Living the Guardian Ethos

Memorial Day means many things to the American people and to all of us who serve, or have family who serve in the armed forces. As we honor those who gave their lives for this country, we celebrate their service, selflessness, and heroism. For the Coast Guard, Memorial Day also marks the start of our busiest season, as 17 million recreational boaters kick off their summers on the water. It is also the time our role as “guardians” is most visible to the public.

Throughout the summer, we are engaged as “guardians” across the full spectrum of operations and missions. Our men and women stay busy 24/7 keeping boaters safe, protecting the maritime environment from pollutants, and preserving our fragile living marine resources. We prepare our service and our communities for hurricane season on the East, Gulf and Southern coasts. We patrol the Arctic as the winter ice recedes, and we maintain our vigilance in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, keeping drug traffickers and migrant smugglers from reaching our shores.

At the same time, we keep our ports secure and commerce flowing safely and expediently around the world. In the midst of all these activities, our men and women are often transferring to new duty stations, training to maintain qualifications, or picking up the responsibilities of fellow crewmembers involved in this cycle of work and growth. We find ourselves acting as guardians to both our communities and our shipmates.

Recently, we’ve had a lot of discussion in the service about what it means to be a “guardian.” Memorial Day provides a rare moment to reflect on this role, before we launch into the throws of summer. A Coast Guardsman named Harry Hamlet, who served as our Commandant three quarters of a century ago, was one of the first to contemplate our ethos. Vice Admiral Hamlet penned the Creed of the United States Coast Guardsman, the words of his generation that expressed our service’s core values. The creed is a personal vow of character, specifically service, self-sacrifice, and courage. He also implored Coast Guard members to be model citizens in our communities and to possess a “cheerful and helpful demeanor.” His creed became the pledge of the men and women in the Coast Guard for generations to come.

During my tenure as Commandant, our senior enlisted leadership developed another pledge – what has been coined our "Guardian Ethos." It complements Admiral Hamlet’s creed. The Guardian Ethos defines who we are and is akin to a contract between members of the Coast Guard and the American people. Although in name and style, it matches the “Warrior Ethos,” it contains a few differences that shape our identity as a service. While both the pledges speak of serving and defending America, the “Guardian Ethos” goes on to say “I will save them. I am their Shield.” This is really the essence of the Coast Guard today, though it dates back to the days when the Coast Guard was the Steamboat Inspection Service, the Revenue Cutter Service, and the Life Saving and Lighthouse Services. We have a proud history of serving the nation and our communities in the maritime domain both in wartime and peace. And our core values remain focused on saving lives and protecting both people and the environment. We will always be America’s Maritime Guardian.

On this Memorial Day, as we honor the men and women who gallantly gave their lives for this nation, let’s pay homage to those living the Warrior and Guardian Ethos. Courageous and selfless young men and women within the Department of Homeland Security and in all of the armed forces serve with distinction throughout this country and around the world in countless ways. They keep America and Americans free and safe while making the world a better place for all of us. Their commitment, as well as that of their families, symbolizes the pride, strength and idealism of this great nation.

Admiral Thad W. Allen
Commandant U.S. Coast Guard

Debunking the “E-Verify Capacity Problem”

Second in a series on E-Verify.

Another myth is that the E-Verify program doesn’t have the capacity to handle the heavy load that would result if many states adopt laws requiring its use.

Critics say that only 60 thousand employers are registered with E-Verify, while there are 6 million employers in the U.S. But this is an example of using an accurate statistic to produce a misleading result. Many of those 6 million employers won’t hire a single worker this year. Others will hire thousands.

What counts is how many individual hires the system can handle. And on that measure, E-Verify is performing well. In fact, it is rapidly becoming a commonplace experience for U.S. workers.

According to the Department of Labor, there were 7.8 million non-farm new hires in the first two months of 2008. In the same period, over a million new hires were checked through E-Verify. On that basis, E-Verify is handling one in eight new hires already. Even more conservative estimates that include agricultural hires show that E-Verify is handling at least 10 percent of all new hires in the U.S. this year. Either way, there’s no reason to think it won’t be able to handle further expansion. Indeed, the number of employers in the system has quadrupled in just the last year (from 16,000 to more than 66,000), and we’ve performed more queries in the last seven months (3.58 million) than we did in all of 2007 FY (3.21 million). Based on a recent load testing, the system has the capacity to handle 240 million queries a year. That’s three to four times the number of people who are usually hired in a given year.

Many businesses are beginning to recognize the value of E-Verify. It helps protect them from incurring penalties for employing illegal immigrants. State legislators are also recognizing the value of the program, encouraging their contractors and licensors to sign up. Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Utah currently have legislation or executive orders that encourage or require the use of E-Verify.[*] We’ve welcomed the states’ confidence in E-Verify, and we’re confident that the program is well-positioned to handle the growth we foresee in future years.

Stewart Baker
Assistant Secretary for Policy

[* update 1: Illinois was mistakenly included in the original post.]
[* update 2: added "encourage"]

A National Fusion Center Network

The Department and states have made a lot of progress in making the State and Local Fusion Center Program -- a key provision of the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act -- a success in the last three years. Now we are committed to building on that success by supporting the implementation of a National Fusion Center Network.

What do I mean by that? Working with our colleagues in the Department of Justice, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Program Manager-Information Sharing Environment, the National Fusion Center Network strategy will connect more than 50 state and major city fusion centers and the federal government in a partnership to protect America.

I envision a community of state, local and federal intelligence and law enforcement professionals working together – supported by appropriate tools – to achieve a common goal: protection of the nation.

These men and women would leverage federal as well as state and local networks; move relevant information and intelligence quickly; and enable rapid analytic and operational judgments. That is what this National Fusion Center Network is all about.

Our ability to move, analyze and act on information is our greatest strength. We must use the network and the information in that network to push our defensive perimeter outward. That’s what the National Fusion Center Network will do for us.

We in the federal government recognize that state and local authorities have been working at this for years. We, particularly those of us in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the rest of the National Intelligence Community, must aggressively support the states in this endeavor and become a committed partner in creating the National Fusion Center Network.

That is exactly what we are doing.

Intelligence officers equipped with exiting capabilities are helping local authorities as needed and appropriate. In addition, information once only available in cities and states can be shared with the federal government and used to protect the nation as a whole.

This is all very new and different for the Intelligence Community. We are working hard to educate ourselves on the information needs of our state, local and tribal partners, as well as increase our ability to provide them information.

And we all must do this while paying the utmost respect to the civil liberties and privacy of our citizens.

Creating this National Fusion Center Network is a challenging but achievable task. We are doing many things for the first time, and will likely make mistakes. But we will learn from those mistakes, do better, and create what the country should have had before 9/11.

Charlie Allen

Under Secretary for Intelligence & Analysis

Debunking the “E-Verify Error Rate”

Everyone agrees that illegal immigrants cross our borders because they want to work here. If we can reduce the lure of illegal employment, we can reduce the pressure on our borders.

That’s exactly what E-Verify does. When an E-Verify employer hires a new worker, the employer gets on line and fills out a short electronic form. As soon as the employer hits “send,” the system checks to make sure that the worker’s name matches his Social Security Number. If the worker is not a U.S. citizen, the system also checks to make sure his work authorization is still valid and shows the employer the picture that should be on the DHS-issued identity card. For most workers, verification is instantaneous.

E-Verify is simple, free, and highly effective in preventing illegal work. It works, and maybe that’s what the interests arrayed against E-Verify don’t like. Whatever the reason, opponents of E-Verify have resorted to charges that just don’t hold up. In this series, I debunk the myths.

The opposition to E-Verify often claims that the program has a high error rate. Some critics claim that the error rate is as high as 4% and will lead to millions of Americans losing their jobs by mistake.

To see how wrong this claim is, we need to look more closely at how E-Verify works. We can draw a precise picture of what happens to a thousand applicants who use E-Verify by using data gathered from October 2006 to March 2007 by Westat, an independent reviewer.


Of the thousand, 942 are instantly verified. Instant verification of legal workers surely can’t be an error.

Fifty-eight are told that they have to do something more to establish that they are lawfully authorized to work. Usually this means they have to go to Social Security to correct the mismatch in name and number. (Typos and similar problems are cured on line, so legal workers usually have a problem only if they changed their names or citizenship status but failed to tell Social Security of the change.)

So five of the thousand must go to Social Security and straighten out their records. For 90% of them, the process takes less than 2 days. Is that an error rate? If so, it’s ten times lower than our critics claim. And, is it really an error to tell workers that their social security credits aren’t being properly recorded? Sooner or later, the worker will want to collect benefits, and they won’t want to face doubts about who earned the credits. (Of course, straightening out Social Security records isn’t fun, but we’re working to reduce the hassle. Just a few weeks ago, we introduced software changes that will automate some of the correction process, reducing the number of legitimate workers who have to go to Social Security offices from five to two or three per thousand.)

That leaves the 53 who walk away. Is that an error rate? There are certainly people who believe it’s an error to keep illegal workers out of the U.S. workforce. But we don’t. It’s our job to enforce the immigration laws.

And common sense suggests that the walkaways are overwhelmingly likely to be illegal workers. It’s just common sense that a legal worker wouldn’t want to walk away from a job he applied for--and has been offered if he straightens out his records. It’s just common sense that a legal worker wouldn’t walk away from the opportunity to correct Social Security records he now knows are wrong – records that will have to be corrected for him to get benefits. And it’s just common sense that about five percent of E-Verify workers would walk away, since a Pew Foundation expert recently estimated that 4.9% of U.S. jobs are held by illegal workers. It’s hard to see the walkaway rate as an error; in fact, that’s the program working as it should.

Stewart Baker
Assistant Secretary for Policy

We're Listening

Last month, former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Emilio Gonzalez discussed an editorial printed in the New York Times about USCIS’ recent application backlog--and it generated more interest from readers than any other Leadership Journal entry to date, both in terms of the numbers of readers and posted comments.

I am not surprised. We all appreciate that immigration benefits granted by USCIS, including citizenship, employment authorization, and permanent residency for immigrants and their families, are incredibly important to you--our customers and stakeholders--and our nation. We also know that our business processes are not always transparent or easily understood—they are admittedly complex. In this Journal entry, I’ll try to address some of your comments.

Many comments dealt with the surge in applications that took place after USCIS announced its new fees. After a long, in-depth review of our financial situation, we increased our fees last summer. We had to. USCIS is almost completely funded by fees, and the agency was not meeting its obligations or operating costs under the old fee structure.

To meet those obligations, we needed to invest in new facilities and technology and build our staff to improve the service our customers deserve, knowing it would take some time to accomplish. These things do. We needed to ensure funds were actually coming in the door before hiring thousands of new employees or making investments in technology.

We expected an increase in filings prior to the fee increase, but not nearly the volume of filings we received. We did not foresee the impact of the national discussion on immigration reform, or gauge the impact of an overwhelmingly effective drive by community-based organizations to encourage immigrants to file for citizenship.

Now that the fee increase is generating needed revenue, we’re hiring and training 1,334 new adjudications officers and 521 new support staff – totaling 1,855 new USCIS employees, many of whom are already on board. We’ve shifted existing employees where that made sense, moved work where capacity was available. We are rehiring retired, experienced employees, and are developing new facilities to better serve customers. We’re even conducting interviews, where needed, on Saturdays, Sundays and after normal business hours.

At the same time, we’ve embarked on a joint plan with the FBI to eliminate the name check backlog. By providing additional funds to increase the FBI’s capacity to conduct name checks, we’ll eliminate the name check backlog by the end of next summer.

As a result of these combined efforts, we are now naturalizing new citizens at record levels. But just as important as what we are doing to address the surge in naturalization applications is what we are not doing: we are not compromising the quality or national security in processing these increased applications.

Again, thank you for reading and responding to USCIS’ previous Leadership Journal entry, and for reading this one. I look forward to reading your comments. This Journal is an excellent way to communicate with our stakeholders, and one that we intend to continue.

Jonathan “Jock” Scharfen
Acting Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

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Responding to the Oklahoma and Missouri Tornadoes

Today, Secretary Chertoff and I traveled to Picher, Okla. and Seneca, Mo. to asses the damage caused by the recent storms. I was struck by the severity of damage to the area. We would like to offer our condolences to those who lost loved ones.

In the aftermath of the storms FEMA was on the ground within hours and are on site to support local emergency managers and officials. We will continue to support the authorities on the ground.

The residents of Picher and Seneca have strong leadership from their local and state leaders. These leaders have spoken to the President as well as met with myself and Secretary Chertoff. They will receive support as requested to recover.

Bad weather continues to move through the Midwest, and I urge all residents in area to listen to the local authorities and head all warnings. Thankfully, most of the residents in the area were able to seek shelter and escape injury from the tornadoes.

From what we saw today the resiliency and spirit of the people remains strong. The residents of these two towns are committed to rebuilding and getting life back to normal. FEMA will continue to be there to support the local and state officials as needed as they continue the recovery effort.

David Paulison
FEMA Administrator

A Vicious Circle

When homeland security officials point out that we are still threatened by al-Qaeda, we are sometimes accused of fear-mongering. But when it comes to creating a bogeyman to scare the public, it’s our critics who are in a league by themselves.

The Washington Post recently recycled a travel association claim that overseas travel to the U.S. has declined since 2000 because people are treated badly at the border (“Fear Is A Tax, And We’re Eagerly Paying It,” Josef Joffe). I say recycled because this is at least the tenth time in the past year that much the same claim has been repeated, always accompanied by references to the same flawed poll. While saying they just want to encourage tourism, Joffe and the industry that commissioned the biased poll are in fact discouraging it by perpetuating fear of a border “security apparat,” whose face is “distorted by fear and suspicion.”

There are two problems with the claim that travel to the U.S. has declined because of harsh security at the border. First, the poll Joffe cites as evidence that border security is too harsh doesn’t actually show that at all. Half the respondents had not come to the U.S. in the last five years. So when they were asked whether they feared rude treatment in U.S. Customs, they weren’t relying on recent experience. The only data they had to go on was the news media. Peddling this uninformed judgment as proof that travelers are treated badly simply generates more stories claiming rude treatment in the U.S. It’s a nearly perfect example of a vicious circle.

The second problem with Joffe’s argument is that there has not been a reduction in travel to the United States. It is true that, after 9/11, there was a decline in global tourism (not just travel to the United States). However, international arrivals to the U.S. have risen for four consecutive years, and they have returned to pre-9/11 levels.

Some argue that those figures reflect a disproportionate increase in Canadian and Mexican visitors, while visitors from overseas (mostly Europe) are still below 2000 levels. Maybe so, but that in itself raises doubts about the claim that our border practices are deterring travel. The U.S. doesn’t have one line at the airport full of friendly inspectors for Canadians and a different line for Europeans.

So why has travel from Europe been slower to recover? Here’s one answer: During the last five years, transatlantic plane fares have steadily increased while intra-European fares have dropped, making it cheaper to fly from Britain to Southern Spain or Italy than to Florida. That’s a much more straightforward explanation for the slow recovery of transatlantic travel.

Want proof? How’s this--overseas travel to Canada dropped even further after 2001 than travel to the U.S. And travel to Canada has not been as quick to rebound. But no one thinks Canada’s border has gotten more unfriendly recently. Only transatlantic fares explain why European travel to both the U.S. and Canada have been slow to reach 2001 levels.

We at DHS want to attract more international travelers. We will continue to do whatever it takes to improve the quality of our welcome. But we won’t stay silent when aspersions are cast on the quality of our workforce.

Stewart Baker
Assistant Secretary for Policy

ICE and INTERPOL Cooperation Nabs Child Predator

One of the most important lessons for law enforcement in the 21st century is that cooperation in investigations is absolutely essential. As criminals and terrorists become more mobile, more sophisticated and more technologically savvy, it’s critical that law enforcement agencies across the board work together to get the job done.

That spirit of cooperation was on display in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) most recent success yesterday when we arrested a suspect in an international child predator investigation in New Jersey. The arrest stemmed from an alert circulated earlier this week by INTERPOL, the international law enforcement organization that works closely with ICE agents in fighting transnational criminal activity.

It was a tough case: The suspect’s name, nationality and location were a mystery. But his face was known from a series of photographs depicting the sexual abuse of three boys between the ages of six and 10 years old. The pictures, believed to have been taken in Southeast Asia, were originally discovered by police in Norway two years ago. Since then, the photographs have been circulated widely to law enforcement agencies around the world.

INTERPOL, working with ICE investigators, distributed a new alert on the suspect on May 6. Traffic to the INTERPOL Web site exploded, with more than a quarter million hits, as the public and law enforcement officials joined in to help offer information that might identify the suspect. Thanks to these Internet tips, by the morning of May 8, ICE agents arrested 59-year-old Wayne Nelson Corliss of Union City, N.J., who at this time is believed to be the man in the photographs.

This alleged predator is now in custody and will face charges for the exploitation of vulnerable children. It could not have happened without the coordination and cooperation of law enforcement investigators working around the world to keep children safe.

Julie L. Myers

Assistant Secretary

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

An Op-ed the New York Times Editorial Page Refused to Run

When it comes to illegal immigration, the American people are tired of thirty years of lip service. They want our laws enforced. As Secretary of Homeland Security, I have directed my department to pursue that mandate, using all the tools permitted by law.

This involves a three-fold approach.

First, we stem the flow at the border by increasing the likelihood that illegal entrants – and smugglers of all types – will be detected, apprehended, and removed.

Second, we drive businesses to comply with laws against employing illegal workers.

Third, when we encounter those who are here illegally, we remove them.

Granted, we need a long-term solution involving a temporary worker program, legal immigration reform, and a fair policy to deal with illegal immigrants long-rooted here.

But the American people have demanded that we first demonstrate an effective commitment to enforce current laws. And even those who are sympathetic to the painful circumstances of illegal immigration question any change that might trigger new waves of entrants seeking to benefit from still-future waves of “reform.”

Our policies respond to this demand and to Congress. They may be tough, yet they are fair, and they are succeeding.

That success has now bred a firestorm of opposition. Opponents are driven by factors ranging from an ideological commitment to open borders to reliance on illegal workforces. Apparently, their strategy is to challenge every enforcement action with exaggerated or misleading cries of outrage. These challenges add up to a position that would forbid any effective enforcement.

The New York Times editorial page is a case in point.

Regarding interior enforcement, a March 27, 2008 editorial (“A Foolish Immigration Purge”) attacked our proposal that businesses receiving letters about workers whose names don’t match Social Security numbers clear up the discrepancy within three months. Under this proposal, if a mismatch is caused by an innocent clerical mistake, the mistake is simply corrected. But if it’s caused by an illegal worker carrying a forged identity, the employer must act. Ignoring this distinction, the Times falsely implied that businesses would have to fire workers even for innocent errors.

A December 18, 2006 editorial (“Swift Raids”) protested earlier efforts at workplace enforcement. It was followed by an October 4, 2007 editorial (“Stop the Raids”) which depicted our enforcement efforts on Long Island and elsewhere as trampling on localities. But an April 16, 2008 editorial (“New Jersey’s Immigration Crackdown”) castigated Garden State localities for their enforcement efforts.

Concerning border security, an April 3, 2008 editorial (“Michael Chertoff’s Insult”) condemned our exercise of legal authority to waive certain environmental regulations that would have stopped us from fulfilling the explicit mandate of Congress to put fencing, roads, and lighting in place this year in order to stem drug and human smuggling.

The editorial failed to mention that we had previously conducted multiple environmental reviews or that the Interior Department has complained that some border areas are so endangered by smugglers that visitors and employees are turned away.

Taken together, these examples suggest that in some quarters, no enforcement technique is acceptable. Of course, if none is acceptable, enforcing immigration law becomes impossible.

Perhaps that’s what some critics really want. In a March 4, 2008 editorial (“Border Insecurity”), this newspaper takes aim at the very propriety of defending our sovereignty and our laws:

“From San Diego on the Pacific to Brownsville on the Rio Grande, a steel curtain is descending across the continent. Behind it lies a nation….that has decided to wall itself off….”

In this rewrite of lines from Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain address, the editorialists outrageously compare America’s attempts to secure its own borders against smugglers with Josef Stalin’s subjugation of Eastern Europe.

In the end, the debate is not about enforcement tactics. It’s about enforcing the rule of law. Do our critics want a country where employers create economic incentives for people to come here illegally? Do they desire an America with open borders and uncontrolled illegal migration? Should federal officials tacitly allow this to happen by rejecting every meaningful effort to enforce the law?

In the end, two truths stand out. We need to continue to discuss reforms to our immigration laws. But we must continue to uphold our current laws by enforcing them.

Michael Chertoff