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Point of View ::
My father was a wonderful man, but like me, he was not the most gifted mechanic or carpenter. The year before I was born he built his first home and he never stopped loving that house even after our family moved from it when I was 15 years old. Years later when he retired, he decided to fix it back up, but years of neglect had taken their toll. There was so much to do he did not know where to start.
My wife Shirley, and I knew that Dad had spent days working on the house so we decided to see how he was coming. When we arrived, our hearts dropped and we smiled to each other. There sat the house, just as it was before - the front porch steps rotted, paint peeled from every surface, gutters hanging, window panes cracked, and the yard still a mess.
In the backyard was a small structure that was no longer used. It once sheltered a pump to draw water from a well. With city water having been installed years before, the pump house was of no particular use anymore and needed to be removed. Despite the attention that the main house demanded, as we had rounded the corner into the backyard, there was my dad, a huge grin on his face and a paintbrush in his hand, painting the pump house. “Doesn’t it look great?!?,” he asked. He was so overwhelmed by the priority needs of the house that it made him feel good to accomplish something even if it did not cure the problem. Ever since that time when Shirley and I face a huge problem, we remind ourselves of the need to solve the problem and not to just “paint the pump house.”
This week as Congress passed legislation to address the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, I thought back to my father painting the pump house. He had worked so hard to fix up that little pump house that he had lost sight of the bigger project. Similarly, many people have worked very hard to pass the 9/11 bill. In the last year, I have personally drafted legislation to reform how America prosecutes crimes involving weapons of mass destruction, and this language was subsequently included in the legislation. I also supported the 9/11 bill through two committees and on the floor of the House of Representatives. However, when the Senate decided to significantly weaken the bill by striking key immigration provisions, I could no longer support the legislation.
Over a decade ago, the ability of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to be granted asylum and to move freely in the country should have signaled that something was terribly wrong with our immigration system. It did not, and eight years later, 19 terrorists - collectively carrying a total of 63 valid US drivers licenses - boarded planes to finish Yousef's work.
It is now over three years since that tragic September 11th, and our immigration system is still in disarray. I believe that serious security reform must address three key failures of current immigration policy. First, it must mandate standards to obtain driver's licenses in this country. Second, it must tighten the nation's asylum laws, which historically favor asylum seekers, some of which are suspected terrorists. And, finally, it must seriously address the need to secure our borders.
As my father showed years ago when he painted that pump house, sometimes the tasks we face are so daunting and the prices to the solutions are so high, that it’s just easier to focus on something less demanding and easier to fix. When it comes to our nation’s security, we can restructure, reshuffle, and reshape our intelligence system as many times as we want, and while each time we may incrementally improve process and procedure, at the end of the day, we will not correct the problems that existed on 9/11 until we seriously address immigration reform. Even with the hundreds of pages of legislative language passed in the 9/11 bill, terrorists can continue to exploit vulnerabilities in our asylum system, can continue to use our driver's licenses to gain access, and - despite attempts to beef up border patrols – terrorists can still enter our country through large holes in our borders.
The security chain protecting America is only as good as its weakest link. So long as we ignore the need for immigration reform, we place American citizens at risk. The central purpose of the 9/11 legislation should have been to effectively and firmly address these risks. We missed this opportunity and, instead, we painted the pump house. I hope when Congress reconvenes in January we will focus on this oversight and mend the hole in our security system before additional events highlight the opportunity we missed in the 9/11 legislation.
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IN
BRIEF ....
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New
Jobs Continue Growing
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ON
THE HILL ....
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Current
Floor Proceedings
Bills
Coming Up This Week
Monthly
Whip Calendar |
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OFFICE
LOCATIONS ....
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307 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202.225.6365
505 INDEPENDENCE PKWY, SUITE 104
Chesapeake, VA 23322
757.382.0080
2903 Boulevard, Suite B
Colonial Heights, VA 23834
804.526.4969
425 H. South Main Street
Emporia, VA 23847
434.634.5575
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