Radicals Still at the U.S. Southern Border Nearly a Century Later
Immigration reform, a key component of American national security, is not given enough serious attention by today’s policymakers. But as a November 1919 New York Times article makes clear, this is not a new issue. In fact, our southern border has served as a point of illegal entry since the early 1900s. The author writes,
The difficulty was not only in handling the man who arrived at American ports, but the committee also had information that aliens were being smuggled across the Mexican border at the rate of 100 a day…
While we no longer face a threat from “Russians Reds” smuggled in on Japanese boats, our security is jeopardized by potential terrorists smuggled into the country by powerful and violent drug cartels. (A couple examples of known–and prosecuted–cases can be found here.)
According to the Department of Homeland Security, in 2008, 5,500 of nearly 800,000 of those detained while crossing the border were from “‘special interest'” countries, or countries with ties to terrorism.
At ASP, we have made the argument that immigration reform, on a number of levels, is imperative to American national security, particularly as we are faced with a warming planet. As climate change affects our Latin American neighbors to the south in the coming decades, it is likely the number of illegal immigrants seeking a more hospitable environment in the U.S. will swell, increasing the challenges faced by border state sheriffs and the threat posed as “‘special interest'” aliens are provided a bit more cover to enter the country undetected.
