Posted on 06/21/2004 2:27:25 PM PDT by churchillbuff
Look, I'm a fan of Michael Medved. But it's frustrating how -- in my opinion -- he dances away from illegal immigration issues. Today, for example, he was asking callers who disagree with Iraq policy to suggest alternative ways to fighting terrorism. One guy called in and said, "close the borders" or "police the borders," or something like that. Medved became very agitated and impatient, and essentially said this would be an irrelevant response to the terror threat. Now, no matter what your position on Iraq, how is policing the borders irrelevent to fighting terror? True, only a minority of the 9-11 terrorists were illegals - - but things might have turned out differently if those illegals hadn't been in the country. And we might have fewer threatening "legal" immigrants if we did a better job of policing who gets "legal" status.
Am I off the rails here? Or is it Medved who needs to wake up?
They already have, judging by your post.
I heard it in the background and turned it off because it got so contentious. The caller was evading the topic.
Medved's question was: What would you have done to prevent 9/11?
The caller's response was to talk about the need to police the borders.
Medved said he did not disagree with that need. But how would it have prevented 9/11? The majority of the hijackers were here legally. He repeated his opening question.
The caller repeated his first response. Like he was reading from a script.
Medved got on him then. Medved likes a conversation, even with people who disagree with him. The caller was like a robot. He repeated his statements a third time and I turned it off.
I don’t know if we are talking about the same caller, I heard one caller who seemed to be saying we should take all the troops out of Iraq and use them to close the boarder; the implication being that would solve all the problems. “Closing” our Southern boarder would be difficult if not imposable – add to that the Northern border, and the East and West coast and the idea of “controlling our boarders” that is, stopping all, or even a significant percentage, of people determined to get in is simply imposable. This is not to suggest that we should not be more concerned about boarder security.
Most of the people who I hear Medved going off on seem to view it (controlling the boarders) as 1.) easy, and 2.) a panacea; it is neither.
You're missing the point. None of the terrorists entered the United States illegally. The borders could have been land mined with sci-fi laser turrets every 20 feet, and it wouldn't have made a difference.
Th Mexican government seems to be pursuing a policy of encouraging illigal immigration in order to pass some of their own problems on.
I'm not but its a fools errand to believe it will protect us from terrorists.
I think Medved just frustrates easily when answers are off topic, but he definitely has a "the borders are not an issue-at-all" attitude; that, and "there are too many illegals here now, so let's give up on that as a problem and things will sort themselves out".
You have that completely backwards. Medved wasn't talking about "that" issue, he was discussing another issue entirely, when he took a call from a guy who tried to work "that" issue into it. Medved was right on the money insisting that the caller relate his proposal directly to 911.
I see where some of these pre-citizens will even get the right to vote. Those people in San Francisco must be very open-minded and generous. We should all strive to be the same, especially considering all the cultural benefits that will come our way.
Even if I grant everything you said above as true, it wouldn't change the thing. Medved wasn't dicusssing any of this, he was talking about fighting Islamic terrorist when a caller who's pet issue is our Southern Border, tried to work it inappropriately into the discussion. It didn't work.
Since we all have shown or love for Ronald Reagan the last few days let's listen to what he said about borders.
Ronald Reagan captured this imagery well in his final televised speech to the nation as president from the Oval Office: "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still."
Those words moved me then and they still move me today. Yet Reagan also said, "A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation." Not everyone loves our shining city on a hill. As Michelle Malkin demonstrates in her book Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores, porous borders can threaten American lives and security. Others love their nations as we love our own. They may want to come here for the material abundance few other countries in the world can provide, but that does not mean that they will abandon their loyalty to their homelands or customs that may not be compatible with our own. Immigration policy cannot just be shaped by our hopes, but also by these realities.
Nope, you have it wrong. While some of the hijackers were here illegally, in that their visas had expired, they had all entered the country legally.
Well, then, if they'd been booted from the country, 9-11 might not have gone down the way it did.
Thanks for the correction; I didn't hear the program.
Since our jails in the southwest seem to have an ever increasing number of illegals who've in effect,"terrorized" innumerable innocent Americans through rape, murder, robbery, etc. I think it's safe to say that the relatives of these victims would be very unified in their stance to do whatever is necessary to protect the border.
There's a problem when those with expired visas are still here. Worse, I think one of them had a visa/green card (? someone, help) approved by INS after 9/11.
This is still part of the whole "enforce our immigration laws" issue.
You sound about as confused as Dukakis did when asked if he would oppose the death penalty if the victim was his wife. I guess you remember the result of that intellectual exercise.
That's like saying don't close or lock the doors to your home at night or when you go on vacation because if someone wants in, they'll get in anyhow. It doesn't have to be as easy as it is.
Yes but they were to lock their kids out of the sex games. The alarms didn't matter apparently, since they ignored them.
Just wondering if all the useful idiot open/border folks ever stop for one minute to wonder what would happen to many communities in this country if the checks ever stop coming to illegals who can't speak the language, have no skills and care nothing about this country. Cities such as LA, Phoenix, Houston & Dallas would unravel so fast, martial law would be declared within a day or so of such an event.
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