Diversity and Our Homeland Security Farce

In Iraq, American soldiers are dying, and the US Treasury is being mortgaged (one can't say looted since it's already empty), so that America can, in President Bush's words, "fight the terrorists there, so we don't have to fight them here." Like most other statements made by President Bush, it's just so much rhetorical testosterone, an empty, meaningless statement that is completely belied by his administration's own actions. The President's outright refusal to secure the borders long ago put the lie to his "war on terrorism" policy, but if more evidence was needed, consider the following gem:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 10,000 people from countries designated as sponsors of terrorism have entered the United States under an immigration diversity program with relatively few restrictions, a report released on Friday said.

The report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office said the State Department's inspector general warned in 2003 that the Diversity Visa Program posed a significant risk to national security and recommended it be closed to people from countries on the U.S. list of state terrorism sponsors.

But four years later, the program remains open to people from those nations and little is known about what becomes of them once they enter the United States, the GAO said.

From 2000 to 2006, the program allowed 3,703 people from Sudan, 3,164 from Iran, 2,763 from Cuba and 162 from Syria to enter the United States and apply for permanent legal resident status, the report said. That totals 9,792 new immigrants.

"We found no documented evidence of ... immigrants from state sponsors of terrorism committing any terrorist acts," said the GAO, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.

"However ... the Department of Homeland Security, terrorism experts and federal law enforcement officials familiar with immigration fraud believe that some individuals including terrorists and criminals could use fraudulent means to enter or remain in the United States."

Really, you think?

And why is the U.S. allowing people from HOSTILE states to enter the U.S. Well, it turns out the answer is -- wait for it -- our old friend, "diversity."

The Diversity Visa Program was created by the Immigration Act of 1990 and provides up to 55,000 immigrant visas each year to people from countries with relatively low rates of immigration to the United States. People from 179 countries are eligible to participate this year.

The program has enabled more than half a million immigrants -- mainly from Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia -- to gain permanent legal status in the United States.

But unlike most U.S. visa programs, the diversity program does not require applicants to have family members or employers in the United States to petition on their behalf.

Applicants from countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism normally are granted non-immigrant visas under limited circumstances. But the GAO report said no parallel restrictions exist for diversity visas.

This would be amusing, if it weren't so serious. This is what the Bush administration considers "defending the homeland." Every time you hear the President or his flunkies wax rhetorically about homeland security, the war on terrorism, or "fighting the enemy over there so they can't come here," remember the thousands of miles of border left unguarded by the President, remember the 12 million illegal aliens he wanted to amnesty, remember the tens of millions more he wants to import, remember the thousands of Iraqi refugees he is preparing to admit, remember they way he denounced those who disagreed pointed these things out, and remember the "Diversity Visa" program that he allows to continue. Remember those things and see him for what he is, an incompetent and a liar. Homeland security and the "war on terrorism," at least as this administration carries them out, are total frauds.