An excellent column by former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey for the Wall Street Journal notes that "Tamerlan Tsarnaev [one of the brothers accused in the Boston Marathon attack] is the fifth person since 9/11 who has participated in terror attacks after questioning by the FBI."
This sentence is loaded in several ways, but is directly relevant to the debate over the Schumer-Rubio amnesty proposal now being debated in the Senate.
The Gang of 8 knew it had to come up with a gimmick to counter the inevitable objections to amnesty on the grounds that it would inspire more illegal immigration, as happened after the 1986 amnesty. They latched on to the idea of "triggers", meaning no one gets to proceed on the path to citizenship until certain enforcement conditions are met.
It's a logical concept. But I suggest an alternative to the bogus triggers that the Gang of 8 staffers came up with: No amnesty and no increases in legal immigration or temporary admissions until five years have passed without a terrorist attack or attempt at the hands of an immigrant, legal or otherwise, temporary or permanent, naturalized or not.
The Gang's first trigger is meaningless; it requires only that DHS craft a plan to improve border security. Then the amnesty happens and only afterward are meaningful triggers, including mandatory E-Verify and exit tracking implemented. The so-called background checks or registration of illegal aliens will not prevent the legalization or admission of terrorists because they are just a routine fingerprint check through limited FBI and DHS databases of the criminals and terrorists we already know.
It is inconceivable to me that lawmakers can contemplate such a sweeping overhaul of our immigration system before we have had a chance to examine the immigration history of the Tsarnaev brothers and any associates. Before taking on 11-plus million legalization applications, 4-plus million applications from the immigrant visa waiting list, and hundreds of thousands more guestworkers, it would be prudent to figure out how we can do a better job screening applications and/or removing those who were a mistake to admit. We can't go on relying on federal and local law enforcement agencies to continuously have to clean up after our admissions mistakes.
