|
|
During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
Money Moves, 5/24: Chocomize Co-Founder Fabian Kaempfer talks with Bloomberg’s Deirdre Bolton about the business of customizing chocolate
The president's campaign has a new rule—no cell phones allowed
In honor of remote control inventor Eugene Polley, we recognize other influential but neglected inventors who have felt the sting of stolen glory
Forget Adderall. Traders now pop chia seeds to stay focused and energized
The Italian automaker and others are adding hybrid technology to elite cars
The storied bridge that links San Francisco and Marin County changed the face of California
Schools cultivate ties with startups before they're big successes
Dave McClure's traveling venture capital show scours the world for promising startups
Get Four
|  | APRIL 19, 2005
Homeland Security's New Broom[Page 2 of 2]Q: The former Immigration and Naturalization service, much of which has been moved to DHS, was possibly the worst agency in government. Not entirely its fault since there was always a conflict between those in Congress who thought allowing illegal immigration is good for the economy and others who thought otherwise. So now we have a situation where we have 11 million illegal aliens in the country, tens of thousands of absconders -- aliens fleeing deportation orders -- and not very many people looking for them, and you've got vigilantes lining up on the border to do the work that the federal government has failed to do. At the same time, you have a White House that is trying, largely for political reasons, to come up with a limited amnesty program. So it seems like a big conflict still exists between the political goals and addressing the problem of illegal immigration. A: I probably disagree with about 10 of the assumptions embedded in your question. I think that, actually, the position of the Administration is sensible, which is this: It is not an amnesty program. It is a program for temporary workers. It would get people who are coming to the country illegally but don't intend to do any harm into a controlled and regulated pathway that will at least give us some sense of who they are. And it will allow us to follow them and determine who may be interested in harming us. Q: If you go to an airport you can have a pretty intense experience now being checked by the TSA, with people looking into your shoes and groping around your body. But the same sort of attention is not being given to people who get on trains, cruise ships, car ferries, or the like. Do you see that there needs to be a rebalancing? A: Well, we always need to be rebalanced. In the second-stage review we have underway, we are looking at the whole landscape to see if we need to recalibrate a little bit. And it wouldn't be surprising if we did. We also have to use a risk-focused approach that not all modes of transportation demonstrate the same risk. For example, with an airplane the concern isn't just that the plane could be destroyed with a loss of life, but that it could also be turned into a weapon and launched into a building. That can't happen with a train. So there are different sets of concerns. Also, most transportation in this country is private -- it's vehicular transportation. It poses a different security challenge. The answer is yes, we do have to make sure we are properly balanced. Q: I would put cargo in that group, too. A huge amount of attention is being paid to the fact that we have 20,000 cargo containers coming into the country every day, and we have 1% to 3%, by most estimates, that are being inspected. A: There is a difference between screening and inspection. We have a layered approach. We screen essentially 100% of the maritime cargo in the sense that we know who the shipper is, what the manifest is, where it comes from, what the port is, what the ship is. Based on a complex of factors, including the shipper, whether the shipper has a track record, and whether the shipper is reputable, we target some percentage for an actual inspection. So you have a balanced system based upon risk. Where we want to head is to a system of reputable preclearances for shippers that enable us to move them very rapidly without a lot of physical inspections, and then focus our remaining resources on shippers we don't have that comfort level with. And this will create competitive pressure for private business itself to take the steps necessary to build their own security.
 Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
 Copyright 2005, Bloomberg L.P.Terms of Use | Privacy Notice |
Printer-Friendly Version
