I have a lot of respect for Ted Kennedy, the old "lion in winter" of the US Senate, but I think he is dead wrong on illegal immigration. As much as I respect him, I think he has let his bleeding heart tendencies get the better of him. The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (S. 1033) introduced by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) is not the right approach to solving the problem. First of all what is the problem? Is it the 10 to 20 illegal immigrants that are already here or is it the millions more that are likely to flood across the border in the months or years to come? If you have a hole in the dike and water is pouring in, is your highest priority plugging the hole in the dike or do you first start bailing? The answer should be obvious. Kennedy's approach is to put the cart before the horse to introduce yet another metaphor.
The first order of business should be to stop the torrent that is flooding across our southern border. Once that's accomplished, the problem of what to do with the illegals that are already here can be addressed. Talking about giving them a path to citizenship at this point will only give more of them an incentive to illegally immigrate. We don't have to do a guest worker program now. The ones that are already here are already filling the low-skilled, low wage jobs that big agribusiness seems to so desperately need them for. They're causing no problems so why is it so urgent that a guest worker program needs to be worked out now? They're already here! That situation is stable, not causing any immediate problems. The urgency is the millions who still want to come and are going to be coming across our border today, tomorrow, next week, next month and next year.
A hasty approach to dealing with the illegals who are already here is not the answer. Instead a more carefully thought out approach to that problem needs to be implemented. The urgency is with plugging the hole in the dike to prevent the torrent that is flooding in. There are numerous reasons for securing the border. 1) It's illegal to cross the border without permission. Rather than punish those who do this illegally, it is better to take a preemptive approach and prevent them from committing this illegal act in the first place. 2) If a million illegal immigrants, who only want to work hard, come across the border in an uncontrolled manner, one terrorist who only wants to do us harm can also cross the border. The argument that all those crossing the border only want to do jobs Americans don't want to do is a canard. The borders needs to be controlled to prevent that one person who wants to do us harm from crossing. 3) The flood of illegal drugs and other contraband can be stopped only if we are serious about controlling our borders.
What the President won't tell you is that the War on Terrorism is primarily a defensive war. Defensive wars are not as glamorous as offensive wars. Instead of engaging our troops in military adventurism abroad in order to project American geo-political power in the world and gain access to Iraqi oil fields, he should be focusing on domestic , defensive measures at home. Instead he leaves the borders and ports unprotected, leaves chemical and nuclear plants unprotected, leaves local emergency services unfunded, leaves local disaster plans unthought out. The list of things undone goes on and on while the list of things done unnecessarily overseas goes on and on.
The Democrats have made a big, big political mistake here in addition to taking the wrong approach to the illegal immigration problem. All the seats in Congress that are up for grabs this November that the Democrats should win are being fought by Republicans on the wedge issue of illegal immigration. And what do the Democrats do? They let the Republicans get to the right of them on the issue when they had a big chance to get to the right of the Republicans when the Republicans were divided on the issue and fighting among themselves. Now the issue is being painted by the Republican candidates as being tough on illegal immigration (them) versus amnesty (the Democrats.) The Democrats should get to the right of the Republicans on every issue they can without being disingenuous, and here was a chance and they blew it! They could have stood for securing the borders and painted the Republicans as wanting amnesty, but instead they let the Republicans run on securing the borders and let themselves be painted as wanting amnesty. How dumb can they get?!
Being tough (on anything) is what has won Republicans elections regardless of how they've performed once they've gotten into office. Now what will probably happen is the Democrats will not pick up as many Congressional seats as they might have; the Republicans will vote in a block (although they run as individuals) and it will be business as usual - the same old sorry business! What needs to be done is that military assets need to be withdrawn from Iraq and positioned at the border. Military expenditures need to be redirected to providing high tech satellite and drone surveillance of the border. Terrorism needs to be fought primarily with special forces not standing armies and by means of intelligence gathering and infiltration of terrorist organizations at home and abroad. This is how you get tough on terrorism - by doing the intelligent thing. The tough thing and the intelligent thing is one and the same thing in this case. Why can't the Democrats see this? The Bush administration's policy is to primarily gain access to Iraqi oil fields and to secondarily fight terrorism or to use terrorism as an excuse to gain access to Iraqi oil fields. They're not serious about protecting the homeland!
