SPECIAL EDITORIAL: Security Watch
Hillyer, Quin
SPECIAL EDITORIAL Security Watc BY QUIN HILLYER 11 ~ WO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE. That's the documented number of times that people in Mexican military or police uniforms crossed into...
...Or just get tough with them and firmly encourage them to leave...
...In this article, he tells tales full of ambiguity, confusion, frustration- and fear...
...Those judgments are up to us...
...If the U.S...
...But his report is highly relevant to that debate, because too many lawmakers fail to understand that the question of what to do with immigration is only a proxy, at least for many Americans, for the issues of national sovereignty and of law-and-order...
...Offer them citizenship, or other legal status, if they comply with new regulations...
...But unless the border is secure, no new "immigration law" is likely to ease the passions of Americans who will keep agitating for their fears to be allayed--and for American t e r r i t o r y to be defended...
...That's the documented number of times that people in Mexican military or police uniforms crossed into American territory in a recent ten-year stretch...
...Whatever combination of options is the best will, we all hope, be worked out through the political process...
...Slivka tells great stories, but lets others draw conclusions and certainly makes no political judgments...
...Give them worker IDs, perhaps with a biometric scan...
...Quin Hillyer is executive editor of The American Spectator...
...And if, what's worse, our own personnel on our own side of the border are actually getting chased by uniformed Mexicans in helicopters and even shot at, then how can we possibly feel secure...
...Require that they assimilate by learning our language and our laws...
...But, in practical terms--even life-and-death terms-what do those crossings, these armed incursions, mean for the lives of Americans living in the border region...
...If our border were well guarded and safe-if we knew the armed trafficking of drugs and illegal humans was under control-then the American people might more rationally consider the options for humanely and intelligently treating the 12 million illegals here already...
...Freelance journalist Judd Slivka, who writes this issue's dispatch from the troubled border with Mexico (see page 22), is the kind of reporter known for picking through the rubble of a horrendous tornado in Arkansas and finding and communicating pathos through an abandoned can of grape Nehi soda, or for filing a series of reports from Antarctica that find aweinspiring nuances in the different types of ice...
...4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2006...
...government can't even keep out impoverished Mexicans looking for a job, how can it stop the entry of trained, committed terrorists...
...Slivka's border stories in this issue aren't specifically about immigration, and certainly not about the politics swirling around the treatment of illegal immigrants, which is this season's hottest topic on Capitol Hill...
...Around the proverbial kitchen counters in American homes, the immigration debate is a "gut" issue less because of the immigrants themselves than because their presence, at least that of the illegal ones, hints at a rampant lawlessness and a failure of our government to make our own territory safe...
...The actual number is certainly higher...
Vol. 39 • June 2006 • No. 5
