Will U.S. ever put up borders?
Friday, March 8, 2002
By: Dan Stein

New York Post

In his latest budget proposal, President Bush is asking for $11 billion to guard America's borders against foreign terrorists. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, few would dispute the need for enhanced protection of our borders.

The failure to adequately protect our borders, however, is not the cause of our vulnerability to international terrorism. Our vulnerability stems from a decades-long, systematic undermining of the concept of borders themselves. Moreover, it is a philosophy that both the president and congressional leaders cling to even in the post-Sept. 11 world.

Just since the beginning of the year there have been two shocking revelations about what the government cannot do with regard to protecting the nation against foreign terrorists who make their way into the United States.

In January, it was revealed that although some of the Sept. 11 terrorists were student visa abusers, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) still has no idea where the more than half a million student visa holders really are, or what they're up to.

In February, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a scathing report, stating that immigration benefit fraud (i.e., the granting of residency visas for a variety of reasons) is "rampant" and "out of control." The GAO accused the INS of routinely granting immigration benefits to serious and violent criminals.

Even after the murder of some 3,000 Americans, the political leadership will not act as though borders are important or impose meaningful consequences on those who ignore immigration rules;

An INS task force, charged with improving the management of U.S. entry and exit records, met for the first time on Feb. 20. The 17-member panel is dominated by business and travel industry representatives, whose stated priority is commerce first, national security a distant second.

Congressional leaders of both parties continue to push legislative proposals that favor immigration benefits over immigration enforcement. Key legislators and President Bush are still seeking to revive a legal loophole that allows illegal aliens who have found a pretext for remaining in this country to be able to do so, without first returning to their homelands for a thorough background check.

Leaving aside the question of whether it is ever wise to reward people who have broken the law, the GAO's blunt assessment of the INS's investigatory capabilities makes it clear that those who back this proposal do not place national security high on the priority list for U.S. immigration policy.

Many of the same political leaders are still pressing for amnesty for many or all of the estimated 9 million to 11 million illegal aliens residing in the United States. Imagine the INS, which can't locate a half a million students to whom it has issued visas, trying to sort out the backgrounds and associations of millions of people about whom the only thing we know for certain is that they broke immigration laws.

Before we can begin to make our land, sea and air borders secure, the political leadership of this country must demonstrate that it believes borders are meaningful and serve and important function. They must demonstrate, through deeds, that protecting homeland security is the highest priority to which other considerations must yield.

There is no such thing as an open border policy except for terrorists. There can be no large-scale programs to legalize illegal aliens that will not include terrorists and assorted other bad guys. Combating the threat to homeland security from international terrorism is as much a philosophical issue as it is a tactical one.