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Guest Commentary March 25, 2002
Amnesty Proposal for Illegal Aliens Is Sheer Lunacy
The Honorable Robert Byrd
Last week, CNN broke the news that, six months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Immigration and Naturalization Service finally provided a confirmation notice to a Florida flight school that two of the suicide hijackers who died on September 11 had been approved for student visas.
The American people must have been be shaking their heads in dismay. Certainly many politicians viewed the incident with incredulity and anger. Our President said he was "plenty hot." The Attorney General promised an investigation. Legislators and pundits have called for the restructuring -- and even for the abolishment -- of the INS.
I find it hard to understand the apparent shock. That this incident occurred should come as no surprise to anyone who has read anything in recent months about the inept manner in which our immigration system is apparently operating. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the American people heard repeatedly about the lapses in our immigration laws that allowed these terrorists to enter our country. Three of the terrorists were in the country on expired visas and should have been deported. Countless federal reports and investigations have concluded that INS is plagued by backlogs and delays. The agency has little sense of who is crossing our borders, and can't track individuals once they are inside the country.
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As if to try to provide some logic for its bumbling, the INS said in a statement last week that it had no information at the time that it approved these student visas that either man was tied to terrorist groups. I hardly find any comfort in that. It doesn't explain why Mohammed Atta's visa extension kept winding its way through the bureaucratic process for months after he became recognized internationally as a brutal terrorist.
Since September 11th, the Administration has sought to reassure the American people that this government was taking steps to reinforce that invisible barrier that ostensibly protects our citizens from foreign threats. The American people were told that this government is doing all that it can to strengthen our borders and make Americans safe.
But then this CNN report is unveiled, reinforcing the negative impression that most Americans have of our Nation's border security.
If the American people went to bed last Tuesday night in dismay over this latest INS debacle, they must have been absolutely dumbfounded when they awoke Wednesday morning to learn that the House of Representatives had passed, at the request of the President, what amounts to an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, many of whom have not undergone any -- any -- background or security check. ...
The American people and the Congress cannot be expected to have confidence in our efforts to secure our borders, if they see the administration advocating legislation that seems to fly in the face of tighter border security. The administration must explain why, on the same day that the Homeland Security Director would issue an elevated state of alert, the White House would push through the House an amnesty for illegal aliens that would weaken our visa screening processes. Doesn't make much sense, does it? The right hand seems not to know what the left hand is doing.
It is lunacy -- sheer lunacy -- that the President would request, and the House would pass, such an amnesty at this time. That point seems obvious to the American people, if not to the administration.
Robert Byrd, a Democrat, is a U.S. Senator from West Virginia. The above commentary has been adapted from a speech Sen. Byrd delivered on the floor of the Senate, March 18, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
