Thread: Revisiting the Frank Amendment

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Revisiting the Frank Amendment

Chuck Morse
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 14 January 2008

Rep. Barney Frank was the chief sponsor of an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which became law in 1990, that nullified the exclusion clause to our immigration laws. The exclusion clause, first signed into law by President John Adams in 1798, granted our government the right to deny a visa to a foreign applicant who was either believed to espouse views antithetical to the government or who was believed to be associated with foreign groups judged to be subversive.

The exclusion clause, the right to deny a visa, was rooted in international law and custom. All governments, today and historically, have asserted this right. The right of a nation to exclude a foreigner is analogous to the right of an individual to deny someone entry into his home. The exclusion clause was, essentially, a no trespassing law on the national level. Governments shouldered the moral and practical responsibility of protecting their respective national homelands from undesirables. That is until Barney Frank's social experiment turned this basic principle on it's head.

After the Frank amendment became law in 1990, according to the congressional testimony of terrorism experts Steven Emerson and Josef Bodansky and author Gerald Posner, the country was flooded with applicants who would be free to express their anti-Semitic and supremacist views and to engage in subversive activities such as the raising of funds for terrorism overseas, the recruiting of potential terrorists, and to engage in anti-American propaganda. The new Frank Amendment applicants would be free to operate unhindered in this country as they were protected by the color of the law.

The Frank amendment effectively dismantled a concerted effort by the Reagan Administration to deny visas to and to detain and deport foreigners believed to be linked to terrorist groups or who were engaging in anti-American activities. The Frank amendment stymied coordination between the CIA and the FBI and subsequent Frank sponsored laws would also shackle the State Department and embassy personnel in their efforts to deny visas. It should be stressed that the exclusion clause applied only to foreigners, not to American citizens protected by the constitution. There is no such thing as a constitutional or a civil right to visit this country or, for that matter, any country.

In 1995, the Republican Congress attempted to contain the impending disaster caused by the Frank amendment by modifying the law. Barney Frank voted against this modest reform stating that he objected to the part that banned "seditious activities" on behalf of foreigners on American soil. Regarding the Frank amendment, President Bill Clinton's CIA Director R. James Woolsey commented to the Wall Street Journal "Congress had made it illegal to deny visas to members of terrorist groups."

I ran for Congress against Barney Frank in 2004 making the case that the Frank amendment helped the nineteen hijackers of 9/11 obtain legal visas. Frank claimed that he sponsored the amendment because he wanted to help poet Gabriel Garcia Marquez, denied a visa because of his communist affiliations, to enter the country. As a sitting congressman, Frank could have sponsored a book tour for Marquez or he could have asked the State Department to provide a waiver as had been done in analogous cases previously.

Instead, Frank sponsored a law that allowed all suspected subversives entry, including members of Hamas and others connected with Islamic terrorism. The Frank amendment stated that the government could deny a visa to an applicant only if there was evidence of "terrorist activities." Under the Frank amendment courtroom standards of proof, bin Laden would have been able to obtain a legal visa.

I found myself reflecting on the Frank amendment as I contemplated the upcoming presidential primary. The Frank amendment itself is now a sad and disturbing chapter of history since 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Yet the Frank amendment is bigger than Barney Frank and his inept meddling in immigration. The Frank amendment is an idea that might still resonate with some of the Presidential candidates today.

For more information, please check out the excellent web site www.anti-cair-net.org.

http://www.brookesnews.com/082101chuckmorse.html

Another fine member of our Government.

The Frank Ammendment is an example of unintended consequences as Barney Frank is a Jewish Leftist Gay. The Frank Ammendment which he drafted wih the intention of the law admitting some dissidents who Frank empathized with ended up admitting a great many people totally unsympathtic to him.