The dangers of nuclear and biological terrorism are now recognized across the entire spectrum of intellectual and political opinion. In their article on counterterrorism (Physics Today, April 2003, page 39), Jay Davis and Don Prosnitz focus on technical and policy issues related to homeland security. Although their focus is understandable in a piece written primarily for physicists, the article is incomplete, given the extraordinary importance of avoiding nuclear explosions in our cities.
Deployment of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the US requires that someone bring them across our borders. In box 2 of the article, the authors addressed the difficulties of checking the entry of 540 million people at more than 420 ports of entry. But Davis and Prosnitz wrote nothing about the thousands of miles of wide open borders across which more than half a million people, along with tons of drugs and machines, illegally cross each year.
To reduce the probability that WMDs will be used in the US, we must terminate illegal immigration and seriously crack down on all smuggling across the border. We cannot have homeland security with open borders.
Presently, it is much easier to monitor and prevent the entry of people than of WMDs. It is ludicrous and self-defeating to claim, as some do, that border enforcement is impossible. Significantly fewer resources would be required to defend our borders than to wage war and engage in nation-building in the Middle East or elsewhere.
A national poll conducted in mid-2002 by the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Foreign Relations found that 60% of the general public regards the present level of immigration as a “critical threat to the vital interests of the United States” (http://www.worldviews.org/detailreports/usreport). However, the poll also showed that only 14% of our nation’s leaders hold the same view. As a result, our level of national insecurity remains the same as before September 11th, 2001.
Many people are haunted by the saying that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Yet a repeat of September 11th would be like a picnic in the park compared to the effects of a nuclear bomb. We must secure our borders now.
