Mark Cromer: Welcome to the Age of Schultz

When it comes to immigration, our officials choose to 'know nothing!'

By Mark Cromer | Published on 07.02.2009

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For all the head-shaking disbelief that has erupted over revelations that San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris allowed illegal immigrant felons to skip prison and deportation by working in a tax-funded “jobs program,” the only truly shocking development is that anyone is surprised at all.

Mark Cromer
Mark Cromer

When it comes to immigration — particularly of the illegal variety — America is now living in the Age of Schultz: an era of intentional malfeasance that’s epitomized by our elected officials professing at each new outrage “I know nothing! Nothing!”

With all apologies to John Banner, the veteran actor who portrayed the bumbling Sgt. Hans Schultz on the classic television show, Hogan’s Heroes, Harris may as well start wearing a Wehrmacht helmet and a long coat so she can look the part as well (noshing on bratwurst five times daily might also help establish a more Schultz-like girth).

Harris, who is running for the top law-enforcement job in California, found herself pleading ignorance after it was reported that illegal immigrant Alexander Izaguirre was in a jobs program run by Harris when he savagely attacked a woman during a street robbery spree in San Francisco last summer.

Just months before the robbery and brutal attack — which left his victim with a shattered skull and compelled her to flee the state — Izaguirre had been arrested in San Francisco for peddling cocaine on the street. Before that dope bust he had been arrested for a previous robbery. He pleaded guilty to the felony narcotics charge and was transferred into a program euphemistically entitled “Back On Track,” which provides “job training” for first-time felons in the hope of diverting them from re-offending.

Free from prison and in Harris’ program, Izaguirre struck again.

But as Harris now tells it, she simply didn’t know that illegal immigrant felons were being funneled into the program until Izaguirre’s attack on the woman last summer. Once she found out about it, Harris said, she decided not to find out just how many more illegal immigrant felons were in the program.

Instead, she chose to issue instructions that, going forward, illegal immigrants were no longer qualified for the “Back On Track” program. “I believe we fixed it,” Harris blithely explained.

The dynamics of this incident reveal, yet again, the absolute culpability of our government officials in aiding and abetting illegal immigration and, therefore, their guilt as accessories to the crimes illegal immigrants commit.

The bitter truth is that just weeks before Harris’ program partner Izaguirre mauled a woman on the street, police say Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant gang member who had been arrested repeatedly and yet shielded from deportation by a San Francisco city program, opened fire with a machine gun and slaughtered a family in its car.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, now a candidate for governor, offered the same glib excuse that Harris is now: he didn’t know.

Of course, the truth is that Harris, Newsom and numerous other officials up and down California and across the country — including in the White House — choose not to know, just like Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes. In fact, they are so firmly committed to not knowing that they oppose virtually any sensible effort to determine if a person is in the country legally.

They will declare their support for targeting employers who hire illegal immigrants, and then work to ensure that E-verify and other measures are never applied to employers and job sites. They claim illegal immigrants pose no significant burden to taxpayers, but challenge and obstruct any effort for a comprehensive accounting of the financial cost of this illicit population.

Again and again, they just don’t want to know.

Thus this willful ignorance is replicated and encouraged throughout much of California’s local, state and county bureaucracies, with employees either forbidden to inquire about a person’s immigration status or prevented from reporting it — or both.

From hospital emergency rooms to job programs to public school classrooms and even still in many jails, illegal immigrants remain shielded from any real threat of detection and deportation by a government that’s actively in collusion with the business interests that are addicted to cheap labor and ethnocentric interest groups that are hungry for pure demographic power.

Even President Obama, as he wages an all-out fight for health-care reform, seems gleefully unaware as to just how many illegal immigrants are among the 40-million-plus uninsured people in the country. And it’s a safe bet he will not be asked.

And so it goes in this Age of Schultz.

The one thing that Schultz the bumbling oaf of a guard had over Harris, Newsom and their ilk, however, is that Schultz was likable because it was, after all, just television. On the streets of San Francisco, the blood and the betrayal are all too real.

— Mark Cromer is a senior writing fellow at Californians for Population Stabilization. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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» Jim in SB on 07.03.09 @ 10:11 AM

There are plenty of Mexicans that want to work here.  Why do we not have a comprehensive Green Card Program like we had years ago.

We could make it better because of technology.  No Green Cards for Felons, Gang Members, many Misdeamenors or a job etc.  No Welfare etc. They must return to Mexico if they do not have work.

To apply, they have to provide (or we can connect computers to Mexico’s legal system) recent Mexican reports showing they are not criminals.

Then, when there is a “Legal Immigrant” that is becoming a problem, we can deport him and revoke his Green Card.

This way we can “sift” through and eliminate the bad and keep the good.

As long as the Politicians are more conerned about getting reelected than our safety and economy, things will not change.


» Brittanicus on 07.03.09 @ 02:03 PM

We are being forced-fed immigration reform, but we should not reward foreign nationals who break the law. As ICE begins its auditing of any business who is believed to be sheltering illegal workers. We as a nation should implement Italy’s brand new illegal immigration law. Instead of a slap on the wrist by our laws, we should demand that Washington makes illegally immigrating a felony with appropriate consequences. As Italy we should give the legal population the right to detain foreign nationals who shouldn’t be here. After it’s inception we can then use a points system to settle new immigrants, who are highly skilled, with professional scientific, computer or business credentials. American taxpayers can no longer afford to subsidize the businesses and illegal families with handouts. That’s the predicament of California—SANCTUARY STATE—has brought upon itself, and its hurting population. Now the State must issue IOU’s, extract higher taxes and restrict health care to low income legal citizens. It seems like companies have a right to hire cheap labor and not pay decent, living wages for Americans. When the Status Quo has a strangle hold on our politicians immigration laws are weakened or killed, health care remains the domain of the wealthy insurance companies and the American public gets distracted by useless issues that doesn’t effect their bank accounts.

With yet another path to citizenship in this nations future, we had better take careful notice of the consequences? Without any doubt to process 13 to 20 million plus illegal immigrants is, according to Robert Rector of the reputable non-profit Heritage Foundation $2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS. It’s an accumulation of procedures necessary to investigate backgrounds of all those who come out of the proverbial shadows. But if and when another of these AMNESTIES is forced past the American voters, millions more will be equally ready to head for America, expecting a ninth Amnesty. The major one in 1986 was rife with fraud, a absolute disaster and was never enforced, that’s why our country has uncontrolled illegal immigration?

If we command of the Democratic leadership who originally tried to kill E-Verify, such as Sen. Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, we have an ongoing chance of combating the illegal immigrants of stealing further into the workplace. With Obama admitting that unemployment is farther on the rise, why would they be entering discussions of forcing another Amnesty down our throats. E-Verify is rapidly catching on and accelerating in the workplace and should not be denied to the American worker. CALL YOUR SENATOR AND REPRESENTATIVE AND DEMAND It should be fully funded, permanent and an a Federal identity check for everyone working in America? NUMBERSUSA, CAPSWEB for more details. ICE has a phone number to call when suspicious activity is determined in the Factory, office, restaurant or any industry.


» b_reynaldo on 07.03.09 @ 06:06 PM

Legal immigration is just as big a problem as illegal.  The U.S. grants 150,000 work visas A MONTH.  Many of these “temporary” visas become permanent green cards.  Do we need 150,000 more people looking for work every month when 14 million Americans are unemployed?  The true unemployment rate in California is over 15%—we’re at depression levels.  Do we have to or want to live in a nation of 1 billion people?  Why?  What for?  Why can’t high school and college students work in restaurants and hotels for extra cash, and machines harvest the crops?


» Fed up in SB on 07.03.09 @ 07:57 PM

Please just send them home.  They have ruined California.  They use our ER’s as walk in clinics an do not pay.  Our schools have to provide them with much more than an education.  Free meals, free bus passes, free childcare, foodstamps, free this, free that. Somehow they manage free health care.  How is that?  They know how to work the system and are plenty of “advocates” out there to teach them how.  Then they roll up in their Cadillac Escalades and pick up their kids!  They are abusing the system and costing the state everything as it is now in ruins.  Crime… gangs….PLEASE send them home!


» Fed up in SB on 07.04.09 @ 09:07 AM

Please just send them home.  They have ruined California.  They use our ER’s as walk in clinics an do not pay.  Our schools have to provide them with much more than an education.  Free meals, free bus passes, free childcare, foodstamps, free this, free that. Somehow they manage free health care.  How is that?  They know how to work the system and are plenty of “advocates” out there to teach them how.  Then they roll up in their Cadillac Escalades and pick up their kids!  They are abusing the system and costing the state everything as it is now in ruins.  Crime… gangs….PLEASE send them home!


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