So, how does the chairman assess the work of the Senate Select Committee so far? They've been at it for almost 6 months, and they'e already logged well over 100 hours in testimony from the many witnesses who've appeared. We've heard plenty about the various abuses within the Department, and the corruption, but there has been no evidence which definitively points to one specific person caught in wrongdoing.
Does the Chairman view that as a failure? That's what we asked, and here's what he said:
Daniel Ortiz
"It seems from the course of the Senate hearings, all the bodies have been exhumed of all the crimes committed but nobody, no evidence has come forward to the Senate which definitively points to a particular individual to be held responsible. Would you agree?"
Hon. Aldo Salazar - Chairman, Senate Select Committee
"Yes but it is not - you see we are misconstruing the duty of the Senate. We feel that the Senate is the one who has to go and find somebody who is responsible, that is not our duty. If you read our term of reference which I read every time contrary to my own will, I am told I must do it so I do it out of what has transpired before so I do it but that is not our duty, a lot of people feel that is our duty but it really is not. Our duty is to call the witnesses that are relevant, produce a report, our report does not have to say X person was responsible for taking the photograph of Wong Hong Kim because I can tell you we can be here till I am 50 years which is not that far away; we can be here until I am 50 and we probably won't find out who did that. So the people who are supposed to do that are the police, not the Senate. The Senate has to see okay what in the entire process led to a situation that would lead to this abuse and how we fix it."
Daniel Ortiz
"Is there ever a point in which you have personally looked at the exercise because you all have been listening to hours of testimony maybe over a hundred hours by now and you feel that you haven't gotten anywhere in terms of trying to plug these loopholes. How exactly you will achieve that?"
Hon. Aldo Salazar
"No I think you're asking me if I feel like we've wasted our time in not so many words. No I don't think so; I think this is a good thing, good exercise in democracy. Politics aside that it can blur what we are trying to do, I think it's good for us to look and see what happen and I think that positive things can come out of this inquiry because we have already seen where there were abuses, certain things weren't kept properly as how they should have been kept, certain controls weren't there for example why the 8 stubs went missing. There wasn't comparison between the visa applicants along with the passport applicants to see if those people were really here for 5 years, those who were applying for nationality. We have uncovered a host of things procedurally that are immensely valuable to us as a country."
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