US President George W. Bush's unveiling of a plan to contain illegal immigration raises a simmering issue back up to boiling point in electoral manifestos across the nation. Once again the immigration woes bedevilling the US are back in the spotlight.
These are polarising times in the country, yet post-September 11 America is still finding that questions of humanitarian responsibility get easily confused with the preservation of national security, as shown by the latest figures from the UN refugee agency.
While it reports that the world's refugee population has fallen to its lowest for 25 years, at 9.2 million, it also warns that too many governments are showing too little compassion towards refugees and asylum seekers.
The US is regarded as one of the prime offenders, and it brings to mind an event that helped ignite the immigration debate in the first place - the Golden Venture, a rusty old freighter that ran aground off the Queens shoreline 13 years ago, spilling its cargo of 286 Fujianese into the arms of an overwhelmed police department and into the glare of the world's media. To this day it remains a key event that awaits resolution.
When the overloaded boat hit a sandbank 300 metres off Rockaway Beach in June 1993, the US was confronted with a clear-cut question of where its moral responsibility ended and national security began.
Those on board had risked life and limb in squalid, cramped conditions, with 10 not surviving. Many were so emaciated from the year-long voyage - where the only food was two or three bowls daily of tainted rice and filthy drinking water - that emergency teams recalled cracking ribcages as they attempted to resuscitate survivors.