A Republican lawmaker took to the floor of the Senate on Monday to say that last week’s violence in France justifies tougher immigration laws in the United States.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) cited the Islamist attacks in Paris and just outside the French capital as reasons to oppose President Obama’s executive order on immigration and to call for the implementation of a biometric visa system that has been criticized by civil liberties advocates.
“Attacks on the people of France demonstrate in the most chilling terms the threat posed to western nations by those who are imbued with Islamic terrorism,” he said. “While there are many factors that play into the spread of this jihadist ideology in the west, it’s time for an honest and plan admission that our open immigration policies are ineffective and have failed to meet the minimum standards that are set by existing law in the United States.”
Sessions said that refugees are taking advantage of asylum laws, citing the entry granted to the family of the Boston Marathon bombers, and the failed Christmas bombing in Oregon.
He also said the visa system is being abused, and claimed tougher restrictions on issuing the permits could have stopped the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, snuffed out an unsuccessful plot against a school and a courthouse in Connecticut, and prevented the entrance of Iraqi insurgents who were arrested in Kentucky.
“These individuals used lax visa policies, flawed asylum policies, flawed refugee policies, and flawed border protection policies,” Sessions said.
Many of the militants he listed were, however, either apprehended, already under some level of surveillance before carrying out their attempts or both. The 9/11 hijackers, ProPublica reported, could have been foiled by information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Boston Marathon attack leader Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been interviewed by FBI officials in 2011, reportedly after warnings from the Russian government about his activities. It has also been alleged that the Christmas plot in Oregon would not have even been attempted but for repeated goading by FBI informants in a pattern of behavior that some have described as entrapment of a vulnerable teenager. And the suspect at the center of the Connecticut plot, his lawyer claimed, merely spun tales to impress informants and had “no intention or aspiration to conduct any bomb attacks or other acts of violence.”
Nonetheless, Sessions called a clampdown. He said that a biometric entry-exit visa program, and the stopping of President Obama’s extension of temporary deportation relief for certain types of undocumented immigrants were vital to national security.
“It’s a national security imperative to stop this executive amnesty,” Sessions claimed. “What it says is that if you can get into America through the border, by a boat, by a plane, on a visa, anyway you get into this country and pass the border, you’re not going to be asked to leave unless you commit some felony.”
The executive order, however, only applies to undocumented immigrants who have been in the US for over five years and have children who are US citizens, and extends deportation deferrals to certain types of immigrants who came to the US without documents as children.
Civil liberties have also raised concerns about the domestic impact of the infrastructure required to implement biometric border controls. American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Chris Calabrese told the Christian Science Monitor that “the de facto effect is you have to build that same system” for Americans and that false positives could unduly burden US citizens.
Many observers have raised concerns that outsized attention is given by American politicians to terrorism, particularly in the aftermath of an attack anywhere in the world. In 2010, more Americans were killed in accidents involving furniture than by acts of terrorism. Between 2009 and 2013, fewer than 20 Americans were killed each year by acts of worldwide terrorism. Meanwhile, in 2013 alone, 4,405 American workers died as a result of occupational hazards.
