Immigration bill will keep borders safe

You Got Conserved: Media are misdirected

There are two new reasons that the world is going to Hell in a hand basket: 1) Kevin Federline's new single, "Popozao," and 2) mainstream media have successfully spent an entire week covering Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident. Every pundit and comedian in the country has been taking shots at Cheney (kinda like that one) for an entire week, alleging a cover-up, intentional deception, and arguing that this proves the Bush administration's propensity for sowing lies. The coverage of this accident, however, speaks to a problem greater than the vice president's aim.

You Got Conserved: No change in sight to pork barrel spending

Because I am certain that virtually no Bowdoin student will be reading my column this weekend, down from the five that have typically muscled through columns past, I deliver to my non-student readership (my parents) a scorcher of a column on domestic spending policy. Read on. The political firestorm of the week in Washington centers around a Senate appropriations bill, comprised of both a hurricane aid package and a fifth emergency defense funding request, that weighs in at a whopping $106 billion. President Bush, under pressure from fiscal conservatives in Congress, vowed Tuesday not to sign the bill in its current pork barrel-laden incarnation if the final price tag topped $92 billion, leaving senators to pare a hefty sum from the bill.

You Got Conserved

Immigration bill will keep borders safe

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

March 31, 2006

The growing row over immigration reforms debated these past few weeks in the Senate and media represents an abundance of misunderstanding on the part of most Americans about the intent of the changes being proposed. Millions of Americans, mostly of Latino ethnicity, have taken to the streets in the past days to protest what they perceive is a gross breach of their civil and human rights.

The bill in question will ease restrictions on citizenship for millions of illegal aliens, and critics of the bill have argued that the approach is simply a cop-out to enforcing current immigration laws. Senate Republicans have rightfully opposed the view that granting citizenship to the eight to 11 million illegal aliens currently in the United States would prove easier than actually enforcing the current law and arresting and deporting those who enter the country illegally.

While the racial tensions of the debate have taken the headlines of most media outlets, there are issues at hand that are a great deal more important than the question of guest-worker status and citizenship eligibility.

Since September 11, the main goal of the Department of Homeland Security has been to defend our borders from those who would attack our country. The most high profile of these efforts have been in the nation's airports and seaports. Indeed, last month's largest news story was the failed bid by a Dubai firm to operate several American ports.

The greatest security vulnerability we face is the one that we cannot confront without automatically ruffling the feathers of civil rights activists across the country. In the five years since the September 11 attacks, we have functionally failed in our efforts to make American borders more secure, and this failure is in no small part due to the porous boundaries we share with Mexico and Canada.

Those protesting suggest that any modification to the law which makes it more difficult to enter the United States is inherently racist. I would argue, however, that we need to focus first on gaining the ability to enforce current laws. The millions of illegal aliens currently in the United States are labeled as such for one reason: they are breaking a law. And the ability of millions to enter this country without documentation and clearance from customs worries me immensely.

I am not a xenophobe. I believe that those from foreign countries should have the opportunity to gain citizenship to the United States if they follow the rules in doing so. I am not writing this to harp on a Mexican family that wishes to join relatives earning an honest living in Texas. I am writing this because the ease with which so many undocumented workers cross into the United States unnoticed provides ample opportunity to any terrorist organization that wishes to do the same.

I am not particularly scared about the arrest last week of Shahzad Qureshi, the Pakistani chauffeur scheduled to pick up Bill Clinton in Newark, who was instead picked up by police for skipping out on a residency-status hearing. Actually, the timing of that one was pretty funny. I am troubled by the November arrest of an Iraqi national on the al-Qaeda most wanted list, because this man was captured in west Texas after crossing into the United States from Mexico.

The intelligence community seems increasingly confident that al-Qaeda is reaching out to Latin American gangs such as MS-13 to establish routes into the United States, and that when a terrorist organization does get its hands on a weapon of mass destruction (and this will happen), that weapon will enter our soil neither by air nor by sea. We've done little to make our borders more secure, and in order to better protect ourselves from another terrorist attack on our land, we must, at the very least, enforce the laws we already have.

There is a great deal of emotion running through our country right now when it comes to both immigration law and national security. It is understandable that when these two areas overlap the response from some will be great, as we've seen in Los Angeles and Dallas.

In the end, however, it is wholly necessary for the system we use to control our borders to be effective in admitting those who seek entrance legally and returning those who don't, because the laws are there, and so is the threat. The security of our nation cannot rest on laws that are ignored because it is more convenient to be complacent than it is to enforce them.

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