Immigration—The Unmentionable Elephant In This Election

You know what makes me nervous
about President Bush?

It`s not his

facial expressions. Nor his

verbal clumsiness. I don`t care about his alleged
weakness at the podium.

What concerns me more than anything
else is his demonstrated

weakness at our borders.

Immigration enforcement is the
six-ton elephant in the room. Barely two sentences were
devoted to border control in the

first presidential debate, despite the fact that the
major issue of the showdown was leadership on national
security. Both President Bush and Sen. Kerry

bloviated about throwing more money at the

Department of Homeland Security, while ignoring the
fundamental problem: Our immigration laws are being
broken en masse because America is unwilling to
enforce them—clearly,
consistently, and unapologetically—until it is too
late.

The vice presidential candidates
are no better. Dick Cheney, alas, has

dutifully defended the administration`s abominable
amnesty plan, which amounts to a mass government
pardon of illegal visa overstayers and

border crossers and deportation fugitives at a time
of war. (We are at war, aren`t we, gentlemen?)

For his part, Sen. John Edwards
supports the just-as-awful Democratic version of this
illegal alien incentive policy.

On the same day of the presidential
debate last week, alarming news broke in McAllen, TX.,
which underscores the illegal immigration/terrorism
nexus. The feds have been investigating evidence from a
high-level al Qaeda operative that the terrorists were
planning to poison our military`s supply of MREs (meals
ready-to-eat). In the course of the investigation, law
enforcement officers initiated a sweep of a McAllen-area
defense subcontractor, the

Wornick Company, which produced

MREs and had been an

alleged target of al Qaeda.

Luckily, no signs of sabotage or
terrorist infiltration were uncovered. But the place was
crawling with illegals (mostly, but not all Mexican) who
used falsified ID and employment forms. In an
all-too-rare occurrence, an executive from an employment
agency that provided workers for Wornick was indicted
last week for flouting immigration rules and faking
documents.

Last year, a

measly four employers faced criminal prosecution for
immigration employment violations.

There are countless Pollyannas in
the political, media, and intellectual elite who
continue to downplay the dangers of open borders.
“Better intelligence” will solve the problem, they
argue naively. “We are a nation of immigrants,”
they preach cluelessly.

“Family values don`t stop at the Rio Grande,”
they babble pointlessly.

Meanwhile, the patient and
undeterred minions of Osama bin Laden dispatched from
abroad are here. Others are teaming up with other
immigration outlaws to wreak havoc on our security.

Not far from Bush`s Crawford ranch,
there are ominous signs that al Qaeda has teamed with
illegal alien smugglers from Mexico to bring new
operatives through the southern border. The feds
recently disclosed that suspected al Qaeda operative

Adnan Shukrijumah—a young

Saudi pilot on the run since

Sept. 11—met with the notorious

El Salvador-based gang/alien smuggling operation,

Mara Salvatrucha.

And in southern Arizona, site of
the

next presidential debate, the illegal Arab alien

smuggling route known as

“Terrorist Alley” is as unprotected as ever.
Unknown numbers of al Qaeda in America have

fraudulent identification, which enables them (like
their Sept. 11 predecessors) to blend into the vast sea
of 13 million other

immigration outlaws who have

little fear of getting caught.

It doesn`t help matters when Bush`s
own border security undersecretary,

Asa Hutchinson, states publicly that it`s
“not realistic” for his own officers to try to
do their jobs and

deport law-breakers.

In an even more shameful betrayal,
the White House is now reportedly pressuring stalwart
House Republicans into scrapping important immigration
enforcement provisions of the House Intelligence Bill
that speed up the

deportation process and bar illegal aliens from
obtaining valuable
driver`s licenses or using easy-to-fake foreign
consular ID cards. Why? Because they are politically
unpopular with

ethnic constituencies.

This race is not just about who is
better able to hunt down and destroy

our enemies abroad. It`s about who is more willing
to hunt them down

right here,

jail them,

kick them out, and

keep them out of our home.

President Bush has shown that he
can stand up to the international Axis of Weasels.

He must show the same resolve
against

La Raza, the

immigration lawyers, and

Teddy Kennedy.

Michelle Malkin [email
her] is author of

Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores.
Click

here for Peter Brimelow`s review. Click

here for Michelle Malkin`s website.

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