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Arresting Immigrants, Fighting Terrorism
Over at The Reaction, Heraclitus has a post up about the recent raid by homeland security agents on a Massachusetts defence contractor. 350 immigrants, including many women, were arrested.
Is linking immigration and terrorism the government’s new gameplan? Is immigration the key wedge issue to energize the GOP base in 2008? Does it matter that these “illegal” immigrants were working for a defence contractor? And what about the children of those arrested?
You can find the full post here.
11 Responses to “Arresting Immigrants, Fighting Terrorism”
the new definition of chutzpah: entering this country illegally, having kids, getting arrested for violating immigration laws and then moaning that their poor kids are all alone without mommy and/or daddy.
if you’re so worried about kids being separated from their lawbreaking parents, is it fair to assume you’ll likewise cry over single parents arrested for other crimes, such as murder and the like? how can the state separate these lawbreakers from their kids? where’s the humanity?
and what’s with the (probably fake) concern over the fact that this raid involved a defense contractor? You’re not willing to excuse lawbreaking just because the company happens to be selling things to the military, are you?
and last I read, the plant had no shortage of legal residents lining up for the now-open jobs… just as has happened elsewhere in the country.
Well, linking terrorism and illegal immigration is certainly problematic. The main link that I could see is that porous borders and the ability to live within the US with no official identity are two things that facilitate infiltration of the US by terrorists. So does easy access to guns and explosives, but this is legal in the US, immigrating illegally is not. Still, I think that immigration policy/funds should probably be kept separate from anti-terrorism policy/funds, though they should collaborate where necessary.
As for the specific situation at hand, let’s have a go:
1. Whoever illegally employed these people needs to go to jail, pronto.
2. Those within the US illegally should be deported. Sorry, no cutting in line.
3. Concern for the children is fine (insinuation that TMV commentators callously could give a shit about those kids is not). If their parents are detained they should be turned over to a legal resident family member or if there isn’t one, to social services (foster care or orphanage, temporarily). When the parents are deported the kids go with them. If the parents have actual criminal reasons to stay detained or are found to be unfit as parents efforts should be made to find the families of those kids in their home countries and send them there. If this STILL isn’t possible the children should stay under government care, just like any unprotected minor.
PS: If it can be proven that the child was born within the US I have no idea how to handle that situation. I personally am against giving citizenship if you were born on US soil, but that’s the law, and as long as it is anchor babies will keep happening.
The terrorism link is not as spurrious as some would say, because of the invelvement of fake I.D.s. Certainly, we shouldn’t equate immigrants with terrorists. But when you are dealing with the potential of terrorists entering the country, those entering illegally do present special challenges and risks.
In a way, this is the same argument as that involving Muslim immigrants in Europe who are advocating for sharia law.
We want to be welcoming, but we don’t want the newcomers determining our laws or rules.
To resolve the issue of humanitarian vs illegal, it is crucial to redo our legal immigration policies. There must be an easier way to enter the country legally, with documents intact, so that we don’t need to think about terrorism in this context.
Temporary work permits, properly enforced, make a lot of sense to me.
As discussed at the link, HezbollahTerrorists have actually infiltrated the U.S. over the border, and thousands of people from “SpecialInterest countries” have successfully entered without being caught. So, to those of us who are actually familiar with the subject, yes, there are strong links between IllegalImmigration and possible terrorism.
And, even the BushAdministration has been fairly good about arresting IllegalAliens, but only if they were working on military bases, nuclear power plants, and the like. They don’t care about anything else (except the occasional ShowRaid), but they do do something about those sensitiveFacilities.
Obvious to just about everyone else, Bush is on the wrong side, so using this as a wedge issue makes no sense. They want to give their backers a nice source of workers, without any problems.
And, almost everyone admits that the “defence contractor” was a sweatshop; failing to raid them and failing to deport the IllegalAliens just leads to more sweatshops, as would ImmigrationReform.
And, why is it spelled “defence”?
RaH does have a point, although to be blunt, most discussions of “illegal immigration” are really talking about illegal Mexican immigration, which doesn’t really have a terrorism angle. I would be curious as to which industries we have found suspected terrorists, but even then you can’t say ‘oh well we just won’t look at these industries because they are all Latino, because that then becomes a weak point for infiltration.
However, the seriousness of the national security concerns simply make it critical that we deal with the problem quickly, which means naturalization which gets people on the books where they can be checked out quickly, not simply enforcement and deportment, which encourages people to stay in hiding as long as possible.
I don’t see how retroactively enforcing immigration laws 6 years late is a plus, call me puzzled but I just don;t see how that works.
This kinda reminds me of the imaginary nature of “Immigration Reform”. They already have laws regarding it, they are simply not enforced. So, lets make some more laws to ignore.
And what about the defense contractor that hired the illegals? People get all up in arms about illegal immigrants, but then get strangely silent when it comes to the companies that hired them. Yes, in the cases of the contractor in California that hired illegals and in the case of the Swift meat packing plant in Iowa, the employers got penalized, but those cases seem to be more the exception than the rule.
.oO{ proofread…}
The “contractor in California” I refer to was the one that was tasked with building a section of fence along the US border.
Food For Thought: Something must be done by individual Americans as the Federal Government has grown lazy.
Suggestions we hire aliens website
“A LINE IN THE SAND” Iraq’s Learn Spanish Before Crossing
Senator Mc Caul’s Website http://www.house.gov/mccaul/
Immigration may not be a problem with a few more 911′s