- You know what makes me nervous about President Bush?
It's not his facial expressions. Nor his verbal clumsiness. I don't care
about his alleged weakness at the podium. What concerns me more than anything
else is his demonstrated weakness at our borders.
-
- Immigration enforcement is the six-ton elephant in the
room. Barely two sentences were devoted to border control in the first
presidential debate, despite the fact that the major issue of the showdown
was leadership on national security. Both President Bush and Sen. Kerry
bloviated about throwing more money at the Department of Homeland Security,
while ignoring the fundamental problem: Our immigration laws are being
broken en masse because America is unwilling to enforce them -- clearly,
consistently and unapologetically -- until it is too late.
-
- The vice presidential candidates are no better. Dick
Cheney, alas, has dutifully defended the administration's abominable amnesty
plan, which amounts to a mass government pardon of illegal visa overstayers
and border crossers and deportation fugitives at a time of war. (We are
at war, aren't we, gentlemen?) For his part, Sen. John Edwards supports
the just-as-awful Democratic version of this illegal alien incentive policy.
-
- On the same day of the presidential debate last week,
alarming news broke in McAllen, Texas, which underscores the illegal immigration/terrorism
nexus. The feds have been investigating evidence from a high-level al Qaeda
operative that the terrorists were planning to poison our military's supply
of MREs (meals ready-to-eat). In the course of the investigation, law enforcement
officers initiated a sweep of a McAllen-area defense subcontractor, the
Wornick Company, which produced MREs and had been an alleged target of
al Qaeda.
-
- Luckily, no signs of sabotage or terrorist infiltration
were uncovered. But the place was crawling with illegals (mostly, but not
all Mexican) who used falsified ID and employment forms. In an all-too-rare
occurrence, an executive from an employment agency that provided workers
for Wornick was indicted last week for flouting immigration rules and faking
documents. Last year, a measly four employers faced criminal prosecution
for immigration employment violations.
-
- There are countless Pollyannas in the political, media
and intellectual elite who continue to downplay the dangers of open borders.
"Better intelligence" will solve the problem, they argue naively.
"We are a nation of immigrants," they preach cluelessly. "Family
values don't stop at the Rio Grande," they babble pointlessly.
-
- Meanwhile, the patient and undeterred minions of Osama
bin Laden dispatched from abroad are here. Others are cooperating with
other immigration outlaws to wreak havoc on our security. Not far from
Bush's Crawford ranch, there are ominous signs that al Qaeda has teamed
up with illegal alien smugglers from Mexico to bring new operatives through
the southern border. The feds recently disclosed that suspected al Qaeda
operative Adnan Shukrijumah -- a young Saudi pilot on the run since Sept.
11 -- met with the notorious El Salvador-based gang/alien smuggling operation,
Mara Salvatrucha.
-
- And in southern Arizona, site of the final presidential
debate, the illegal Arab alien smuggling route known as "Terrorist
Alley" is as unprotected as ever. Unknown numbers of al Qaeda in America
have fraudulent identification, which enables them (like their Sept. 11
predecessors) to blend into the vast sea of 13 million other immigration
outlaws who have little fear of getting caught. It doesn't help matters
when Bush's own border security undersecretary, Asa Hutchinson, states
publicly that it's "not realistic" for his own officers to try
to do their jobs and deport law-breakers.
-
- In an even more shameful betrayal, the White House is
now reportedly pressuring stalwart House Republicans into scrapping important
immigration enforcement provisions of the House Intelligence Bill that
speed up the deportation process and bar illegal aliens from obtaining
valuable driver's licenses or using easy-to-fake foreign consular ID cards.
Why? Because they are politically unpopular with ethnic constituencies.
-
- This race is not just about who is better able to hunt
down and destroy our enemies abroad. It's about who is more willing to
hunt them down right here, jail them, kick them out and keep them out of
our home. President Bush has shown he can stand up to the international
Axis of Weasels. He must show the same resolve against La Raza, the immigration
lawyers and Teddy Kennedy.
-
-
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- Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains
her weblog at
- michellemalkin.com
-
- ©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
- http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20041006.shtml
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