Security System in Reference to Immigration Essay

Security System in Reference to Immigration - Essay Example the INS for a Green Card or any other adjustment of status). Yet, after considerable review of the existing literature, consultation with scholars, policy makers, and security experts alike this author has come to the conclusion that because virtually every sort of immigration, i.e., refugee and sanctuary policy, the issuance of non-immigrant visas, and other temporary-stay provisions can potentially be exploited by terrorists, immigration policy in general should be framed in terms of security. Therefore, focusing on just one category such as student visas, or even temporary visas in general would be shortsighted. Rather, in light of September 11th all aspects of the immigration system, including the way visas are processed in overseas consulates, the handling of foreign citizens at ports of entry, policing the nation's borders, and enforcement of immigration laws within the European Union and the United States need to be transformed and strengthened in order to reduce the terrorist threat. No doubt, this presents a formidable challenge to the men and women who supply on the front-line such as border police, asylum and visa officers, immigration judges and national militaries. All these actors are forced to leave administrative decisions with limited information and often must be made in moments of crisis, involving highly charged national debates. This paper examines the contemporary (and newly emerging) challenge facing the member states of the European Union and the United States in protecting their borders against international terrorism while at the similar time acknowledging the veracity of large-scale immigration to these societies and protecting the rights of non-citizens. Close administrative cooperation at an... Atlanta, GA. When James Hollifield delivered this paper at the 1989 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association barely three months before the descend of the Berlin Wall he seemed to foretell the crisis situation which the member states of the European Union (at that time the European Community) and the United States would visage when coming to terms with the unprecedented international migration flows they experienced in the early 1990s. With the collapse of communism in Europe and the subsequent rise of irredentist and nationalist tendencies on a global scale, both Western Europe and the United States were faced with the challenge of sustained wide-scale migration flows into their territory throughout the early half of the decade. Accompanying these flows were highly charged national debates surrounding colonization which as Hollifield noted laid 7 bare and revealed "in pristine form the innermost workings of the political system and the key philosophical assumpti ons upon which the systems are based." it is surprising, however, is that despite the restrictionist climate of public opinion in both Western Europe and the United States, the 1990s has been the decade of immigration and one, which recast the racial and national composition now co