New Report from FAIR: Senate Immigration Bill Falls Far Short on Enforcement
Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks Are a Reminder of Why Real Immigration Enforcement is Essential
(September 11, 2013 — Washington, D.C.) — As the nation marks the twelfth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, a new report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) warns that the mass illegal alien amnesty and weak enforcement provisions of S.744, the Senate Gang of Eight immigration bill, would make the United States more vulnerable to future terrorist attacks. S. 744, also known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, was approved by the Senate in June.
The report, Real Immigration Enforcement: S.744 Doesn’t Do the Job, details how S.744’s border and immigration enforcement provisions come up far short of what is needed to protect the security of the United States and the American people, and offers specific recommendations to achieve meaningful enforcement of our immigration laws.
“Twelve years after the tragedies of 9/11, the United States remains dangerously vulnerable to another attack by international terrorists,” observed Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “Unfortunately, the Senate bill treats plans for more effective border and immigration enforcement as actual achievements toward those ends. Even in the unlikely event that all of the provisions called for in the bill were actually carried out, it would still be more than a decade before even these modest improvements were in place.”
Real Immigration Enforcement finds disturbing similarities in S.744 to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), which granted amnesty to some 3 million illegal aliens, but failed to secure our borders or prevent millions of people from overstaying their visas. “These universally acknowledged flaws of IRCA made it easy for Middle Eastern terrorists to gain entry to the United States and to remain here even after their visas expired. Alarmingly, S.744 repeats the same tragic mistakes. The legislation lacks specific metrics for measuring the effectiveness of border enforcement efforts. Even more significantly, it would weaken existing legislative standards for preventing visa overstays,” Stein charged.
“If the lessons of 2001 are not enough of a reminder of the dangers we face, the international crises in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East should serve as a clear warning that we cannot delay implementation of real border and immigration enforcement,” Stein concluded.
The complete report, Real Immigration Enforcement: S.744 Doesn’t Do the Job, is available here.