In the context of the Fort Dix hirabis, Victor Davis Hanson has some useful thoughts on the problem of completely uncontrolled immigration:

Once the United States accepts as a permanent condition the notion that several million illegal aliens can reside in perpetuity and under immunity from the law, then a sort of insidious message is established:

We in America will ask nothing of our immigrants-not legality, not English, not rudimentary knowledge of our history and values, and not real efforts at assimilation and Americanization.

So, the wannabe jihadist, here illegally, whether as in the Fort Dix case or as was true of a few of the 9/11 murderers—gets two messages: one, they won't dare come for me, since they'd have to come for 12 million others. And, second, this is a pretty easy country where rules don't count and one can operate well enough in a nether world in which it is more likely to be considered criminal, or at least unspeakable, to arrest or report an illegal alien than to be one.

Think of it as an analog to the " broken window" theory of policing that Giuliani used so effectively to clean up New York in the nineties.

I'm actually in favor of immigration, even in mass numbers, but I do think that it has to finally be controlled, so we know who's coming in, and rationalized so that we're bringing in those we want, and excluding those (for example, hirabis) we don't. We also need to work harder to ensure assimilation (though we're doing a much better job than the Europeans are).

You assume that the INS and The Border Patrol can control for people like Hirabis. I don't think they can. I don't believe any of the 9/11 terrorists entered the country illegally and I don't believe there was anything that would have lawfully precluded their entering. All terrorists acts in the United States have been perpetrated by either US citizens or foreigners who entered lawfully in the first place. I know some here will posit that they should be deported immediately when their time is up but how do you deport someone who knows he is illegal and doesn't want to be found?

You assume that the INS and The Border Patrol can control for people like Hirabis. I don't think they can.

I assume only that if they try, they'll be more successful than if we have essentially no border.

Jardinero1, this is a definition of "legal" with which I am unfamiliar. But I see it elsewhere:

For one, the country's priorities shifted overnight. The Bush administration understandably became consumed with national security. The possibility of a guest-worker program also became a much harder sell, Meyers said. That's because the terrorists had managed to enter the country legally by exploiting the U.S. visa system. Some had lied on their visa applications; others had stayed after their visas had expired or violated other terms.

Think about that for a moment. Lying on your visa application, staying in the country on an expired visa, or violating terms of your visa is "legal"?

I agree Rand. If we could begin to show that we are managing the illegal immigration, I am all in favor of drastically increasing the totals allowed to gain citizenship per year. Because there are deserving, hard-working individuals who want to come from all over the world, not just our southern border. Plus, we are setting up a system to fail when we have all of this cheap labor depending on unsustainable growth in the construction market among others.

I for one would also like to attack the problem of H1-B visas by allowing the many talented individuals, who would love to become Americans, actually have a snowball's chance. That way we are not educating a whole generation of folks who go back to their country and immediately compete using knowledge gained in this country.

Karl makes an interesting and valid point about legal entrants. But there is very little INS or the Homeland Security department can do to keep people from lying on their visa applications. It's like keeping guns out of gun-free zones. It would require a huge amount of resources to do fact checking on every visa that comes accross. Is it worth the expenditure to catch the, one off, liar, who most likely is not a terrorist anyway. Most entrants to the US are on tourist visas. Millions of these are processed every year.

Rand: I do think that it has to finally be controlled, so we know who's coming in

But only if it can be accomplished without raising your taxes, of course.