War on Terror

American jihad, amnesty, War on Terror

A wake-up call for the Senate

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Kris W. Kobac writes today in the Washington Times:

The ability of terrorists to obtain legal status by fraudulently applying for amnesty is also well established.
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A 2005 study by Janice Kephart, counsel to the September 11 commission, found that 59 out of 94 foreign-born terrorists (about two in three) successfully committed immigration fraud to acquire or adjust legal status. So, we know that terrorists will seek amnesty under the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the legislation creates two huge doorways for them to get it.

First, the bill limits the government’s ability to stop a terrorist operating under his real name, because it allows the government only one business day to do a “background check.” If the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudicator can’t find any terrorist connection in time, the alien receives a probationary “Z” visa, allowing him to work and roam the country at will.

This might work if the government had a single, readily searchable database of all the world’s terrorists. But we don’t. Much information exists only on paper, while foreign governments are the source for other data. Twenty-four hours simply isn’t enough time. It’s a terrorist fast track [emphasis added mine].

Moreover, as a practical matter, the adjudicators wouldn’t even have 24 hours. As the Government Accountability Office reported in 2006, USCIS is already stretched to the breaking point, receiving approximately 6 million applications for immigration benefits (asylum, green cards, etc.) annually. As a result, the GAO concluded, failure to detect fraud is already “an ongoing and serious problem.” It’s so bad that an informal “six-minute rule” is in place — spend no more than six minutes looking at any application.

Assuming (conservatively) that 12 million illegal aliens apply for the amnesty within the year allowed, it would triple the annual workload, from 6 million applications to 18 million. Consequently, applications for the amnesty would receive only a few minutes of scrutiny. Terrorist applications would sail through.

The second doorway is just as troubling. The Senate bill also fails to stop terrorists who invent an entirely “clean” identity. Because the bill contains no requirement that the alien produce a secure foreign passport proving that he is who he says he is, terrorists will easily game the system.

A terrorist could walk into a USCIS office and offer a completely fictitious name — one without any negative information associated with it. In other words, a terrorist could declare that his name is “Rumpelstiltskin,” produce two easily forged scraps of paper indicating that he was in the country before Jan. 1, 2007, and walk out with a probationary Z visa — complete with a government-issued ID card backing up his false identity.

Don’t expect proponents of the bill to fix that loophole. The majority of the 12-20 million illegal aliens do not possess a passport. Requiring them to present one would disqualify too many aliens for the pro-amnesty crowd Consequently, dozens of terrorists will receive amnesty if the bill becomes law.

9/11, Political wind, War on Terror

Fun facts about the NY Times’ experts in the War on Terror

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I was reading yesterday about Sunday’s debate between the Democratic Party’s candidates for President. All but one blames Bush for our being, in their “expert” opinions, less safe here. While none of the candidates could recall a successful terrorist attack here since 9/11, the New York Times childed Senator Clinton for saying, “we are safer than we were,” even though she added, “we are not yet safe enough.” They did not argue with her or take any of the candidates to task for not saying how they would prevent terrorist attacks from happening here in the future. Instead, the Times brought out their big guns, their own experts:

The question of whether the nation is safer than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks is debated passionately among policy makers and security experts. A survey of more than 100 foreign policy experts, conducted in February by Foreign Policy magazine, for instance, found that three-quarters believed that the United States was losing the war on terror.

As is their practice when revealing America’s national secrets, the Times did not name “three-quarters” of those among the “more than 100 foreign policy experts” who think we are “losing the war on terror” yet they did name who surveyed them. The Foreign Policy magazine is:

“…a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel. It is published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. Its topics include global politics, economics, integration and ideas.”

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is:

“…a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States. Founded in 1910 by Andrew Carnegie, its work is nonpartisan and dedicated to achieving practical results.”

Here are some fun facts about the past and present presidents of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After all, if even the survey takers remain anonymous, how can we judge if there was bias involved when “more than 100” anonymous “security experts” are touted by the New York Times:

Nicholas Murray Butler (1925-1945):

“Butler was president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945.
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“Anti-Semitism was common in American education during Butler’s day, and it may be argued that his personal dislike of Jews, and discriminatory policies against them, were no worse than average for that time. Nonetheless, Butler often considered Jews as a whole to be aggressive and vulgar … For many years of his presidency, Columbia had a strict quota limiting the number of Jews who could attend. In 1928, the Board of Trustees authorized the creation of “Seth Low Junior College” in Brooklyn as a way to deal with the number of Jewish (and Italian) applicants. If Columbia College, the university’s prestigious undergraduate school, had already admitted its modest quota of Jews for the year, other Jewish applicants would be shunted to Seth Low. Among Seth Low’s alumni were Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach and noted science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who wrote of how he ended up at Seth Low … When Seth Low folded in 1938, its remaining students were absorbed into the Columbia College undergraduate population. However, when they graduated, they received the stigma of a Bachelor of Science degree, and not the normal Bachelor of Arts—which is exactly what happened to Asimov.”

Alger Hiss (1946-1949):

“…was a U.S. State Department official involved in the establishment of the United Nations. He was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.

Joseph E. Johnson (1950-1971):

Although he served as a consultant at numerous international conferences, and was an alternate U.S. delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1969, he is perhaps best remembered for his role on the U.N. Conciliation Commission for Palestine in 1961. As part of the commission Johnson was named a special envoy, and traveled throughout the Middle East, meeting with various governments in search of a means of providing Palestinian refugees with a homeland of their own. Johnson’s final report recommended that refugees who were forced out of their homes by the 1948 war be allowed to return to their former homes in Israel. However, neither side accepted Johnson’s proposals.

Jessica T. Mathews (?-current):

As we mark the fourth anniversary of Bush’s catastrophic war in Iraq, a round of blaming is sure to ensue along with counts of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded, money spent, dreams dashed, and the like. What we should also do is celebrate the people who opposed the war from the beginning. In the face of severe opprobrium and intimidation, a sizable number of Americans saw the charade for what it was and rued the oncoming disaster. They should be cheered, time and again.
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The public intellectuals and activists who took a strong stand: Medea Benjamin, Howard Zinn, Tom Hayden, Jesse Jackson, Noam Chomsky, Leslie Cagan, John Cavannagh, Michael Klare, Scott Ritter, Ben Cohen, Jessica T. Mathews, Tom Andrews, James Carroll, and Jonathan Schell, just to start the list of honorees. Throw in the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference and nearly every major religious organization to the left of the Christian Right.

Careful, Senator Clinton; the New York Times cannot endorse you unless you actually win the Democratic Party’s nomination. Dancing towards the middle this far before the primaries will continue to cause them to wheel out their “experts” to survey those who will disagree with you.

Now wasn’t that fun?