1.  Should not flights from such countries be suspended until our ports of entry are prepared to begin the enhanced screen process so that we don’t wind up with passengers arriving in the United States before these measures are implemented?  (Let’s remember that all it took was on Hamas-fired missile landing about one mile from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport for the administration, through the FAA to suspend flights to Israel.)

 2.  How effective are the measures that we are told will be implemented?  Fevers can be reduced by a dose of aspirin or Tylenol and visa fraud and immigration fraud are a well known factor that undermines the integrity of the entire immigration system.  Indeed, the 9/11 Commission identified immigration fraud and visa fraud as a method of choice for numerous terrorists to enter the United States and embed themselves in the United States.  At the least the questionnaires, in my judgement, should contain bold-faced warnings about the penalties for committing fraud and then make certain to increase resources to investigate such fraud and publicize these cases of such fraud that are prosecuted.  This would coincide with a way of “fixing” the “broken immigration system.”  This is what a strategy of deterrence should be about.

 3.  What if anything is going to be done to screen international travelers who don’t come directly from the countries now suffering from Ebola outbreaks but make their way to the United States by changing aircraft in other countries?  Should not measures be implemented to consider this very real possibility?

4.  As a thought- would it not be appropriate to amend the immigration laws to subject aliens who fail to abide by a lawful quarantine order issued by a judge or other such authority when the alien in question was quarantined because of a deadly disease such as Ebola?

5.  Time and again a series of GAO and OIG reports have noted that millions of aliens who have been lawfully admitted into the United States have gone “missing.”  Would it not make sense to have the addresses of all arriving aliens be checked against databases to make certain that the address that these arriving travelers provide actually exist?  When an alien claims to be planning to tour around the United States should efforts not be made to obtain additional verifiable information such as the information concerning the travel arrangements- that is to say, connect the airline ticket information including the methods of payment and hotel reservation information into the arrival information concerning such aliens to provide investigative leads such such aliens need to be located in the future?  This would be helpful because of the threat of disease as well as terrorism.

Having focused on the measures to be implemented at ports of entry, let’s not forget the way that aliens evade the inspections process altogether.  These are the aliens that the open-borders crowd refers to as “Undocumented.”  In reality, they are Un-inspected.  In point of fact, immigration enforcement personnel refer to such aliens who evade that inspections process as being EWI (Entry Without Inspection).  In view of this concern- we come to my last question-

6.  What is being done along our land borders to provide Border Patrol along the northern and southern borders with assistance to enable them to quickly and safely screen aliens apprehended who may have sought illegal entry into the United States because they are infected with the Ebola virus or other deadly communicable disease?  If we make it more difficult for such aliens to enter the United States via ports of entry in the United States we must presume that some aliens may seek to evade the inspections process altogether.

You would not know if if you listened to the open borders / pro-amnesty advocates in the administration, within the political arena or in the media, but aliens do not have an inherent right to enter the United States.  In point of fact, when I was in training as an INS Immigration Inspector the point was made that the inspectors at ports of entry inspected aliens and examined United States citizens.  This bit of nuanced language may not appear significant but it is extremely significant.

The point is that under no circumstances could a citizen of the United States be denied entry- however, aliens most definitely need to be granted authorization to enter the United States.  As soon as an inspector at a port of entry is convinced that the person seeking entry into the United States is a U.S. citizen the person must be permitted to enter.  (Of course if the citizen was wanted for arrest by a law enforcement agency, that person would be detained and the appropriate law enforcement agency was to be notified the the person was being held for that agency.)

Aliens, on the other hand needed to prove that they were admissible because they would not likely violate our immigration laws that, at their foundation, were enacted to protect the lives and jobs of Americans.

The importance of our borders and our immigration laws cannot be overemphasized.  In the war on terror and transnational gangs, they are our first line of defense and our last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals.  They are equally important to American workers who are facing unfair competition from foreign workers, aided and abetted by the administration and advocates for “Sanctuary Cities” and Comprehensive Immigration Reform.