This is getting scary already

What is this now, the fifth consecutive John Tierney column that doesn't make me want to tear my hair out and run around screaming?

The fixation on "securing the border" is a political — and psychological — problem, not a rational response to a genuine national threat. People living along the border understandably object to strangers' sneaking through their backyard, but why are so many people in the rest of the country obsessed with keeping out foreigners?

The border hawks have two chief arguments, starting with that great debate stopper: Sept. 11. A porous southern border is supposedly no longer tolerable now that terrorists have declared war on America and are threatening even more catastrophic attacks.

But if terrorists are smart enough to plan such an attack, they're smart enough to get into the United States, no matter how many agents and troops are on the Mexican border. If terrorists have the determination to train for years, if they can pay for flight lessons or anthrax or a nuclear bomb, then they can easily bribe or forge their way into America — or waltz in with legitimate visas.

Mohamed Atta did not have to hire a coyote or swim across the Rio Grande. He and the other hijackers all entered the country legally. The 500,000 or so people who manage to sneak in from Mexico each year are a minuscule fraction — about 1 percent — of the tourists and students and other visitors who enter America legally.

Mexico is not the preferred route of the suspected terrorists caught so far because they prefer more convenient options, like coming in from Canada.

Even if the northern border were sealed with the Great Wall of Saskatchewan, there would still be thousands of miles of unsecured coastline — and plenty of drug runners with boats and planes who would have no trouble delivering a terrorist or a suitcase bomb.

Illegal immigration seems to be the boogeyman that conservatives and nativists drag out every time they need a scapegoat for the discontent that Americans feel when their job opportunities are dwindling, their cost of living is rising, and their faith in the future is threatened. If they can redirect people's attention to the Scary Brown Guy cutting their lawn, perhaps they won't look at the latest round of tax cuts given to those in the top 1% income tier.

Unfettered illegal immigration is a problem, and has the potential to be a national security problem, though as Tierney notes, the 9/11 hijackers were here legally. But I find the timing of this obsession with immigration right now to be a curious one. It smacks of scapegoating, and at a time when Kellogg, Brown, and Root is building what are essentially internment camps in Texas, this could get very ugly indeed.