DEPORTING YOUNG CHEF IS FIGHTING TERRORISM?

Reports that the Department of Homeland Security is a tangled-up mess
of bureaucratic wheel-spinning and ineffectual anti-terror efforts
resonate given the local target of the department's zeal: An 18-year-
old Canadian -- and legal resident of this country -- who was caught
with a small amount of marijuana when he was 15.

This is about fighting terror?

We understand the department's focus on aliens, whether legal or
illegal. But just as with air travel restrictions that out of
"fairness" target elderly grandmothers with the same zeal as young
male immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security seems to have
abandoned common sense.

Or, maybe, it's Congress that can't see the forest for the trees.
Homeland Security officials claim they only are following the law,
which the attorney for Ryan Snodgrass says essentially lumps together
"everyone from a shoplifter to a murderer."

Congress' myopia is underscored by the comments of an aide to U.S.
Rep. Jeff Miller, who said, "Basically, if you're in the country as a
legal resident, the country is doing you a favor by letting you stay
in the country."

That sort of thinking is what has Silicon Valley entrepreneurs
regularly objecting to the government's overly restrictive immigration
work policies that leave them scrambling to hire enough qualified
engineers and programmers from overseas, while watching more and more
high-tech work head offshore.

It helps explain why universities are finding it more difficult to
bring in researchers with needed expertise and are watching top
foreign students who used to flock to U.S. colleges increasingly head
to universities in places such as China.

And it helps explain why scientists seeking to do top-level research
in many fields are finding a more hospitable climate overseas.

It is comforting to think that the United States can stay a high-tech
leader simply because we are so wonderful. The reality is that people
make it happen, and many of the best scientists, programmers,
researchers and engineers long have come here from other countries. In
the past, the United States was seen as the best place for them to get
ahead. Today, they increasingly are looking to other countries.

In Snodgrass we have an ambitious young man seeking to reach the top
ranks of the culinary industry. He works as a chef at the upper-scale
Portofino development on Pensacola Beach and is slated to attend the
Orlando Culinary Academy, a Cordon Bleu program.

Instead, he ends up jailed in Atlanta for a week and now awaits a
hearing to determine if he should be deported to a country he left 14
years ago. Why?

Because at 15 -- 15! -- he was arrested for possession of 20 grams of
marijuana. That's about the weight of a Reese's peanut butter cup.

What we want of young people who make mistakes is to straighten out
their lives and become productive. Well, isn't that what Snodgrass is
doing?

Now, in the interests of "national security," that progress is
threatened.

Can someone tell us how this is making us safer?