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December 13, 2004,
8:28 a.m. EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece appears in the December 27, 2004, issue of National Review. "Try this thought experiment: It is December 2005. The immigration-reform bill that was supposed to incorporate the stricter provisions on illegal immigrants omitted from the 2004 intelligence-reform bill — including a provision forbidding states to issue them driver's licenses — was published a week ago. It contained no such provisions. But it did contain what the White House again denied was an "amnesty" for illegal immigrants. This story was driven from the front page very quickly, however. Forty-eight hours later, four American airliners were shot down with missiles over Midwestern cities, and almost 700 passengers were killed. In one case three terrorists were apprehended fleeing the scene. FBI and police raids based on their interrogations led to no new arrests but uncovered documents hurriedly abandoned that indicated a nationwide terror network with plans to blow up dams and power stations. The cells were linked not by the Internet — which the terrorists apparently distrusted as capable of being infiltrated — but by a system of couriers using automobiles rather than risking airport checkpoints. In the following days, 14 such couriers were tracked down and arrested on the basis of information retrieved from their hideouts. All but two were illegal immigrants; all had legally-issued driver's licenses; and one had some of the components for a nuclear warhead in his car. Yesterday, impeachment proceedings against the president . . . The above scenario is, of course, implausible. Why would the terrorists avoid the airports when the civil-rights sections of the Justice and Transportation departments have made them and the airlines perfectly safe for terrorists? As Heather Mac Donald points out in a superb article in City Journal — "Homeland Security? Not Yet" — the U.S. government is not merely lax in enforcing sensible precautions against further hijackings; every granny who has been groped while young Middle Easterners flit unmolested through the screening knows that. What Mac Donald further establishes is that the executive is strongly proactive in preventing others, notably the airlines, from defending public safety as best they can. In particular, the Transportation department has launched several lawsuits against airlines because pilots had banned passengers they thought were security risks. It was more concerned that these exclusions might have been prompted in part by racial profiling than it was about the safety of passengers. Airlines are now paying fines and fees to instruct their staff in the dangers of profiling. It's not just the airlines. Earlier this year Asa Hutchinson, the Department of Homeland Security's man in charge of border security, shut down a border-patrol initiative to catch illegal aliens. Reason? It was catching too many illegal aliens... YOU CAN READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF THE DIGITAL VERSION OF NATIONAL REVIEW. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A SUBSCRIPTION TO NR DIGITAL OR NATIONAL REVIEW, YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR A SUBSCRIPTION TO NATIONAL REVIEW here OR NATIONAL REVIEW DIGITAL here (a subscription to NR includes Digital access). * * * YOU’RE NOT A SUBSCRIBER TO NATIONAL REVIEW? Sign up right now! It’s easy: Subscribe to National Review here, or to the digital version of the magazine here. You can even order a subscription as a gift: print or digital! |
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