Reforms in Immigration Laws

[boxcar]

Long before the horrific attacks on 9/11, I have been in favor of rethinking and overhauling our current weak and lightly enforced immigration laws, policies and procedures. Now, in the wake of the terrorist attacks, I'm seeing concrete evidence that I "suddenly" have a lot of company -- even from the more liberal sectors of Congress. It seems that self-preservation is really a pretty strong motivator, after all. :)

I would urge everyone here to become better informed of immigration policies and changes that are being bandied around Congress. A great place to start would be this website:

http://www.numbersusa.com/index

One of the very unique features to this non-partisan site is that if you wish to contact your congress critters, Numbers will do so for you at no charge by FAXING them on your behalf. It's a pretty well known fact that most congress critters don't even read their email, let alone respond to any. (For example, of all the emails I have sent over the years to any branch of the government at any level, I have received only two replies! However, I have already received that many in just the past few weeks by using the Numbers service.) Our congress critters will pay a lot more attention to letters, phone calls and faxes -- sad to say in this day and age of fast, efficient electronic communications.

So, if you're like me and think that our current immigration policies are in need of some real and meaningful changes, visit the above site and get yourself signed up for their free FAX service, and get on their mailing list so that you may be kept abreast of what's going on in congress.

Boxcar

[Tom]

Thanks for the tips, boxcar. I will get into this. As a citizen, and a taxpayer, I believe I have every right to have a voice in this government generally and in immigration specifically. The times have changed a lot from the days of "give your tired, etc.".
Anything that gets these professional politicain slugs to respond or listen is worth it.

Tom

[boxcar]

You're quite welcome, Tom. Hope you make good use of the site. I have found it to be informative.

Personally, I think the U.S. should "lock down" its borders until such time it actually has a strong immigration policy in place, and a beefed up INS capable of enforcing all its laws and regulations. When half the terrorists that were here were here illegally, then you know it's time for a major overhaul. And the other half probably wouldn't have been here at all if we had conducted extensive background checks. Amazes me how much we're capable of finding out about these people after the fact. But we've got to change that hindsight BS quickly and start to discover these things up front before we allow more murderous scumbuckets into the country.

Boxcar

[Tom]

When I go to visit other companies, I wear a visitors badge and am typically escorted. We need to be doing something along those lines for "guests" in our country.
I don't mean to say we should ban everyone-there a lot of people out there that deserve to come here and have much to offer, but no one, no matter why they are here, should have free reign. I understand one of the mad dog terrosists was here on an educational visa-and never showed up to the college at all. Now if this isn't a red flag and an alarm, I don't know what is.

Tom

[boxcar]

Tom wrote:

>>
When I go to visit other companies, I wear a visitors badge and am typically escorted. We need to be doing something along those lines for "guests" in our country.
I don't mean to say we should ban everyone-there a lot of people out there that deserve to come here and have much to offer, but no one, no matter why they are here, should have free reign. I understand one of the mad dog terrosists was here on an educational visa-and never showed up to the college at all. Now if this isn't a red flag and an alarm, I don't know what is.
>>


You're quite right. I've been told by my wife, other family members and friends who have lived overseas for any length of time that enforcement of our immigration laws in this country is _extremely lax_ compared to most other countries'. We need to tighten up on these kind of security breeches in a big way.

And, yes, the student visa area has now become a major concern of the government. It appears that colleges and universities will now be required to cooperate with authorities as they never have before. Damn shame, though, that it took about 7,000 innocent lives to get our government to act responsibly.

Boxcar

[karlskorner]

Boxcar;

The unfortunate part is that "they" are here, have been for some time, in one guise or another. We must nail these intruders, track them down with every possible means.

If it means a community watch, than so be it. The government must inform the general public what is known of these people, who they are and where there last location was, or suppose to be. Closing our borders is all well and good, but the "fox is in the hen house". Our government can't be expected to assume this responsibility alone, the general public must be able to assist.

I am afraid we are in for a long siege, we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, in a type of war that we know little about. Every American must be responsible for his/her safety.

Karl

[smf]

karlskorner,

Your last paragraph is dead-on.

I Never thought I'd see a day when we need to tighten the borders, but (much like handicapping) if we don't change the way we do things when necessary, we risk losing it all.

[boxcar]

Karl, have you said a mouthful! What you said about every American taking an active role for himself and country is indeed on the mark. ( And this applies doubly with respect to bio-terrorism. If we look to the government to protect us from an attack of this kind, we might as well kiss our royal behinds goodbye <g>. The only thing our government excels out is reactionary action.) But I digress.... As you imply, the horses are already out of the barn; however I don't think it's a good idea to keep that barn door open to allow more rogues to escape to this country at some future time. It wouldn't do much good to catch the muderous thugs that are already here, without also revising immigration policies to assure that we don't have any repeat performances -- at least on the kind of wholesale level we are currently witnessing.

Boxcar