INVITING THE ENEMY TO LIVE AMONG US
THEY MUST BE FOUND AND THEY MUST BE DEPORTED
By: Alan Caruba
The United States has an imperative need to find, jail or deport any Arab or Muslim supporter of the Islamic Jihad. I know any number of loyal Arab Americans. I also know that intelligence experts estimate that at least one hundred al Qaeda agents are at large in America waiting to strike again!
It is a cruel and frightening truth that America has invited its enemies to visit and to live among us and is doing nothing to stem new ones from joining those already in place. They come as tourists. They come as students. Some just come without a visa or a passport. Right now, a second blanket amnesty has been endorsed by the White House. It will insure still more will attempt to enter the US illegally and promise future attacks like 9.11.
Its estimates may be far too low, but the most recent Census figures indicate that 114,000 illegal immigrants from the Middle East are currently somewhere in the United States. There are an estimated 314,000 illegal immigrants from various nations scattered around the nation. The largest group, however, are Mexicans.
The Justice Department is trying to find at least 6,000 of these illegal aliens who have come in from nations known to be strongholds of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. We literally have thousands of "students" from Iraq and other Middle Eastern nations attending our colleges and universities. Some of these people represent "sleeper cells" of terrorists who are literally waiting to wreak havoc on this nation.
When the Attorney General recently announced plans to seek voluntary interviews of an additional 3,000 foreigners in the United States, he was immediately denounced by Arab-American and Muslim groups as practicing "racial profiling", but this nation, its embassies, and military has been attacked for decades by Arabs and other Muslim nationals.
There is no evidence that Arab-American groups support our need to make our nation secure. The AG pointed out the new group being sought are not suspects in the terrorism investigation, but rather may be able to provide useful information about terrorists living among us. The Muslim groups have consistently opposed the Justice Department's actions.
Since Congress opened the doors to immigrants from Middle Eastern nations in 1965, an estimated 2.8 million have made America their home, though Muslim groups claim three times that much. Given the choice between their intense loyalty to Islam and their loyalty to American, it is unknown how many would choose their religion, but Islam's hold on its adherents is the strongest bond in their lives.
Among American Muslims are countless numbers who have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to terrorist organizations through their mosques and other Islamic groups. Some are terrorists and some are harboring terrorists, knowingly employing them, sponsoring their presence among us. The problem is that we cannot know who are loyal Americans and who are not. There are 1,209 mosques in the United States and, as of two years ago, not one of them were served by imams, leaders of prayer, born in America. Nearly eight in ten US Muslims were born abroad.
In an act of astonishing indifference to the security of the nation, Congress with the blessing of the White House, recently considered a vote to extend amnesty to all illegal aliens estimated to number between 300,000 and 400,000. The vast bulk of them are Mexicans. As the vote was being debated, we learned that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had mailed notices of visa upgrades to the airfield where the two 9.11 pilots had trained to destroy the World Trade Center.
How easy is it to get your visa status upgraded? You need only pay the INS a thousand dollars and produce someone who will sponsor your continued residence in the United States. No one will check your records for any possible link to al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization in the world.
About two weeks ago four Pakistanis jumped shipped with the help of yet another INS blunder and disappeared into our nation. Meanwhile, countless others have blended into the life of our cities and even small towns. We can't find them, but we need to launch a nationwide campaign to do so.
This level of INS incompetence, this criminal indifference, this failure to identify dedicated and fanatical enemies of our nation before they arrive and our inability to know where they are within an hour after they arrive, imperils the lives of all Americans. It must stop. It must stop now.
Meanwhile, the director of the INS is openly calling for a complete overhaul of his own agency to even begin to cope with the threats facing this nation from illegal immigration. The agency has only 35,000 employees, most of whom can't even be fired for gross incompetence. James W. Zigler, the new director, has the authority to appoint only six new administrators to assist him in the task of finding and deporting an estimated eight to eleven million illegal immigrants. There are some 65 levels of management at the INS that have to be consulted on just about every decision they make.
Like their hospitals, our border State's courts are overwhelmed with the wave of crime that comes with illegal immigrants. An estimated 250,000 illegal immigrants enter the United States every year without so much as a health examination, criminal or national security screening.
We are inviting all manner of disaster and neither the Congress, nor the White House, appears to take any of this seriously. Recently, Florida petitioned the federal government for the right to let state and local police arrest and detain suspected illegal aliens. At present, no state law enforcement organization has the right to do this. Those caught committing crimes constitute a large part of our prison population.
It only takes a small number of the already vast population of legal and illegal immigrants to plan and carry out attacks on all aspects of our nation's network for energy generation and distribution. When the electricity goes off, this nation will shut down. Likewise, an attack on our water supply could sicken and kill countless Americans. A bio-weapon or nuclear device could kill hundreds of thousands. The destruction of key bridges could have a huge economic impact on most of our cities. And when the attack comes, people will dance in the streets of places with Middle Eastern names.
They may be insanely devoted to their Islamic Jihad or some Mexican dream of "reconquista" but illegal immigrants, no matter where they come from, are a threat to our nation that is living and working among us. They must be found and they must be deported. And they must be stopped from gaining entry. Only when America can have time to absorb the millions that arrived in the last decade and weed out those who would attack us from within will we be safe again. |
