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Illegal aliens have no right to be in this country, and should not automatically benefit from the liberties of full citizenship. Date published: 10/7/2001
CIVIL LIBERTARIANS fear that establishing a war footing against so elusive an enemy as international terrorism will mean
surrendering freedoms Americans have fought to establish and protect for more than 200 years. Those are the healthy reflexes of a remarkable nation. This country accords more rights to accused criminals than many governments give to citizens in good standing. It is perhaps America's greatest virtue. But sometimes, as is the American way, we take things too far. People who have committed murders and rapes walk the streets today because they got off on a technicality that had only a tangential relationship to their guilt or innocence. We too often demand police and judicial perfection when a slightly lesser standard would serve. That obsession, however, seems to have waned a bit in the wake of last month's attack. Congress moved quickly last week to pass laws that would, to a degree that would have been unthinkable four weeks ago, loosen the shackles we place on our police forces. And it's about time. Swinging the pendulum back in the direction of the victims of crime--as opposed to the perpetrators--has never been more important. Most of the men who carried out the mass murders on Sept. 11 were in this country illegally. A nation of immigrants, especially one that expends so much energy celebrating diversity, is not stirred to outrage over such "status" crimes. Indeed, illegal immigration is hardly considered a crime at all--even by our own Immigration and Naturalization Service. Save a random raid on a factory here and there along the border with Mexico, the INS doesn't bother much with enforcing immigration laws. Just a few weeks before the attacks, President Bush was poised to grant blanket amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that the INS lacked the manpower to track down. As is typical, the monsters who killed thousands of innocent Americans were able to enter the country--many on student visas--and simply disappear. And there are doubtless many more henchmen of Osama bin Laden still among us. As John J. Miller writes in National Review, nearly a half-million foreigners enter the U.S. every year, "and the most stringent demand many of them face is filling out a form asking where they're headed; the forms are then shipped off to storage, where they probably won't ever be seen again."
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