Invasion: Will The New Homeland Security Department Address The Crisis In U.S. Immigration Policy?

The fanfare attending Monday’s signing by President Bush of the legislation establishing the Department of Homeland Security inspired hope that the United States’ pervasive vulnerability to attack would shortly begin to be redressed. This is more than desirable; it is absolutely mandatory in light of the threat we currently face.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Department — at least initially — is not going to grapple with one of the most serious sources of our vulnerability: the dismal failure of American immigration policies. This point has been lucidly made by Michelle Malkin in her new book Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to our Shores. As Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. noted in a column distributed last week by FoxNews.com, Ms. Malkin has rendered an invaluable service by identifying a number of areas in which corrective action is urgently needed if the homeland is to be made appreciably more secure.

It can only be hoped that Secretary-designate Tom Ridge and his new organization will ensure that the job of fixing these and other risky immigration-related deficiencies will be given priority attention — along with that of addressing the vulnerabilities of our population centers, ports, transportation and energy infrastructures, etc. that can be exploited by those who should not be in this country.

SOFT UNDERBELLY OF HOMELAND SECURITY

By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

FoxNews.com, 21 November 2002

The recent passage of legislation creating the new Department of Homeland Security represents another personal political triumph for President Bush.

More importantly, of course, this department should if properly organized, led and utilized do much to mitigate our nation’s considerable vulnerability to terrorist attack.

Unfortunately, the contribution such a long overdue initiative will be actually able to make to reducing this vulnerability will be far less than is required unless the executive branch and the Congress also address what might be called the "soft underbelly of homeland insecurity": our grievously problematic immigration situation and the dysfunctional policies and practices that contribute to it.

The associated dangers are documented in a new book by the brilliant and courageous syndicated columnist, Michelle Malkin. Malkin’s Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to our Shores and her other writings are informed by her perspective as a daughter of legal immigrants a perspective that both values the tremendous freedoms and opportunities afforded by this country, and clearly sees the risks associated with extending them to people who are gaining entry to this country illegally, improperly and/or ill advisedly.

Malkin is seized with several particularly pressing defects in the conduct of U.S. immigration policy and warns that, all other things being equal, the Homeland Security Department is unlikely to address them.

They include the following:

— the systematic failure to track foreign students who they are, what they are studying and when they will leave the country;

— a similar failure with respect to tourists;

— the continuing admission of what she estimates are hundreds of thousands of people from countries that are known to tolerate the presence of terrorist organizations, including some formally identified by the U.S. government as terrorist sponsoring nations;

— the largely ignored requirement to enforce sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants;

— the insane practice of holding lotteries to allocate green cards to those living illegally in the United States (the way the terrorist who shot up Los Angeles International Airport on the Fourth of July got his immigration documents);

— the incompetent monitoring of passengers who have landed in the United States without visas or consular screening on the grounds that their itinerary has them simply transiting enroute to other destinations. This practice, according to Malkin, has enabled thousands of Middle Eastern men to simply walk out of transient lounges and disappear into our society;

— the lack of uniformity from one law enforcement jurisdiction to another with respect to illegal aliens, giving rise in the more laissez faire of these locales (such as New York City, Oregon and Montgomery County, Md.,) to what amount to terrorist sanctuaries;

— an Immigration and Naturalization Service whose standard operating procedure for illegal aliens is a "catch and release" approach. As Malkin points out, an illegal Jamaican immigrant by the name of Una James, who is the mother of accused sniper John Malvo and a likely material witness in connection with his case, is on the lamb today because of this INS practice.

These and other problems identified in Malkin’s Invasion argue for urgent and truly comprehensive immigration reform. If, as seems likely, the new Homeland Security Department is unable or unwilling to take on this task even though it will be impossible to succeed in its mission without doing so the Congress must fill the vacuum. Given the myriad jurisdictions and "turfs" that will be involved, it may be necessary to create a special or select committee to conduct the urgently needed oversight hearings and to draft the requisite reform legislation.

Michelle Malkin persuasively argues that this is no time for business as usual if we are serious about the business of securing our homeland.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department. He is currently president of the Center for Security Policy.