America's most underrated -- and consequential -- challenge.
August 19, 2016
In real estate it is said that the three most important factors to consider are “location, location, location.”
When considering the candidates Americans should vote for in the upcoming elections, the key issue is simply immigration or, as I wrote in a recent article, “It’s the Immigration Problem, Stupid: Secure borders are synonymous with safety and that's what Americans want in 2016.”
Elected officials and government employees, especially those in law enforcement and intelligence, hold positions of trust. They take an oath, upon entering on duty, in which they swear (affirm) to uphold the Constitution and our laws and protect our nation from all enemies.
There is no ambiguity where the purpose of that oath is concerned.
The preface of the official government report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” begins with the following paragraph:
It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.
The 9/11 Commission identified failures of the immigration system as vulnerabilities that the terrorists exploited to enter the United States and embed themselves as they went about their deadly preparations. The Commission made it clear that this was not unique to the 9/11 hijackers but to other terrorists they investigated who entered the United States in the decade before the attacks of 9/11.
The Commission also noted that terrorists gamed the visa process and obtained lawful immigration status by committing fraud. They obtained local, state and federal identity documents, including driver's licenses, through fraud and by purchasing altered and counterfeit identity documents.
Yet “Sanctuary Cities” shield illegal aliens from detection, thus encouraging aliens to enter our country illegally. I addressed this lunacy in my articles, “Sanctuary Cities Endanger - National Security and Public Safety” and “Terrorism, Enclaves and Sanctuary Cities: How sanctuary cities facilitate the growth of terror enclaves in America.”
It is clear that America's borders are its first line of defense and last line of defense. There was a good reason that the enforcement and administration of America's immigration laws was vested in the Department of Homeland Security.
Yet the administration and many politicians blithely ignore the inherent risk that non-secured borders and the presence of unknown millions of aliens who have evaded the inspections process represent to national security and the safety of our citizens.
In point of fact, many politicians, including Hillary Clinton, have advocated for providing lawful status and a pathway to citizenship to millions – likely tens of millions of illegal aliens. In this scenario, there would be no way to conduct in-person interviews let alone field investigations of aliens who entered the United States without inspection
Ms. Clinton would also greatly increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted into the United States even thought there is no way to vet them. She has been extremely critical of the Obama administration's supposed aggressive enforcement of our immigration laws.
In reality Obama has failed to enforce the immigration laws both along our borders and from within the interior of the United States.
Indeed, the administration has released tens of thousands of criminal aliens who, upon release, committed still more homicides and assaults.
Clinton's Vice-Presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, has echoed her sentiments about immigration and even addressed the Democratic Convention in both English and Spanish and also amplified Hillary's promise (threat?) to provide all of the illegal aliens present in the United States with United States citizenship.
Our legal immigration system admits roughly one million lawful immigrants annually. Legalizing illegal aliens makes a mockery of the legal immigration process.
I fully support the notion of people learning multiple languages. As a native New Yorker, I love the diversity of the cultures to be found in my hometown.
My mother came to the United States as a fourteen-year-old girl who had to leave her mother behind in Poland prior to World War II and the Holocaust that saw the slaughter of upwards of 17 million people, 6 million of whom were Jews.
My mother's mother, for whom I was named, was one of those killed. My mother came to America fluent in Yiddish and Polish, but did not speak a word of English. Her first task, upon securing a room in a rooming house and a job at an umbrella factory, was to learn to speak English.
My dad was born in Brooklyn, but his family came to America from Bessarabia located in Russia/Romania.
His family came to America speaking Russian and Yiddish, but quickly learned to speak English.
My parents used Yiddish as a “secret language” when they did not want me to know what they were discussing, providing me with a very strong incentive to learn Yiddish.
When I attended Border Patrol Academy, at the beginning of my career with the INS, I was required to develop Spanish-language proficiency.
However, a common language is the mortar that holds a society together. Our nation has turned itself into a bilingual country without the consent of the citizens of the United States. This has been done by our politicians who were pandering to ethnic voters and to the businesses that want to market their goods and services to as many people as possible.
In many states drivers may take motor vehicle tests in a wide variety of languages even though road signs are only posted in the English language. Globally, English is the language of aviation. Yet in states such as New York, drivers who cannot read the road signs share the roads with pedestrians and other drivers. You have to wonder how many people have been injured or killed because many drivers cannot read the road signs. Yet this irrational and dangerous practice continues.
This probably makes the auto repair shop owners, trial lawyers and funeral home directors happy, however.
Politicians, pollsters and pundits have divided America into a Balkanized country where ostensible “Latino voters” have different goals and dreams from other Americans. This is a dangerous, divisive and disgusting course of action.
All citizens of the United States have essentially the same goals -- to live in a secure country where our enemies are held at bay overseas by our military; where police keep our towns and cities as free from crime as possible and where the “American Dream” provides opportunities for Americans willing to acquire a good education and work hard to achieve success.
Effective immigration law enforcement is critical to achieving those goals.
Incredibly, the open-borders anarchists have created the deception that anyone who wants our borders secured and our immigration laws enforced is a racist.
As I have repeatedly written, our immigration laws have absolutely nothing to do with race, religion or ethnicity. Those laws were enacted to prevent the entry and continued presence of aliens in the United States who would pose a threat to national security or the safety, well-being, lives and livelihoods of Americans. Period.
Indeed, immigrants living in the various ethnic communities around the United States, who come from all around the world, are often the most likely victims of transnational criminals. It is not likely that victims of crime take solace in the knowledge that they or their loved ones have been victimized by thugs who share their ethnicity.
When politicians push for a massive amnesty program they are advocating for dumping millions, if not tens of millions, of newly authorized foreign workers, into a labor pool of desperate American workers who cannot find decent jobs.
My article “Hillary Clinton’s Immigration Goals Make Her Economic Promises Impossible to Achieve” focused on her game of “bait and switch” promising “wage equality” and a minimum hourly wage of $10.10. At the same time, her Clinton Foundation had partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates has pumped well over one billion dollars into pushing for an endless supply of H-1B visas to destroy the wage structure of high-tech workers in America.
On August 14, 2016 CBS News, New York reported, “Carpenters Persevere In Camping Out For Union Training, Better Life.” The report noted that for several days hundreds of people had camped out on the sidewalk hoping to become apprentice carpenters and beating out the competition, even though the temperature had soared to nearly 100 degrees. There is no shortage of American workers, but there most certainly is a shortage of jobs. There is no job an American won't do for a living wage.
The shortage of a lack of jobs would not be solved by adding more workers. This wrong-headed notion, that admitting many more foreign workers would somehow enable unemployed Americans to find jobs, makes as much sense as claiming the best way to deal with a hole in the bottom of your rowboat is to drill more holes, hoping that magically the water will leave through those additional holes.
Any politician who refuses to secure our nation’s borders and effectively enforce our immigration laws would be defying his/her oath of office and breaking promises about helping struggling American families or protecting America from the threats posed by international terrorists.
