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by Chris Strohm
GovExec.com- Members of the commission
that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks said
Monday the Bush administration and Congress have failed to make
enough progress in several critical areas to protect the
country from another attack.
In their final appearance together,
members of the former 9/11 commission issued a report card on
the government’s progress in implementing recommendations
they made more than a year ago. Commissioners issued more
“Fs” than “As” and made emotional pleas
for bipartisanship and civic engagement to ensure that needed
reforms are enacted.
“Here we are in December of 2005 and
our government has still not passed some of the basic reforms
to make our citizens a little bit safer,” said
commissioner Timothy Roemer, a former Democratic congressman
from Indiana. “We are skating on thin ice; that ice is
getting thinner and [is] about to crack.”
“When will our government wake up to
this challenge?” he asked.
The report card included five failing
grades, 12 “Ds” and two incomplete grades. The best
grade was an “A-” in the area of tracking and
stopping terrorist financing.
The worst grades were in areas such as
preventing terrorists from getting weapons of mass destruction,
reforming how homeland security funds are allocated, developing
international standards for detaining suspected terrorists,
setting up a privacy and civil liberties oversight board,
improving international collaboration on borders and document
security, screening airline passengers and allocating radio
spectra for first responders.
“If my children were to receive this
report card, they would have to repeat a grade,” Roemer
said. “We can’t afford to repeat the lessons of
9/11 and the losses of 9/11.”
The 9/11 commission disbanded after it
gave its final report in July 2004. Since then, members have
continued pressing for reforms as part of the 9/11 Public
Discourse Project, a nonprofit funded by private money.
Commission chairman Thomas Kean, a former
Republican governor of New Jersey, called it
“shocking” and “scandalous” that local
responders across the country still cannot adequately
communicate with each other, airline passengers still are not
checked against all names on terrorist watch lists and scarce
homeland security funding is not allocated solely based on
risks.
“We’re frustrated at the lack
of urgency in addressing these various problems,” Kean
said.
“The terrorists don’t target
Republicans or Democrats; they target Americans,” he
added. “We will not defeat them as Republicans or as
Democrats. We will defeat them only if we all work
together.”
The reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act
presents Congress with a “golden opportunity” to
change the formula for allocating homeland security grants,
Kean said. The House and Senate are in conference to hammer out
a final bill. The House version would distribute grants to
states based on risk. Kean said six senators must support the
change in order for it to pass; only five are on board so far.
Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton, a
former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said efforts to
stop terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction
“fall far short of what we need to do,” adding that
there “is simply no higher priority on the national
security agenda.”
Hamilton also said more reforms are needed
within the FBI. The bureau has made some progress but is
deficient in its analytical capabilities, information sharing
with other agencies and local law enforcement, and recruiting,
hiring, training and career development, he said.
“The bureau still struggles to make
the intelligence mission the dominate mission of the
agency,” Hamilton said. “Reforms are at risk from
inertia and complacency.”
“A strong and effective domestic
intelligence function is not an option for the United States;
it is an obligation,” Hamilton added. “Our
nation’s security depends on its success.”
Chris Strom writes for GovExec.com and can
be reached at cstrohm@govexec.com.
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 /PRNewswire/ —
The vast majority of undocumented migrants from Mexico were
gainfully employed before they left for the United States,
according to a Pew Hispanic Center report released today. The
report suggests that failure to find work at home does not seem
to be the primary reason that the estimated 6.3 million
undocumented migrants from Mexico have come to the U.S.
Once they arrive and pass through a brief
transition period, migrants have little trouble finding work,
with family and social networks playing an important role in
aiding the process, the study found. Migrants easily make
transitions into new jobs, even though most find themselves
working in industries that are new to them. Many are paid at
minimum-wage levels or below.
The demand for labor appears to play a
strong role in shaping the economic destiny of Mexican
migrants. Migrants are concentrated in a handful of industries
— agriculture, hospitality, construction and
manufacturing. There are also signs of change in the
characteristics of migrants and the nature of the demand for
them. The more recently arrived and younger migrants from
Mexico are better educated than their predecessors, less likely
to be farm workers and more likely to have a background in
other industries, such as commerce and sales. They increasingly
come from a greater variety of regions in Mexico and make homes
in new Mexican-migrant settlement areas in the U.S., such as
New York and Raleigh, N.C.
These findings emerge from the
Center’s Survey of Mexican Migrants, which provides
detailed information on 4,836 Mexican migrants who completed a
12- page questionnaire as they were applying for a matricula
consular, an identity document issued by Mexican diplomatic
missions. The survey was not a random sample of foreign-born
Mexicans but one designed to generate the maximum number of
observations of migrants seeking further documentation of their
identity. Fieldwork was conducted in Los Angeles, New York,
Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Raleigh and Fresno, from July 12,
2004, to Jan. 28, 2005. While respondents were not asked
directly to specify their immigration status, most are believed
to lack authorization to work in the U.S.
The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan
research organization, is a project of the Pew Research Center
and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
CONTACT: Angela Luben of Pew
Hispanic Center, (202) 419-3606.