by James R. Edwards, Jr.

The nation was incensed March 11 of last year when news reports revealed that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)—much maligned after the September 11 attacks—had dutifully notified a flight school that some deceased terrorists had been approved for student visas.

The irony of such a bureaucratic blunder—occurring exactly six months after a brutal, unjustifiable attack on innocent victims—was lost on some. When Congress promptly held oversight hearings, INS Commissioner James Ziglar explained how the INS’s contractor had followed standard procedures, that it was simply paperwork being sent, not post-September 11 approval. But Ziglar missed the point everybody else got.

The INS’s nonchalance encapsulates a fundamental problem with the U.S. immigration system. Congress and special interests share the blame, but the INS is guilty of its own set of sins.

Exposing the many loopholes in America’s immigration system is a daunting task, but syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin has shed a bright light on them in her new book, Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (Regnery, 2002).

Up-front disclosure: Malkin sent me a couple of draft chapters to comment on, and she cited my own book (The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform, Addison-Wesley, 1998) as a source. But in addition to being largely in accordance with my own views, the book is compelling reading—I read it from cover to cover, scarcely able to put it down.

Invasion is riveting. It’s revealing. It’s infuriating. The daughter of Filipino immigrants, Malkin is proud of her immigrant heritage. She can’t easily be dismissed as “anti-immigrant,” a favorite hate-label of those who advocate an open-borders immigration policy.

Her careful research and close documentation of facts further insulate her from the character attacks of left-wing lawyers, Big Business interests, radical libertarians, and self-appointed immigrants’ rights advocates. (All of these groups, in fact, receive their comeuppance in Invasion.) Malkin often relies on government sources, such as reports from the Department of Justice Inspector General and the General Accounting Office, for indicting evidence.

Invasion details how America’s post-September 11 security is not much better than it was before the terrorist attacks. Even now, aliens may still gain entry through airport “security,” seaports, and land crossings. Other avenues open to threatening aliens include marriage fraud, asylum loopholes, and amnesties. Then there are the easy visas, made available to please the college lobby, soft-headed State Department bureaucrats, and other interested parties. Malkin exposes all of these groups as putting their special interests ahead of America’s national interest.

The beauty of Invasion is in how Malkin lets the words and deeds of bad actors within the immigration system do the talking. For example, she quotes INS officials who told the press that being illegally present in the United States isn’t “a crime.” (Malkin helpfully includes as an appendix the sections of the law that plainly state the illegality of such acts.) Another INS officer called illegal immigrants “law-abiding citizens.”

Malkin pays particular attention to the worst offenders at the INS, such chickens guarding the henhouse as Jerry Wolf Stuchiner, a former high-ranking INS official (known as the “Aldrich Ames of the immigration world”) who actually engaged in alien trafficking. After terribly abusing the powers of his office, Stuchiner, incredibly, now practices immigration law in Las Vegas. Malkin’s book also cites several brave INS employees who blew the whistle on misdeeds—and were hung out to dry by INS higher-ups.

Invasion puts a human face on America’s immigration problems. For example, Malkin profiles the victims of serial murderer and illegal alien Angel Resendiz, the so-called “Railroad Killer” who committed his crimes along the Texas-Mexico border and all the way into Illinois and Kentucky from 1997 to 1999. Readers get a powerful sense of the real human costs of the nation’s appallingly leaky immigration system.

In addition to the human faces, evil and good, presented in Invasion, Malkin details the flaws in the system itself. She paints an ugly picture of expensive computer systems that can’t talk to one another, high-tech devices that aren’t or can’t be used, dumbed-down citizenship requirements, and over-lawyered processes stacked so that “it ain’t over ’til the alien wins.”

Invasion exposes the widespread and arguably criminal undermining of American sovereignty, the ability to pick and choose whom to admit, whom to keep out, and on what grounds to make those important decisions. And this excellent book not only gives a full accounting of problems with America’s immigration system, but also offers a set of solutions.

For example, Malkin suggests such commonsense reforms as a moratorium on temporary visas for “al Qaeda-friendly countries,” requiring all foreign visitors to obtain a visa, and heightening security at all points of entry. She calls for treating illegal immigration as the crime that it is—eliminating the “voluntary departure” policy (as the aliens never depart), mandating detention of illegals at military bases that have been closed, and streamlining the process whereby detained illegals are sent home. Her approach would put troops on the borders, enforce immigration laws in the interior (which the Clinton administration gutted), clean out INS deadwood, and be stricter in granting citizenship.

The book’s greatest contribution, however, is to expose the cheap sentimentality through which many defend the status quo of America’s badly broken immigration system.

James Edwards, Jr. is an Adjunct Fellow with Hudson Institute.

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