Bush's Immigration Folly
by Selwyn Duke
Whenever people conduct business or formulate plans secretly, it has to give you pause for thought. After all, when someone has nothing to hide, he usually doesn't hide it. Criminals conjure up their schemes in secret because these schemes would hurt their fellow man, and they know that if their fellow man knows about them he will foil what they're trying to accomplish. So it is with political slight of hand as well, and this is why you have to see a red flag when politicians seek to pass legislation below the radar of the American public. Well, this is exactly what has happened with the immigration bill that has just been passed at the behest of President Bush via an unrecorded vote by the House of Representatives.
This bill would offer amnesty to hundreds of thousands of Mexican illegal aliens who presently live in this country. All an individual has to do to qualify is break our laws by entering our country illegally, find a citizen to vouch for him and then pay the Immigration and Naturalization Service $1000 [sounds like legalized bribery to me]. Why is Bush advocating this idea? Well, it could be because his brother is married to a woman of Mexican descent, because he wants to ingratiate himself to Americans of Mexican descent for the purposes of securing their votes, or it could just be that with respect to this he's acting out of misguided emotionalism. I don't know what his true motivation is, so I'll reserve judgement for now. What I do know is that it is a terrible, un-American idea that would be poison for our nation.
Think about the message that is ALWAYS sent when you offer amnesty to illegal aliens: illegally enter our country any way you can, then just stick it out long enough and eventually someone will grant you amnesty - you don't have to bother with the legal process that immigrants have always had to follow to become American. This is idiotic because it REWARDS bad behavior; it gives people an incentive to break the law thereby increasing the chances that people will act criminally. In reality, we should adopt a policy that is just the opposite: we should enact a law stating that if you enter this country illegally, you will be deported and FOREVER disallowed from coming to the US. This would send a very different message to people, one that says that if you want to have any chance whatsoever of becoming American, you must seek to do so legally - this would create an incentive to FOLLOW the law.
Another problem with amnesty is that it is a slap in the face to all the good, law-abiding immigrants who wait and seek to enter the US through legal channels, because you're giving those who acted ignobly preference over them. Sadly, this is emblematic of how things have come to be done in this country; it's just like when children who break rules aren't punished, and end up being as well or better off than those who followed the rules. This engenders anger in those who follow the rules, causing many of them to conclude that "nice guys finish last," and guess what happens when people start believing that? The answer is that you end up with fewer nice guys.
Now, I must address a very silly argument that has been used to buttress the idea of offering amnesty to illegals. There are those who say, "these people are going to be here anyway, so we might as well legalize them and try to bring them into the mainstream." Well, this is another example of something that is emblematic of the way many in our nation have come to think and act. It's the "they're going to do it anyway so let's legalize it" excuse. But, ok, if this is a valid approach, then let's apply it consistently. Some people are going to break into homes anyway, so why not just legalize it? Of course, this would be silly; the fact is that it's the government's job to enforce just laws as best as is humanly possible. Not every crime of any type can be prevented, but that's no excuse for not trying to minimize crime as much as possible. And, when the government fails in this, fails to enforce the laws of the land, it has failed in one of it's most basic missions - this means it has failed us.
Additionally, we have to ask ourselves what kind of immigrant we want in this country in the first place. We don't want people who are criminally inclined, yet, these feckless politicians seek to naturalize those whose very entrance into our country was a criminal act. This is like someone breaking into your house, and instead of calling the police, you decide to invite him to live with you and are totally oblivious to the fact that if he was inclined to break in, he will no doubt be inclined to perpetrate other acts of evil as well. The fact is, that people who are willing to violate the law stating that they can't break into our nation, will be more likely than average to break other laws as well. This no doubt partially explains why fully 15% of the inmates in California's penal system are Mexican illegal aliens.
Of course, many would sanctimoniously frame the issue of offering amnesty to these illegals as one of compassion. House Majority Leader Dick Armey alluded to this when he said that this will demonstrate to the world that America is a "beacon to all who love freedom and the opportunity to live, work and raise a family." Well, I may surprise you, but I agree - it IS an issue of compassion. This is because there's nothing compassionate about hurting your country. There's nothing compassionate about following a course of action that will increase the amount of lawbreaking, thereby harming Americans of all stripes as well as future generations. There's nothing compassionate about supporting that which benefits those who do ill at the expense of those who act rightly. These things are the very antithesis of compassion. The politicians who support this measure are at best acting stupidly, and at worst are selling their country out for political gain, which would mean they were behaving like enemies of America. We should do the compassionate thing here, and this means opposing this destructive idea and exposing those who support this undermining of our country.
Protected by Copyright
