Last year, nearly 3 million people came to visit the U.S. on temporary visas… and didn’t go back. Although the departments of Homeland Security and Immigration combined have many effective ways of monitoring foreigners’ entry to the United States, there is currently no system in place for keeping track of whether or not they leave. This causes problems in the cases of those foreigners who may not have any incriminating ties to terrorist groups upon entering the U.S., but may develop communication with or sympathy toward such organizations while remaining within the nation’s borders.
The current policy of having foreigners return a paper stub on departure is obviously an insufficient means of monitoring exactly how many, and who, of the ‘visitors’ are overstaying their visas. For this reason, congressmen and congresswomen of both parties have proposed an electronic system that would officially record exit information for people with temporary visas on a national scale.
The issue that arises is that the implementation of such a universal electronic monitoring system would require a significant divergence of funds from the already strained stimulus program. Should this really be one of our nation’s top priorities? After all, most of these illegal immigrants cause no direct harm or threat to America. As much as we may want to avoid the isolated cases of suspected or attempted terrorist acts, it would be far less expensive to leave this to the department of Homeland Security to deal with on an individual basis. As we’ve seen from the relative peace that domestic America has enjoyed post-September 11th, the existing policy has worked rather well. We should eventually establish a policy for tracking and overseeing the timely exit of visitors to decrease illegal immigration rates, but for now we need to leave it up to security instead of diverting funds and placing more pressure on Immigration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/us/12visa.html?_r=1&ref=politics
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4 comments:
I agree with you point that from time to time, where the government's fund goes should depend on the priority of the time. However, if the problem with the system exaggerate, wouldn't the choice of "leave this to ... Homeland Security to deal with on an individual basis" cost the government more money anyway? And, if terrorist attack really happened because of the problem of immigration system, how should the government justify it?
I agree that the issue of immigration should not be dealt with right now. I think that immigrants contribute to the nation in a positive manner, and that should also be considered in allowing them to not be pushed out so fast. It seems to me that they provide a lot of services that Americans typically don't want to do such as harvest fruit in California. However, I guess one could also consider that with the job market the way it is today, immigrants might actually be taking work away from Americans, and thus, we should find a way to pressure immigration more.
While I do agree that current financial constraints hinder proactive immigration policies, I find it a bit perplexing that officials in charge are adopting a leave-it-for-later mindset. Such an attitude will only perpetuate lax enforcement and create further problems in the future. And while the threat of a terrorist attack on US soil is probably as close to non-existent as possible, such assurance in the state of security could one day be ruptured. In the future, the threat of attack can make itself every more present until we reach a security crisis. Then, as we did 8 years go, we will tell ourselves that we should have known better and that we could have prevented a tragedy from happening in the first place.
I find that the argument against loosening the immigration restrictions which highlights the threat of terrorism - and often uses 9/11 as an example, to be pure scare tactics. Many instances of 'home grown terrorists' have been recorded, lending an air of fallacy to this argument. The truth is that terrorists can come from anywhere, so restricting one group of people is not going to eliminate all threat.
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