Security Starts at Our Borders — November 2001

The Administration has set up a Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force to study all policies and procedures relating to noncitizens. Instead of more study, how about announcing that all illegals have 30 days to leave the country or they will be prosecuted when located?

In announcing this Task Force on Halloween, Attorney General John Ashcroft stated that its mission will be to ensure federal coordination to bar from the United States all aliens who are members or supporters of terrorist organizations, who are suspected of engaging in terrorist activity, or who provide material support to terrorist activity.

If you wonder why such dangerous characters were not denied visas prior to October 31, look to the 1990 Immigration Act, sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Under that law, merely advocating terrorism, or even belonging to a group that engages in terrorism, could not be used as grounds for denying a U.S. visa. The regulations said: “Statements approving a specific terrorist act, and asserting that such acts should be repeated, do not render an applicant ineligible.”

The United States has been granting 250,000 visas a year to Middle Easterners, including aliens from Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan. Applicants from Saudi Arabia can get “Multiple Use” two-year visas and, beginning June 25, can take advantage of an express visa service that waives the requirement of personal appearance. (Washington Times, 11-1-01) Fifteen of the 19 hijackers got their visas in Saudi Arabia. How about cutting the number of visas from 250,000 to 2,500 while the Task Force is studying and until it comes up with the technology to screen out and track the dangerous aliens?

Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) inserted in the USA PATRIOT (Anti-Terrorism) Act, signed October 26, 2001 (Public Law 107-56), a provision ordering the Attorney General to report to Congress on the feasibility of enhancing an Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System in order to better identify aliens who may be wanted in a criminal investigation. It should be a matter of conscience and duty for Ashcroft to rapidly implement this long-awaited entry-exit system to keep track of aliens entering and leaving the United States.

We must increase our Border Patrol to any extent necessary to keep guards on duty 24 hours a day at all crossing points, and provide military backup as needed. This is the government’s duty. The U.S. Constitution, Article IV, section 4, states: “The United States … shall protect each of [the States] against invasion.”

We should immediately close our borders to all illegal aliens and deport those who are inside the United States, including the millions who are illegally in this country on expired visas. It is a default of duty that our government hasn’t made this a regular practice.

The Bush Administration’s announcement that it will find and deport foreigners who are illegally in the United States because their visa terms have expired is a move in the right direction. (New York Times, 10-30-01) This raises the question, however, why did it take seven weeks to initiate such an obvious safety measure?

The Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 requires all aliens crossing the Mexican border to present biometric, machine-readable border crossing cards. This law went into effect on October 1, 2001, but the border officials don’t have the machines to read the cards and don’t know when they will get them. They should be bought and the law enforced without further delay.

We must completely overhaul the visa procedures to require full disclosure about the applicant’s identity, employment, destination, health, travel plans, and U.S. guarantors. We should require aliens to carry an ID card with photo and fingerprint, and report their destination, residence and travels. The government should enter the information on a database in order to track their travels in this country and flag the date their visa expires. Those who overstay should be ineligible for reentry in the future.

If the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. legally, who issued the visas and what information was given, or not given, on their applications? Sadly, we have seen no indication that the State Department has reformed its casual visa program. No visas of any kind should be issued to countries that fail to repudiate terrorists.

About 85%,000 foreigners are admitted on student visas each year. Over the past 10 years, more than 16,000 students have come from the countries listed by the State Department as terrorist-sponsoring states. At least one of the 9/11 hijackers was here on a student visa but never reported to class.

In 1996 Congress ordered our Immigration Service to create a database to track foreign students. It never became fully operational because of opposition from the universities that are making so much money on foreign students’ tuition. We should put a moratorium on the granting of all student and worker visas until a system is in place to track the aliens in this country and assure that they report to the educational institution or corporation claimed as the reason for entry.

Attorney General Ashcroft says he has detained 1,000 aliens, but that’s not very reassuring. More terrorists could be landing at U.S. airports every day on planes from the Middle East, and even attending flight schools. Ashcroft did not detain the 14 Syrian men who entered the United States at the DFW airport on student visas on October 14 and 15, and headed for a flight training school in Fort Worth. (WorldNetDaily, 10-16-01)

We should refuse to let any Saudi Arabian airplane land in our country unless it provides our immigration and customs officials in advance with the names and passport numbers of its passengers. Other foreign airlines provide these lists as a matter of course, but the United States continues to let Saudi Arabia get by with this impudence.

Legal Numbers Are the Problem 
The U.S. Census Bureau has repeatedly increased its estimate of the swelling population of illegal aliens in the United States, and in October announced a new figure of 8 million. Most observers think the number is closer to 11 or 12 million, but even the Census Bureau’s figure means that the net increase during the 1990s was nearly a half-million a year, i.e., a half million aliens per year violating our laws with the government doing nothing about it.

It’s time for the American people to wake up to the fact that the problem of illegal aliens and residents who don’t share our worldview comes not merely from people sneaking across our borders or overstaying their tourist, student or worker visas. America is also endangered by the incredible increase in the numbers of legal immigrants, especially from Third World countries, that resulted from the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965.

Legal immigration averaged 178,000 per year from 1925 to 1965. After the 1965 law, immigration increased to 507,000 per year from 1966 to 1989, and increased further to more than 800,000 per year in the 1990s. It’s now nearly a million a year, five times the traditional numbers, mostly people from non-Western countries who don’t share our respect for the Rule of Law and don’t learn how to speak English. We now have 31 million U.S. residents who were foreign born.

Certain pressure groups, for which Senator Ted Kennedy is the congressional spokesman, have a clear goal to change the make-up of the American nation, culture and language. The 1990 Immigration Act, which he also sponsored and which President Bush the Elder signed, increased the level of immigration subject to numerical limits from 270,000 for 1988-1991 to 700,000 for 1992-1994, with most of the additional immigrants coming from Third World countries. (INS Triennial Comprehensive Report on Immigration, May 1999)

This 1990 law discriminates against Western Europe and in favor of the Third World by admitting 50,000 Diversity Immigrants for permanent residence through a lottery system open primarily to non-Western countries, including all seven countries listed by our State Department as “state sponsors of international terrorism” (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan). Applicants from England are not eligible. This year’s lottery winners were 95% from non-Western countries.

Our Immigration Service is so swamped that it is unable to do the processing necessary to screen out those with criminal records, communicable diseases, and relationships with terrorist groups. It can’t even find 250,000 illegals it has already identified for deportation.

We urgently need to call a time-out on immigration for at least a year and until we identify the terrorists and get rid of them. We should assess the blame for whoever let them in. We certainly should repeal Kennedy’s diversity nonsense.

We hope the Bush Administration sticks to its announcement that it will delay indefinitely the admission of refugees from terrorist countries. (New York Times, 10-29-01) We should not admit any refugees from the current conflict because there is no rational way to know the good guys from the criminals.

We should review naturalizations of the past five years to detect fraud or criminal records as a basis for revocation of citizenship. We should revoke the citizenship of any naturalized citizen who violates the oath to renounce allegiance to another country.

Several of the hijackers had U.S. driver’s licenses. Driver’s licenses should be issued only to citizens and legal residents who can pass the driver’s test in English.

Most important, our laws should make a clear, bright line of difference between citizens and aliens. We should not use terrorism as an excuse to place more controls over the actions of law-abiding Americans or simply increase the power and budget of Big Government.

Foreign Diseases Attack Americans 
The anthrax scare has made Americans suddenly and acutely very disease conscious. Until a few weeks ago, most Americans had never heard of anthrax, and worries about smallpox were abandoned years ago.

While we have yet to learn the source of the malicious delivery of anthrax infections, it’s time to open a national discussion about the variety of diseases coming into our country with immigrants and illegal aliens. U.S. law bars entry to aliens, either as immigrants or visitors, who have “a communicable disease of public health significance,” as well as drug abusers and addicts. (8 U.S.Code Sec. 1182)

But with our current unprecedented high level of immigrants, visa holders, refugees and illegal aliens entering every year, it’s virtually impossible to screen them adequately for disease.

The West Nile virus was never reported in the United States prior to 1999, when 8,200 people were infected with West Nile encephalitis in the New York area, including 62 severe cases and seven deaths. This year, the virus has been detected in 21 states (including 51 Florida counties) and Washington, D.C. (USAToday.com 7-26-01; WorldNetDaily.com 7-26-01; bloomberg.com 7-26-01; ChicagoTribune.com 9-5-01; Sun-Sentinel.com 10-13-01)

The first known appearance of the West Nile virus was in Uganda in 1937, and it is now prevalent in Africa, India, Australia, and the Middle East. This African import is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes and can be deadly, especially to the elderly. (Harvard Magazine, Nov-Dec 2001)

Tuberculosis is on the rise, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a worldwide emergency in 1995. Part of this problem is what WHO calls the “deadly synergy between TB and HIV.”

Due to our large-scale immigration, tuberculosis is making a comeback in the United States where we thought it had been virtually eradicated. Immigrants and aliens accounted for 41% of TB cases diagnosed in the United States in 1998, and in some clinics this year two-thirds of TB patients are foreign born. States with large immigrant populations (California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois) have been most heavily affected. (NationalReview.com 6-1-01; New England Journal of Medicine, Apr. 20, 1995)

Although tuberculosis constitutes grounds for denying admission to the United States, the screening process can’t cope with the numbers. TB can remain dormant for years before becoming contagious, the standards for detection in foreign countries are often inferior to ours, and foreign results are unreliable. Of course, screening is done only on law-abiding applicants; obviously, there is no screening of illegal aliens.

The New England Journal of Medicine (3-11-99) reported that “more than 85%,000 immigrants enter the United States each year from countries where intestinal parasites are endemic. At entry, persons with parasitic infections may be asymptomatic.” Those most at risk are immigrants from the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. U.S. public health officials can’t agree whether to screen all immigrants for parasites, treat all immigrants presumptively, or do nothing unless they show symptoms.

According to the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University, more than half of the 1.3 million hepatitis B cases in the United States are in Asians, although Asians constitute only 4% of our population. The hepatitis B rate is about 70 times greater for Asians than for whites and Hispanics, and 14 times greater than for blacks.
(stanfordhospital.com/clinicsmedServices/COE/cancer/livercancer.html)

This raises a question for concerned parents. Why is there such pressure to administer hepatitis B shots to all newborn babies even though only a tiny percentage are in any risk category?

Malaria was eradicated in the United States in the early part of the 20th century, but now is reemerging as a serious health problem. Dr. Jane Zucker of the Centers for Disease Control cites immigration as a contributing factor in the recent outbreaks of mosquito-borne transmission in the densely populated areas of New Jersey, New York and Texas.

Food-borne illnesses are another danger exacerbated by immigration. Last year, an outbreak of listeriosis among Mexican aliens in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, left 12 people ill and resulted in five stillbirths and three premature births. This infectious disease was contracted from soft cheeses made by aliens from unpasteurized milk. Despite North Carolina laws prohibiting the sale and consumption of raw milk and raw milk products, such practices persist in some communities because of the aliens’ taste preferences and cultural attitudes. (CDC, 7-6-01)

The Centers for Disease Control has declared that the United States has been free from indigenous measles since 1998, and the only cases come in with immigrants. (Journal of the American Medical Association, 12-27-00)

Americans cannot continue to ignore the serious health effects and the high costs to our health care system of diseases brought into this country by aliens since we permitted tremendously high levels of admissions from Third World countries over the last two decades. U.S. public health demands that we place a moratorium on immigration until we get a better screening process to protect Americans from alien diseases.

Is It Assimilation or Invasion? 
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, support for the United States has poured in from around the world, but the response from Mexico has been decidedly lukewarm. A Gallup poll reported that 78% of Mexicans oppose contributing troops to a multinational coalition, and we have seen no indication that Mexico will modify its oil policy of acting like a member of OPEC.

While there is no evidence that the 9/11 terrorists entered over the Mexican border, the trial in El Paso of an Iraqi smuggler has produced evidence that he alone brought more than 1,000 Middle East illegals into the United States via that route, charging his clients $10,000 to $15,000 each. Border Patrol agents have confirmed the increase in illegal aliens coming from the Middle East across our southern border and the fact that Arabs pay up to $50,000 each for a “coyote” to smuggle them into the United States. (New York Times, 10-26-01)

The 9/11 events have temporarily shelved the foolish proposals to grant amnesty to three million Mexicans illegally living in our country. Unfortunately, there is no indication that Mexico has retreated from its longtime goal of opening the U.S. border.

In Chicago on July 27, 1997, then Mexican President Ernesto Zedilla told the National Council of LaRaza, “I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders.” He announced a Mexican constitutional amendment that purports to allow Mexicans to retain their Mexican nationality even though they become U.S. citizens (which is contrary to the U.S. naturalization oath).

When President Vicente Fox came to the United States this year, he reiterated this line, proclaiming that “the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders” and includes migrants living in the United States. He called for open borders and endorsed Mexico’s new dual citizenship law.

Some Mexicans use the term “reconquista,” which is Spanish for reconquest, to describe their desire to see California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas acquired by Mexico and named the new country of Aztlan. They are teaching their youth that the United States “stole” those areas from Mexico and that they should be “returned.”

The United States acquired the Southwest a century and a half ago in three ways: part by the 1845 annexation agreement with Texas, which was then an independent republic, part ceded by Mexico in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican-American War, and part by the 1852 Gadsden Purchase.

Mexico’s claim to the Southwest originated with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which drew an imaginary line on the map to divide the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal. Because geography had so many unknowns at that time, Portugal got only Brazil (which is why Brazilians speak Portuguese).

Other countries never recognized this treaty, and Americans consider it ridiculous even to talk about giving the Southwest to Mexico. Most national borders all over the world have come about as the result of war.

Mexicans obviously have no thought of invading the Southwest with troops, so their hope is reconquista by migration, both legal and illegal. According to Mario Obledo, founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, “California is going to be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave.”

An amnesty rally in the Los Angeles Sports Arena on June 10, 2000 attracted 25,000 people. In demanding amnesty for illegal Mexican aliens, the speakers proudly announced the names of at least a dozen unions in Los Angeles that are now headed by Mexicans.

Vicente Fox presented Mexico’s Congress with a five-year development plan to eliminate the U.S.-Mexican border. He said he plans to serve “the 100 million Mexicans who now live in Mexico and the more than 18 million who live abroad,” and to “strengthen our ability to protect and defend the rights of all Mexicans abroad.”

Juan Hernandez, appointed by Fox as special liaison to Mexicans abroad, lobbies to get U.S. driver’s licenses issued to illegal aliens, and several states now permit this. He defends the Mexican government’s issuance of desert survival kits to those sneaking across the border. On ABC’s Nightline on June 7, he boasted: “We are betting that the Mexican-American population in the United States … will think Mexico first.”

Fox’s five-year plan calls for building a larger consular presence in the United States, and this is already in operation. In U.S. areas with large Hispanic (including illegal) populations, the Mexican consul donates to the local public schools the same textbooks that are used in every elementary school in Mexico, grades 1 through 6.

The books, written in Spanish and including all academic subjects, teach that Mexico is entitled to take back the Southwest. The Mexican government considers these textbooks a symbol of Mexican national pride, guarantees a set to every Mexican child, and makes it a crime for anyone to sell them.

The only reason we learned about this Mexican plan is that one school in Santa Ana, California, decided to sell the books at a book fair and the local Hispanics kicked up a fuss about it. The school apologized to the Hispanics for selling the books, but should have apologized to the students for accepting the books in the first place. (Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, 8-20-01)

The question we should ask our Mexican immigrant friends is, are you assimilating or invading?