hijackers used their Virginia licenses to remain in the U.S. undetected:
20. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had openly declared that he will not enforce U.S. immigration laws. ".those people who are undocumented do not have to worry about the city government."
21. Saudi Arabians wishing to travel to the U.S. are typically not interviewed by the State Department. They can obtain visas through travel agents or "drop boxes" near the U.S. Consulates in the country. 15 of the 19 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia.
22. The INS has a processing backlog of approximately 4.5 million immigration applications.

23. State Department form DS-156 ­ the official nonimmigrant visa application ­ asks the following question: "Do you seek to enter the U.S. to engage in export control violations, subversive or terrorist activities, or any other unlawful purpose? Are you a member of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the U.S. Secretary of State?" The footnote to the question states that "A YES answer does not automatically signify ineligibility for a visa." 24. Studies estimate there are approximately 350,000 people who have become illegal immigrants by overstaying their visas. Because of its failure to implement an entry-exit system as required by a 1996 law, the INS has no way to identify or locate them.

25. Since September 11th, no action has been taken to tighten up the "visa waiver" program ­ a program that permits people from 29 countries to enter the U.S. without a visa or an interview.

26. The GAO (General accounting office) found that the INS wastes around $100 million per year by not efficiently managing the deportation of criminal immigrants.

27. The Immigration and Nationality act in 2001 legalized approximately 900,000 illegal immigrants in just four months.
29. New INS field officers quickly learn an unofficial creed: "Big cases, big problems. Small cases, small problems. NO cases, NO problems." This claim, made by an INS whistleblower who testified before the Congressional Immigration Caucus, has been confirmed by several other INS agents who have contacted Rep. Tancredo to assure him that it is true.

30. INS whistleblowers have come to live by another widely understood maxim: "You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. to look for another job."

31. Immigrants who are detained on deportable offenses are often released with a summons to appear at a deportation hearing at some point in the future. The summons has become sarcastically known as a "run letter," because it simply prompts the criminal alien to run from the law and disappear back into the community undetected. 32. Fraud within the non-immigrant visa system has become so rampant that an entire industry of "body shops" has sprung up in America. The body shops sponsor foreign workers' visas and then place them in jobs with American companies, typically working for a significantly lower wage than American high-tech workers.

33. The best place to buy fake documents in order to get into the U.S. from Mexico ­ just blocks away from the border crossing in Juarez. The best person to ask for help in getting them ­ the Mexican official guarding the gate! U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo recently asked a Mexican official at the border crossing how to get phony papers, and was given directions and advice about how much he should pay for them.

34. Between 1993 and 2002, Congress roughly quadrupled INS' operating budget. A recent GovExec.com piece wrote that despite this, INS has a "range and depth of management problems, including poor financial reporting, incorrect records management . poor personnel management, and inadequate capital planning." 35. Companies who are laying off visa holders frequently inform the INS that the person's status has changed to "unpaid leave" rather than "unemployed." The worker is then free to search for another job indefinitely (and compete with American workers in the high-tech job market) without fear of deportation.

36. A teenager was arrested in California for stealing an elderly woman's purse and breaking her arm. He told the police he was in the country illegally and wasn't carrying any identification. An immigration judge ordered him deported. Once across the border, he picked up the phone and asked his mom to drive down with his U.S. passport so that he ­ a U.S. citizen ­ could re-enter the country, having successfully gotten away with a felony.

37. Just two weeks after September 11th, Clinton INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace forum that tracking down people who overstay their visas (as most of the hijackers did) has been "a very, very low priority, and I think it should be a low priority." 38. During the summer of 2001, the Mexican government distributed "survival kits" to Mexicans near the border containing granola bars, water, first aid supplies, and condoms ­ presumably to make their upcoming (illegal) journeys into America easier. Unfreakin' believable .......
39. The INS used a motel room in Durango, Colorado to detain a group of illegal immigrants from Central America after their arrest. The room was left unguarded overnight, and the illegal immigrants "escaped" through the windows. See 5/20/01 Denver Post, page A1

40. The H-1B program ( I think it's called) for high-tech temporary work, admits about 500 "fashion models" visas for employment in the U.S. every year.

41. Walter Cadman, the former INS District Director in Florida was caught deceiving Congressional investigators looking into the functioning of the INS and then lead a coverup. The Justice Department investigated the scandal ­ "Kromegate" ­ and recommended that Cadman be fired for hiding evidence that the facilities he oversaw were grossly mismanaged. Cadman was briefly demoted and a year later, in 1998, was promoted to the head of the INS National Security Unit.
42. Confusion as to the true point at which the U.S. ends and Mexico begins has grown to the point that on March 14th, 2000, a Mexican Army unit crossed the U.S. border, mistakenly chased U.S. Border Patrol Agents and shot at them. 43. Juan Hernandez, head of the government's Office of Mexicans Living Outside Mexico, told U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo that the North American southwest "is not two countries; it's just a region."

44. In Houston, after September 11th, an INS task force was established to help search for some of the most dangerous immigrant fugitives in the region. The more than 20 officers were expected complete their task with between two and four cars. One officer, who was forced to remain at his desk due to a lack of transportation said, "There are thousands of [fugitive] files, and we're pushing paper."
45. Between six and eight million people living in America are dual-citizens ­ implying that they share their political and ideological loyalty between America and some other country. A series of court decisions dating back to 1980 have weakened expatriation laws to the point that being elected to office in another country or serving as a high ranking officer in a foreign military are not sufficient grounds for losing U.S. citizenship. 46. Illegal immigrants who enroll in the University of California system are charged in-state tuition.

47. Speaking to a gathering in Milwaukee in July of 2001, President Vicente Fox of declared that "Mexico extends beyond its borders."
Wow can you believe this one ?????????48. INS Commissioner James Ziglar's only law enforcement experience is serving as the Sergeant-at-Arms for the Senate.

49. Although the law says that out of work visa holders must leave the country immediately after being laid off or fired, b
50. A movement to reclaim "Aztlan" has begun in America's west. Sometimes known as the "reconquista" movement, its aim is (evidently) to retake the southwest back from the U.S. government. Its leaders declare that "political-economic power, which respects only money and force is our fundamental enemy and the name of this power is 'colonization' and Capitalism is its principal weapon."
51. 63% of INS managers responding to a 1997 GAO survey, said that unclear lines of accountability were a problem at the INS to a moderate or great extent. 52. In 1990, Congress created "temporary protected status" (TPS) ­ a status under which people from countries experiencing a natural disaster or civil war could come to the U.S. temporarily. The true beneficiaries of this status are usually illegal immigrants. When Congress passed the 1990 law, it specified that persons from El Salvador would be the first beneficiaries. Most of the people from El Salvador who applied for TPS, however, were already in the country illegally and simply "adjusted their status." The net result was a widespread amnesty for Salvadorans living in America illegally.
53. What is INS' policy toward illegal immigrants in the U.S.? According to INS manager Nina Moniz "Our job is to explain to people why they are here illegally, help them change that and help them to get benefits."
54. Six months after September 11th, INS mailed a letter to the flight school in Florida informing them that two of the hijackers (including ringleader Mohammed Atta) had been approved for student visas. Despite the president's "outrage" at the incident, to date INS' only response has been to reassign four career INS employees.

55. The town of San Luis, Arizona has around 3,000 residents but 20,000 post office boxes. The reason? So that Mexican citizens living just across the border can come to the U.S. to collect the public benefits (welfare checks) every month that they signed up for using their P.O. Box as their "permanent" address in the U.S.

What a great little corrupt country we have for a neighbor !

Have a nice day ... Senior

Dock

I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me. You too can win arguments. Simply follow these rules:

Drink liquor.
Suppose you are at a party and some hotshot intellectual is expounding on the economy of Peru, a subject you know nothing about.

If you're drinking some health-fanatic drink like grapefruit juice, you'll hang back, afraid to display your ignorance, while the hotshot enthralls your date.

But if you drink several large martinis, you'll discover you have STRONG VIEWS about the Yata, Yata economy. You'll be a WEALTH of information. You'll argue forcefully, offering searing insights and possibly upsetting the freakin' furniture. People will be impressed. Some may leave the room .....

Make things up.
Suppose, in the Peruvian economy argument, you are trying to prove that Peruvians are underpaid, a position you base solely on the fact that YOU are underpaid, and you'll be damned if you're going to let a bunch of Peruvians be better off. DON'T say: "I think Peruvians are underpaid." Say instead: "The average Peruvian's salary in 1981 dollars adjusted for the revised tax base is $1,452.81 per annum, which is $836.07 before the mean gross poverty level."

NOTE: Always make up exact figures.

If an opponent asks you where you got your information, make THAT up too. Say: "This information comes from Dr. Peter K. Carmelcorn's study for the Buford Commission published on May 9, 2002. Didn't you read it?" Say this in the same tone of voice you would use to say, "You left your soiled underwear in my bathroom."

Use meaningless but weighty-sounding words and phrases.

Memorize this list:

Let me put it this way
In terms of
Vis-a-vis
Per se
As it were
Qua
So to speak
You should also memorize some Latin abbreviations such as Sic Semper Tyrannis" "Q.E.D.", "e.g.", and "i.e." These are all short for "I speak Latin, and you don't."

Here's how to use these words and phrases. Suppose you want to say, "Peruvians would like to order appetizers more often, but they don't have enough money." You never win arguments talking like that. But you WILL win if you say, "Let me put it this way......

In terms of appetizers vis-a-vis Peruvians V Peruvians, they would like to order them more often, so to speak, but they do not have enough money per se, as it were. Q.E.D."

Only a fool would challenge that statement.

Use snappy and irrelevant comebacks.
You need an arsenal of all-purpose irrelevant phrases to fire back at your opponents when they make valid points. The best are:

You're begging the question.
You're being defensive.
Don't compare apples to oranges.
What are your parameters?
This last one is especially valuable. Nobody (other than engineers and policy wonks) has the vaguest idea what "parameters" means. Don't forget the classic: YOU'RE SO LINEAR.

Here's how to use your comebacks:

You say: As Abraham Lincoln said in 1873...
Your opponent says: Lincoln died in 1865.
You say: You're begging the question.

You say: Liberians, like most Asians...
Your opponent says: Liberia is in Africa.
You say: You're being defensive.

Compare your opponent to Adolf Hitler.
This is your heavy artillery, for when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectacularly wrong. Bring Hitler up subtly. Say, "That sounds suspiciously like something Adolf Hitler might say," or "You certainly do remind me of Adolf Hitler."

Works every time !!

Doc