Will Americans support another amnesty?

Were Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's Miami meanderings a gaffe, a trial balloon, an announcement of his department's policy, or an announcement of Bush administration policy?

His shocking words were a broadside on current law: "We have to come to grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegal aliens, afford them some kind of legal status some way." He pointedly did not say we have to come to grips with 8 to 12 million people who have violated our laws by entering our country illegally, and further violated our laws by using fraudulent documents to get jobs and remain here.

Nor did he say we have to come to grips with the thousands of employers who are violating our laws by hiring illegal aliens, and violating additional laws by paying the illegal aliens in the underground economy in order to avoid our laws about minimum wage, overtime, workers' compensation, unemployment compensation, family leave, Americans with disabilities, payroll taxes, etc.

Ridge didn't elaborate on how he would award "some kind of legal status," nor explain how giving legal status is any different from granting amnesty. What part of illegal doesn't Ridge understand?

Continuing, Ridge said his plan is to "legalize their presence, then, as a country, you make a decision that from this day forward, this is the process of entry, and if you violate that process of entry we have the resources to cope with it."

But we've been there, done that. In 1986, the United States granted what was promised to be a one-time legalization - then honestly called amnesty. That sent a message to others to enter illegally and wait for the next amnesty.

The administrations of Presidents Bush I, Clinton and Bush II have flagrantly failed to use our resources "to cope with" those who afterward violated the "process of entry." And so the illegal-alien problem quadrupled.

Not only did the 1986 amnesty transform millions of illegal aliens into lawful permanent residents, but after they became U.S. citizens they could import their relatives. Congress never investigated how many additional millions entered the United States or the massive document fraud that was involved in the process.

The current President Bush was asked to clarify his policy. He responded: "I have constantly said that we need to have an immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee.

"It makes sense that that policy go forward. And we're in the process of working that through now."

No, that does not make sense. First, it's an all-out repudiation of current law, and second, up to 5 billion people in the world might want to be "willing employees" in the United States.

Bush didn't limit the number of "willing employees." An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Mexicans every year cross illegally into the United States looking for work.

Thousands of these have died from thirst and dehydration in the desert or in locked vans, or from drowning, or from crimes committed by their smugglers. The Bush's administration's failure to close the border makes the payoff of getting into the United States worth the risk of death.

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan repeated Bush's exact words and added, "Migration should be safe, orderly and humane." But Congress and the American people never authorized "migration." We only authorized immigration under certain laws.

Bush claims he is "against blanket amnesty," but "blanket" is his weasel word. He apparently is for amnesty for the 8 to 12 million illegal aliens already in this country.

Amnesty for illegal aliens comes disguised under various euphemisms. These include guest worker program, Mexican ID cards, the DREAM Act (to give in-state college tuition), driver's licenses, 245(i) visas, H-1B and L-1 visas, free hospital care, anchor babies, and "totalization," which is to give Social Security benefits.

Ridge says that illegal aliens in the United States should be given "some kind of legal status" because most are not a threat to national security. That's an irrelevancy. Most passengers who boarded those four fatal planes on Sept. 11, 2001, were not hijackers, but 19 of them were, and Ridge has no plan to separate the terrorists from the 300,000 or more who cross our borders illegally every year.

According to the Washington Post, Karl Rove is designing the White House plan and the president will present his proposal the second week of January, shortly before his trip to Monterrey, Mexico.

Asa Hutchinson, Homeland Security's undersecretary for border and transportation security, says the Bush and Ridge remarks simply reflect the ongoing debate in Congress over the immigration issue. If that's so, then it's time for Congress to hear loud and clear from the two-thirds of Americans, according to a Zogby International poll, who believe that foreigners residing illegally in the United States should not be allowed to stay.

Arabs still enter U.S.
illegally from Mexico
Terrorists used past amnesty programs
to plot operations on American targets

While President Bush considers a broad-based amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., there is growing evidence the Mexican border continues to be used as a covert entry point for the smuggling of Arabs into the country.

An Arab-smuggling ring was broken up just last month, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, an online, premium intelligence newsletter published by WND. The seven-member ring included a former Mexican diplomat who worked in Lebanon's consular ministry office and gave out passports.

The newsletter also reports convicted Arab terrorists involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center and other acts of sabotage have used the porous Mexican border as an entry point and have also capitalized on previous amnesty programs to establish residency in the U.S.

Foreign-born Islamic terrorists have continued to use almost every conceivable means of entering the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, including every aspect of penetrating the U.S. immigration system.

Militant Islamic terrorists have come into the U.S. as students, tourists and business visitors. They have sneaked across the border illegally, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, and have been granted amnesty and citizenship. Terrorists have even used America's humanitarian tradition of welcoming those seeking asylum, reports G2 Bulletin.

And there is no question Arabs have used the porous border between the U.S. and Mexico and the immigration problems it poses for Washington to its advantage.

Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 Trade Center bombing, was legalized as a seasonal agricultural worker as part of the 1986 amnesty. Only after he was legalized was he able to travel outside of the country, including several trips to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where he received the terrorist training he used in the bombing. Abdel Hakim Tizegha, involved in the millennium plot, sneaked across the border posing as a Mexican migrant.

It's not just a question of Arab terrorists buying their way into the U.S. with the cooperation of border "coyotes." There is also a political alliance developing between separatist Hispanics and Muslim radicals.

Arabic journal found on Mexican route to U.S.

On its website, a group called "La Voz de Aztlan," the Voice of Aztlan, identifies Mexicans in the U.S. as "America's Palestinians." Many Mexicans see themselves as part of a transnational ethnic group known as "La Raza," the race. A May editorial on the website, with a dateline of Los Angeles, Alta California, declares that "both La Raza and the Palestinians have been displaced by invaders that have utilized military means to conquer and occupy our territories."

But the threat of secession is not merely from groups that might be considered on the fringe. Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo said in a 1997 speech in Chicago to the "National Council of La Raza," a Hispanic advocacy group, that he "proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important – a very important – part of this."

Zedillo said that because of this fact his government proposed a constitutional amendment that allows Mexican citizens to hold dual citizenship. Spencer believes that the objective is to enable Mexicans in the United States to vote in the interest of Mexico.

Ultimately, many Mexicans hope for a "reconquista," a reconquest of territory lost when Mexico signed the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War.

The U.S. has tripled its border patrol budget over the past five years, but the flow of immigrants has barely changed. At the same time, Mexican President Vicente Fox has pressed for an eventual erasure of the southern border and encouraged Mexicans who seek work in the U.S.

According to a survey conducted in June 2002, a healthy majority of Mexicans claim that their country rightfully owns much of the southwestern United States, while most Americans believe Washington should adopt stricter immigration standards and deploy U.S. troops along the border. The Zogby International poll found a majority of Mexicans say the U.S. Southwest "rightfully belongs to Mexico," and that Mexican citizens should be able to come into those areas freely, without U.S. permission. The poll found that 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, "The territory of the United States' southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico." Zogby said 28 percent disagreed, while another 14 percent said they weren't sure.

President Bush says he wants to see a Palestinian state carved out of Israel. It may be very difficult for him some day to explain why an Aztlan state should not likewise be carved out of America.

Activists who quite literally see themselves "America's Palestinians" are gearing up a movement to carve out of the southwestern United States – a region including all of Bush's home state of Texas – a sovereign Hispanic state called the Republica del Norte.

"There are great similarities between the political and economic condition of the Palestinians in occupied Palestine and that of La Raza in the southwest United States," explains an editorial from earlier this year in La Voz de Aztlan in Los Angeles, the city seen as the future capital of the new Hispanic state – much like Jerusalem is seen by Palestinian Arabs as their capital.

The editorial goes on to draw analogies between the Arab uprising in Israel and gang violence in Los Angeles. It's the same thing, the activists claim. This is not crime and punishment, according to the La Raza (literally, "The Race") activists, this is the birth of an independence movement by young Hispanics.

"The similarities are many," says the editorial. "The primary one, of course, is the fact that both La Raza and the Palestinians have been displaced by invaders that have utilized military means to conquer and occupy our territories. The takeover of our respective lands by foreign elements occurred 100 years apart. For La Raza, it happened in 1848 when Mexico lost the southwest at the end of the Mexican-American war and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidlago. For the Palestinians, it occurred in 1948 when the Zionist Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and signed the 'Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel' on the day in which the British Mandate over Palestine expired."

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