Truth a Victim in Report on Israel's Darfur Refugees

There are only two reasons that a reporter might wait until the seventeenth paragraph of an article to provide the other side to a seemingly outrageous story: first, the reporter is an extraordinarily poor writer who is betting unwisely that readers will actually read all the way to the seventeenth paragraph; second, the reporter knows that the seventeenth paragraph takes all the controversy and shock value out of the first sixteen paragraphs and thus the other side of the story is intentionally buried in hopes that readers will not read that far into the article and learn the truth. A perfect example of this "journalistic" technique was available in this morning's AP story, "Israel to Send Darfur Refugees Back to Egypt." We'll let readers decide whether the AP reporter put the real explanation for Israel's seemingly outrageous and hypocritical rejection of Darfur refugees in the seventeenth paragraph of the story or whether the intent was to paint Israel in the worst light possible through a shocking headline and the first sixteen paragraphs.

Capital Cloak prefaces this analysis by declaring that the situation in Darfur is deplorable, and we have sympathy for the hundreds of thousands who have been killed in what many have labeled genocide in Darfur. Any fighting that kills so many and leaves millions with no choice but to flee their lands and become refugees is of grave concern and should be stopped through all available means. Many countries, particularly those that border Darfur, have absorbed large numbers of refugees, particularly Chad and Egypt. Israel likewise has allowed hundreds of Darfur refugees to remain in Israel despite having entered the country illegally. Yet Israel is now under fire, as evidenced by today's AP story cited above, for declaring that it will not accept any more refugees seeking asylum who enter Israel illegally, with no exceptions.

Anyone familiar with the situation in Darfur would read the headline of today's AP story with a sense of disbelief that a nation established specifically as a home for Jewish refugees from the Holocaust would turn away people escaping from genocide. The first sixteen paragraphs only reinforce the perception that Israel, in deporting Darfur refugees, is acting out the ultimate hypocrisy through its intolerant new policy against all illegal aliens found within its borders. Yet once the AP reporter finally got around to including the Israeli explanation for sending Darfur refugees back to Egypt, the logic of the Israeli policy was not hypocritical or sinister. Like the emotional controversy over illegal immigration in America, the key element in the Israeli Darfur immigration issue is the word "illegal."

Not until the seventeenth paragraph does a reader of the AP story encounter a critical factor behind the Israeli policy toward Darfur refugees: the refugees are not fleeing directly from Darfur into Israel seeking asylum. Israel does not border Darfur, thus refugees from genocide in that land illegally enter nations like Chad or Egypt seeking asylum, and only after realizing how poor their living conditions and economic opportunities are in Chad or Egypt do they then illegally cross into Israel. Thus from Israel's perspective, it is experiencing a rapidly increasing influx of African economic refugees rather than victims fleeing from genocide. Egypt had already promised Darfur refugees that it would not deport them back to Darfur, thus once in Egypt they were safe from genocide. What Egypt could not offer, however, were employment and good living conditions. Thus the refugees illegally entering Israel were not actually seeking asylum or protection from genocide, but rather hoped for jobs and a better standard of living than what was available in Egypt. That pertinent piece of information cast an entirely different light on the motives and hard line stance of the Israelis toward illegal aliens, including Darfur's genocide survivors.

Perhaps more than any nation on earth, Israel must be wary of who it allows to cross its borders. To that end, Israel has established, unlike the United States, very strict policies toward legal and illegal immigration. A paragraph near the end of the AP story further clarifies an important reason for Israel's policy:

That the refugees are from Sudan further complicates the matter, because Israeli law denies asylum to anyone from an enemy state. Sudan's Muslim government is hostile to Israel and has no diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

Americans are wary of Middle Eastern terrorists crossing our border with Mexico by posing as Hispanics, and this has been one frequently cited reason for the need to secure our border with Mexico. Likewise, Israel faces a great peril from Muslim terrorists in Sudan posing as Darfur refugees and infiltrating Israel by playing on that nation's sympathies toward genocide survivors. In reality, Israel has no way to verify the identities of Darfur refugees and confirm whether they were in fact fleeing genocide, seeking jobs or better living conditions than Egypt offered, or were penetrating Israeli security to conduct future terrorist actions. Without the ability to make such determinations, Israel has adopted the most prudent course of action:

On Sunday, a government spokesman said some 500 Darfurians already in Israel would be allowed to stay, but all new asylum seekers would be sent back to Egypt, with no exception.

"The policy of returning back anyone who enters Israel illegally will pertain to everyone, including those from Darfur," spokesman David Baker said.

While international and internal activists fighting to publicize the plight of Darfur refugees condemn Israel for not living up to its "moral and legal obligation to accept any refugees or asylum seekers," Israel has attempted to make it clear that it is not deporting illegal aliens from Darfur back to that country. Israel has been deporting illegal aliens from Darfur back to Egypt, since the refugees entered Israel illegally by crossing Egypt's poorly policed desert border. Thus even in its hard line position toward illegal aliens from Darfur, Israel continues to demonstrate cautious compassion by deporting them back to the safety of Egypt. Yet the AP headline and most of today's article appeared to have been presented in such a way as to generate ill-will and unfavorable impressions of Isreal as enforcing an uncaring and hypocritical policy toward genocide survivors.

Once the distinction is made between asylum seekers and strictly economic refugees from an enemy Muslim government, it is no surprise that Israel has taken decisive steps to curb further attempts by Darfur refugees to come to Israel seeking economic prosperity rather than protection from an African holocaust.

It is a shame that readers of the AP story had to delve nearly twenty paragraphs into it to find the truth behind the emotionally charged headline.

Technorati Tags:
Darfur, Genocide, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Asylum, Deportation, Illegal Immigration, Chad, Economic Migrants, Holocaust, Associated Press, Biased Reporting

Illegal Video Games or Illegal Immigrants?

Which is a greater threat to America’s national security, pirated video games or criminal illegal aliens? While the answer to that question may seem obvious, apparently the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has funding for spending its time and resources to conduct raids and seize illegally modified Wii and PlayStation video game console chips but insufficient funds to dedicate its full resources to the highest priority job that Americans expect of it: locating and deporting criminal illegal aliens. When it comes to prioritizing between video game piracy or illegal immigration investigations, ICE must face the decision, paraphrasing Shakespeare, to Wii or not to Wii.

In fairness to ICE, many federal law enforcement agencies are mandated to enforce multiple federal criminal statutes, some of which have conflicting priorities that often force those agencies to choose investigations based on dollar-loss amounts, likelihood of prosecution by U.S. Attorneys, and positive media attention that generates increased budgets from a media-influenced Congress. Enforcement of immigration statutes and subsequent deportations, as important as they are to national security, do not meet these criteria. As a result, ICE is vilified in the media for tearing apart families, “unfairly” targeting day laborers, or ruining American businesses by disrupting their workforces when it actually enforces existing illegal immigration statutes.

The uproar over ICE enforcement of immigration statutes tends to remind ICE officials that it has multiple missions to perform, and not surprisingly those officials logically conclude that the best way to garner positive media coverage and subsequent Congressional gratitude is to actively enforce other criminal statutes that are less controversial than illegal immigration. One such statute involves the smuggling and distribution of illegal devices that allow pirated video games to play on video game consoles.

This crime may not have any impact on national security, but it does cost businesses like Sony and Nintendo approximately $3 billion in video game sales annually. Of course Sony and Nintendo have effective lobbyists who bring these losses to Congress’ attention, and when ICE conducts raids and executes search warrants to curb this $3 billion per year loss, the media praises it, congress basks in the positive coverage given to its well-spent law enforcement funding, and ICE’s decision to actively enforce non-controversial crimes unrelated to national security is reinforced.

After raids and search warrants were conducted yesterday on 32 businesses and homes in 16 states, the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for ICE made the following statement:

Illicit devices like the ones targeted today are created with one purpose in mind, subverting copyright protections. These crimes cost legitimate businesses billions of dollars annually and facilitate multiple other layers of criminality, such as smuggling, software piracy and money laundering.

The same is true of illegal immigration, which costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually and involves smuggling, human exploitation, money laundering, and a host of other criminal activities. Yet ICE officials recently made it clear to Virginia’s state legislature that it cannot scrape together sufficient funds to train and work with state and local law enforcement officers in Virginia’s jails to deport criminal illegal aliens already in custody. That is worth repeating. Virginia was merely asking ICE to train its deputies to deport illegal alien criminals already in custody and sitting in the state’s jails. Virginia had previously enacted a law allowing its law enforcement agencies that staff state jails to attend official ICE training programs designed to help local agencies check the immigration status of prisoners and begin the deportation status on behalf of ICE. However, earlier this week ICE officials informed Virginia’s legislature that it simply did not have adequate funding to extend the immigration enforcement training to agencies throughout the state. ICE has received similar requests from many law enforcement agencies throughout the nation and its budget to provide the training that would help locals enforce existing illegal immigration laws cannot keep pace with the current demand. Meanwhile, ICE continues to use a portion of its funds to investigate video game piracy.

Virginia’s response was predictable and poignant:

Delegate Robert G. Marshall, Prince William Republican, declined to say whether he would support using state funds for immigration enforcement, but said the federal government should pay to enforce its own laws.

"If we're doing the job of the federal government, they should be humiliated that they wouldn't offer to pay for all of this," said Mr. Marshall, who sits on a separate commission studying the effects of illegal aliens on the state. "I'm not going to start putting the state's cards on the table until the federal government is going to openly say, 'We don't have the interest. The state of Virginia can [forget] their efforts to enforce immigration law.' "

There are an estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the United States. More than 250,000 of them lived in Virginia in 2005, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Virginia’s counties have been so impacted by illegal immigration that two, Loudoun and Prince William counties, recently voted to deny county services to illegal immigrants, a move that was widely applauded by residents who already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation.

The question this budget shortfall for ICE training for local agencies raises is an important one: in a War on Terror, should Homeland Security agencies like ICE continue dividing their manpower, equipment, energy, and budget resources between financial crimes like video game piracy and national security responsibilities like illegal immigration? Like many other agencies, ICE has conducted many successful high-profile criminal investigations of smuggling, counterfeit merchandise, and child pornography materials, among others. They are good at what they do. However, as the recent national uproar over the “comprehensive immigration reform bill” demonstrated, Americans do not want amnesty or new laws; what they want is enforcement of existing illegal immigration laws, and the issue is considered to be directly related to national security. In war, priorities are paramount.

While it is unfortunate that Sony and Nintendo lose money annually due to video game piracy, there are many agencies in departments other than Homeland Security that could enforce piracy and intellectual property statutes. It would make sense if the agencies grouped into the behemoth Department of Homeland Security actually performed duties that directly protect some aspect of the homeland. Agencies that do not perform national security functions should be relocated to other departments, so that the remaining agencies would all reflect what the Department of Homeland Security’s name implies. ICE clearly belongs in Homeland Security, but some of its investigative case load includes enforcement of statutes that are completely devoid of any national security nexus.

If ICE could dedicate its funds, manpower, and other resources exclusively to criminal investigations related to national security rather than to a year-long investigation of video game piracy, it would find funds to help Virginia’s jails start criminal illegal aliens on the path to deportation. ICE did good work in its raids and seizures of 61,000 illegal game console chips, but there is more important work to be done to secure the homeland and our resources must be dedicated to priorities that improve national security. Illegal immigration is such a priority; illegal video games are not.

Americans care far less that their neighbor’s Wii or PlayStation games are legal than they do that their neighbors themselves are here legally.

Technorati Tags:
ICE, Illegal Immigration, Software Piracy, Video Games, Sony, Nintendo, Wii, PlayStation, Virginia, Loudoun County, Prince William County

"Tamper-Proof" ID is Fantasy

The buzzword in the illegal immigration debate is “tamper-proof,” as in tamper proof ID cards for aliens. I just watched Tony Snow’s interview this morning with Steve Doocy on Fox and Friends, and Snow was out there front and center defending the proposed amnesty bill by touting the “tough” enforcement measures it allegedly contains. Perhaps some of the measures would be “tough” if the government had any track record whatsoever of enforcing past laws. However, the most outrageous falsehood that Snow, President Bush, and even the field of 2008 presidential candidates continue to perpetuate, aside from claiming the bill is not amnesty, is the notion of a “tamper-proof” government issued ID card.

Show me a “tamper-proof” ID card, and I can take you to a street corner in Los Angeles near MacArthur Park where the card can be taken, analyzed, dissected, and reproduced to near perfection in a matter of minutes. Governments have a poor history of making “tamper-proof” official documents, as evidenced by the phenomenally lucrative criminal market for counterfeit or forged Social Security Cards, passports (including the new ridiculously vulnerable RF chip encoded version), driver’s licenses, and even law enforcement credentials and badges. The simple truth is that there is no such thing as “tamper-proof,” whether one is referring to ID documents, ID cards, computer networks, or product packaging. Computer hackers, some of them mere teens testing their skills on a dare, have penetrated “secure” networks operated by the Defense Department and many other local, state, and federal agencies. Private corporations guarding priceless trade secrets have also learned by sad experience that their secure systems are anything but tamper proof. Credit card companies have spent millions of dollars attempting to make their cards as tamper-proof as possible, but with only mixed results.

Tony Snow told Steve Doocy moments ago that the proposed “tamper-proof” ID card for illegal aliens would allow the government to know who is currently here, because, according to Snow, anyone found without one would be “kicked out” of America. Let me see if I have this straight: The government that has never made any serious effort to deport illegal aliens it stumbles upon or are handed to it without proper documentation or ID will miraculously transform itself and “kick out” any illegal aliens found without the magic “tamper-proof” ID card after they are issued to amnesty recipients? It doesn’t take a math whiz to calculate that something in that equation is significantly flawed.

Americans should be suspicious of anyone who insists that something is tamper-proof, and even more skeptical of the pie-in-the-sky promise that any new form of ID card will eliminate the underground market for counterfeit official documents. Unfortunately, many 2008 presidential candidates have adopted the lingo of “tamper-proof” ID cards in their policy positions on illegal immigration, including Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. To their credit, they advocate a “tamper-proof” ID card AFTER the borders have been secured and after illegal aliens currently here are given Z visa applications and sent back to their native country to await the granting of legal permission to enter the U.S. That is not the case when the White House champions “tamper-proof” ID cards. President Bush’s vision for immigration reform does not require anyone currently in America to leave, allowing all to remain in place, apply for the Z visa, and continue working and living in America.

As Romney pointed out strongly in the third GOP candidates’ debate, allowing any Z visa applicants to remain in the U.S. to await adjudication of their status gives them tremendous advantages over applicants from other countries who are waiting in their homeland, where they should be. Let’s face facts: immigration adjudication officers will be under enormous pressure to grant Z visas first to applicants already in America, and they will receive preferential treatment despite the illegality of their presence here. A law abiding foreign national who wants to become a U.S. citizen will be kept waiting for years, while foreign nationals who broke our laws by entering the U.S. without documentation will be rewarded with all the benefits of life in the U.S. throughout the entire application time line.

Consider the following whopper from Tony Snow, courtesy of World Net Daily. I preface the inclusion of Snow’s comment and my subsequent analysis with the disclaimer that I think Snow is a fantastic White House Press Secretary, tragically tasked with defending a terrible piece of legislation. Having made that point, note in Snow’s comment all of the violations for which illegal aliens would allegedly be deported under the proposed McCain-Kennedy-Bush amnesty bill:

Snow launched his response by denying that the plan is amnesty. "Right now a lot of times 'amnesty' is used as shorthand for saying, we don't like the bill," he said. "If you look up the dictionary definition of amnesty, it means total forgiveness of a crime.

"What you have here is a crime [entering the U.S. illegally] for which there was no punishment originally. Now what we're saying is everybody who came across the border, No. 1, you pay a thousand dollar fine. No. 2, you are on permanent probation. If you break the law, you're deported. If you do not maintain a job, you are deported. If you do not learn the English language, you're deported. If you do not subject yourself to a criminal background check, you're deported. If you do not have an ID that allows us to trace who you are, where you are, for whom you work, you are deported," he said.

This statement by Snow is astonishing in its scope and in its audacity. When someone has to pull out the dictionary to explain why a proposed bill is not amnesty, you can rest assured that he is in fact trying to conceal amnesty. The semantic hairsplitting involved in defining amnesty is disgustingly reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s legal obfuscations over the legal definition of “sex” in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Trying to sound tough on illegal immigration after doing virtually nothing about it for 6 years is also less than impressive. Snow stated, “If you break the law, you’re deported.” That’s a good place to start, Tony. We have laws on the books that include deportation. Enforce them. The government has not enforced them in the past and claims that deporting illegal aliens already here is logistically impossible. If the government has not been deporting illegal aliens who have already broken our laws, why should anyone accept the claim that the government will suddenly grow sufficient spine to start deporting violators of the proposed bill?

There are certainly a lot of violations listed in Snow’s comment for which deportation is promised. Snow should be reminded that deportation has always been the prescribed punishment for illegal immigration but the government never writes the prescription and the medicine is never administered, hence the 12-20 million who have come here with impunity knowing that the government lacked the spine and/or stomach to deport anyone unless public outcry over a specific case made it unavoidable.

Even in those cases, most criminal deportees are back in the U.S. in a matter of weeks, free to commit further crimes or kill law enforcement officers (remember the slayer of L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy David March). They return so easily because the borders are not secure. Note that I wrote “borders” rather than “border,” because there are enormous security problems associated with both our northern and southern borders. Instead of offering “tamper-proof” ID cards as a spoonful of sugar to help the amnesty medicine go down more smoothly, the government should strive for a “tamper-proof” border and “tamper-proof” deportation proceedings.

Technorati Tags:
Illegal Immigration, Amnesty, Tamper Proof Identification, Tony Snow, Deportation, Immigration Reform, Border Enforcement, Border Security

McCain Fears Riots if Illegals Deported

I fully expected that this morning, considering that the second Democratic candidates’ debate occurred last night, it would be easy to select the most asinine comment of the weekend from a wide variety of choices. Thanks to John Hawkins at Right Wing News, it was easy to identify by far the most ludicrous statement made over the weekend, but it dismayed me that the comment did not come from any of the Democratic candidates and was not uttered in last night’s DNC debate on CNN. Instead, it came from a leading GOP presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, who may have quashed his presidential ambitions through his continued political jihad against true conservatives who oppose giving amnesty to America’s illegal aliens.

As quoted by Right Wing News:

McCain went back and forth with one audience member, who said he was upset that the immigration proposal before Congress is not tough enough. The man told McCain that there were already adequate laws on the books — they just aren't being enforced.

McCain said that was a misnomer.

``The old rules are not workable and enforceable,'' he said. ``We've certainly proved that over the last 20 years.''

Congress ``failed you,'' McCain said. ``We passed a law in 1986 that said we'd give amnesty to some people and now we have 12 million more,'' illegal immigrants.

The man wasn't satisfied with McCain's answer. He asked McCain why the U.S. couldn't execute large-scale deportations, as he had heard they did in France and other countries.

The question seemed to pique McCain.

``In case you hadn't noticed, the thousands of people who have been relegated to ghettos have risen up and burned cars in France,'' McCain said. ``They've got huge problems in France. They have tremendous problems. The police can't even go into certain areas in the suburbs of Paris. I don't want that in the suburbs of America.''

For a lover of history and politics, John McCain here demonstrated a remarkable ignorance, particularly through his analogy with France. Of course there have been and continue to be neighborhoods of young Muslim immigrants in France who riot and burn cars, but McCain leaves out the salient fact that most of these young Muslims in France are not illegal aliens at all. They are not rioting against the government because France is deporting those who are in France illegally. They riot because they came to France expecting “the good life” but have discovered that living on France’s socialist welfare and unemployment benefits is becoming more difficult. Anytime anyone (such as newly-elected President Sarkozy) proposes reducing welfare benefits and forcing these idle hooligans to find jobs or face deportation they riot and burn their own neighborhoods in suburban Paris. The comparison by McCain is completely disingenuous. So disingenuous, in fact, that Sarkozy’s opponent warned French voters that if Sarkozy were elected, France would be torn apart by rioting immigrant workers. Senator McCain might want to remember that she lost that election, and fear-mongering did not sway the French, nor will it sway the American voter.

Yet, even if the riots in France were solely to oppose deportation, McCain’s invocation of them as an example of why America cannot and should not deport its illegal aliens is quite revealing about McCain’s leadership potential. McCain survived the Vietnam War and imprisonment as a POW for 5 years, yet his primary reason not to deport illegal aliens is fear. He fears an illegal alien uprising; he fears riots in American streets; he fears cars burning and police unable to go into certain neighborhoods in America. He fears all of these more than he fears the gangs, drugs, murders, rapes, DUI’s, and other crimes that are already attributable to illegal aliens in disturbingly high numbers in America. I sense that McCain does not take many occasions to venture outside his protected comfort bubble and witness firsthand with law enforcement that America has plenty of neighborhoods and entire suburbs where police will not go.

Notice that when asked why America does not deport illegal aliens like France, McCain became condescending to the audience member and tried to scare the audience with mental images of rioting illegal aliens (isn’t that profiling?), but he did not answer the question. He did not claim that the government lacks the ability to deport, only that it fears the social consequences of doing so. Why is there no fear among our elected officials about the consequences that result when a nation does not enforce the laws it enacts? If Congress cannot agree that enforcing laws governing legal entry and presence is critical to living up to their sworn duty to defend the United States, how likely is it that Congress is in any way serious about any of its other duties? Every election year brings a slew of incumbents and challengers, each of whom vows to “change Washington” or “restore public trust in government.” That trust will never be renewed until government learns to enforce existing laws that the people demanded in the first place.

The question the audience should have posed to McCain was “since you already granted one time amnesty in 1986 and continue to fail to enforce deportation laws already on the books, why on earth should we believe you have any intention of enforcing any measures in the Kennedy amnesty bill?” McCain made the ridiculous claim that the government has proven that the old laws are “unworkable” or “unenforceable,” yet this, too, is simply false. The government has never made a concerted effort to try to enforce the deportation provisions of our immigration statutes, whether out of misguided compassion (President Bush), fear of social unrest (McCain), or political pandering to Hispanic voters (the GOP and DNC). The truth is that since the 1986 amnesty, the government has made only a token effort to enforce deportation. It is an issue of will rather than capacity. Are we supposed to believe that a nation that can send men to the moon, harness the energy of the atom, and make powerful computers that fit into shirt pockets lacks the logistical capacity to secure its borders or systematically deport illegal aliens, especially those who have committed criminal acts? Why would anyone vote for a candidate who lacks the faith and optimism to believe that America is capable of surmounting any obstacle?

Senator McCain is likely to discover, to his chagrin and well in advance of any state primaries, that Americans do not appreciate fear-mongering from their leaders, nor do we want our leaders to be held captive by their own fears of burning cars and riots. Should we forbid the Tigers, Red Wings, or Pistons from ever playing for championships because their fans have a tendency to riot in, loot, and burn various sections of Detroit when they win? Should we never hold another Democratic Convention in Los Angeles because protesters overturned and set fire to vehicles and threw bottles at police in 2000? What about the violent riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention? If fear of potential rioting were the determining factor, large events of every kind would be banned for safety reasons. Fortunately, Americans are not ruled by their fears even if some of its prominent leaders and political candidates think otherwise.

Technorati: John McCain Presidential Candidates Immigration Reform Illegal Immigration Riots Nicolas Sarkozy Deportation Amnesty Illegal Aliens

Should National Security "Bow to Reality?"

The old adage “don’t shoot the messenger” is nowhere more applicable than in the debate over the Bush-Kennedy amnesty for illegal aliens bill currently before Congress. Those who oppose President Bush’s “path to citizenship” (amnesty) for an estimated 12-20 million illegal aliens are branded as racists by Latino groups, as nativists lacking compassion, or as fear mongers by the president himself. Latino groups assume that all opposition to illegal immigration reform is directed solely at Mexicans, but that is ethnic vanity. They would like to believe the issue is all about them, but it not. Illegal immigration is illegal, whether the violator is Mexican, Canadian, German, or Tibetan. Of course, due to geographic proximity, the vast majority of illegal aliens are Mexican, but violators should not be allowed to profit from their illegal action simply because they violate in bulk.

The most effective media messenger thus far in the illegal alien immigration debate has been Ann Coulter. Of course, because Coulter is blunt and opposes the proposed “reform” legislation, she is portrayed by the liberal media as a radical hate monger. It is unfortunate that few seem capable of looking beyond Coulter’s biting sarcasm of past columns to discover the gems of logic in her most recent and quite astute assessment of the Bush-Kennedy bill.

Coulter’s column, “Importing a Slave Class,” unintentionally became a forceful rebuttal to comments made later in the day by Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff. Let’s examine Chertoff’s statements, and then apply Coulter’s arguments to determine who makes a better case.

Chertoff, in an extensive interview with USA Today’s editorial board on May 23, made some comments that were extraordinary coming from the man charged with protecting homeland security. The most telling remark may have been his criticism of Bush-Kennedy bill opponents for demanding deportations that are “not going to happen.” There it was, in black and white print; Homeland Security throwing up its arms in surrender to 12-20 million lawbreakers and admitting they will not be deported, apparently regardless of whether the Bush-Kennedy bill passes. The following excerpt from USA Today’s report provides a sample of Chertoff’s embrace of amnesty:

Chertoff acknowledged that there is "a fundamental unfairness" in a bill allowing illegal immigrants to stay. But trying to force them to leave would be impossible, Chertoff said, "We are bowing to reality."

He dismissed the argument of Republican conservatives, such as Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., who argue that illegal immigrants will leave if strict enforcement of U.S. laws makes it impossible for them to find a job.

"You're not going to replace 12 million people who are doing the work they're currently doing," Chertoff said. "If they don't leave, then you are going to give them silent amnesty. You're either going to let them stay or you're going to be hypocritical."

Bilbray said his idea hasn't worked because "there's been a conscious strategy of not enforcing the law."

Chertoff, whose department has staged a number of recent raids that have resulted in mass roundups of illegal workers and sharp protests from religious groups, warned there will be more if the workers don't get a chance to become legal. "We're going to enforce the law," he said. "People all around the country will be seeing teary-eyed children whose parents are going to be deported."

There is a lot in that excerpt to turn one’s stomach, but I will begin with the white flag attitude that deportation is impossible. No one asked Chertoff to deport all 12-20 million illegal aliens overnight, but his response is very clear; if you can’t deport them all, why try to deport any? Remembering that Coulter wrote her column before Chertoff’s interview, here is Coulter’s rebuttal to the notion that deportation is impossible:

…The jejune fact that we "can't deport them all" is supposed to lead ineluctably to the conclusion that we must grant amnesty to illegal aliens – and fast!

I'm astounded that debate has sunk so low that I need to type the following words, but: No law is ever enforced 100 percent.

We can't catch all rapists, so why not grant amnesty to rapists? Surely no one wants thousands of rapists living in the shadows! How about discrimination laws? Insider trading laws? Do you expect Bush to round up everyone who goes over the speed limit? Of course we can't do that. We can't even catch all murderers. What we need is "comprehensive murder reform." It's not "amnesty" – we'll ask them to pay a small fine.

If it's "impossible" to deport illegal aliens, how did we come to have so much specific information about them? I keep hearing they are Catholic, pro-life, hardworking, just dying to become American citizens and will take jobs other Americans won't. Someone must have talked to them to gather all this information. Let's find that guy – he must know where they are!

…If the 12-million figure is an extrapolation based on the number of illegal immigrants in public schools or emergency rooms and well-manicured lawns in Brentwood, then shouldn't we be looking for them at schools and hospitals and well-manicured lawns in Brentwood?

There are a lot of well-manicured lawns in the Metropolitan Washington DC area too, but I am SURE that has no bearing on the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill debate.

I keep hearing President Bush and others claim that this is our best chance for reform, or something similar, but Americans should not accept the “either/or” choice placed before them. Coulter’s point is valid; No one is demanding 100% deportation or overnight deportation. For that matter, everyone hopes for but few expect Homeland Security to identify and catch 100% of the terrorists in America. Americans do, however, expect a 100% effort to do so, and should demand the resignation of anyone who considers less than 100% effort to be acceptable. What Americans have wanted all along is an honest, adequately funded, and consistently applied effort to enforce the illegal immigration laws already in place. What Americans did not request was for someone in Washington to unilaterally decide that it was not in America’s best interest to actually enforce immigration laws. That decision is not Chertoff’s to make, nor is it the president’s responsibility to interfere with a law enforcement function. Does America want a Homeland Security Secretary who thinks his tasks are impossible? Should Homeland Security be in the business of “bowing to reality” or creating reality through determined application of the law?

The number has reached 12-20 million precisely because the government has not enforced existing laws. The goal of law enforcement is often as much to produce societal deterrence as it is to punish individual offenders. By granting previous amnesty (1986) and then not enforcing existing laws, no deterrent was ever applied and now officials like Chertoff are unwilling even to try enforcement. Instead of rolling up his shirtsleeves and going to work, Chertoff wants to roll up his shirtsleeves and wash his hands of that 12-20 million figure.

It has been claimed that there is not enough money to hire additional Customs, Border Patrol, or Immigration and Citizenship personnel to handle any large scale deportation effort. Yet Chertoff is convinced that he could secure additional funds and staff to handle performing 12-20 million background checks in a gradual process to legalize (amnesty) the illegals he claims it impossible to deport. Hugh Hewitt recently interviewed Chertoff and the Homeland Security Secretary made it quite clear that while he is willing to gradually legalize illegal aliens, he will not consider gradually deporting those same aliens:

HH: I know it’s a little more prosaic what I’m getting to, Mr. Secretary, which is you’ve got 12 million applications.

MC: Right.

HH: Who’s physically going to pick them up and handle them? Which department’s going to do that?

MC: We’re going to use…DHS will collect the applications, collect the fingerprints. The process of background checking then will occur in cooperation with the FBI and its databases, our databases, and all the databases that are currently kept in the terrorist screening center.

HH: And have you allocated staff time? I mean, an 11 million, if it’s on the low end, 12 million investigations, 12 million interviews, have you got an analysis of where that’s going to funnel to, and who’s actually going to do that work, because from my time in the government as deputy director of OPM running the securities investigation, it takes days to do a decent investigation, and this is all going to hit at once. I don’t know where the people are.

MC: Well, it’s not going to hit at once. It will hit over a period of time, because there will be an enrollment period. And as I know you know, Hugh, obviously, we’re not going to be doing background checks of the kind that you do for a top security clearance. What we’re going to be doing is running fingerprints and names against various databases, which is a process we currently use, for example, in screening people who get visas to come into the country for all kinds of purposes. So we already do millions of these through our existing processes. There’s no question we’re going to need money to increase the staff and the capability for these 12 million. But I want to put it in perspective by saying that we process 80 million air travelers every year coming through our airports, so we already deal with a very large volume of people that we are screening to let them come into the country legally.

It is incredible that the head of Homeland Security would ask for additional funding and staff to help streamline the legalization process but adopts a “bowing to reality” posture when it comes to enforcement of current laws. Chertoff attempted to cast the debate in compassionate terms, citing examples of federal raids that resulted in a press conference, some token arrests, and news coverage of crying children. Americans should reject this clouding of the issue. Raids and deportations are rare, not because of the negative press or crying children, but for reasons Ann Coulter captured most effectively:

The people who make arguments about "jobs Americans won't do" are never in a line of work where unskilled immigrants can compete with them. Liberals love to strike generous, humanitarian poses with other people's lives.

Something tells me the immigration debate would be different if we were importing millions of politicians or Hollywood agents. You lose your job, while I keep my job at the Endeavor agency, my Senate seat, my professorship, my editorial position or my presidency. (And I get a maid!)

The only beneficiaries of these famed hardworking immigrants – unlike you lazy Americans – are the wealthy, who want the cheap labor while making the rest of us chip in for the immigrants' schooling, food and health care.

These great lovers of the downtrodden – the downtrodden trimming their hedges – pretend to believe that their gardeners' children will be graduating from Harvard and curing cancer someday, but 1) they don't believe that; and 2) if it happened, they'd lose their gardeners.

The Bush administration is busy casting verbal stones at those who oppose the current immigration “reform” bill, but there should be no surprise that Americans are angered by the proposed legislation. The federal government has proven unwilling to enforce existing laws for decades, but now a new bill with new laws will magically be enforced and seal up our borders? Rather than granting amnesty, government should work to earn our trust by securing America’s borders, not just the one with Mexico, and then enforcing laws already in place. “Sanctuary cities” became sanctuaries because local law enforcement encountered illegal aliens, reported them to INS-CBP-ICE, and then waited eternally for a response or sign of interest in taking custody of the alien. When those agencies demonstrated no effort to take immigration status seriously, local governments adopted the same stance.

Illegal immigration, like Iraq, is a difficult national security situation. The president refuses to “cut and run” in Iraq, but amnesty would be to illegal immigration what surrender in defeat would be to Iraq. America can afford neither.

France Doing Job Americans Won't Do

I never thought it would come to this. The more I observe America’s political state, I find myself wishing that our president and Congress were, well, more French. I do not refer to their culinary tastes or mandatory maximum 35 hour work week (that would require Congress to put in many more hours than they currently do!). Perhaps it would be more accurate to write that I wish our leaders had the courage of the newly elected and unapologetic pro-American French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. While President Bush and political opportunists in the House and Senate, such as John McCain and Ted Kennedy, attempt to sneak amnesty past the American people while insisting it is not amnesty, the French are taking steps to do what the vast majority of its citizens have demanded: Not granting legalization (amnesty) to France’s illegal immigrants and continuing to deport them at an increasing rate.

When did the French develop more backbone than Americans? Why is France becoming increasingly aware of the need to enforce its existing laws and adopting stronger new ones at the very time America’s elected officials are insisting that a “path to citizenship” (amnesty) should be provided to illegal immigrants? Is it possible that France, faced with the largest Muslim population of any European nation, realized that its very survival might depend on securing its borders and developing intelligence regarding who resides in France and why they are there? President Bush and vote pandering members of both parties claim enforcement and deportation are not realistic, yet France is stepping up its efforts to do both.

One of President Sarkozy’s first post-election moves was to establish a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, which is charged with enforcing immigration laws and deporting violators. At Sarkozy’s urging, the new ministry is also concerned with helping legal immigrants better assimilate into French society, culture, and education. Sarkozy insists that immigrants learn the French language and that once legal citizenship is extended and family members from the native country seek to join the new French citizen, those family members must demonstrate French language proficiency as well. While the French require immigrants to speak the national language and integrate better with their new country, America cannot even agree that English is the national language, thus integration or assimilation are optional for immigrants, regardless of legal status.

It is a dangerous situation when law enforcement or other first responders cannot communicate with citizens in entire sections of American cities because learning English is not required for driving, shopping, obtaining government services, or citizenship. France is moving to correct this; America is afraid of offending immigrants by imposing American civilization upon them.

The Senate immigration bill put forward by Senators Kennedy, McCain, Kyl, and others late last week and praised by the president, is rightfully under assault as amnesty by another name. 2008 GOP candidate Mitt Romney spoke out forcefully against the bill, and was joined later by 2008 GOP expected candidate Fred Thompson in that assessment. The 2008 DNC candidates are avoiding this issue like the plague, as they cannot pander to Latino voters and appear tough on homeland security simultaneously. Romney and Thompson appear to grasp that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose amnesty or any policy that offers anything similar to it. Over time, Americans will embrace candidates who, like Sarkozy, recognize that the existence of national culture and identity are threatened by illegal immigration and legal immigration without integration.

Sarkozy’s election victory sparked rioting in French suburbs populated in large part by Muslim immigrants living on government subsidies who feared Sarkozy would follow through with his promises to slash welfare programs and make immigrants work to support themselves. When French voters see this unrest, it only assures that they will continue to ask pertinent questions of their political leaders: Where did these immigrants come from? Are they here in France legally? Why aren’t they trying to become French? Sarkozy offered the desired though controversial answers and the French elevated him to the presidency to restore order and preserve France from a perceived invasion of immigrants, legal and illegal.

Jokes about French retreat are becoming stale and do not apply to Sarkozy’s France, while America’s government is replacing France as a punch line. It is the American government that wants to retreat from Iraq, retreat from confronting near-nuclear Iran, retreat from securing its borders, retreat from establishing English as the national language, and retreat from enforcing existing deportation laws. In coming years, the French may boycott American cheese, American Airlines, and all things American because America, particularly through its elected officials, increasingly symbolizes cowardice.