The Washington Times reports that the U.S. government is investigating intelligence reports that 25 Chechen terrorists have crossed into the United States via Mexico. The Bush Administration failed to learn a major lesson of 9/11: immigration is now an national security issue. The President's initial solution to the border problem was to make illegal immigrants legal immigrants with the stroke of a pen. The public balked, and the plan was quietly withdrawn. Uncounted numbers of foreigners illegally enter the U.S. every year. Millions come looking for jobs. A smaller number come to sponge off the system. Twenty-five, apparently, have come hoping to kill Americans.
I think you're just trying to distract from the fact that Schilling looked horrible last night.
But yes, Immigration policy is a sacred cow of sorts, or is handled with kid gloves.
Over here, in Europe, one can't touch the subject without being branded far-Right. It's a silly prejudice, it seems to me. Of course, one must be on guard against policies of a gov't or an administration which brand a certain group, illegitimately, as a threat to society, as the National Socialists did beginning in the early 30's with the Jews living in Germany (or pick your own example).
Even Jefferson, however (that's Thomas, not George), admitted that if there are people whose religious or cultural principles are at odds with the basic principles of society, or cause harm to others living with them in said society, then they cannot be allowed to persist in these principles whilst living in that society.
They must either abandon those of their principles opposed to a free and open society as defined in the Constitution (as the doctrinaire Wahabist schools which existed in VA and elsewhere must), or they must be silent, or they must go elsewhere. I don't know why this is so difficult for some people to grasp. And it's not a 'far-right' thing for me to say, but rather very Jeffersonian...
But talk of some abstract, absolute freedom is nonsense. It's a nice theoretical Newtonian-type construct in political theory, as John Locke well knew, but it doesn't apply in actuality. A society must construct rules and laws which forbid those things that are harmful to the body politic.
DPO
Is this really a surprise.
A country that can not control its borders can not control its security.
If the President wants to help fight the war on terrorism, he can start by protecting California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Bush seems to believe in principle that controlling Mexican immigration is wrong and to believe that limiting immigration will hurt his numbers with latinos. But he is currently campagning in a state that should be locked up for him -- Colorado -- partly because it has changed so much in the last 4 years due to latino immigration. When will he stop hallucinating and realize that (no matter how well he speaks spanish) he is not going to win enough of the latino vote to make mass immigration worthwhile for the Republicans politically?
More importantly: His self-righteous talk of "security" (with which he defends his takeover of a sovereign country half-way around the globe) is made to look silly when he won't even control the borders at home.
What are you honkies talkin' about! Who am I goin' to get to operate my chain of Jefferson Cleaners? You honkies won't work for minimum wage. What, you think this deluxe apartment in the Manhattan sky comes cheap?
Thomas Jefferson was a crazy honky as well! Weezy, have you ever heard such nonsense in your life?
Wow. GW just got schooled in that debate.
He just kicked Kerry's a$$. Again.
Kerry again proved that he's a socialist, elitist, tax and spent, liberal democrat.
We need to close off our borders completely and set up a single point for immigrants to enter the country, sort of like Ellis Island. If it worked back then, it'll work now.
