Notes on immigration reform — it’s good for terrorists
Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, declared: “This week we will vote on cloture and final passage of a comprehensive bill that will strengthen border security, bring the 12 million undocumented Americans out of the shadows, and keep our economy strong.” Talk about “a fast track to citizenship”! Never mind probationary visas, Z-visas and Green Cards, in the eyes of the Democrat steering “comprehensive immigration reform” through Congress these guys are already “undocumented Americans.”…
On Fox News the other night, I was told by NPR’s Juan Williams, “You’re anti-immigrant!” Er, actually, I am an immigrant – one of the members of the very very teensy-weensy barely statistically detectable category of “legal immigrant.” But perhaps that doesn’t count any more…I wouldn’t presume to speak for the millions of Americans who oppose this bill, but it’s because I’m an immigrant myself that I object to the most patent absurdity peddled by the pro-amnesty crowd. The bill is fundamentally a fraud. Its “comprehensive solution” to illegal immigration is simply to flip all the illegals overnight into the legal category. Voila! Problem solved! There can be no more illegal immigrants because the Senate has simply abolished the category…
Remember the 1986 amnesty? Mahmoud abu Halima applied for it and went on to bomb the World Trade Center seven years later. His colleague, Mohammad Salameh, was rejected but carried on living here anyway. John Lee Malvo was detained and released by U.S. immigration in breach of its own procedures and re-emerged as the Washington sniper. The young Muslim men who availed themselves of the U.S. government’s “visa express” system for Saudi Arabia filled in joke applications – “Address in the United States: HOTEL, AMERICA” – that octogenarian snowbirds from Toronto who’ve been wintering at their Florida condos since 1953 wouldn’t try to get away with. The late Mohammed Atta received his flight-school student visa on March 11, 2002, six months to the day after famously flying his first and last commercial airliner.All the above passed through the legal immigration system. Whether they were detained, rejected, approved or posthumously approved, in the end it made no difference. Because U.S. immigration had no real idea who these men were. But, don’t worry, they’ll be able to handle another “12 million undocumented Americans” tossed in for express processing.
That final point is what we’ve been saying all along. On the other hand, the bill is full of good feelings, and maybe that’s what really counts. Mark Steyn is so mean.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform is none of these things. It is not comprehensive, its reference to immigration only refers to squatter’s rights for primarily Mexican economic invaders (augmented by a “we give up – it is too hard” approach by the Congress), and does nothing to reform the situation, unless you define “reform” as meaning “making things worse.”
In this case, it is a classic “Emperor has no clothes” situation for both the president and the congress. For Ted Kennedy, this should be his “third strike” on so called immigration reform, and he should be led out to pasture (and should take his idiot son, Patrick Kennedy, D-RI, with him).
One may fault Michael Savage for many things, but his “borders, country, language” slogan is dead on accurate, and should be the guiding force behind any further legislation.