September 13, 2002
View From Lodi, CA: Michelle Malkin’s Invasion—With
Borders Wide Open
By Joe Guzzardi
Last week, I wrote about
how little progress has been made since 9/11 to
make America safe from its
enemies.
An 800-word editorial can only give
readers the skimpiest outline of how American leaders
have taken our country to the brink of disaster.
For the full story, I refer you to
syndicated columnist
Michelle Malkin's new book,
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces on Our Shores.
For the millions of Americans who
are gravely concerned about the country’s direction,
Malkin’s book represents a painfully candid assessment
of all of the foolish, selfish and plain old stupid
errors in judgment that have brought us to this point.
In the hundreds of conversations
that I have had over the last decade about immigration
folly, I always remind people that they don’t have the
vaguest idea just how wide open America is to anyone who wants access.
Read Invasion and you’ll know. If
you have a hankering to come to America, 57 immigrant
and non-immigrant visas await you. You can apply for
high-tech visas,
student visas,
own your own business visas,
diversity visas and
religious visas.
Maybe you live in a “friendly”
country where no visa to come to the U.S. is required.
But if not, perhaps you can qualify for the
Visa Express Program where normal consular
procedures are waived. Three Saudi Arabian 9/11
hijackers entered the U.S. from the “express lane.”
After nine months of ignoring the problem, the State
Department finally eliminated Saudi Arabia.
Another possibility would be to
qualify for the
“Travel Without a Visa” program. Begun in1952 to
resettle World War II refugees, the program was
originally intended for airline passengers just passing
through the U.S. en route to their final destination.
Half a century later, 5 million
visitors came to the U.S. using “Travel Without a Visa.”
But since the I.N.S. doesn’t keep statistics on
arriving/departing passengers, who knows where they are?
How else can the U.S. make things
easier for any and all comers? If the weather is bad in
your country or if you had an earthquake, we’ll let you
in under the
Temporary Protected Status program. Once into the
U.S. on any of these visas or under the guise of any of
these programs, you can stay as long as you like. The
9/11 terrorists certainly did.
In the extremely unlikely event
that someone who aspires to come to the U.S. cannot
qualify for any of the above visas or programs, an
applicant can always resort to bribery and fraud. Malkin
documents dozens of cases in Invasion where corrupt
I.N.S. officials sold visa stamps or altered
applications. At the dysfunctional I.N.S.,
money talks.
Visas are cheap and so is American
citizenship. Citizenship is for sale through
sham marriages, fiancée visas or to some of the cruelest torturers
to ever walk the earth.
Malkin reports that human rights
groups and investigative reporters calculate that the
U.S. is a safe haven for hundreds of the most well known
political assassins in history. They were admitted to
the country under our refugee or political asylum
programs with the full knowledge and assistance of the
U.S. military.
Those living among us, now U.S.
citizens, are
Eriberto Mederos, Fidel Castro’s main practitioner
of electroshock torture and
Kelbessa Negewo, Ethiopian rapist and killer. Other
warlords, butchers and “monsters,” as Malkin correctly
describe them, are in the U.S. as legal permanent
residents.
In the book’s saddest chapter,
Malkin tells the personal stories of victims of
Angel Resindez, the infamous “Railway Killer.” In
and out of the U.S. multiple times since he was fourteen
and with a long, long rap sheet, Rasindez brutally
murdered, among others, a young medical researcher, a
young college student, a young teacher, a young teenage
couple, a reverend and his wife and three gentle elderly
ladies.
Resindez roamed free because of
I.N.S. failures at virtually every level. And while
Malkin correctly blames I.N.S. ineptitude for a large
part of our immigration mess, others come in for heavy
criticism also.
From a very long list, I offer
these examples:
