Patterico’s Pontifications

12/12/2004

Dog Trainer Fumbles Again; PrestoPundit Recovers

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 11:08 pm

PrestoPundit has a nice catch. The L.A. Times complained today about Republicans’ conditioning passage of the intelligence bill on provisions that would deny driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. But the Times never mentioned that most of the 9/11 terrorists had been issued driver’s licenses or ID cards, which facilitated their ability to carry out their plot.

20 Comments

  1. How many of them didn’t have proper immigration status?

    Comment by actus — 12/12/2004 @ 11:22 pm

  2. Hmmm … do you think that just maybe illegal residents ought to be on the domestic “no fly list”? And “no ID” might be a clue?

    Comment by Kevin Murphy — 12/12/2004 @ 11:38 pm

  3. Actus –

    Hard to say. INS gave Atta a visa 6 months after 9/11.

    Comment by Kevin Murphy — 12/12/2004 @ 11:39 pm

  4. my memory says they were all legal (even those who should have been stopped) but most had overstayed their visas..

    Comment by e m butler — 12/13/2004 @ 5:57 am

  5. my memory says they were all legal (even those who should have been stopped) but most had overstayed their visas..and their licenses would have been issued while they were legal,…not that NJ didnt issue to anyone who showed up..different now…3 or 5 IDs needed these days..

    Comment by e m butler — 12/13/2004 @ 5:58 am

  6. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t get their ID cards and driver’s licenses on the up-and-up — they took advantage of lax procedures that need to be tightened:

    For example, Hijacker Hanni Hanjour and Khalid Al-Midhar obtained Virginia licenses by hiring an illegal alien to co-sign their residency forms and listing his address as theirs. The day after they got their licenses, they sponsored two other hijackers, Salem Al-Hamzi and Majed Moqed, to get licenses, too.

    The 9/11 terrorists’ experience is directly relevant to why lawmakers like Sensenbrenner wanted tighter controls.

    Comment by Patterico — 12/13/2004 @ 6:33 am

  7. So then mentioning the 9/11 terrorists really wouldn’t add that much since they were legal when they got their licenses.

    Comment by actus — 12/13/2004 @ 7:27 am

  8. So then mentioning the 9/11 terrorists really wouldn’t add that much since they were legal when they got their licenses.

    Comment by actus — 12/13/2004 @ 7:28 am

  9. Regardless of these 9/11 terrorists, the immigration controls were a part of the specific suggestions by the 9/11 Commission.

    Or are you going to say that they all hate immigrants too?

    Comment by The Angry Clam — 12/13/2004 @ 7:53 am

  10. The big point here is that all the guys who destroyed the WTC had overstayed their visas - they were in the country illegally.

    The best way we have to catch people in the country illegally is when they are pulled over on traffic stops, etc. they are found to have NO VALID DRIVERS LICENSE. And that causes further investigation.

    Comment by goober — 12/13/2004 @ 8:40 am

  11. Geez these LA Times people are nuts. They are actually saying that giving out IDs to illegals ENHANCES security.

    … denying driver’s licenses was bad for road safety. “It really increases the number of hit-and-run accidents,” he said, “and it contributes to identity theft. When you close off one avenue to getting a legitimate document, you force people into another avenue, which is bad for security because you fuel a market in false documents.”

    Comment by goober — 12/13/2004 @ 8:58 am

  12. “When you close off one avenue to getting a legitimate document, you force people into another avenue, which is bad for security because you fuel a market in false documents.”

    Kinda like when you make it illegal to just walk across the border without documentaion, you fuel a market in coyote crossings. Easy to solve, just let everyone who wants, come.

    Jeez, gotta love that whole reverse engineering approach to immigration control!

    Comment by deesine — 12/13/2004 @ 10:51 am

  13. ‘Kinda like when you make it illegal to just walk across the border without documentaion, you fuel a market in coyote crossings. Easy to solve, just let everyone who wants, come.’

    Free markets are a bitch ain’t they?

    Comment by actus — 12/13/2004 @ 2:36 pm

  14. The driver’s license question isn’t an easy one - it’s used as the primary ID for a lot of purposes, including verifying identity for opening bank accounts and wiring money. It took a lot of money for the 9/11 hijackers and the original WTC bombers to do what they did.

    After 9/11, a lot of new rules were placed on financial institutions to try to prevent terrorists from transacting business. But every rule for verifying identity is essentially useless if an illegal immigrant or one overstaying their visa simply presents a driver’s license and claims they are a US citizen. In other words, the rules only work well for honest people, who aren’t the ones you need to catch.

    If you issue licenses to illegal aliens, you usually don’t have adequate verification of their true identity. So if it’s easy to get a license as an illegal alien, they can also probably get one under a false identity - and from there, our system is absolutely wide open.

    On the other hand, most of the illegal aliens in this country are here to work and want to make no trouble for anyone, and not letting them get these documents poses a safety problem of its own. The reasons states give licenses to illegal aliens has been that their experience is that it’s the safest thing to do. From the point of view of blocking terrorism, one very important measure is preventing the growth of back-door financial systems that might allow transfers of money to fund terror, and not allowing the wire transfers of money to other countries (which you are not supposed to do without ID) will cause problems.

    The superficial discussion of this issue in the press really irritates me.

    Comment by MaxedOutMama — 12/13/2004 @ 3:01 pm

  15. “Free markets are a bitch ain’t they?”

    I’ll take a bitch any day of the week over a paternal,socialist,diseased whore.

    Comment by deesine — 12/13/2004 @ 6:01 pm

  16. “Free markets are a bitch ain’t they?”

    I’ll take a bitch any day of the week over a paternal,socialist,diseased whore.

    Comment by deesine — 12/13/2004 @ 6:02 pm

  17. ‘I’ll take a bitch any day of the week over a paternal,socialist,diseased whore.’

    Exactly. So lets open up the borders.

    Comment by actus — 12/13/2004 @ 8:49 pm

  18. It is illegal for a US Citizen to obtain a Mexican drivers license.

    Our retarded congressmen should try solving that problem for voters in THIS country before solving the problem for voters of OTHER countries.

    But they won’t. They try to look more compassionate by helping out citizens of other countries by hurting people of this country. Go figure.

    Comment by goober — 12/14/2004 @ 8:18 am

  19. It is illegal for a US Citizen to obtain a Mexican drivers license.

    Our retarded congressmen should try solving that problem for voters in THIS country before solving the problem for voters of OTHER countries.

    But they won’t. They try to look more compassionate by helping out citizens of other countries by hurting people of this country. Go figure.

    Comment by goober — 12/14/2004 @ 8:18 am

  20. Does anyone else worry that CDLs for illegal aliens will mean more lost jobs? Without a license, an employer can’t insure his driver. I get tired of hearing the illegals do all the jobs citizens won’t do because of low pay. The reason the pay sucks is because we are flooded with cheap illegal labor. And to add insult to injury, those illegal aliens who can’t afford it will qualifiy for state subsidized insurnance. Also, uninsured drivers can’t sue if they are involved in an accident. I can’t wait to see the number of lawsuits go up.

    Comment by julie — 12/17/2004 @ 11:28 am

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