Spencer Hsu has a good article in the Washington Post that highlights the political schizophrenia that exists among the political class in this country with regard to illegal immigration. In the abstract, the majority of Americans demand that government crackdown on illegal immigration. In the concrete reality of such crackdowns, American communities and local economies can be gravely disrupted, producing inevitable outcries from local politicians.
Recently, I came across an editorial titled “Vigilantes at ICE” that was critical of ICE worksite enforcement initiatives, indicating that the agency was operating outside its intended mission – national security – and specifically, was failing in its goal to protect the U.S. from the next terrorist attack. The editorial was personally insulting to me and greatly mis-represented reality. Although resources are limited, no one has forgotten the “core mission” of national security that is the number one priority for ICE and the Department as a whole.
When former Secretary Tom Ridge departed DHS, the international registered traveler program was placed on hold with the new leadership focused on a range of other significant international travel issues. However, CBP continued to press the case for its risk management tool and DHS approved the initiative earlier this year which was branded Global Entry and announced in April of this year. To truly succeed in fulfilling its potential, however, the Global Entry program will need a number of important enhancements.
Despite the stereotypes in the media, not every terrorist is going to look like he or she comes from Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. They don’t have official “Member of the International Brotherhood of Terrorism” identification cards. They will say things like, “I just need to get a job to feed my family” rather than “Will you help sneak me across the border so that I can blow up the Pentagon?” They will look like Middle Eastern in some cases, yes, but they will also look German or French or Canadian or American or Mexican in others. They will look like me and you.
We see the “100 Percent” debate playing itself out between DHS and Democrats on the Hill — in the areas of employee screening at our nation’s airports, the screening of air cargo, and the screening of shipping containers coming from overseas. In all these instances, Democrats have passed legislative mandates requiring DHS to implement the costly solution of 100% scanning. DHS has been correct to push back, and they should do so more forcefully.
Harris writes: “Increased airport security and scrutiny of foreign visitors are not the primary causes of America’s global image problem. The excesses of Abu Ghraib, the existence of the Guantanamo prison (which all the presidential candidates say they want to shutter) and our controversial and passionately debated interrogation practices have done more to diminish our global standing than some gruff Customs officials or aggressive airport security personnel.”
Seven years after the horror of September 11th, these cultural sophisticates exude a kind of national-security ennui, bored with the hassles of visa paperwork and ready to go back to the way it was on September 10th. For them, even common-sense security measures are viewed with resentment and are held up as evidence that America is no longer that shining city on a hill but one turned inward with in fear and loathing.
There was time in our Nation’s history when the hallmark of excellence in journalism was The New York Times. While the excellence and certainly the integrity of that paper have fallen on what can diplomatically be called ‘hard times,’ it appears that things are even worse for ‘The Old Gray Lady’ (aka – the New York Times) than we knew. While its legendary editorial page has long thrown its weighty opinion around without abandon, it seems that when you go to respond to it with hard-cold facts, including actual reference to law, the Times does not have the guts to share the stage (or a portion of its editorial page) to allow a response.
The Heritage Foundation will host next week a forum on cargo security entitled Homeland Security and Inspecting Shipping Containers: Debating the Way Forward. Two of Security Debrief’s contributors will participate – former DHS Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson, who is also now head of the Safe Commerce Coalition, and Dr. James Carafano, who is the senior fellow for foreign policy, homeland security and counter-terrorism issues at the Foundation.
To listen to the paranoid debate now taking place over the REAL ID Act in Congress, some state legislatures and the blogosphere, one might think that this legislation was some Bush administration plot to create a national identity card and spy on innocent Americans. The reality is much more serious and mundane. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, there is a need to set some kind of minimum standards to ensure that driver’s licenses and other forms of government-issued identification cannot be tampered with and used by terrorists.
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