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CNN Crossfire

Debating Immigration Policy

Aired October 23, 2001 - 19:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES ZIGLAR, INS COMMISSIONER: What happened on September the 11th is not about immigrants. It's about evil. It's about evil people and not about immigrants. Immigrants are the core, are the heart of this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCKER CARLSON, CO-HOST: But in the wake of terrorist attacks, is it time to reform immigration policy? Just how open should American borders be?

This is CROSSFIRE.

Good evening and welcome to CROSSFIRE.

Time to close the borders? There's more support for that idea than you may think. A new poll shows an overwhelming majority of Americans now want to stem the tide of immigrants to the United States. In the last six weeks, there have been calls to beef up the INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, detain aliens, curtail student visas and increase deportations.

It's all fallout from the attacks of September 11, attacks carried out by men who, for the most part, were here legally. But these solutions, say critics, are in fact overreactions. Immigrants don't cause terrorism, they point out. Terrorists do. Should America raise the drawbridge? That's our debate tonight with Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, and Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform -- Bill Press.

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Dan Stein, before I give the CIA, the FBI, the INS or any other agency any more powers, I would like to go back -- or any more controls -- and look at the people responsible for September 11, Mohamed Atta, in particular. Everybody identifies him as the ringleader of that band of evil men.

He had been in and out of the United States several times. The last time he came in was last January 10 in Miami. He shows up. He's got a tourist visa. He tells them he is there to take flying lessons. They say, "Uh-oh, something is suspicious here." They pull him out of line. They interrogate him for a little bit. But they let him in. DAN STEIN, FEDERATION FOR AMER. IMMIGRATION REFORM: Right.

PRESS: He's got the wrong visa. You can't take flying lessons on a tourist visa, No. 1.

No. 2, the last time he had been here, he overstayed his visa 32 days. So despite those two things, they let him go. Isn't it pretty clear that these agencies don't need any more power; they just need to do the job with the powers they have?

STEIN: I'm going to let you in on little secret, Bill: Our borders are out of control at every phase of the operations of the Immigration Service and our State Department overseas.

They are overwhelmed and simply can't enforce the law as written, don't have the proper information. We have got a police -- an interior enforcement operation smaller than the San Diego Police Department. We don't have control over any phase of immigration policy. Atta should not have been let in at that point. And the officers clearly don't even understand the law or their operating instructions when they made the decision to let him in.

But what we need to do is dramatically curtail the level of immigration, improve our documentary requirements, understand who is here. And under a properly managed, much lower level of immigration, we could actually have some say in the policy as people.

PRESS: I want to let you in on a little secret: You didn't come close to answering my question, which is not about all these problems with it.

I'm just saying: Let's take -- if they used the powers they had, couldn't they have done the job? I want to give you another example, because, as you know, that's just one of four times that they came close and should have nabbed...

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: Let me finish. Let me finish, please -- nabbed Mohamed Atta.

The most notorious time -- which I just cannot comprehend -- he's flying a small plane -- Miami International Airport, not some Podunk airport. He's in the middle of the runway to get ready to take off. The plane breaks down. He doesn't know how to fix it. He and his buddy get out of the plane, leave the plane there, walk away from the plane, and they're never caught. They're never nabbed. They're never questioned.

Why give them more power, when they clearly don't know what to do with the power they have got?

STEIN: Because we have to deal with the real world.

If there were less gravity, we would all run faster, OK? But the bottom line is, with 300 million entries coming across the border, with a virtual absence of state cooperation in enforcing federal immigration laws, and a Byzantine, noncommunicating federal bureaucracy, with the numbers involved, we can't enforce the law. It would take $50 billion a year in immigration enforcement and an integrated enforcement strategy, with a border security agency, including all these agencies, and an interior enforcement apparatus to try to manage the hundreds of millions of people crossing our border.

The only rational thing we can right now is dramatically curtail the flow.

CARLSON: Frank Sharry, before September 11, 41 percent of Americans wanted to curtail immigration. Today, 58 percent do. Why? Are they racists? No. They understand a basic truth: that the 19 hijackers who came here and destroyed the World Trade Centers, hit the Pentagon, came here because they were able to, because it's easy, because we have virtually no control at border, as Mr. Stein pointed out, and because our immigration policy allows, basically, anyone who is determined to get here to the get here.

They understand that, if that were changed, America would be safer. Big business doesn't understand this, because it wants cheap labor. Aren't the people right in this case?

FRANK SHARRY, NATIONAL IMMIGRATION FORUM: Look, it's understandable.

Look, these 19 monstrous mass murderers did come from outside our border. But they came on temporary business and tourist visas. They didn't live here for a long time as legal immigrants and spring out of the community. They planned this, from everything we know, in Hamburg, Germany.

They came here to do this dastardly deed. Let's distinguish that from the hard-working immigrants who come here with their families to embrace America, to contribute to it. You have seen all the vigils and the blood drives and the donations from all these immigrant communities who have people right now in Afghanistan who are the children of immigrants who are willing to spill blood to defend this country.

When we fight this war against terrorism, I hope that our heritage as a nation of immigrants is the one of the things we

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Wait a second. Nobody is attacking the heritage of our nation.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Nobody is pulling down the Statue of Liberty. Nobody is even attacking immigrants. The question on the table is: Is America safeguarding itself at its borders? And the answer, clearly, is no. The rhetoric about immigrants is not helpful. The question is: Should we tighten the borders? SHARRY: The point is: How do we keep people like Mohamed Atta out of the country, rather than people who are coming here to settle and to build a new life, like they have for 400 years?

Of course we have to do more. We have to do more at the point of visa issuance in our consulates and borders. We need a professional consular core. We need better human intelligence so that we can track these folks before they get in. We need better cooperation with our neighbors to the north and south. We need better inspections before people get on planes and after. We can do a number of things.

The anti-terrorism bill is going to dramatically expand the authority of the attorney general.

STEIN: Which he opposes, I assume.

SHARRY: No. We support these measures.

STEIN: I'm shocked.

SHARRY: In fact, there is going to be bipartisan legislation, with Sam Brownback and Ted Kennedy and the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, that are going to propose sensible measures that will reduce the risk.

But, Tucker, here is the point: We cannot solve the problem of terrorism through immigration policy. We can reduce the risk. And we need to do so. But let's not kid the American people that if we just wall up America -- you know what happens if we wall up America? The only people that get in are the determined terrorists.

(LAUGHTER)

STEIN: It is inconsistent that this country can project global military dominance as a power with the foreign policy implications and not establish effective perimeter controls to protect the American people against retaliation.

It's byproduct of that global reach of our military power that makes us need to live in the real world to recognize no longer can talk about mass amnesties and using immigration for ethnic politics or cheap labor interests. We have a national security imperative in our lack of immigration controls that must be dealt with from the top down, from the leadership of this country down to the grassroots.

PRESS: Look, I agree with Frank that there are some steps that could be taken. Clearly, the borders are too porous right now. And we ought to know, it seems to me, who is here and why they are here and how long they are here.

STEIN: Let's get to it.

PRESS: But here is problem that I have -- the underlying problem with all of those proposals. And I think that James Ziglar, the INS commissioner, said it well just a couple weeks ago.

Let's listen to that bite, if we can, of Mr. Ziglar.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZIGLAR: What happened on September the 11th is not about immigrants. It's about evil. It's about evil people and not about immigrants. Immigrants are the core, are the heart of this country. So this is not something that should be used by people who are not of good will to try to stir up an anti-immigrant bias in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESS: So, when you talk about controlling the flow or reducing the flow, aren't you really punishing all immigrants for those 19 evil people? Isn't that the problem?

STEIN: Absolutely not.

Obviously, immigration policy is what is at issue here. And a lot of U.S. national interest here is in the management of immigration policy under dramatically lower levels than what we have now. That's not anti-immigrant anymore than me being on a diet is anti-food.

PRESS: I am going to have to the interrupt you.

(INTERRUPTED FOR LIVE EVENT)

CARLSON: The vice president of United States.

Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. We are talking about immigration: How tight should our borders be? I want to ask you a question, Frank Sharry, now. In one of the few, I think, sensible ideas she has had since she has been a United States senator, Dianne Feinstein suggested not long ago that we ought to have a moratorium on student visas. Why? Well let me give you one statistic.

In addition to the fact that a number of hijackers on September 11 were here on student visas, 16,000 students over the last decade have come to the U.S. and student visas from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, and Syria. She recognizes this as a problem, but her idea was shot down, the senator's idea was shot down by the obvious constituencies, school that make a ton of money from foreign students coming in and paying full freight.

Isn't this the most obvious kind of reform that we need: To stop student visas at least for a moment?

FRANK SHARRY, NATIONAL IMMIGRATION REFORM: First of all, she is the one who pulled back the idea.

CARLSON: But under pressure from the lobby.

SHARRY: No. But what she and many senators are proposing and we support is a better tracking system of students here. That's the solution. If people come in for the express purpose of going to a school, studying a particular course, we don't think it is a problem to demand that universities colleges and schools report that information if there is a change in visa status.

That is long overdue, it is on the books, it hasn't been fully implemented. It is about time that we did it. This doesn't require inspiration, this requires perspiration. We need to get to the work that is doing what the law calls for.

CARLSON: As I understand it, there is no law at the moment that requires schools at the moment...

SHARRY: There is a law.

CARLSON: ... no, but only schools that participate in the reporting program, as far as I understood.

The school that Hani Hanjour (ph) one of the hijackers whose plane hit the Pentagon, the school that he was accepted at in Oakland, California, admitted that 10 percent of the students it accepts come to the United States on student visas never show up, and the school has never reported that to anybody.

SHARRY: Well, 10 percent don't show up. It has never been clear whether they came or not but they have to be included. All schools and educational programs and business that do sponsor people on a temporary basis should be part of a better monitoring system. It just makes common sense. And there has been resistance from the university lobby and they have caved and they should have. We should do it now.

STEIN: They've caved?

SHARRY: They've turned around on it -- finally.

STEIN: The point is that this program, like just about every other, dealing with immigration control, has been opposed by special interests. We have privatized, given to special interests, management of immigration policy to the point where I think the public is entitled to know the truth. We have lost control of the whole system. Everybody who is using the system. employers -- universities, various flight training schools have abdicated responsibility and they have pressured Congress to avoid doing a job that they should have to do.

PRESS: I will repeat, the question is not, can we improve the system, the question is the over-reactions that are proposed including, on this one, the idea that there would be a freeze on student visas.

Now let me just go back to the facts, OK. One out of 19 of the terrorists on September 11 was here on a student visa -- one out of 19.

Tucker mentioned the other countries where all these people are from: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya. None of terrorists of September 11 came from those countries.

STEIN: But Bill.

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: Just a second...

STEIN: We don't know who is in that group and we don't know the extent of these terrorist cells. They are talking about millions of people here now who have overstayed student visas, visitor visas. There is no interior enforcement control in this country. We don't have, right now, the ability to deport people when their visas expire. It's not just about terrorism.

PRESS: Here is your problem, you interrupt and make this speech before I asked the question. I'm asking you about student visas; there are 500,000 here now. One of them was here on a phony student visa, didn't show up for class and so you are proposing a moratorium on all student visas and cripple our brilliant students here all over the country who are helping our college campuses.

STEIN: We need a time out, obviously to get the system in place.

PRESS: Why?

STEIN: Have you ever seen a plumber try to fix a pipe without shutting off the water first? You have to shut off the water first to fix the system. We have also had intelligence agencies telling Congress for years that the student visa program and the M-1 visa program are being used by terrorist operatives, fund-raising. We have had an enormous amount of evidence before Congress that this is a big problem. What do you need to see -- bioterrorism, nuclear terrorism, before you realize that we need to control the process?

PRESS: I need to see some common sense. Don't you know that if -- wait a minute -- Frank just said it earlier, you know as well as I do, these guys are smart, Dan. They are not dummies. If they can't get in on a...

STEIN: Smart?

PRESS: Smart -- you are damn right they are smart if they figured out to hijack four planes successfully in one day -- if they can't get in on a student visa, they will get in on a tourist visa. They will get in on a worker visa, or they will come in illegally.

STEIN: Our system is an international embarrassment. Other post industrial societies look at this country and they go, you have absolutely no legal control over the process. Twelve million illegal aliens in the country, we have Congress and the president talking about rewarding millions of law breakers with an amnesty and you think we somehow think we have got the discipline in the system to enforce the law?

PRESS: Illegal immigrants. What you are trying to do is...

STEIN: Illegal and legal immigration are intricately related. The illegal immigration is driving the legal policy.

PRESS: If I may, you are trying to hijack this terrorist operation to get past all those anti-immigrant measures you have never been able to get passed all these years since I met you in California on (UNINTELLIGIBLE) only.

STEIN: Look, if we had integrated state and local enforcement programs like 187 was all about, we would have control of the system. I'm telling you, Bill. Everything we have said for 20 years. If it had been implemented this wouldn't have happened.

PRESS: Wrong. Wrong.

SHARRY: That's just exploiting a tragedy for a wish list of...

CARLSON: Wait, wait. How is it exploiting a tragedy?

(CROSSTALK)

STEIN: You have systematically he opposed every measure...

(CROSSTALK)

SHARRY: Dan, we have known each other 20 years and you know that is a flat out lie.

PRESS: One at a time.

SHARRY: We want sensible enforcement that works, rather than feel-good measures that make good press releases. We have had a lot of immigration policies that are designed to tell the American people we have control when we don't.

STEIN: Name something that would work.

SHARRY: Now it is time to...

CARLSON: Now it's time -- wasn't it time six months ago?

(CROSSTALK)

SHARRY: Our whole immigration policy has been geared to keeping out people who are going to come in illegally. Now it has to be geared to keeping out terrorists.

STEIN: We don't know who is coming in the country, Frank.

SHARRY: You know what it is base on most? No matter what immigration system we have, it is based on human intelligence. And unless we know who these bad guys are, it is going to be garbage in, garbage out. So we are going to need our intelligence agencies to step up, identify with a new biometric identifiers...

(CROSSTALK)

STEIN: I am glad you finally got around to that.

CARLSON: We are going to have to leave it there. Dan Stein, Frank Sharry, you all have been together before and we hope you will be together again here on CROSSFIRE.

Bill Press and I will certainly be together in just a moment in our closing comments talking about the relative merits of having the other one deported. We will talk about that in just a moment when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: You notice, Bill, that virtually all of the reforms that have taken place since the terrorist attacks curtail the freedoms and movements of American citizens in air travel or going into buildings and we accept that. And yet when you suggest that we might want to tighten our borders and restrict the freedoms of movement of citizens to come into this country from outside you are a xenophobe.

PRESS: Actually you are wrong. I oppose the restrict on the freedoms of Americans as well. I think John Ashcroft on that bill, like I agree with Bob Barr, went over the line. Tucker, I'm not for any more police powers. These agencies will always want more power, more power, more power. I say, stop the bill. Do the job with the controls they have.

CARLSON: But Bill, Americans, I think, understand this intuitively, that they have a right, and that is why the polls show that they support tightening up the borders. They have a right to protect themselves from people who aren't American citizens. It is a basic essential right.

PRESS: If these agencies had done their job these terrorist would never have been able to get away with it. From the left I'm Bill Press. Good night for CROSSFIRE.

CARLSON: And from the right I'm Tucker Carlson. Join us again tomorrow night for yet another edition of CROSSFIRE. See you then.

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