Frank Gaffney took to the Washington Times today to warn Sen. Marco Rubio that if he continues to support the Senate immigration reform bill, then he will be effectively helping terrorists gain citizenship.
While Gaffney alleged that “illegal immigration is up as untold numbers of aliens seek to take advantage of our still-too-porous border to get themselves placed on the ‘path to citizenship,’” in reality, the flow of unauthorized immigrants is at historic lows.
He writes that Rubio is pushing the “undoing” of laws which “thwart terrorists and dangerous criminals seeking to exploit our immigration system.”
“As Mr. Rubio surely knows,” Gaffney continues, immigrants crossing the border include people “associated with terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah.” “Does Mr. Rubio want to be responsible for helping their ilk not only continue to come here, but to obtain legal status to stay?”
Like Mr. Obama’s earlier amnesty initiative — the Dream Act — the Gang of Eight bill is already having the predictable effect: Illegal immigration is up as untold numbers of aliens seek to take advantage of our still-too-porous border to get themselves placed on the “path to citizenship.” As Mr. Rubio surely knows, a non-trivial percentage of those are dubbed OTMs — “other than Mexicans.” These include persons from what are euphemistically called “special-interest countries,” notably, Iran and other Islamist-ruled nations. Some are even associated with terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah — notwithstanding the Obama State Department’s preposterous announcement last week that there are “no known operational cells” of such groups in the Western Hemisphere.
Does Mr. Rubio want to be responsible for helping their ilk not only continue to come here, but to obtain legal status to stay? Is he OK with the extensive hamstringing of law enforcement this bill entails, which can only make it more difficult to protect us against such unwanted aliens?
Then there’s the screening process mandated by the gang’s legislation for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants already here. It seems designed to delude the innocent, not detect the dangerous. Its superficial, hands-off review bears no resemblance to the 14-hour interview the FBI conducted of Tamerlan Tsarnaev before the Boston Marathon bombings— and even that proved inadequate to the task of identifying and excluding a threat.
Mr. Rubio cannot finesse the hard choice before him. An amendment here or there will not fix the systemic problems with a bill that, at its core, ignores and subverts national security by undoing much of the law put in place after Sept. 11 to thwart terrorists and dangerous criminals seeking to exploit our immigration system. Will he enable it to become the devastating new law of the land?
