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Tuesday, March 18, 2003 Page: 7A
On March 1, former Pa. Gov. Tom Ridge was sworn in as the newest member of
the Bush cabinet. As secretary of Homeland Security, he now begins in earnest
to confront the gargantuan management challenge of merging 22 federal agencies
and their 170,000 employees into a single super-department. At the same time,
he must defend against the possibility of an imminent attack by terrorists who
could enter the U.S. from across thousands of miles of border, if they are not
here already.
In my opinion, if we had a sane immigration policy, we wouldn’t have this
constant threat of terror on our soil. We allow 1 million people to immigrate
to this country annually, along with over 300,000 people who come here
illegally.
Among those recent arrivals were the 19 murderous terrorists who took
advantage of our lax mass-immigration policies to come here to kill and do
harm to our citizens.
If we had a moratorium on immigration, we could sort out all our problems
and find the cells (sleeper) in our country that never should have been
allowed in in the first place.
The government shouldn’t use the USA Patriot Act to spy on its own
citizens, though.
Grossly sloppy enforcement of existing laws, not the nation’s constitution
and laws protecting civil liberties, made the mission of the Sept. 11
terrorists easier to carry out than it should have been.
The government shouldn’t snoop on U.S. citizens. Shredding the U.S.
Constitution won’t make our nation a safer place.
Rodney McAfee
Milnesville