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To keep America safe, immigration laws must be enforced
Sunday, January 20, 2002
If there were such a thing as accountability in government, Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for both of Bill Clinton's terms, would be frog-marched to the site of the World Trade Center and stoned with the rubble.
It took negligence by a lot of federal agencies to permit the terrorist attacks on 9/11 to be so successful. But INS was in a class by itself.
INS is the agency responsible for monitoring legal immigrants and visitors to the United States, and the agency chiefly responsible for keeping illegals out. A few numbers indicate how poorly INS has been doing its job.
Six million and 8 million. Six million is the INS estimate of how many illegal immigrants there are in the United States. Eight million is the Census Bureau's estimate. Somewhere between the equivalent of the population of Chicago and the equivalent of the population of New York City is here illegally.
Five million. This is the number of foreigners who are here lawfully on visas and green cards.
Two million. This is the estimate of how many visa holders stayed after their visas expired. Included among these were three of the 9/11 hijackers. INS is supposed to make sure foreigners go home when their visas expire, but it has never attempted to do so.
Three hundred and fourteen thousand. This is the number of illegals against whom judges have issued deportation orders, but INS doesn't know where they are.
More illegals would be caught if the driver's licenses of visa holders would expire when the visa does. But in 1994, the Clinton administration forbade the INS from providing the relevant information to state authorities, for fear of offending civil rights groups.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has asked INS for a list of the names of foreigners with expired visas. Some 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 had ties to Florida, so Florida's interest is understandable. But the agency is stalling.
"INS officials said local officers do not have authority to detain someone just because they are in the country illegally," said an Associated Press dispatch Dec. 7.
Huh?
Immigration is not a civil right. The Constitution grants Congress complete authority over immigration. The Supreme Court has said Congress has the right to make rules for immigrants which would "be unacceptable if applied to citizens."
"Anyone from abroad who is permitted to travel or live among us does so as a guest, remaining here at our pleasure, until such time as we permit him to become a member of our people," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last October.
And no one has the right to break the law. Illegal immigrants are here illegally. Police ought not to be obstructed from detaining them.
Every week, thousands of people with criminal backgrounds, diseases, illegal drugs and violent political beliefs enter the United States essentially unchecked. Every week, thousands of shipping containers enter the United States essentially unchecked. This is insane. We must get control of our borders.
The first step is to suspend granting of visas to most Muslims until we have a better system in place for checking the backgrounds of visa applicants. When in doubt, keep them out.
The second step is to examine the bona fides of noncitizen Muslims who are already here. There was a great hue and cry when the attorney general announced plans to ask recent Muslim immigrants to come in voluntarily for interviews. Failure to cooperate should be grounds for deportation. When in doubt, throw them out.
Third, we must devote enough resources to our border control agencies to properly inspect all people and goods entering this country.
If we were to do the things necessary to protect Americans from terrorists -- which are much less difficult and expensive than the naysayers make them out to be -- we would also stop losing the war on drugs, and we would slam a brake on illegal immigration. This may in part be why so many powerful people oppose sensible reform.
Jack Kelly is national affairs writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com).