Open door to terror: Bush's amnesty plan will compound the dangers our nation already faces from international terrorists and their allies.

Two Iraqis meet in southern Texas. One starts to greet the other in the native language, Arabic. The other Iraqi waves him away contemptuously and snaps, "We're in America now. Speak Spanish!"

Popular humor often lays bare crucial truths that are cloaked in cant. The popular jibe recited above not only reflects the radical changes being inflicted on our public culture by rampant immigration, but the growing danger to our nation as international terrorists from the Middle East and elsewhere exploit our porous borders.

"America must control its borders," pronounced President Bush in the January 7 address outlining his new amnesty proposal. "Following the attacks of September the 11th, 2001, this duty of the federal government has become even more urgent.... Illegal entry across our borders makes more difficult the urgent task of securing the homeland."

How granting amnesty to millions of foreign lawbreakers enhances our national security, the president did not deign to explain. Nor did the president allude to the negative impact his amnesty proposal would obviously have on the morale of those given the task of securing our borders. The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), which represents the 9,000 line agents of the BoLder Patrol (now part of the Department of Homeland Security), denounced the plan as a "slap in the face to anyone who has ever tried to enforce the immigration laws of the United States."

"Hey, you know all those illegal aliens you risked 'life and limb' to apprehend'? FAH-GED-ABOWD-IT," wrote NBPC Vice President John Frecker in a letter to members shortly after the president's speech. "President Bush has solved the problem. Don't be confused and call this an 'amnesty,' even though those who are here illegally will suddenly become legal and will be allowed to stay here."

In the section of his January 7 speech describing his administration's supposed accomplishments in the counter-terrorism field, Mr. Bush declared, "America is acting on a basic belief: our borders should be open to legal travel and honest trade: our borders should be shut and barred tight to criminals, drug traders, to drug traffickers and to criminals, and to terrorists." The amnesty proposal would allow law enforcement agencies "to focus on the true threats to our nation from criminals and terrorists," while helping us to become "a more compassionate and more humane ... country." But how does legalizing millions of illegal aliens enable law enforcement to focus on the true threats to our nation? Once again, President Bush did not attempt to explain.

Those who are familiar with the 1986 amnesty will recall nearly identical assurances from sponsors of that ill-fated measure. And the proposed Bush amnesty like its predecessor--would, at best, merely shut the door behind criminals who entered our nation, allowing them to operate openly and freely.

Sleepers Among Us

Among those who benefited from the compassionate and humane 1986 amnesty was terrorist "sleeper" agent Mahmoud Abouhalima, the ringleader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Co-conspirator Mohammed Salameh also applied for amnesty but was turned down--yet he was still able to remain in the country for seven years. Despite Salameh's illegal status, notes commentator Mark Steyn, he somehow "had enough ID to get past the rental agent at Ryder," where he rented the truck used in the bombing.

Prior to announcing the amnesty plan, the Bush administration pressured financial institutions and municipal governments to accept Mexico's matricula consular cards as legitimate identification, despite the fact that they are issued to Mexican immigrants irrespective of their legal status. It's easy to imagine how useful the matricula cards will be to the next crop of terrorist "sleepers" seeking to gain a foothold in this country.

Shortly before President Bush announced his amnesty plan, Imelda Ortiz Abdala, a former Mexican consul in Lebanon, was arrested and charged with running an immigrant-smuggling ring into the U.S. Between 1998 and 2001, reported the November 15 San Diego Mercury. News, Ortiz--aided by

Mexican citizen Salim Boughader, a native of Lebanon--smuggled numerous individuals into the U.S., including at least one identified as a "Muslim extremist."

"Until a year ago," reported the January 5 Chicago Tribune, "Boughader ran a Lebanese cafe where U.S. officials would lunch a block from the consulate. But unbeknownst to them, the Mexican with Lebanese roots also was fielding calls on his cell phone from illegal Lebanese immigrants whom he secretly was helping to smuggle over the U.S. border into California."

Ortiz's role in this scheme, allegedly, was to provide fraudulent Mexican passports (at up to $4,500 a copy) to Boughader's clients. Between 1999 and his arrest in November 2002, Boughader reportedly smuggled about 300 illegal immigrants from Lebanon into the U.S. Convicted of human trafficking last March, Boughader was released and deported to Mexico after serving 10 months. Arrested again in Mexico, Boughader now faces up to 30 years in prison on organized crime-related charges.

Ironically, Boughader has served time in a U.S. prison--and faces a lengthy prison term in Mexico--for committing exactly the offenses President Bush now proposes to legalize.

Running for the Border

Both the Mexican government and U.S. amnesty supporters would argue that Imelda Ortiz's role in aiding immigrant smuggling was an aberration. However, the Mexican government, as a matter of policy, provides safe haven for both legal and illegal Mexican immigrants to the U.S., and even for American-born citizens of Mexican ancestry, who flee south after committing capital offenses in the U.S. This problem is particularly acute throughout the southwestern U.S., a region designated "Aztlan" by radical Chicano activists seeking to reconquer it through unchecked immigration.

An investigative report conducted by the CBS television affiliate in Nogales, Arizona, in late 2002 concluded: "If a Mexican citizen kills someone in Arizona, and makes it across the border, odds are, [he] will get away with murder." The station's news team learned of 100 cases over the previous five years in which "murder suspects fled to Mexico and are still on the loose."

"There are over three hundred suspected killers who fled south and are being sheltered by Mexico," observed Joe Guzzardi, a columnist for the Lodi (California) News-Sentinel, in an interview with THE NEW AMERICAN. "Mexico refuses to extradite them to stand trial here, where they face the death sentence or life without parole."

Two particularly aggravating cases cited by Guzzardi are those of Armando Garcia and Alvaro Luna Jara. Garcia, an illegal Mexican immigrant, shot and killed Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff David March in April 2001. Having been previously charged with two counts of attempted murder and twice deported, Garcia fled back to Mexico, which has made no effort to deport the accused mass murderer. Jara, accused of the brutal murder of a 12-year-old boy, and the attempted murder of three others, is not a Mexican national. However, notes Guzzardi, "Mexico refused to extradite him because his parents are."

What is truly outrageous about the Bush amnesty plan, Guzzardi told THE NEW AMERICAN, is that "the president is willing to give Mexico everything it wants, and ask nothing in return. He's not publicly mentioned the murderers who are sheltered by Mexico. He's not even willing to describe the beneficiaries of the amnesty as 'illegal immigrants,' choosing instead to call them 'undocumented workers.' It's a great deal for Mexico, and for the criminals that government protects, but what's in it for the United States? Nothing." But what is even more outrageous is a "'conservative" Republican president adopting the lexicon of the radical Left (in calling illegal aliens "undocumented workers") and leaving our nation vulnerable to another terrorist attack that may well make 9-11 pale in comparison.