Obama's Immigration Policy Aid's Past May Hunt Him

Photo courtesy of Georgetown University's website

According to an article from the Washington Times, President-elect Barack Obama's immigration policy aid T. Alexander Aleinikoff failed to check the criminal background of thousands of foreing-born immigrants that were granted citizenship during a program that he was in charged of during the Clinton years.
Through Citizenship USA, 1.2 million foreign-born nationals were granted citizenship in 1996. But more than 180,000 applicants were sort of passed through without the proper FBI fingerprint analyses and other criminal-background checks.
At the time, Aleinikoff said that the program had reached its goal of getting a more people their citizenship in a timely manner "while maitining the integrity of the citizenship process."

But in a report by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General, the program failed misserably due in part by their "self-impossed goal of completing more than one million cases by the end of fiscal 1996" and not following the appropiate procedures.

Although the article doesn' really specify what kind of criminals this program was giving citizenships to other than people who had fraudulently obtained their green card, I wonder how this will affect the current dean and executive vice-president of Georgetown University of Law.

The fact that he failed to follow some of those procedures will make people keep an eye on the guy. And they should keep an eye on the guy. Like every other law maker and public servant, Aleinikoff's decisions will affect everyone and we must make sure that he's doing his job right. Let's hope that this doesn't stop any future decisions of a possible fair immigration reform.