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Critics of U.S. immigration policy argue that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks tragically proved that the country needs to clamp down on legal as well as illegal immigration.
“The numbers of immigrants are such that the government has lost the capacity to monitor who is here, and under what conditions,” says Daniel Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “The numbers are too high. The exploded numbers of the aliens fighting to stay in the country have hamstrung the whole enforcement apparatus of the Immigration and Naturalization Service” (INS).
In fact, according to INS figures, the number of legal immigrants has been steadily falling. From an all-time high of more than 1.5 million in 1990, the number dropped to 646,568 in 1999, the most recent year for which totals are available. At the same time, however, non-immigrant visitors, such as tourists, business people and students, rose sharply. In 1999, 31.4 million visitors were admitted, compared with 17.6 million in 1990.
The number of immigrants isn't the critics' only concern. Some argue that immigrant communities in the United States offer a haven for terrorists.
“Immigrant sub-cultures, not just Islamic or Arabic but many different cultures, provide comfort and anonymity for potential terrorists,” says political columnist Sam Francis. “Obviously, most of the people in the subculture communities are not terrorists, and most of them are not sympathetic with terrorists. But the community itself provides cover and a kind of sanctuary for terrorists.”
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, agrees. “Immigrant communities serve as the sea within which terrorist fish swim,” he says, much as Italian communities in major U.S. cities once served as “incubators” for the Mafia. It was only when immigration from Italy was reduced, Krikorian says, that people in the communities began to assimilate into the broader American society. “The Mafia lost the incubator they benefited from and the FBI was, little by little, able to penetrate the group,” Krikorian says.
Krikorian argues that lower levels of immigration today would have a similar impact. “Today, Muslim communities form unwitting cover for terrorists, and promoting the assimilation of the recent immigrants in these communities can only make it more difficult for terrorists who operate in these communities to use them as hosts,” he says. “A reduction in immigration is naturally going to allow assimilation to operate more thoroughly, and that will have national-security benefits.”
But civil liberties advocates reject proposals that single people out by race or national origin, and especially those that target legal immigrants for special attention. “We had a terrible legacy in this country of discriminatory immigration policy,” says Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “It would be a huge mistake for this country to assume we're going to come up with a list of pariah countries in the Islamic world that can't get access to the United States.”
In fact, Edgar says, terrorists don't always come from a specific country or group of countries. For example, he says, recent terrorist incidents have involved an American — Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh — and a man from Great Britain, Richard Reid, who was recently arrested on board a U.S. airliner after trying to ignite explosives in his shoes.
Edgar suspects other motives lie behind suggestions to reduce legal immigration. “I think the basic impetus behind some of these proposals has nothing to do with enforcing immigration laws,” he says. “It stems from a vague anxiety that immigrants are more likely to be dangerous.”
Judith Golub, senior director for advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, agrees. “We are a nation of immigrants,” she says. “The only way to enhance our security is to target only those who plan to do us harm, and those are terrorists, not immigrants.”
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