Arabs still enter U.S.
illegally from Mexico

While President Bush considers a broad-based amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., there is growing evidence the Mexican border continues to be used as a covert entry point for the smuggling of Arabs into the country.

An Arab-smuggling ring was broken up just last month, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, an online, premium intelligence newsletter published by WND. The seven-member ring included a former Mexican diplomat who worked in Lebanon's consular ministry office and gave out passports.

The newsletter also reports convicted Arab terrorists involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center and other acts of sabotage have used the porous Mexican border as an entry point and have also capitalized on previous amnesty programs to establish residency in the U.S.

Foreign-born Islamic terrorists have continued to use almost every conceivable means of entering the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, including every aspect of penetrating the U.S. immigration system.

Militant Islamic terrorists have come into the U.S. as students, tourists and business visitors. They have sneaked across the border illegally, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, and have been granted amnesty and citizenship. Terrorists have even used America's humanitarian tradition of welcoming those seeking asylum, reports G2 Bulletin.

And there is no question Arabs have used the porous border between the U.S. and Mexico and the immigration problems it poses for Washington to its advantage.

Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 Trade Center bombing, was legalized as a seasonal agricultural worker as part of the 1986 amnesty. Only after he was legalized was he able to travel outside of the country, including several trips to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where he received the terrorist training he used in the bombing. Abdel Hakim Tizegha, involved in the millennium plot, sneaked across the border posing as a Mexican migrant.

It's not just a question of Arab terrorists buying their way into the U.S. with the cooperation of border "coyotes." There is also a political alliance developing between separatist Hispanics and Muslim radicals.

Arabic journal found on Mexican route to U.S.

On its website, a group called "La Voz de Aztlan," the Voice of Aztlan, identifies Mexicans in the U.S. as "America's Palestinians." Many Mexicans see themselves as part of a transnational ethnic group known as "La Raza," the race. A May editorial on the website, with a dateline of Los Angeles, Alta California, declares that "both La Raza and the Palestinians have been displaced by invaders that have utilized military means to conquer and occupy our territories."

But the threat of secession is not merely from groups that might be considered on the fringe. Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo said in a 1997 speech in Chicago to the "National Council of La Raza," a Hispanic advocacy group, that he "proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important – a very important – part of this."

Zedillo said that because of this fact his government proposed a constitutional amendment that allows Mexican citizens to hold dual citizenship. Spencer believes that the objective is to enable Mexicans in the United States to vote in the interest of Mexico.

Ultimately, many Mexicans hope for a "reconquista," a reconquest of territory lost when Mexico signed the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War.

The U.S. has tripled its border patrol budget over the past five years, but the flow of immigrants has barely changed. At the same time, Mexican President Vicente Fox has pressed for an eventual erasure of the southern border and encouraged Mexicans who seek work in the U.S.

According to a survey conducted in June 2002, a healthy majority of Mexicans claim that their country rightfully owns much of the southwestern United States, while most Americans believe Washington should adopt stricter immigration standards and deploy U.S. troops along the border. The Zogby International poll found a majority of Mexicans say the U.S. Southwest "rightfully belongs to Mexico," and that Mexican citizens should be able to come into those areas freely, without U.S. permission. The poll found that 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, "The territory of the United States' southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico." Zogby said 28 percent disagreed, while another 14 percent said they weren't sure.

President Bush says he wants to see a Palestinian state carved out of Israel. It may be very difficult for him some day to explain why an Aztlan state should not likewise be carved out of America.

Activists who quite literally see themselves "America's Palestinians" are gearing up a movement to carve out of the southwestern United States – a region including all of Bush's home state of Texas – a sovereign Hispanic state called the Republica del Norte.

"There are great similarities between the political and economic condition of the Palestinians in occupied Palestine and that of La Raza in the southwest United States," explains an editorial from earlier this year in La Voz de Aztlan in Los Angeles, the city seen as the future capital of the new Hispanic state – much like Jerusalem is seen by Palestinian Arabs as their capital.

The editorial goes on to draw analogies between the Arab uprising in Israel and gang violence in Los Angeles. It's the same thing, the activists claim. This is not crime and punishment, according to the La Raza (literally, "The Race") activists, this is the birth of an independence movement by young Hispanics.

"The similarities are many," says the editorial. "The primary one, of course, is the fact that both La Raza and the Palestinians have been displaced by invaders that have utilized military means to conquer and occupy our territories. The takeover of our respective lands by foreign elements occurred 100 years apart. For La Raza, it happened in 1848 when Mexico lost the southwest at the end of the Mexican-American war and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidlago. For the Palestinians, it occurred in 1948 when the Zionist Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and signed the 'Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel' on the day in which the British Mandate over Palestine expired."

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