Just turned on C-span---Tom Delay is up and talking about border control---
The House of Reps is taking up the matter of border security---sounds like it will be interesting---
Thanks...
BORDER SECURITY IS HOMELAND SECURITY -- (House of Representatives - February 08, 2005)
[Page: H355] GPO's PDF
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(Mr. DeLAY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, border security is homeland security. It is odd we even need reminding about that fact especially after 9/11. But just as homeland security is national security, so border security is homeland security. It is really simple, Mr. Speaker. There are violent men who wish to commit atrocities against innocent Americans; and most of them, not all, but most of them come from outside the United States. The 19 men who hijacked commercial passenger planes on September 11, 2001, to fly them into American buildings to perpetrate mass murder exploited our porous borders and ultimately succeeded in their mission of evil.
Since that time, we have made numerous reforms to numerous programs and agencies and systems to prevent such exploitation and such treachery from ever again bloodying our soil.
But, Mr. Speaker, the job is not done. The job is not near done. The holes that remain in our border security systems are not small; they are gaping. And they are glaring to our terrorist enemies. They are coming for us, Mr. Speaker, and politics will not stop them. What will?
Last year, Congress asked the bipartisan 9/11 Commission that very question, and here is what they said in their report: ``The Federal Government,'' the report reads, on page 390, ``should set standards for the issuances of birth certificates and sources of identification such as driver's licenses.''
Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft. The Federal Government should restrict terrorists' freedom of movement because without it, we learn on page 65, ``terrorists cannot plan, conduct surveillance, hold meetings, train for their mission, or execute an attack.
``Today more than 9 million people are in the United States outside the legal immigration system,'' we read on page 390.
``Once in the United States,'' the commission says on page 49, ``terrorists tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to stay here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud by claiming political asylum. Immigration cases against suspected terrorists are often mired for years in bureaucratic struggles over alien rights and the adequacy of evidence.
``There is also evidence,'' we learn on page 64, ``that terrorists used human smugglers to sneak across borders.''
In other words, Mr. Speaker, there are gaping holes in our border security system that, 3 years after 9/11, still remain untouched by any reform. This week, the House will finally consider the kind of reforms our border security system desperately needs, reforms called for in the 9/11 Commission's report, reforms American families demand and deserve.
Border security is homeland security, and this week we will begin the process of saying so in the law.