By Debbie Schlussel
So, what was it that “genius” lawyer/incompetent Homeland Security chief Michael “Serpenthead” Chertoff was saying about finally getting serious on national security in his last months in office?
More BS, as he’s now decided that 47,000 applicants will get green cards without even a basic FBI background check. As I’ve noted before, Michael Maxwell, whistleblower and former Director of Security at Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), has testified about this numerous times, and former CIS employees complained about it to me. And they’ve testified that USCIS officials currently spend less than 6 minutes per green card applicant as it is–yup, very thorough.
But this is really getting ridiculous. Why have we taken measure like this 6.5 years after 9/11? Why?:

Facing a rapidly growing backlog of immigration cases, the Bush administration will grant permanent residency to tens of thousands of legal U.S. immigrants without first completing required background checks against the FBI’s investigative files.
The change affects a large but unknown number of about 47,000 permanent residency, or green-card, applicants whose cases are otherwise complete but whose FBI checks have been pending for more than six months, U.S. officials said. Overall, about 44 percent of the 320,000 pending immigration name checks before the FBI — including citizenship as well as green-card requests — have waited more than six months.
The delays have been called “the most pervasive” processing problem in the U.S. immigration system, according to Prakash Khatri, the ombudsman of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The change, announced in an internal agency memorandum Feb. 4, follows years of criticism by Khatri, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, lawmakers and federal judges, who say that lengthy delays in FBI name checks serve neither national security nor immigrants, who in any case have been living in the United States for years while awaiting a decision.

Um, why the heck are they living here BEFORE the background checks? Hello . . . ?
Oh, and by the way, not noted in the article, this GUH-REAT new DHS greencard policy is in response to a lawsuit filed by Muslim Arab aliens who want their citizenship rubberstamped faster than it already is. The Washington Post merely calls them the non-descript “immigrants.”

The USCIS memo and Smith’s e-mail were filed by the government last Wednesday in a pending case brought by immigrants before U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. The memo was first reported Sunday by McClatchy Newspapers.

ADC, the deceptively-named American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee–brought the suit on behalf of Muslim Arabs, many of whom came here on visas, violated them by overstaying, then applied for citizenship. Strangely, Spencer S. Hsu of the Washington Post doesn’t want you to know that. Now, they will be rewarded without even a basic FBI background check.
Conservatives whining about McCain, where the heck were your whines about GEORGE W. BUSH? HUH?