Hillary Calls for Border Security Czar

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is urging the Bush administration to appoint a border security coordinator who would be responsible for devising a strategy to stop terrorists from entering the U.S. from Canada.

“We know that the northern border is an important gateway for people coming into our country,” Clinton said on Wednesday.

“We have to be more vigilant about who comes in and who leaves. And I think the best way we can handle this it to have one person in the government who’s responsible.”

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Clinton’s call for a border security czar is seen as an extension of her get-tough policy on illegal immigration. Her critics charge that Sen. Clinton and her political strategists hope this new strategy will appeal to red-state voters in anticipation of a 2008 presidential run.

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In a February 2003 radio interview the top Democrat offered her harshest comments to date on illegal immigration.

“I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants,” she told WABC host John Gambling.

Borrowing a page from conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, Clinton railed: “People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx; you’re going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work.”