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April 6, 2009 AN EDITORIALThis editorial appears on April 6, 2009. The schedule published with our first editorial in this series on March 24 indicated that the editorial for today would deal with national security and public safety. Taken together, those two subjects comprise a body of thought too broad to be addressed in one piece. Therefore, we will look today at the national security element of the two, and tomorrow we will speak to public safety. Our Leaders Betray Us – National SecurityA thoughtful immigration policy ought to protect the United States from those who would do us harm – and harm can come to us in a number of forms, some not immediately visible. For example, during the Cold War, Communists were not eligible to enter the United States except under very limited circumstances and their travel and activities were severely defined. Even long before Communism became an issue, our immigration laws barred the entry of anarchists or subversives. It is no longer so. Lack of meaningful enforcement of our immigration laws has made us vulnerable to harm from abroad. Now, reflecting modern realities, the law says that terrorists, or terrorist supporters, or those coming to commit an act of terrorism are not eligible for entry. One would certainly hope not. However, for laws like that to be effective, there must be a means of enforcement, and enforcement calls for identification of, in this example, terrorists. How are we to do that? The visa process is, or was, anyway, a useful tool for that purpose. Briefly, a visa is a license to apply for admission to the U.S. at a port of entry. It does not guarantee that the holder will be allowed in, only that he may present himself to an immigration officer – without a proper visa, the immigration officer won’t even consider letting the alien into the U.S. In days past, someone wanting to come to the United States took his passport (a document issued by his home country that serves to identify him) to the U.S. Consul (a U.S. State Department official in that foreign country) and applied for a visa. In that application, he said who he was, answered questions about things he had done or not done (was a Communist, for example), and what he intended to do in this country. In a perfect world, the consul then verified that his passport was valid and all the other things that mattered, did a brief investigation of the applicant’s background, and issued the visa, or not. As a practical matter, it was not a flawless process, but it was useful when done with diligence by U.S. officials – which has been rare since the 1970s. However, while the visa process is still in place for some purposes, its value has been eroded by a number of factors, largely inattention by the nation and its consular staffs to its purpose. Visas are issued by the U.S. Department of State, and, taken as a whole, our State Department is embarrassed by having to tell a foreigner that he can’t come to the U.S; they don’t like saying “No”. Furthermore, they are also usually charged with getting as many foreigners as possible over here so that they spend money and contribute to our accounts in the world’s balance of trade, and saying “No” to visa seekers is no way to work toward that goal. National security, in the thinking at our Department of State, falls way down the list of considerations, although they won’t say so publicly. So the visa process is leaky, even when it is applied. The visa process can inhibit the free passage of people who want to come spend money, so in the case of many nationalities, it has been waived entirely. Sometimes, that’s not such a dangerous idea, but other times, it is. For decades, because Canada is a neighbor and one of the nations we have been able to call “friend”, we did not demand visas of Canadian citizens, and it worked well. It worked so well that over time, we extended the “visa waiver” program to other countries, beginning with England and eventually most of Europe and our major trading partners around the world, and a few nations that are on the list just because they have political influence. Taking Germany as another example, they are on the visa waiver list, yet within Germany are thousands of radical Muslims who are German citizens, and thus eligible to come here without the screening provided by the visa process. That situation exists throughout Europe. As for Mexico, because of the volume of trade and family traffic there, the U.S. has for decades issued what’s called a “local card”, a document used in lieu of passport and visa. Legally, it allows the holder to cross for a limited period of time and go only to the border states without a visa. In practice, it is a license for fraud, meaningless for all practical, security, purposes. Another issue (and we take NO pleasure in discussing this), is corruption. The agency (INS in the past; Customs and Border Protection now) has recruited so fast, and with so little care, and has a practice of allowing officers to work in their own home towns, that they practically invite corruption. It was predicted by those who have seen such things before, it has come to pass, and it is getting worse. It will be aggravated by pressures brought on individual officers by the drug cartels as they seek new avenues of entry into the U.S. In light of the near-useless visa process, the visa waiver program, and the situation with Mexico, the U.S. practically has an open door to terrorists at our ports of entry. The situation is aggravated by the fact that on average, an Inspector has only about thirty seconds to reach a decision about whether or not he should admit an applicant. The border protection agencies talk a good game, but as a practical matter, they are ineffective in major ways, many of which are not their fault. So far, we have discussed just retail entry, so to speak, through the ports of entry. It is sufficient to endanger national security; recall that all the 9/11 murderers entered this country legally, as students. On the wholesale level, we have illegal entry across the border between the ports of entry. That includes, not just the land border, but by air and by boat, as well. It numbers in the millions a year, and among those millions can be anyone – we don’t know who they are because we never even see them. The Border Patrol has been beefed up significantly, and there have been security enhancements such as fences, sensors, cameras, and lights. Those are good, necessary steps, but by themselves, they are not enough. We must have balanced enforcement, that is, a secure border backed up by stringent interior enforcement. That should include, incidentally, return of the old annual alien address report, which was dropped in the 1970s. We have not had significant interior enforcement in the past, we do not have it now, and as long as our leaders have their way, we will not have it in the future. For reasons clear to anyone interested in national security, interior enforcement is a must. If anyone had been paying attention to that need, those “students” who brought us 9/11 would have been located when they dropped out of school and questioned about what they were up to. The fact they were no longer in school could have resulted in their removal from the country even if it had not been possible to prove that they were up to murder. Even now, there are Islamic terrorist training camps in this country, staffed by aliens (who may have come here legally, but for illicit purposes), but there is no action being taken against them by immigration authorities. Those people should be found, identified, detained, and deported, but they are not. Instead, they are free to continue giving their lessons to our domestic idiots, would-be terrorists who will happily blow other Americans up. To be sure, the FBI may well have them under surveillance, even penetrated by informants, but they must gather evidence that can be used in court, perhaps even wait for some overt act, a dangerous thing. Instead, we should put our immigration laws to the use for which they were intended. Such interior enforcement was done well into the 1970s, but it was curtailed due to bureaucratic and political pressures; 3,000 people paid the predictable price on 9/11. Without a strong interior enforcement posture, the border can never be secured. As long as aliens think they can roam the U.S. with impunity, doing what they will (be it work, or killing) they will get past any number of patrols and technology. No illegal alien should feel secure in his activities once he is here; he is breaking the law, he represents a threat, and he should be looking over his shoulder every second. In fact, he has nothing to fear, though, for interior enforcement has to all intents and purposes, been stifled in recent years, and gutted in recent months. As in the case of protecting our jobs, it seems clear that too many of our leaders just do not give a damn. Obama, Reed, Pelosi, Napolitano, and their Amen Chorus in Congress seek to stifle any meaningful efforts at controlling the presence of illegal aliens in this country. Pelosi even goes so far as to make the despicable statement that attempts to do so are un-American. We are being betrayed by our leaders. We leave them in place at our peril, for they obviously do not see protecting us as part of their job descriptions. That must be changed, and soon. Kent Lundgren Chairman National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers
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