The state of the borders 2003 (Michelle Malkin)

Townhall.com ^ | January 24th, 2003 | Michelle Malkin

[Sabertooth]

Michelle Malkin (archive)

January 24, 2003

The state of the borders 2003

Prediction: On one of the most pressing homeland security issues facing the nation, President Bush will have nothing -- nada -- to say during his State of the Union address.

I am talking, of course, about the state of our borders.

The Bush White House remains shamefully silent about the brutal murder of U.S. Park Ranger Kris Eggle. This 28-year-old American was gunned down last summer by an AK-47-toting illegal alien drug smuggler who waltzed across the southern border into Arizona's Organ Pipe National Monument.

According to the Park Service, as many as 1,000 illegal aliens a day trample across the park -- trashing our fences, ruining the environment, breaking our laws and endangering lives. It's a smugglers' paradise and a national security nightmare. "We have caught people from China, Pakistan and Yemen coming through," Bo Stone, an Organ Pipe ranger and close friend of Eggle's, told the Los Angeles Times this week.

"If 1,000 illegal immigrants can walk through the desert here, so can 1,000 terrorists."

Kris's father, Bob, a Vietnam veteran, told me last fall on a trip to Washington, D.C.: "I gave an eye for one war. Now, I've given my son for another. What is our president going to do about the war on our borders?"

Despite recent press coverage from the L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, National Geographic magazine and Outside magazine, the Eggle family still has received no phone call, no acknowledgement, from the Bush White House in response to their call for border reform and serious enforcement of our laws.

Bob Eggle noted at a press conference in October: "The Mexico-American border is in chaos and is virtually a non-border. I have been involved there as a volunteer for the National Park Service and attempted to repair the border fence, only to have it knocked down again a couple of hours later. That non-border contributed to Kris's death."

The story is the same on the northern border, where just last week two reporters for the Toronto Star illegally crossed a dozen easy entry points between the land boundaries that separate Quebec from Vermont and New York state. Mangled fences and battered stop signs spraypainted with "U.S.A." are all that stand in the way.

"After September 11th, we all need to be concerned about border security and how easy it is to get in this country," Bob Eggle says. "Kris's death needs to bring about reform. We have to make his sacrifice meaningful."

Peter Gadiel, a lifelong Republican from Connecticut, is on a similar crusade to get his president to address illegal immigration as a national security issue. He, too, lost a son because of the government's lax border and entrance enforcement policies. James Gadiel, 23, died in the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. He was an assistant trader at Cantor Fitzgerald.

"When you have 8 to 11 million illegal immigrants living here in the U.S, it's hard to notice 18 or 20 terrorists," Peter Gadiel argues. It is that ocean of illegals that "allowed the hijackers to plan, rehearse, finance and carry out their mass murders over a long period of time, almost completely free of fear that they would be discovered."

Some 300,000 illegal alien fugitives remain on the loose despite deportation orders. There is still no systematic tracking of criminal alien felons across the country. Sanctuary for illegal aliens remains the policy in almost every major metropolis. Banks and local governments continue to accept sham Mexican ID cards to "regularize" the existence of alien lawbreakers. And "catch and release" remains standard operating procedure for untold thousands of illegal aliens who pass through the fingers of federal immigration authorities every day.

Nevertheless, the Republican Party elites in Washington continue to turn a blind eye. As grass-roots conservative stalwart Phyllis Schlafly has noted, the Republican National Committee's mail-order surveys on important national issues omit immigration and border security. Meanwhile, the White House refuses to meet with the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, led by Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

"The simple truth is that we've lost control of our own borders," Ronald Reagan warned nearly two decades ago, "and no nation can do that and survive." We ignore America's lost sovereignty at our peril.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Michelle Malkin | Read her biography

[WRhine]

I can't even stand to hear the sound of Bush's voice. The sense of revulsion I experience is as bad as it ever was when I heard Clinton's voice, maybe worse.

I know the feeling. It's like Clinton never left.

[hot august night]

Excellent article. Thanks for the link.

[Paulie]

I notice there's a serious shortage, inside the beltway and in state capitols, of people who truly love their country.

[4Freedom]

"Any man that worries about feeding a stranger than his own hungry child is a worthless, corrupt POS."

IMO, it's worse than that. Bush isn't doing anything he's doing to feed anybody's children. He's doing it for a share of the take on all of that PEMEX oil.

[WRhine]

Excellent article. Thanks for the link.

I must have missed this article on the FR side column yesterday but after checking 2 threads were put up on Paul Craig Robert's article.

U.S. Leaving First World?

U.S. Leaving First World?

[4Freedom]

"I know the feeling. It's like Clinton never left."

No, they just took him out and had him spaded.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Time for some high-speed deportation procedures...

[4Freedom]

It's plenty easy. The TSA advertised for 72,000 passenger screeners and they received 1.5 million applicants.

If they wanted to, they could hire 72,000 of the applicants they turned away to guard our borders.

The TSA offered $24,000 to $39,000 a year to these screeners. Their budget next year is $2.1 billion dollars.

If we get rid of all of our illegal aliens, we'll save $27 billion to $72 billion each year depending on who you ask.

What's not affordable?

[Dust in the Wind]

Please, everybody needs to raise H--yH--l with their insurance companies also. My personal health and hosp policy has gone up over 100% in the past 5 years.

Why? Certainly not because of my overuse. I am basicaly a healthy person and have paid for my own doctor visits the past few times they were needed and self medicate because of doctors that told me what I already knew most of the time.

I believe that these rate increases are caused by hospitals and doctors passing off the costs of unpaying users. They try to make up what the government won't pay off the backs of those that have tried to take care of their own.

I'm about ready to join those ranks (unpaying) rather than continue to take an ever increasing shaft size from those that have no nads to say NO MORE This is getting very frustrating to say the least.

[Marine Inspector]

There's absolutely nothing up there. No border patrol. Nothing.

I don't know where you got that idea or info, but it is wrong.

There are over a thousand Border Patrol Agents working the Canadian border.

[4Freedom]

Is that 1,000 per shift or do they try to provide 24 hour coverage on a 4,000-mile-long border with 1,000 agents?

[WRhine]

I would have to agree with you. He's a TOTAL sellout. That crap with posing in front of the fake "MADE in USA" signs yesterday pushed me past my limit.

That silly Photo Op really blew up in Bush's face. Especially when it was noted that the real boxes stacked up in front of his podium were products from China that his operatives tried to hide by slapping white labels over the "Made In China" stamp. Who is he trying to kid?

Bush is obviously feeling the heat from his disastrous trade policies that have resulted in the mass exportation of umpteen thousands of American manufacturing jobs to Red China and other 3rd world nations. This little escapade shows just how cynical this president is about "American" Interests.

If Bush was trying to inspire confidence all he accomplished was the exact opposite. No wonder the stock market keeps on declining.

[HiJinx]

You want to talk irony?

An acquaintance of mine (shooting club) is being transferred from the US/Mexico border to the US/Canada border. He was born and raised down here, is from a Mexican family, and doesn't like the cold weather.

Come to think of it, that's just what the military used to do to us. I guess I shouldn't be surprised!

[hot august night]

I missed the postings yesterday, too. Thanks for these two links.

[hot august night]

I have heard about that (Bush's greed in Mexican oil is the reason for his selling out the U.S.)only in passing on these threads...I've yet to see a full discussion on it. Will keep my eyes open.

[WRhine]

heh heh heh.

[cyborg]

That was a figure of speech on my part. However, listening to the talk radio shows, and from basic geography, Canadian border has a lot of holes in it. Are they as rigorous there as BP is down south? Last time I went to Canada, they just looked at my birth certificate and that was it.

[1lawlady]

I know what you mean about Republican surveys and fund raising calls. Two nights ago a woman called from the California Republican Party to urge me to resubscribe to "The Party" so that we could raise enough funds to defeat Barbara Boxer and get someone in the Senate that would support GWB's programs. When she said that I responded that I had notified both the State and National Party that not one red cent would be forthcoming from me, until they supported and defended me by enforcing the immigration laws. I told her that border security and the illegal invasion were the key and most prominent issues before the country today, and that "The Party" ignored them at their own peril, but most unfortunately at a huge detriment to U.S. citizens. When she me told that good people from either party saw illegal immigration in different ways than I did, I almost choked getting out, "What part of illegal and the rule of law don't you understand?" She then reponded that President Bush was against illegal immigration, to which I shreiked "No he is not! He has been trying to sneak amnesty past us ever since he was elected, and was only thwarted in that mad march to amnesty by Sept. 11th and a grassroots explosion of people like me. He's an open borders kinda guy." I then reiterated my demand for protection, and urged her to stop "The Party" from pandering for the illegal vote, to which she said it was nice talking to me (I'll bet) and quickly hung up.

My rantings probably did no one, but me, any good. But it did feel good to vent my spleen; I enjoyed every minute of it.

[janetgreen]

YES!! If more of us who feel strongly about this would raise a strong voice to anyone who will listen, we will eventually be heard. I dearly hope that Bush's red carpet treatment to illegal aliens isn't inviting national terrorism, but I believe that it is.

[Fred Mertz]

Nevertheless, the Republican Party elites in Washington continue to turn a blind eye.

I don't live near a border, but I believe the 'blind eye' is a policy statement.