Please, President Bush, another soft-on-crime Beltway back-slapper won't do

Jewish World Review ^ | 8/21/02 | Michelle Malkin

[alloysteel]

Good riddance to James Ziglar, the hopeless head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service who announced his resignation last week. This is a man whose main qualifications for the nation's top immigration enforcement job were his boyhood friendship with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott and his effortless ability to suck up to Sen. Ted Kennedy. This is a man whose law enforcement background consisted of less than three years as the U.S. Senate's sergeant-at-arms and doorkeeper, protecting the Senate gavel and playing Senate hall monitor. This is a man who freely admitted before his confirmation that he had "no discernible experience in immigration law and policy." This is a man whose idea of increasing U.S.-Mexican border security was to give his beleaguered agents pepperball guns, and whose idea of leadership was to openly assure millions of illegal aliens earlier this spring that it is "not practical or reasonable" to deport them. Everyone knows the INS lacks the proper resources and manpower to do its job. But good grief, did we really need the nation's top immigration officer using his megaphone to advertise his own cluelessness and question the reasonableness of the laws he was supposed to enforce? But let's not be too hard on Ziglar. He didn't seek out the job. It was his elbow-rubbing pals who promoted his nomination, and it was President Bush who ultimately put him in power. Administration insiders are saying Ziglar wasn't pushed out. But when his impending departure is coupled with the recent "retirement" of the State Department's Consular Affairs chief, Mary Ryan-she was sacked after intrepid National Review reporter Joel Mowbray relentlessly blew the whistle on her office's terrorist-friendly visa policies-it seems on the surface that the Bush administration is finally getting rid of the pre-September 11 furniture and updating the bureaucratic front offices for the War on Terror. Whether or not the INS gets folded into the proposed Homeland Security Department, it needs top executives who understand that immigration in the post-September 11 era must be treated first and foremost as a national security issue-not as a politically correct entitlement, not as a social engineering experiment, not as a diplomatic tool, and not as a cash cow.

[alloysteel]

This is a state of affairs that has existed for far too long. Time for a housecleaning. Everywhere in the INS

[NeoCaveman]

Ping.