Posted on 10/10/2007 1:50:43 PM PDT by bs9021
Following the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act and the REAL ID Act, an effort to prevent further terrorist invasion of U.S. soil. The Patriot Act extends the material support bar to include fundraising for terrorist groups, and is retroactive towards all aliens whatever their entry date. In addition, a 2001 Department of Justice memorandum states that the Patriot act requires the government to deport an alien for fundraising or recruitment on behalf of a terrorist organization “even if the alien did not intend to fund terrorist activity and/or did not know the organization was a terrorist organization.”
Paul Rosenzweig, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), testified in September before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing that the material support bar “provides absolutely vital protections to American national security.” The bar, he notes, has recently allowed the Department of Homeland Security to deport a Saudi who maintained the website of an Al-Qaeda front group, the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, as well as to deport a financial supporter for the Benevolence International Foundation, a Taliban support group.
Both BIF and CDLR remain unlisted Tier III organizations, and their alien supporters were immune to prosecution prior to the Patriot Act. Rosenzweig believes that these provisions equip the U.S. government “with the means to take offensive against those who fuel the maintenance of the terrorist infrastructure,” and the Act is therefore “an essential weapon of the Administration’s counter-terrorism arsenal.”
However, Orlando Bishop Thomas Wenski and other critics consider such measures gratuitous. “We need not undermine our honored traditions and democratic principles in order to achieve security. In fact, we can achieve both with the proper balance,” argues Bishop Wenski.
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
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