The single greatest threat to the lives of America’s 280 million people remains, to this day, utterly unaddressed by political leaders afraid to lose the votes of ethnicity lobbies that would be "offended" by tighter government controls of our nation’s borders. It is that simple.

Consequently, illegal aliens are free to enter our country – virtually without encumbrance – by land, sea, and air. Michelle Malkin’s startling new book Invasion documents how truly grave the danger of illegal immigration is, and how appallingly meek has been our government’s response to the problem.

Malkin points out, for instance, that seven months ago the US Coast Guard received intelligence information that some twenty-five al Qaeda-linked Islamic extremists had entered our country as stowaways aboard commercial cargo vessels docking in Florida, Georgia, and California ports. Yet it is by no means surprising that some of the world’s most bloodthirsty monsters were able to sneak into our midst in this manner. Barely 3 percent of all cargo containers on US-bound ships are inspected upon arrival. According to Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, that fact "may be our single greatest vulnerability that we have not yet made much progress toward addressing."

We know that at least two of the terrorist conspirators who plotted the foiled Los Angeles International Airport millennium bombing illegally entered the US aboard ships from Algeria. The INS reports that at the Norfolk, Virginia seaport alone, the crews of at least forty foreign cargo vessels have been permitted ashore without proper authorization since the 9/11 attacks. Such a state of affairs would hardly even qualify for a television script, as no intelligent audience could realistically be expected to believe it.

For aspiring terrorists prone to seasickness, there’s plenty of elbow room to be found along the land routes. Our country’s 4,000-mile border with Canada is guarded by fewer than 400 Border Patrol agents – barely one for every ten miles. Half a world away, the US military has been deployed to seal the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in an effort to prevent the escape of al Qaeda terrorists, but political correctness prevents us from similarly protecting the borders on the very doorstep of our nation. And as we learned so painfully on 9/11, terrorists in our midst can harm us much more than can their counterparts in the Afghan mountains.

But would-be terrorists don’t need to go far out of their way to find unpatrolled locations where they can sneak into the US. They can casually saunter – with very little likelihood of detection – across the very same roads and bridges that everyone else uses. Indeed 99 percent of the 8.5 million motor vehicles and trains that crossed the Buffalo-Niagara border bridges last year were permitted to enter our country without inspection. In the south the situation is much the same, as Malkin explains: "Bin Laden operatives can pay cheap prices for escorts, join global smuggling rings, . . . or ride the rails undetected from Mexico along with hundreds of thousands of other ‘undocumented workers.’ "

Even in the comparatively few cases where illegal aliens are identified and ordered deported, the violators are generally released on own recognizance – rendering their deportation rulings toothless and hollow. The Washington Post reports that at least 314,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered deported – including 6,000 Middle Easterners – have simply disappeared and cannot be located.

Predictably, the self-destructive insanity of our immigration policy has not escaped the notice of aspiring illegal immigrants. As a result, they have become emboldened to the point of shamelessness, in some cases actually suing the US for failing to provide water stations along their illegal routes into our country. Presumably, those who break our immigration laws have a right not to get thirsty while doing so.

Incredible though it may seem, our immigration authorities have been cowed by such brazenness, as evidenced by INS commissioner James Ziglar’s recent announcement of the activation of several thirty-foot-tall "rescue beacons" with strobe lights and alarm buttons that sick or weary illegals can use to call for help. Malkin reports that a similar initiative will station horses and hovercraft in remote regions of America’s southern border, so as to protect illegal immigrants from drowning or getting lost. Could there be a more blatant slap in the face of American taxpayers, than to have them fund such disgraceful boondoggles? These are the symptoms of a nation gone mad.

The legal loopholes available to those seeking to enter our midst and plot our eventual doom are virtually limitless. Consider, for instance, the widespread prevalence of marriage fraud. A would-be terrorist can marry an American to obtain legal residence, and eventually even citizenship. Among those who have done precisely this was El Sayyid Nosair, who married an American-born Muslim woman just as he faced possible deportation for having overstayed his visa. Nosair not only went on to become a naturalized US citizen, but also to help carry out the 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing.

Similarly, bin Laden aide Ali Mohammed’s route to citizenship began with his marriage to an American woman, after which he helped execute the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa. Khalid Abu al Dahab became a citizen after marrying no fewer than three American women, and thereafter distinguished himself by joining the aforementioned Mohammed in plotting the embassy bombings. The San Francisco Chronicle describes Dahab as "a one-man communications hub" for al Qaeda, not only recruiting American citizens of Middle Eastern descent for bin Laden’s network, but also sending cash and phony passports to terrorists around the world from his California apartment.

The pitiful saga does not end there. Malkin reminds us that eight Middle Eastern men who plotted to bomb various New York City landmarks also married American citizens in order to obtain permanent legal residence. Even Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary married an American in 1985 and became a naturalized citizen four years later. It is enough to demoralize anyone who truly loves this land.

Of course, for the commitment-phobic terrorist who prefers not to marry, there is always the option of invoking political asylum – whose original intent was to offer safe haven to those fleeing political tyranny. Tragically, our country’s generosity toward that end is habitually abused and exploited by those committed to destroying us – people like murderer Mir Aimal Kansi and WTC bomb plotters Ramzi Yousef and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. Each day, untold numbers of asylum seekers such as these are released on their own recognizance and promptly disappear. Their asylum hearings are often delayed for many months, by which point they are no longer traceable. According to a 2002 General Accounting Office report, a preliminary review examining 5,000 petitions for asylum found a 90-percent fraud rate. In a more comprehensive follow-up analysis of 1,500 of those petitions, only one could be verified as legitimate. These figures, as documented by Malkin, are nothing short of astonishing.

Yet another escape hatch for illegal aliens is to simply wait for a general amnesty to "adjust their status." The 1993 WTC bomber Mahmud Abouhalima demonstrated how to do this quite effectively. Having come to the US with a six-month tourist visa in 1985, he overstayed his visa and patiently waited for Congress to grant amnesty for illegals the following year.

Moreover, a federal program allows those who violate our immigration laws to avoid potential legal hassles by simply paying a $1,000 fee to – again – "adjust their status" and gain permanent residence. More than half a million illegals took advantage of this loophole between 1994 and 1997. Incredibly, some of our nation’s most eminent political figures – in both major parties – seem oblivious to the dangers of this policy. A mere ten months ago Richard Gephardt asserted that "we need to expand and extend" such programs. Senator Ted Kennedy echoed Gephardt’s call for a "meaningful extension" of the program. President Bush joined the chorus as well, characterizing the law as a safeguard for "family values."

Such words are uttered notwithstanding the fact that illegal aliens have, as Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies explains, "taken part in almost every major attack on American soil perpetrated by Islamic terrorists, including the first attack on the World Trade Center, the Millenium plot, the plot to bomb the New York subway, and the attacks of 9/11." Further, those words are uttered despite the fact that illegal aliens of all nationalities comprise an astonishingly high proportion of convicted criminals in several American states. They are 24 percent of New York State’s prisoners, for instance. In California the figure approaches 15 percent.

We are a nation that too readily turns a blind eye to the malevolence that surrounds us. Our refusal to take seriously the current terrorist threat is evident even in the airline industry – the very realm wherein bin Laden’s henchmen attacked us on 9/11. For example, in a study conducted at 32 airports between November 2001 and February 2002, when airports were on their highest alert, undercover government testers successfully snuck knives past security checkpoints 70 percent of time; for simulated explosives, their success rate was 60 percent, and for guns 30 percent. A similar study conducted seven months ago by the Transportation Security Administration found that simulated guns and explosives were successfully smuggled past security checkpoints at 32 airports about once in every four attempts.

These staggering numbers are not themselves the problem. They are symptomatic of a mindset that is unwilling to fight evil with tireless, focused resolve. Thus we have effectively rendered ourselves helpless in the face of potential future attacks by terrorists already in our midst, who are merely awaiting an opportune moment to strike. A December 14 New York Post story reported that, in the event of a threatened city transit strike, NYPD officers would aggressively inspect vehicles deemed capable of hauling explosives designed to destroy the city’s bridges and tunnels. Such catastrophes are quite obviously within the realm of possibility, yet political correctness keeps almost every political leader in our nation from endorsing strict control over our borders, a control that would bar the admittance of anyone deemed potentially dangerous to our homeland security.

One might have thought that a calamity like 9/11 would have opened our Congressional representatives’ eyes to the need for greater safeguards. But alas, not enough people died to spur them into meaningful action. Perhaps when a future attack inflicts a death toll that exceeds 9/11 by a hundredfold or a thousandfold, we will finally hear them acknowledge what any thinking person understands already: If we do not end illegal immigration immediately, there’s really no point in getting all worked up about Social Security, 401-K’s, school vouchers, or any other issue whose relevance is founded upon an expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow.