Posted on 10/07/2001 5:59:02 PM PDT by seamus
Closing immigration loopholes is first step in fighting terrorism
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Those are the healthy reflexes of a remarkable nation. This country accords more rights to accused criminals than many governments give to citizens in good standing. It is perhaps America's greatest virtue.
But sometimes, as is the American way, we take things too far. People who have committed murders and rapes walk the streets today because they got off on a technicality that had only a tangential relationship to their guilt or innocence. We too often demand police and judicial perfection when a slightly lesser standard would serve.
That obsession, however, seems to have waned a bit in the wake of last month's attack. Congress moved quickly last week to pass laws that would, to a degree that would have been unthinkable four weeks ago, loosen the shackles we place on our police forces.
And it's about time. Swinging the pendulum back in the direction of the victims of crime--as opposed to the perpetrators--has never been more important.
Most of the men who carried out the mass murders on Sept. 11 were in this country illegally. A nation of immigrants, especially one that expends so much energy celebrating diversity, is not stirred to outrage over such "status" crimes. Indeed, illegal immigration is hardly considered a crime at all--even by our own Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Save a random raid on a factory here and there along the border with Mexico, the INS doesn't bother much with enforcing immigration laws. Just a few weeks before the attacks, President Bush was poised to grant blanket amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that the INS lacked the manpower to track down.
As is typical, the monsters who killed thousands of innocent Americans were able to enter the country--many on student visas--and simply disappear. And there are doubtless many more henchmen of Osama bin Laden still among us.
As John J. Miller writes in National Review, nearly a half-million foreigners enter the U.S. every year, "and the most stringent demand many of them face is filling out a form asking where they're headed; the forms are then shipped off to storage, where they probably won't ever be seen again."
While we should be proud of having the world's most open immigration policy, we should be doing more than the equivalent of an airline ticket clerk's asking, while barely making eye contact, if anyone packed our luggage for us.
Illegals have no right to be in this country, and should not automatically benefit from the liberties of full citizenship. A bill working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives would allow INS agents
to detain illegal aliens for seven days without charging them with a crime.
Shocking? Hardly. Most Americans might be surprised to learn that current law allows the INS to jail illegals for two days before charging them with a crime--a law-enforcement measure not permitted against those with full citizenship.
The House bill does other helpful things, including:
removing the statute of limitations on the commission of terrorist actions--the dumbest restriction on law enforcement imaginable;
making it easier for the cops to monitor the e-mail messages of suspected terrorists; and
loosening wire-tap laws (just a tad) so we can keep up with the bad guys when they change cellphones.
That last one is probably the most important. Currently, the cops have to get a separate warrant from a judge every time a suspected terrorist or drug dealer picks up a different cellphone. This new law would allow the warrant to apply to the suspect.
Rarely has so much common sense been injected into anti-crime efforts all at once. While they're at it, Congress should permit the cops to use technology to break the coded electronic messages that we know are being sent back and forth between terrorists here and their supporters overseas.
These reforms will not usher in an Orwellian nightmare. Every one of these surveillance actions must come through the courts, whose job it is to protect our civil liberties.
Convincing a judge there is probable cause to monitor the e-mail messages of, say, an illegal immigrant with ties to terrorist organizations is a far cry from Big Brother sifting through the "inbox" of a random home computer.
On the day before they flew a plane into the World Trade Center, Mohammed Atta and Abdulaziz
Alomari were seen on surveillance cameras laughing it up on a shopping spree at Wal-Mart.
Who knows what they were being so jovial about? But there is nothing funny about enemies of America taking advantage of naïvely written laws and lax immigration enforcement to carry out wholesale slaughter.
Closing those loopholes is now a matter of national security.
JAMES G. LAKELY is an editorial writer for The Free Lance-Star.
It is absurd to be patting down Granny in the interest of political correctness.
It's not a matter of closing the borders, but of monitoring them as if we give a sh*t about our country, and national security.
I find it amazing that California's Prop 187 was so popular, and so controversial at the same time.
The Colombian drug lords have pledged to help the terrorists smuggle whatever they need in. The National Guard is reassuring at the airport, but we need them at the borders, too.
It's time to stop blocking our borders with orange highway cones over-night and expecting that to stop terrorists. We need some serious border security. Now.
This is an interesting development. Do you have documentation or a link to go to for this information?
When are we going to wake up to the fact that this massive criminal illegal alien invasion must stop. How many more terrorist are here among us? We have allowed this to happen and it’s now time to end the free for all at our borders. The very lives of our families and loved ones depend on this security of our borders.
This is no longer business as usual. We need to change they way we look at people that gain entry to our nation illegally. As it is now, Sadam himself could enter our country with little or no effort.
Our Borders have been bleeding for years and have become a national disgrace. Estimates range between 10 million and 20 million illegal aliens that are now in our nation. And they are not all Mexicans.
We are now finding out that some of these terrorist involved with this murderous acts against our nation entered our country illegally. We need a massive crackdown on people that enter our nation illegally. We need to protect our country. We need to regain control of all of our borders.
Please realize that as I write this, a small team of terrorist with weapons of mass destruction could be entering this nation illegally, right now. They could already be here illegally, waiting, planning. With 10 to 20 million criminal illegal aliens already in country, how many of them are here with agendas of death?
Joe Hadenuf
You noticed that too?
Our so-called leaders and politicians from both of these main stream parties remain treasonously silent, month after month, year after year, decade after decade while our borders have become a nation disgrace and a national security nightmare.
The open border "free for all" continues....
It seems they won't make a move unless the polls tell them what to do...so LET'S TELL THEM!!!
Yet, if you listen to pundits today, they'll say that politicians that embraced Prop 187 are toxic. Is that true in California (where I plan to move in two to three years) or is that just the usual pap of the liberal media?
And you know what? CONgress didn't give a crap until September 11th.
Grammer police...please take it easy on me, it's been awhile.
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