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I work for the INS, as a Border Patrol Agent, and along with most of
my colleagues, I discern a large chasm between what the INS practices
and what they preach. There are many examples of this phenomenon, which
seems to permeate the entire organization. In the U.S., the individual
is supposed to be "king," and we are supposed to succeed,
as individuals, based solely on merit, that is, performance. At the
Border Patrol, this is clearly not the case. The Border Patrol is now
conducting hiring boards in Spanish and hiring agents who CANNOT SPEAK
ENGLISH, either because the INS is desperate for "diversity"
or desperate for new agents, to replace the thousands who quit (or are
trying to leave) for other jobs with other agencies.
To me allowing individuals to take their hiring board in Spanish is
personally unacceptable. Is this the United States, or Mexico? Has INS
management completely lost their senses? Concerning the vital issue
of retainment, you must be aware that a large number of Border Patrol
Agents have applied for jobs with the FAA as Air Marshals. If 50% of
all FBI agents did the same thing, all hell would break loose and the
public would demand the government "do something." At the
INS, however, this potential hemorrhage of agents is considered normal
and there is no meaningful response to the minuscule level of morale
that defines our organization. The official line appears to be, "We'll
just hire more agents." Patrolling the border effectively, and
maintaining officer safety (my primary concern, anyway, is staying alive),
requires that our agency accrue experience by retaining their personnel.
Do you think that 5 new trainees know as much as a journeyman agent
with 5 years' experience? Do you think it's either sensible, profitable,
or safe to create conditions where the turnover rate requires each line
station to be permanently training new hires? Do you think that any
agency (or corporation-your experience in the private sector must inform
you about this) where well over * the employees want to leave is not
in a crisis?
What core value is represented by this phenomenon? Disdain for current
employees? Indifference? If you don't even attempt to retain current
employees, what message does this send to the newcomers? We've got trainees
at our station who are still on probation and are already looking to
leave! Most of all, this constant turnover is DANGEROUS: for the current
agents, for the trainees, and anyone else who gets between us and the
smugglers. If the INS doesn't care about our physical safety, what else
matters?
From down here on the ground level there is a crisis. There are many
reasons for this almost complete dearth of morale, but the primary responsibility
for its lack lies with INS and Border Patrol management. You guys are
supposedly in charge, so you are responsible for the management, performance,
and morale of the agency.
One of the most damaging aspects of INS "culture" is the
agenda-driven management, which revolves around political correctness,
appeasing lobbyists and Hispanic rights groups, even straight-up appeasement
of the Mexican government, who get more public support from INS management
than Patrol Agents.
The INS is supposed to be at the beck and call of U.S. citizens, not
advocates for illegal aliens and foreign governments. As for political
correctness, we all know that the INS is specifically and openly targeting
so-called "minorities" for hiring and advancement, particularly
women and black-Americans. I worked as a Border Patrol recruiter for
almost two years and was specifically directed by INS personnel management
to focus my recruiting efforts to target woman and blacks.
My core value is this: to hire, train, and retain the best people and
performers, regardless of their sex, color, or any other qualifying
determinant. Hire the best, dump the rest. Nobody elected our government
or appointed INS management to promote a social, political, or other
type of agenda, and it shouldn't be the mission of the INS to play social
scientist using its employees as guinea pigs. The INS hires and promotes
people based on which group they are in, not because of what they achieve
as individuals. This is un-American, counterproductive, a morale killer,
and just plain wrong.
Further, the whole concept of "minority groups" and victims/victimizers
is divisive and insulting to the very groups it's supposed to help.
Women, blacks, Hispanics, even "Scottish-Americans" like me,
don't need special recognition of their limitations to "level the
playing field" on behalf of some half-baked theory. Do you think
that a woman should be promoted before me, even if she lacks certain
qualifications and experience, just because someone (everyone?) at the
INS thinks it's their job to rectify centuries of perceived discrimination
against women? Do you think that this approach works? That women promoted
this way will feel that they earned their promotion? What about more
qualified people who have been leapfrogged in this manner? Doesn't their
legitimate grievance in such cases cancel out the so-called benefits
of this dubious social engineering? This approach is a backdoor way
of saying, "You can't cut it without special recognition and help."
It's patronizing and insulting. Women, blacks, and other "minorities"
are not "minorities," they are citizens. Let everyone stand
on their own two feet, as INDIVIDUALS, and be judged by their performance
and behavior, not because of their membership in a group that management
decided needs remedial help in life. Further, I don't see why my career
chances should be annihilated by someone else's political agenda. I'm
not a pawn to be used in the "re-engineering" of American
society, I'm a human being.
In this way the INS is contributing to the balkanization of America,
where involuntary membership in a sub-group is apparently more important
than individual achievement. The real genius of the American experiment
is that it has often allowed individuals to achieve their potential
despite, not because of, their group identity. The current INS policy
is anti-American and results in so much rancor and cynicism it cancels
out the so-called value of your bogus "diversity" agenda,
therefore damaging the very institution you claim to be assisting. If
you really want to lead, instead of bottom-feeding at the PC trough,
come out and declare your intention to create a meritocracy, where performance
and achievement trump the destructive shibboleths of political correctness.
Dump the quotas and the rainbow-coalition management practices. Achievement
of a real meritocracy would help create and sustain the retention of
current employees, especially those that work, who are fleeing the Border
Patrol like rats from a burning ship. If the INS really cared about
its employees in the Patrol, it would put its money where its mouth
is and: raise journeyman pay to the GS-12 level change our series designation
from 1896 to 1811 or 1801 make provisions for hardship pay, language
pay, and hazard duty pay raise the pre-employment requirements, not
lower them require a yearly P.E.B. (Physical Evaluation
Board) to maintain fitness stop sending trainees to desirable
locations/stations to save money on paid moves allow us to enforce the
INA (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952),
instead of looking for excuses to do nothing. Start backing the Border
Patrol aggressively and publicly; the lack of public support totally
erodes morale and has become a safety issue. When we arrest illegal
aliens now, many of them question our "right" to do so, either
by actively resisting arrest or making sarcastic comments, which can
lead to active resistance if not contained. Imagine that, Mexican and
other nationals questioning whether or not we have the right to arrest
them for breaking the laws of this country. This is pathetic, and will
be more so when the next Patrol Agent gets killed on duty because the
group of aliens he arrested knows the U.S. government won't back up
its own agents.
This dangerous atmosphere stems directly from INS management's refusal
to support their own mission. What core value does that represent? BETRAYAL?
Illegal aliens, criminals, smugglers, and terrorists get the benefit
of the doubt, misplaced sympathy from management, and are coddled by
policies that are guaranteed to undermine the INA by increasing the
flow of illegal aliens and criminals into this country. (e.g., releasing
juveniles, family members, and pregnant females on their own recognizance
prior to their immigration hearing-we all know they will NEVER show
up at their hearing). Patrol Agents, on the other hand, are undercut,
undermined, underfunded, under equipped, underpaid, and overworked.
More and more illegal aliens and criminals challenge our authority on
the river, at night, in a group, in dangerous situations that often
require physical force to maintain LIFE, and the INS' response is to
promise that every alien who makes any allegations whatsoever about
mistreatment will get investigators hounding PA's for months at a time.
The whole Border Safety Initiative is nothing but a sop to the Mexican
government, so our government (sic) can reassure them that our law enforcement
personnel are making the border safe for law-breakers. You help prop
up the corrupt Mexican government by allowing them to dictate American
policy. You should be telling Vicente Fox that there's an easy, safe,
risk-free way to travel from Mexico to the United States: it's called
a port-of-entry. This whole organization is in denial about illegal
immigration. Are you for or against it? Are you for enforcement, or
amnesty? Why doesn't management come straight out and say what their
intentions are?
This isn't a garden party down here on the frontier. Contrary to our
government's insistence, the U.S./Mexican border is a hostile environment
rife with corruption, violence, anger, poverty, aggression, and danger.
Despite our government's kowtowing to Jorge Castaneda, LULAC, La Raza,
Vicente Fox, and all the many "American" fellow-travelers
who advocate law-breaking while taking cynical advantage of American's
generosity and freedom...and despite all the talk about "cooperation"
and "harmony" with Mexico, I've got news for everyone who
doesn't live and work down here on the border, like I do 24/7/365: this
isn't a friendly place, Mexico is not our "friend," and the
Border Patrolman's job is dangerous and difficult. Mexicans don't like
gringos, and they don't like the U.S.; they just use us as a safety
valve for their own totally screwed-up country. When are you going to
publicly and consistently recognize that, to assist in making our jobs
just a little bit safer? We're not trying to maintain non-existent harmony
down here, we're trying to enforce the law. The INS needs a sea-change
in values.
Recognizing this frontier for what it is, rather for what some would
have us believe it is, would be a step in the right direction. As for
creating a "security perimeter" with Canada and Mexico, as
Mr. Fox has proposed...this would enable the Mexicans to advance their
own agenda while excluding all other countries in the hemisphere, thus
"regularizing" illegal immigration from Mexico. It's nothing
but a selfish reaction to the events of 9/11, which have threatened
the Mexican's cozy relationship vis a vis the U.S. You said in your
letter that "the extended hours you have been asked to work-in
many cases around the clock-require numerous sacrifices, none bigger
than not being able to spend time with your family and friends...."
The fact is, The Border Patrol always works around the clock, all day
and all night, all year, on holidays, weekends, midnights, around the
clock. We are NEVER off-duty. We always sacrifice family time and everything
else considered "normal": World Series games, the Super Bowl,
civic meetings, church attendance, political participation, Little League
games w/our children, school activities, holiday festivities, and all
normal social interaction with neighbors and friends, etc. If America
is as "pro-family" as our leaders say it is, how come our
permanent sacrifice of vital family time isn't recognized via better
pay and benefits, let alone recognized by management? Our schedule changes
every week, every month, all year and every year. It takes a heavy toll
on our bodies, minds, families, and lives. Why is it that we are paid
at the GS-09 level, while sacrificing everything that characterizes
a normal life or routine, in service to the nation, while criminal investigators,
deportation officers, and other INS employees work a cozy 9 to 5 gig/weekends
and holidays off, and yet get paid at the GS-12 or 13 level? The bigger
the sacrifice, the smaller the pay. Why is this? Is it because you think
our job is easier than working a desk? Anytime you want to mosey on
down here to the line and work with us for a month or so on the midnight
shift...is fine with me. Have at it. No cameras, no reporters, no press,
no glory, no CNN, no posse of managers and hangers on, no flunkies,
flacks or PIO's. Just you and your security detail. We'll show you what
the border is like, how is "works," and how hard we work to
protect this country. How hard it is to stay up all night, every night
for one month on the midnight shift, while trying to maintain some semblance
of normal family life. We're sacrificing family time not for a month
or two, but for our whole careers, most of our adult lives. INS management
should be fighting to improve our conditions and pay; instead we are
ignored, seemingly an embarrassment to the service. The "bad guys"
on the border who stop the poor and oppressed from finding their destiny.
We also get nickel-and-dimed by INS bureaucrats who are constantly chipping
away at our benefits, desk jockeys who couldn't do my job if they wanted
to.
Unless this changes, you will continue to lose experienced agents by
the thousands. Do you care about that? If so, what are you going to
do to stem the tide of "refugees," besides sugarcoating these
problems under cover of "core values"? We don't want to feel
good about abstract values: we want better pay, better benefits, better
equipment so we can stay ALIVE, recognition/respect/public support from
INS management, and mostly to be allowed to do our job, which is to
protect the citizens and property of the United States by aggressively
enforcing the laws as written. No more free passes for anyone who can
make it across the Rio Grande under cover of night, whether they be
campesinos, dope dealers, terrorists, or maids. You can't pick and choose.
Either the border is secure, or its not. Our mission is about the core
value of law enforcement, which is to enforce the law. Right now, the
INS is failing to do its duty as prescribed by law.
I've got about 5 more pages written out, but what's the point? In the
INS, nothing ever changes, at least for the rank and file. There's a
lot of wind, but the vessel never seems to go anywhere. A couple of
years ago INS management spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars
spreading the word to Border Patrol Agents: "Across the board GS-11s
are a DONE DEAL." They didn't even have Congressional approval
or funding for such a move. It was all talk. They kept telling us about
our imminent pay raise and how LEA pay would benefit us, when we all
knew that LEA pay is basically unlimited, unpaid overtime, slave labor
for federal agents. Then they yanked the whole program without a word.
Ah, no promotion after all. No LEA pay either, although that's a good
thing. No explanations. No nothing. What was the point of this campaign,
besides giving the top-heavy management of the INS useless work that
played with the aspirations, ambitions, and goals of Border Patrol Agents?
Talk about patronizing. Furthermore, my fellow agents and I are tired
of being treated like bums by Border Patrol management. They are primarily
responsible for the total lack of morale at my station, always denigrating
agents, criticizing their character and performance, handing out details
like candy to their minions, while simultaneously behaving like drunken
visigoths themselves. The Border Patrol is a cesspool; are you going
to do something to clean it up?
Maybe the air is pretty rarified in D.C., and you guys think we're
just GS-09's who can't think for ourselves. If so, you're wrong. We're
not idiots. We don't need bureaucrats and managers to tell us what's
good for us. We know what's good for us, and it doesn't take a rocket
scientist, or a social scientist for that matter, to figure it out.
Basically we get NO RESPECT from either INS or Border Patrol management.
Not only that, but from where I'm standing, there is NO management in
the Border Patrol. It's not even bad management, it's a total lack of
anything that could be called management. Everything is personal, nothing
is professional. Obsequious slobs are promoted, while the hard workers
are left to rot. The "diversity" agenda takes precedence over
everything. We don't even enforce the INA, I guess because it's not
fair to pick on the poor "minorities" who are breaking the
law by entering the U.S. We're all racists, I guess. Top management
does whatever they want, and gets away with it. When the rank and file
do their job, they get hammered for it. I'm tired of it. You asked for
contributions to your Initiative. I hope this letter, born out of 4
years of mounting frustration and that of my many hard-working colleagues,
helps enlighten you about the massive problems of morale and job satisfaction
that plague the INS and the Border Patrol. I don't expect INS management
to do ANYTHING about this, but I'm tired of complaining in silence.
And if you think I'm the only guy who feels this way, a lone wolf who's
been out in the sun too much and cooked his brain cells, come on down
to Eagle Pass and have a talk with the rank and file, the BACKBONE of
the Patrol. Send the managers, supervisors, and other "bosses"
out of the room, and talk to Patrol Agents one by one. You'll see that
far from being the only one, I'm just one of many. I'm fed up, and so
are my compadres. Don't send us any more feel-good flyers talking about
"core values" until you start treating the sick patient that
the INS has become. You can't fix anything unless you admit it's broken
first. And let us do our job and deport ALL illegal aliens, including
juveniles, families, Mexicans, and all the other people who take advantage
of the total lack of willpower in Washington D.C., whether at the INS
or in the halls of Congress. we're ready to our job. When are you guys
going to get on board?
P.S. You told Congress that the INS couldn't account for 6 or 7 of
the 9/11 terrorists, e.g., how they entered the U.S. and managed to
stay here undetected. There's a good chance that they crossed the southwest
border illegally along with the millions of others who do it every year.
We've been catching middle-easterners and Muslims down here with regularity
since I got here. How many do you think escaped detection and made it
in? To protect America you've got to tell the Mexicans that the party
is over: no more open border for illegals from Mexico or anywhere else.
It's either security for U.S. citizens, or millions more illegal aliens,
criminals, and terrorists crossing into the U.S. You can't have it both
ways. The choice is stark, yet simple. It's time to either stand up
for AMERICA, or surrender to forces that will eventually destroy this
country. I value America and its citizens. What do you value?
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