The United States has a 3000 mile long northern land border. A great deal of it runs thru primeval forest, un roaded, un settled, un patrolled. Anyone can hike across the border for little more than a decent pair of boots. We have two long coasts, 2000-3000 miles each. Each coast is covered with harbors, ports, boat launch ramps, marinas, gas docks, shore restaurants, you name it. Come in from the sea in a small craft and you are just another fisherman or sailor, or boater coming in at end of day. No papers needed. It doesn't take much cash to rent a slip at a marina to leave the boat. Light aircraft can fly across the border and land at any of thousands of tiny town airports, the kind that doesn't even man the tower, let alone a customs and immigration post. So, the terrorists who want in, can get in, even if they don't have the paperwork to fly in by commercial airline. And, we cannot subject every tourist to the sort of background investigation that we use on personnel cleared to handle nuclear weapons. It just costs too much.
So anyone from a reasonable country, a place like France or Germany or Britain, who has a passport, can just fly over here. And people from crazy places like Syria, there is little a US passport agent can do other than interview the traveler and take a hard look at his/her passport, make sure the picture matches the face in front of him, look for signs of forgery. Sometimes that works and some times it doesn't.
We have to catch them here. That takes tips to the cops, wiretaps (or the internet equivalent thereof), and checks for papers (aka stop and frisk) as often as legally permissible. The cops would get more tips if they were more careful about gunning down innocent citizens. And us loyal citizens ought to make it a point to always have some ID on us.
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