KRIKORIAN: TARGETING OF TANCREDO PROVES WE'RE NOT SERIOUS ABOUT THE BORDER

Writing for National Review Online, CIS executive director Mark Krikorian says the targeting of Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) by the media shows that 9/11 didn't change the way they think about immigration. "Inconveniently for the pro-illegal-immigration side, the feds this week arrested dozens of illegal aliens at Denver International Airport for using fake documents to gain access to restricted areas. Their names were all listed in the newspaper, too — so perhaps they should also get off the hook." Far from the contention of today's Denver Post that Tancredo is hurt politically by recent events, "Tancredo stands to reap enormous political capital from this issue, just as the center-right Liberal party in Sweden earlier this week tripled its share of its parliamentary vote compared with four years ago because it was the only one willing to talk about the problems with immigration policy." Ultimately, "Tancredo has forced an issue that the elite, Republican and Democrat, would prefer to avoid: Do we want to have borders or not? Do we mean it when we say that after 9/11 the United States finally needs to have a coherent immigration-control system? Or should we adopt the Bush administration/Wall Street Journal solution of granting amnesty to illegal aliens and abolishing America's borders?"