I found this nice dissertation on this topic
(A) [Port of Entry] The Senate Approves The Homeland Bill:
What Now?
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Thursday, November 21, 2002 -
http://www.usvisanews.com/memo1920.html
By Jose Latour
If you folks have watched any television since Tuesday, you no
doubt have heard that the Senate resoundingly approved (with a
90-9 vote) a bill that would create a Department of Homeland
Security, leading to a massive reorganization of the federal
government. This courtesy of one Osama bin Laden, Public Enemy
Number One.
According to what we're hearing in the press, President Bush
expects to sign the bill early next week, when he will announce
his choice to lead the department. Word has it that former
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge is a front runner as his choice.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will, as we have
previously discussed here, combine some 170,000 federal workers
from 22 agencies, creating a previously unanticipated federal
bureaucracy which, quite frankly, scares the hell out of me. It
also scared the hell out of Ted Kennedy, Daniel Inouye, Robert
Bird, and a few other Senators who see the government's
intervention in a variety of traditionally private sector issues
as "weakening protections against unwarranted government
intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans." (Statement by
Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold.)
What does it mean for us? A lot. Customs and INS will both be
integrated within the organization, and as a person who has lived
the past 12 years struggling with today's comparatively tiny INS
bureaucracy, I can only imagine what will happen when immigration
responsibilities are effectively swallowed by a bureaucracy
literally hundreds of times larger.
From the perspective of security, I am hopeful that this level of
integration will indeed lead to the type of information-sharing
that can potentially prevent much of the misinformation and chaos
that has traditionally hindered our domestic and international
efforts. For example, one would like to believe that the
wholesale restructuring of our federal government could at least
keep a future immigration service from issuing student visa
renewals for dead terrorists.
But, in a bureaucracy as large as this new one, I expect such
errors are probably more likely to happen, not less.
Hey, what can I say? You guys know me to be an eternal optimist, but this train's a-rollin'. Not much you and I can do to slow the momentum down at this point. I continue to feel glimmers of hope that the complaints I hear around me are the beginning of a quiet revolution, a revolution based on the "Outrage of the
Reasonable Man." I believe that the Reasonable Man is pretty much starting to understand the dichotomy between a sound system for enhancing national security versus a comprehensive dismantling of the system of liberties that made this country great. At the
same time, I severely question whether those in charge of the
enforcement provisions as to homeland security - most notably our current Attorney General - are Reasonable Men.
As the momentum continues on this big train we can only hope that the reasonable men and women of America will continue to
vigorously express their opinions through their elected
representatives and through the newspapers and media of the
United States before we continue to lose more of the precious
rights we hold so dear.
