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Immigration. Let's begin with this nation's immigration policies. New polls
all demonstrate that Americans want significant changes in immigration
policies. Since Terror Tuesday the notion of allowing millions of foreigners
to enter the United States without any means of being able to track their
movements seems like the worst folly imaginable. Other nations don't permit
this, but we still do.
When asked whether the government was doing enough to control the borders and
screen those entering the nation, 76% said no. This figure included
self-identified conservatives, liberals and moderates. Fully 85% of likely
voters thought that lax enforcement at the borders and of immigration laws
made it easier for the terrorists to enter the country. The survey to which I
refer was conducted by the famed Zogby organization on behalf of the Center
for Immigration Studies. Well, better late than never.
"K mart knows every product purchased every day by the minute and that's
billions of products," said Steven Camarota, research director of the Center,
"but we can't track millions of people who come into this country." The US
issued an estimated 31,000,000 visas in 1999, 76% of them to tourists.
Visitors from twenty-nine countries do not even need a visa to enter the US.
Sixteen of the nineteen terrorists who seized the planes that attacked the
Twin Towers and the Pentagon were here on either student or tourist visas.
There are an estimated 600,000 foreign "students" here and I seriously doubt
if the INS could find any of them.
It gets worse. Visitors entering the US from Mexico and Canada are not even
recorded. Those who enter through US airports must fill out a form known as
the I-94 that is stapled to their passport. When they leave, the forms are
collected by airline workers who then transmit them to the Immigration and
Naturalization Service. The reality is, however, the forms are either not
collected or simply get lost.
According to Customs data, on a typical day, more than one million passengers
in 350,000 private vehicles, along with 30,000 commercial trucks, drive past
more than 150 established US border sites with Canada and Mexico. Want to
know how easy it is to get a driver's license, Social Security, welfare and
Medicaid cards? In California, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, and
Texas, it's as easy as asking for them. The 9th Circuit Court and the United
States Supreme Court has ruled that no one can be questioned about his
immigration status to receive state services!
We have no national borders. What we have are at least three million illegal
Mexican or Hispanic aliens living among us. What we have are an unknown
number of illegal Arab aliens living among us. The total of illegal aliens
from other nations in America is variously estimated by experts to be between
six to nine million people! I have a solution. Send them home. Round them up
and send them home. This nation has laws by which anyone who qualifies, can
legally establish residence, secure employment, and acquire naturalization to
become a citizen. Those who obey the laws can stay and all the others can go
home.
Racial Profiling. Ask any law enforcement officer and they will tell you they
are not engaged in racial profiling. They are looking for criminals. Period.
It is an unfortunate, but indisputable aspect of life in America that the
Black community represents a disproportional amount of crime. Now we are
looking hard for potential Arab terrorists. They look like Arabs.
Clarence Page, a nationally syndicated columnist, wrote recently that "two
major polls find that African-Americans are more likely than other racial
groups to favor profiling and extra-thorough airport checks for Arabs and
Arab-Americans." Well, surprise, surprise. Blacks favor profiling for other
ethnic or national groups, but not for themselves. They are not alone. Whites
and Hispanics favor it too.
What is profiling anyway? It's just a name given to the law enforcement
practice of using available information and common sense to try to identify
who is or may be engaged in criminal activity. We never used to call it that
until the liberals made a big stink of it. We used to call it good police
work!
Gun Control. Following Terror Tuesday Americans voted with their feet on the
subject of gun control by going to the nearest gun store and stocking up on
arms and ammunition.
Reportedly, sales in Connecticut, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland
and Virginia increased fifty percent in the days following September 11th. Of
two hundred gun retailers nationwide, polled by the National Sport Shooting
Association, 35% reported sales increases and 15% reported sales that zoomed
25% over normal.
It is time to repeal the laws against carrying concealed weapons in those
States that prefer a defenseless citizenry. How many deadly incidents could
have been prevented if ordinary, sensible, law-abiding citizens could have
responded to the threat of deadly force with some of their own?
The United Nations. Finally, if it is not plain to the most blind of
Americans, within a month of the September 11th attack the United Nations
elected Syria, a nation that sponsors terrorism, to a seat on its Security
Council. In so many ways, with its endless international treaties aimed at
destroying our Constitution, our sovereignty, and our economy, the United
Nations has proven itself the enemy of this nation and all nations, except
for those devoted to its Socialist agenda of being the single, global
government.
This is one liberal notion that has long since revealed itself to be an
impotent foe of dictatorships and other authoritarian governments. It was and
is a Soviet Communist invention, installed after World War II to extend its
hegemony throughout the world. Just as the Soviets imploded in the 1990's, it
is time to send this nest of vipers to the ash heap of history. It's time to
deep-six Secretary of State Powell's idea of turning supervision of any new
governments installed in Afghanistan or elsewhere as the result of the
military campaigns waged by the United States of America.
These and other liberal ideas have put this nation and its people at great
risk from very real enemies while wasting enormous resources on imaginary
ones such as global warming and other environmental fantasies. America has
now awakened to a new age of realism and it is time to take off the liberal
straightjacket and give this nation a chance to defend itself.
Alan Caruba is founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for
information about scare campaigns to influence public opinion and policy. The Center maintains an Internet site at www.anxietycenter.com.
Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2001
Published by permission.
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