Oversimplification is a two-edged sword.
Posted on 02/19/2003 10:30:08 PM PST by lonewacko_dot_com
Shortly after two men were arrested in last October’s sniper shootings, ending a crime spree that had terrorized the D.C.-Baltimore area and left 10 people dead, a detail emerged that galvanized a large segment of the American punditry. One of the suspects, 17-year-old John Lee Malvo, was an illegal alien -- a Jamaican who had entered Florida as a stowaway. Moreover, in December 2001 the U.S. Border Patrol had taken him and his mother into custody. A month later, despite their admission that they were here illegally, the Seattle office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service released them on bond instead of deporting them.
Writing in National Review (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-malkin102502.asp), the syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin -- author of the book Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (Regnery Gateway, 2002) and the first to break the story of Malvo’s brush with the INS -- charged that such "catch and release" decisions have "cost scores of American lives," now including the victims of the snipers... [1]
Never mind that, at the time of Malvo’s detention, no one could have predicted that he would engage in homicidal violence...
It’s understandable, of course, that a terrorist act committed by foreign nationals should raise concerns about national security and border control. But that doesn’t mean the problem of terrorism should be conflated with that of illegal immigration.
The 19 hijackers who struck on September 11 all entered the U.S. legally as tourists or business travelers, [2] although three of them had overstayed their visas. At the same time, not one of the millions of illegals who cross the border from Mexico or get smuggled in on cargo vessels from China has been implicated in terrorism...
Indeed, a wholesale crackdown on illegal immigration could, by consuming scarce resources, hinder rather than help the effort to keep potential terrorists out of this country. "By some estimates," says Griswold, "we spend $3 billion a year trying to keep Mexican workers out of the United States. I’d much rather spend that money trying to keep out Middle Eastern terrorists."
Given the realities of the global economy and the U.S. labor market, the flow of migrants into this country will be a fact for the foreseeable future...
Besides freeing up resources to target terrorists, such legalization would severely diminish the document fraud and smuggling that can in fact assist terrorists. An amnesty for illegal immigrants would bring people out of the shadows in which terror cells can lurk and make it safe for people with useful information about possible terrorists to cooperate with law enforcement...
Immigration hard-liners lament that businesses and local politicians oppose tough measures against illegal aliens, but they rarely stop to wonder if there are good reasons for this opposition. "Polls show that the public opinion is squeamish about immigration," says Jacoby, "but people are squeamish in the abstract. When it comes to their own lives and their local economy, they’re not so squeamish." [3]
[1] She omits the rest of Malkin's comment, which in full is: "these countless "catch and release" cases have demoralized rank-and-file INS agents and cost scores of American lives — from cops gunned down by fugitive deportees to victims of illegal border-crossing murderers, and now, quite possibly, to the innocents slaughtered in the Washington, D.C.-area sniping spree."
[2] Some info at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/05/national/main511204.shtml
[3] In other words, businesspeople and politicians know best, and instead of thinking about difficult questions like immigration, people should concentrate instead on just how low vegetable prices are.
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Yes the price of lettuce and a nice BLT are a real big concern of mine.
Oversimplification is a two-edged sword.
But they have been implicated in numerous murders, assaults, rapes, child molestations, vehicle thefts, robberies, burglaries, welfare fraud, DUI's resulting in injuries or death to others, drug smuggling and sales, gang activity, etc.
I used to think open borders were a good idea.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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It troubles me that you or I will be summarily jailed on an un-constitutional weapons charge, while an entire class of criminal is virtually ignored.
Some dangerous assumptions here:
1) The assumption that all illegal immigrants WANT to be legal. Many illegals do not pay taxes, but they can take advantage of the social services those taxes provide -- and they like it just fine that way, especially since local law enforcement turns a blind eye to immigration violations. The "shadows" in which terror cells lurk aren't necessarily full of illegals -- Atta and his merry murderers, for instance, lived among well-heeled Americans in Florida.
2) The assumption that granting amnesty to all illegals now here would stop document fraud is preposterous -- will illegal immigration stop after amnesty? History has shown us that rumors of any amnesty revs up the illegal smuggling machine to a frenzy pitch. A carte-blanche amnesty will send the message that if you can get here, by hook or by crook, you'll eventually be made legal, thus replenishing the stock of illegals, and perpetuating the vicious cycle.
This lady is in la-la land.
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