Irrelevant, but irritating

poetsheart
Tue, 15 Aug 2006 03:07:16 +0000

Controlling who enters the country would be extremely difficult, though—especially given the incendiary political implications of forbidding entrance to people based on religious or ethnic affiliation. And we have not even begun to address the porosity of our borders. It appears to be fairly easy for persons of ill intent (or benign, for that matter) to enter the country via Mexico or Canada. And given the geographic breadth of both borders, it would be extremely difficult and costly to secure them. Once they slip into the country, it may be nearly impossible to identify and locate them. They can meld into any number of religious and ethnic communities of like affiliation, and lie low, waiting for orders to act. Great Britain certainly can attest to this. We can’t return to the shameful practice of denying people their constitutional rights and placing them in internment camps, the way we did the Japanese during WWII. There are no easy answers to this problem.