, our forebears. How we choose to treat these people will ultimately reflect on our collective capacity not merely for charity, but for justice as well.
Immigration policy in the United States will, from now on, be inextricably linked to homeland security. If we are to remain secure, we must take stock of our illegal aliens, and enact measures designed to control with more specificity what people enter this country and for what purpose. Those that oppose extending governmental benefits and protections to illegal immigrants strengthen their case by pointing to past immigration failures and their consequences, most notably September 11. Persons looking to do grave harm to the United States and its citizens must not come ashore only to find that the system will embrace them or worse, facilitate their schemes by giving them visas. Consider: the Department of State grants more than 500,000 student visas to immigrants every year; one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers was in the US on just such a visa, as were two of the September 11 hijackers (West, 2002, p. 49). If national security is to be a serious concern in the United States, we will not allow non-citizen immigrants to receive the benefits and protections of full-fledged citizens.
On the other hand, one might suggest that a strict moratorium on immigration would be draconian and unrealistic. While it is undoubtedly true that terrorists will find open borders appealing, this is not to say that closed borders will provide anything like an antidote for terrorism. The United States clearly does not have the resources or the will to track with precision every single person crossing over onto our soil by land, sea or air. Not to mention, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has, since its inception, been given minimal resources to perform its tasks (West, 2002, p. 48). History has shown that despite our best efforts to keep illegal aliens out of the country...