Just think; if the nineteen terrorists that brought us 9/11 would have just waited a little longer we would have offered them citizenship. Of course, they might have been required to pay a fine, learn to speak rudimentary English, pay taxes and otherwise cozy up to our elected representatives with promises to vote while waiting at the back of the line. In the meantime, they might have even become movie and sports fans and maybe given up on their mission to attack international trade and our military headquarters.

We are a nation of immigrants, right? And it no longer matters whether these are legal or illegal immigrants that got here by breaking our laws sneaking into the country. As long as they’ll work for less than their American counterparts, they’re welcome. We can’t keep track of them either way, and it’s too expensive to enforce our laws.

Everyone knows we’ve got enough trouble with companies leaving our nation to move elsewhere for cheap labor. We’ve got to do something for the companies that can’t move out. Companies like hotel chains, supermarkets, restaurant chains, big box discounters, food growers and processors and others that depend on some proximity to their customers if for no other reason than quick and less expensive shipping.

They can’t all move out or give up the American market, at least not until they’re successful enough to be bought out by the Japanese, Chinese, or some nationalistic company from Dubai.

The U.S. Senate and the administration are going to do all they can to help these remaining industries. After all, these are the companies that finance their campaigns and have hundreds of lobbyists to pressure them into doing the right thing. If they need cheap labor, they’re going to get it – no matter what it does to American workers.

What began as fruit pickers and other farm workers willing to work for less than minimum wage has now progressed into industries at all levels including the medical world, engineers, sports, and well educated specialists willing to work for less than their American counterparts. None of this happened overnight.

All of this could have been stopped by enforcing existing laws and punishing the individuals and companies that hire these migrants. Fining these lawbreakers for each illegal immigrant hired and jailing employers for at least a month would have taken away the cheap labor incentive and sent the illegals scurrying home on their own. No jobs, no reason to sneak into the country. It’s that simple.

But it would not solve the problem of an estimated forty percent of the immigrants illegally in this country because they overstayed their green card work permits or visas. The Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) cannot keep track of these people and has no idea where they are or what they’re doing and they are not “undocumented” border breakers. They have papers to update or forge.

Current reform, at least from the Senate, would expand this illegal immigration with new Guest Worker programs.

And what more can you expect from an administration that cuts taxes for the wealthy while continuing to overtax every worker in the country in order to produce a surplus in payroll taxes with attendant debt and double taxation?

Just as it took time for the public to realize that our government had sold out port security, so too it will take time for the people to realize that they’ve done the same with border security; that our ports, borders, and shorelines leak like sieves; and that the new Homeland Security department is meaningless as well as Bush’s constant fear story about religious fanatics out to destroy our “way of life.” If there were any significance to his propaganda and lies, he would have done something about these leaks long ago.

It's been more than four and a half years since 9/11 and our borders, ports, and shorelines are still wide open. We've got millions of illegal immigrants streaming across our borders, only about six percent of the containers in our ports being fully inspected, and anyone who arrives on our beaches in a small boat is accepted in our country unless they're Haitians. If we are securing ourselves against terrorists, there's something very very wrong.

Is the war on terror real? Or is it all just a convenient way to control the American public by an opportunistic New World Odor? And if voting could improve anything it would be made illegal.