A U.S. anti-terrorism program that requires Muslim and Arab nationals in the United States to report to the government for fingerprinting and photographing is expanding to include Saudis and Pakistanis raising new cries of ethnic and religious discrimination. The post-Sept. 11th law, which resulted in the arrest of hundreds of Iranians who were illegally living in California last month, sent a ripple of fear through Muslim communities across the United States and threatens to tear families apart, immigrant advocates say.

Of course there is a very valid question that should be asked before all of the left coast liberals decide to take off their gargoyle sunglasses and drop their jaws in order to either gasp or scream discrimination and that question is if these people haven’t done anything wrong then why would they be frightened of following the law? Personally, I find that to be a very fair and legitimate question if only for the fact that those who are here legally will have no reason to be fearful. This law will only affect those who have not followed the letter of the law and have not respected the laws of the United States and in that case they deserve to be detained and deported if deemed an appropriate measure.

In fact, it can be argued that when law abiding foreign nationals get registered it will prevent them from being arbitrarily detained or accused of heinous activities. As we witnessed over the holidays, it is easy for some deep throat wannabe to compile a list of Middle Easterners who perhaps have offended them in some benign way and make the information against them just blurry enough to have the FBI place their names and faces on the internet where they are available for every vigilante half-wit to see. This creates quite the mess when a patriotic yet reality challenged individual spots what he believes is someone who is going to blow-up his local Wal-Mart and either alerts the authorities in order to have him detained or takes inappropriate action himself. It would only take once for something like this to happen and then the legal feeding frenzy would begin and we would no doubt be subjected to seeing presidential candidate Al Sharpton coming to the aid of those poor foreign nationals who were targeted while the disingenuous Bill Clinton makes another public appearance where he claims to have seen this coming.

What the liberal left fails to understand is that the United States is not obligated to afford foreign nationals the rights that a citizen of the U.S. is granted through citizenship (of course I am not referring to all liberals because there are some who do understand reality but they are few and far between). Foreign nationals residing in the United States do not get to vote, they should not be entitled to coverage under the Bill of Rights but for our kindness to do so and they shouldn’t get state funded medical coverage, although there is one state that is finding that out the hard way right now courtesy of the largest budget deficit ever seen by a state…ahem, hello California. Foreign nationals who are residing in this country are here as a courtesy. We are under no obligation to allow them into the country at all. The United States, being the most generous country in the world, allows them to come here and go to school on education visas, allows them to come here and work on temporary work visas and allows them to come and see our great nation on visitors visas just to name a few visas offered by the INS. Yet while we extend our friendship to these people of the world there are those among them who would violate our laws and disrespect our friendship by doing so. There are even those who would fly airplanes into building killing innocents because of something that some deranged mind came up with halfway around the world.

There are those that would say that if the U.S. were going to do this then they should require all foreign nationals to register and to them I would respectfully say that’s my point. We should register all foreign nationals coming into or through this country. Each and every time a foreign national goes through a port of entry their passport should be logged and a photo and fingerprint should be required. Once again I offer the fact that it is not only to catch those who would be pursuing illegal activities but it is also to protect those who are law abiding. There is nothing wrong with keeping an inventory of those who come into and leave from this country. Being required to identify whom you are does not violate anyone’s civil rights it is what is done with the information after it is acquired that has lent itself to scrutiny in the past. This matter needs to be addressed and the procedures that are agreed upon should be enforced rigidly.

As we continue to heal from the murderous acts that were perpetrated on us on September 11th, we should all realize that although we are the most generous country in the world there are some people out there who loathe us for it. They believe that because we are proud of our country that we are arrogant, self-centered and brash. Some of those people come here over the very welcome mat that we lay out with pride and they protest what we stand for and some even plot to kill us, our families, those we love and even our children. It is these people, the murderers, the terrorist, the envious to a fault that we guard against by simply wanting to know who they are. Isn’t it acceptable to want our government to make sure nobody evil is coming here to live down the block from us? Isn’t it acceptable to want to be able to sleep at night knowing that the man down the street isn’t a member of al Qaida?

Frank Salvato is a political media consultant and the managing editor for The New Media Journal.us. He is a contributing writer for The Washington Dispatch, GOPUSA, OpinionEditorials, Men’s News Daily, Canada Free Press & AmericanDaily. His pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared as a guest on The O’Reilly Factor, The Kevin Matthews Radio Show (Chicago) and The Brad Messer Radio Show (San Antonio). His pieces have been recognized by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention and are occasionally featured in The Washington Times and The London Morning Paper as well as other national and international publications.