Posted on 09/10/2002 6:58:53 AM PDT by robowombat
Author sounds immigration alarm Robert Stacy McCain THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 9/10/2002
The day before the September 11 attacks, Michelle Malkin warned of the dangers of unlimited immigration. . "It is a tragedy that we've now given the enemies of our constitutional republic the keys to flood our gates and trash our home," Mrs. Malkin wrote in the last line of her syndicated column published Sept. 10, 2001.
That line resonated in the days after the terrorist hijackings, as readers wrote to Mrs. Malkin saying, "You've got to speak up." She is speaking up with her new book, "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores."
The book "argues a simple theme: that immigration must be treated first and foremost as a national-security issue," she says.
In "Invasion," Mrs. Malkin chronicles:
•How weak U.S. immigration policy helped the September 11 hijackers. Three of the hijackers obtained their visas through the State Department's Visa Express program. Hijacker Hani Hanjour entered on a student visa, but never enrolled in classes. Hanjour and six of his fellow terrorists got fraudulent Virginia identification cards with the help of Salvadoran immigrants.
•How the travel industry and ethnic lobbying groups pressure politicians for lax immigration policies.
•How the appeals process makes it difficult to deport criminal aliens, such as the Haitian babysitter who killed an 18-month-old infant and the German woman who had abetted the sexual assault of her own 3-year-old daughter.
•How officials corrupt the immigration process and seldom pay a price for their wrongdoing. One Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) examiner was convicted for granting permanent residency to immigrants in return for homosexual acts, but was allowed to retire and keep his federal pension. A Justice Department official assigned to the IRS fraudulently obtained U.S. visas for two Russian women, including his girlfriend, but never faced criminal charges and took early retirement.
•How foreign criminals like Mexican serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz — who murdered 12 Americans –— are able to enter the United States and evade capture because of incompetence by the INS.
Though herself the daughter of immigrants, Mrs. Malkin has only contempt for those she calls "the open-borders crowd," who defend even illegal immigration.
"They think it's possible to overlook the fact that we have 9 [million] to 11 million people in this country who have flouted our immigration laws, and still make sure we don't have another September 11," she says. "I'm saying that's impossible. It's a deadly delusion."
Although polls consistently show most Americans favor stricter immigration policies, that grassroots sentiment is opposed by what Mrs. Malkin calls an "almost insurmountable alliance of big business, ethnic panderers, the university cabal, the travel and tourism industry and the immigration lawyers."
That alliance, she notes, includes the Wall Street Journal — which has advocated an open-borders amendment to the Constitution — and many libertarians. "With libertarians in particular, I find it disturbing that these open-borders people — who otherwise advocate attachment to the rule of law — shrug their shoulders at the massive amount of [illegal immigrants] who've shown contempt for that principle," she says.
Born in Philadelphia to Filipino Catholic parents, Michelle Maglalang grew up in New Jersey and attended Oberlin College in Ohio, planning to become a concert pianist. But she "realized fairly early on that I was not going to cut it as a world-class pianist," she says, "so I majored in government and English."
She soon found herself in conflict with the political climate at Oberlin, a famously liberal school. "I think I was either ignorant or willfully naive about how radically left the Oberlin campus was," she says.
At Oberlin, she met her future husband, Jesse Malkin, and the two cooperated on an article in the student magazine criticizing the college's affirmative-action policies. "The response to [the article] was so violent that it really woke me up to what a stranglehold liberal orthodoxy had; that you couldn't even issue the most mild challenge to their sacred cows," says Mrs. Malkin, now 31. "That's what really set the course for my career in journalism."
It was at Oberlin that she developed a resentment toward identity politics. "There were self-appointed minority leaders who presumed to speak for every nonwhite person on campus," she says. "I think that the driving force of my career has been to say that those people don't speak for me. And I think that's the driving force behind the book, as well."
She criticizes "all the hyphenated groups objecting to every single reasonable immigration measure; those groups do not speak for the majority of immigrants who are here legally."
After graduating from Oberlin in 1992, Mrs. Malkin worked at NBC News, the Los Angeles Daily News and the Seattle Times before getting a column with Creators Syndicate in 1999. (Her column appears regularly on the Commentary pages of The Washington Times.) Along the way, she married her college sweetheart — now an economist with Rand Corp. — and gave birth to a daughter, Veronica, now 2.
Sitting on the deck of her Germantown home, which overlooks Little Seneca Lake, Mrs. Malkin admits she has sometimes confronted racism. "Growing up in south Jersey, I certainly experienced my share of name-calling, but that never bothered me," she says. She finds what she calls "liberal condescension" more damaging. "The tacit lowering of expectations — it's so much harder to fight that," she says.
After September 11, writing "Invasion" was for her an act of patriotic duty. "My parents have stressed so much showing gratitude for the freedoms we have here," she says. "I just felt this was a way to give back something."
In her book, Mrs. Malkin quotes a routine by "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno: "U.S. visas: Everywhere you terrorists want to be."
It's hardly a joke, because of policies like the "diversity lottery," which helped at least one terrorist killer stay in America.
INS officials had begun deportation proceedings against Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohammed Hadayet, but in 1997, he was allowed to stay after his wife won permanent residency in the "diversity lottery" program. On July 4, Hadayet shot to death two persons and wounded three others when he opened fire at the El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport.
"It's become clear to us how much blood is on the hands of INS officials who remain in office, who continue to be promoted, who get salary raises," Mrs. Malkin says. "You can't make this stuff up."
Copyright © 2002 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
"Most libertarians also believe in free immigration and emigration. They believe that borders should be completely open, because, ideally, it benefits everyone involved."
Wrong-o, me lad. Most of America lives along the coastline, and those are going to have to be effectively controlled. Said control is going to have to be exercised in depth--unless you just want the INS and Border Patrol to look they're doing their jobs, as opposed to actually accomplishing them.
Anyone within 100 miles of the coastline or a land border is going to be more than close enough to feel the effects. Anyone who goes to an international airport is going to get it shoved in their face.
Oh, and by the way. We federalize our international airports effective 11/16/02 and it's happening as we speak.
Great. We hire minimum-wage idiots to run our security passenger annoyance system--the same one that Freepers kvetch about today. They'd LOVE passing through an airport controlled by the INS and Border Patrol, NOT.
You talk in generalizations about what I believe and then you get into the specifics of what you claim some allegedly banned Freeper stated. That has nothing to do with my questions or my opinions of what should be done in respect to our borders. You're not making sense.
Sorry, you asked for why I think that Freepers wouldn't like it. There is a lot of overlap between those who scream "ROUND 'EM UP AND DEPORT 'EM ALL NOW!" and the ones who squawk about "JACK-BOOTED THUGS!" not inviting a armed and wanted felon to join them for tea and cookies.
This is not one of your better days, Poohbah.
On your best day, you're amusingly stupid. On your more typical days, you're not amusing.
Hows this? Most Republicans agree with David Duke, and concider him their philosophical leader.
Same nonsense.
I knew who this individual was, and I can tell you all, there are many, many more of them among us. Many of these people among us have nothinig but contempt for this country, and many others have agendas of death.
This open border, immigration madness is completely out of control. These people have no respect for our laws, our sovereighty or anything else that we hold dear.
This crisis is not only a national embarrasment, but a huge national security threat to every one of us. Our children, our wife's, grandparents, everyone.
In my opinion, there is no larger threat to this country than this continued unchecked immigration, and this out right, invasion of millions from all points.
http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=87&sortorder=issue
"IMMIGRATION SYMPOSIUM"
Ralph Raico, Ed.
Journal of Libertarian Studies 13, no. 2 (Summer 1998)
Most libertarians have in recent years favored "open borders," but this indispensable collection of articles throws that view into serious question. Some of the contributors, e.g., Walter Block, defend free immigration, to one extent or another; but the opponents of this position are well represented and raise vital points.
Funny what a little "out of context" editing can do. In keeping with your dishonest lying style.
The view of most libertarians, that our borders should be open, is a view that should be thrown into serious question.
"One major area of difference between most libertarians and most conservatives is immigration. FFF favors open borders."
This is just my opinion, but I think that the Libertarian party, like many very small parties, tends to be co-opted by those with the most extreme views. Therefore they are the ones who put all kinds of stuff in the party platform. Many people who are libertarians (small L) ignore the Libertarian party and dissassociate themselves from it simply because it has been co-opted by the extremists.
In the case of the Libertarians; the purists, the ones most closely adhere to libertarian doctrine.
No wonder you're ashamed.
I'd agree that most people would be able to smell your bullcrap from 100 miles away, but I think you're out of your mind when you say that they'll give a damn about what's going on along the borders.
"We hire minimum-wage idiots to run our passenger annoyance system..."
More of your bullcrap. The starting salaries for the 3 Airport Security Positions are $23,600, $31,100 and $36,400 with time and one half for over-time and full benefits in the continental United States.
Outside the continental United States it's $26,314, $34,600 and approx. $40,000 respectively.
When you're as wrong about all of the rest of your assumptions and generalizations as you were about these, I suppose you have no other recourse than to call your detractors "stupid".
Pot, kettle, black, moron.
OK, great. We hire minimum-wage idiots and pay them well OVER the minimum wage. A great opportunity for a man like you, I'm sure.
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