9/11: Eight years onCongress and homeland security legislation: A different view // Ben Frankel
First, illegal immigration is not, in the main, a security issue; an argument can be made that continued illegal immigration, as is the case with any illegal activity, may erode the rule of law and is costly to the American public, but these are not security arguments; second, if we want to make sure no WMDs are smuggled into the United States, there is no alternative to the 100 percent inspection mandate
In another article in this issue we summarized a report by the Heritage Foundation on what Congress should and should not do by way of laws to improve the security of the United States. The report’s authors offer useful suggestion, but we want to raise questions about two of their recommendations.
Illegal immigration
The authors pay much attention, in both the “do’s” and “dont’s” sections of their report, to the issue of illegal immigration. There is a mismatch here, though, between what they say about the seriousness of the problem and the solutions they offer. If illegal immigration poses a serious security risk to the United States, then merely not encouraging more illegal immigration, while helpful at the margins, is not nearly enough. What should be done about the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States? If they pose a major security risk, they should be deported. Rounding up and deporting 12 million people is not practical and will never be done — leaving aside the question of the serious damage such deportation would inflict on agriculture and on the construction and hospitality industries.
If we can manage to live with 12 million illegal immigrants in our midsts, and since there are no plans to round them up and deport them, then, perhaps, illegal immigrants do not pose such a major security risk to the United States.
The authors may be right to argue that continued illegal immigration “would erode rule of law and be costly to the American public,” and these may be good reasons to write tougher immigration laws and enforce them, but this has little to do with security considerations.
Maritime security
The authors write that “Going forward, Congress needs to stop playing po
litics and pandering to stakeholders and start looking at homeland security in a holistic, long-term, sustainable fashion.” They are right, of course — except that their recommendation that Congress should drop the 100 percent screening requirement of maritime and air cargo appears to convey the opposite impression: Most stakeholders — shippers, merchant marine operators, port authorities, airlines, large retailers — oppose the 100 percent screening requirement because they may have to pay for part of it and, until technology improves, it might slow down commerce. Most of those who are involved in public safety support the mandate. Now, an observer would be forgiven were he to conclude that recommending dropping the 100 percent mandate is “pandering to stakeholders,” while insisting that the mandate be implemented is responsible public policy.
What the authors of
