Who Cares About Terrorists? Pols Still Want Amnesty

Further evidence that the Congress doesn't have a clue and doesn't care about what it's doing on amnesty for illegal aliens comes from critics of the masked amnesty program passed by the House last month and now stalled—one hopes forever—in the Senate. [VDARE.com note: as we post Sam’s column, activist groups like American Patrol are warning of a new attempt to slip amnesty through.] The Bush administration was largely responsible for getting the amnesty passed in the House; Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, who rightly calls amnesty "sheer lunacy," is largely responsible for stalling it in the Senate.

What critics of amnesty have recently disclosed is that, under the legislation the House passed and the Bush administration supported, aliens currently being detained on suspicion of involvement in terrorism may be able to apply for amnesty.

If Mr. Byrd thought the amnesty was lunacy before, what should he call it now?

The amnesty is extended under section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and under that section aliens in the United States without legal status who meet certain requirements may apply for legalization. Unless the current underlying law is changed, however, those aliens who have been rounded up by federal law enforcement since Sept. 11 for involvement with terrorism may be eligible to apply for legalization as well.

The point is raised by opponents of the amnesty, namely spokesmen for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Mike Hethmon, a staff attorney for FAIR, tells the Washington Times, "What you have is a status on its face that says terrorists can apply for green cards, and have."

The Immigration and Naturalization Service maintains it can still deport aliens suspected of being terrorists regardless of the amnesty, and spokesmen for the immigration lawyers, who support the amnesty and are licking their chops over the swag they'll rake in by litigating the flood of legalization claims, say there's no problem anyway. Even if the amnesty provides for letting terrorist aliens stay, it could easily be amended.

Maybe so, but that's not quite the point. The point is that the Congress was in such a sweat to pass the amnesty that it never bothered to consider whether terrorists might be eligible for it. The Republicans tried to pass the amnesty virtually in secret by a voice vote, but thanks to amnesty opponent Rep. Tom Tancredo, they were forced to vote on the record.

Writing about the midnight amnesty a day after it was passed, I asked,

"Are the illegals granted amnesty part of the global terrorist network that slaughtered thousands of Americans last year...? If no one knows how many illegals will be legalized by the amnesty, no one knows who or what kind of people the illegals who will benefit are."

That is precisely what Mr. Hethmon is saying. But if no one in Congress knew that alien terrorists would be eligible, why did they vote for it at all?

Despite the high-sounding jabber about President Bush's famous "war on terrorism," there is no war when it comes to controlling the mass immigration, legal or illegal, that lies at the root of the Sept. 11 massacres. What should have been done that day and what should have been rigorously enforced every day ever since is a total moratorium on all immigration into the country and a nationwide round-up and expulsion of all illegal aliens.

Not only has there been not even an impulse to do what was needed, but also every conceivable reason has been dredged up to justify not doing it.

From the day of the attacks until now, the open borders lobby has reached for every fallacy, phony argument and smear of its opponents it can manufacture to keep the borders open, illegal aliens pouring across them and the cheap labor and cheaper votes coming. They've tried to derail the whole argument against immigration by focusing on procedural details like tougher visa procedures and splitting the INS into separate agencies—anything to avoid talking about what should be the real issue, the reduction of immigration numbers.

What the disclosures about the eligibility of alien terrorists to apply for the amnesty just passed show is that the House simply did not know what it was voting for and did not care whether terrorists were eligible or not. And that lesson should be the motto—more appropriately the epitaph—of national immigration policy for the last 30 years.

Motivated solely by the demand of Big Business for cheap labor and more recently by the need for Hispanic political support, the politicians who make immigration laws and policies are entirely indifferent to the impact of immigration on the interests and security of their own nation—even when the nation is under attack from the very forces the politicians claim to be fighting.

It's hard to tell who is really more dangerous to the nation—the aliens and terrorists the politicians refuse to throw out, or the politicians themselves.

April 15, 2002