Here in America, citizens and other legal residents have every right to stage rallies, protests, and demonstrations on any topic that tickles their fancy. <\/p>\n
But they ought to say what they mean. It\u2019s reached the point where some of these characters use so many misleading code words that you need some kind of Politically Correct secret decoder ring. <\/p>\n
And I wonder if the folks who cover such events for newspapers shouldn\u2019t provide us with a little of that cryptanalysis. <\/p>\n
\u201cLocals rally for immigration reform,\u201d read the headline on the local break page of the June 2 Review-Journal; \u201cCampaign seeks solution that keeps families together. … <\/p>\n
\u201cA coalition of labor, business, faith and immigrant rights leaders gathered in downtown Las Vegas on Monday to launch the local leg of a national campaign pushing reform of America\u2019s immigration laws,\u201d the story reported. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe campaign, dubbed Reform Immigration for America, seeks to encourage lawmakers this year to consider comprehensive immigration reform that emphasizes keeping families together.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAll of us have seen the disastrous effects of this broken (immigration) system, which has enforcement only as its approach,\u201d said Peter Ashman, chairman of Nevada\u2019s chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. \u201cThe immigration system must be overhauled to create and accommodate a balanced and sensible approach to immigration, one that takes into account our need for secure and orderly borders and protects our integrity as a nation of immigrants.\u201d <\/p>\n
By which Mr. Ashman actually meant to say that he now demands we \u201cfinish the job of making our borders the least secure in the world, inviting every poor person in the hemisphere to swarm here illegally, thus bankrupting legal immigrants and native-born Americana alike, and if you object I\u2019m going to call you a racist and pretend your forebears broke just as many laws getting here as my clients break every day.\u201d <\/p>\n
Millions of immigrants \u201chave been suffering for many, many years and living in the shadows,\u201d the newspaper quoted Geoconda Arguello-Kline, president of the Culinary union, as saying back on June the second. <\/p>\n
Meantime, lawyer Ashman said immigration reform is necessary in part because trying to \u201cremove the undocumented population\u201d isn\u2019t realistic. \u201cIt\u2019s too costly, unworkable and un-American,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has not worked.\u201d <\/p>\n
Where to begin? <\/p>\n
First, if we define \u201cimmigrants\u201d as most people would, meaning those millions who have gone through the minimal required legal steps to immigrate to America legally, I wonder where we would find the \u201cimmigrants (who) have been suffering for many, many years and living in the shadows,\u201d as Ms. Arguello-Kline contends. <\/p>\n
I know plenty of immigrants. They\u2019re proud to be active participants in every aspect of American life. They\u2019re not afraid to go virtually anywhere, in public, with their heads held high, because they know if the occasion should ever arise where they should have to prove they have a legal right to be here, that won\u2019t be any problem. <\/p>\n
The people to whom Ms. Arguello-Kline refers as \u201cimmigrants\u201d aren\u2019t \u201cimmigrants,\u201d by that sensible definition, at all. They\u2019re trespassing illegal aliens, who violate multiple laws, including the statutes against fraud and identify theft, every day they\u2019re here. <\/p>\n
That is who she\u2019s talking about — right? <\/p>\n
Calling these people “undocumented” is meant to create the impression their “documents merely failed to show up in the mail,” a situation easily remedied by filling out a couple pesky forms. That’s like calling a rapist an “insensitive lover” or a bank robber a “customer who makes withdrawals without presenting proper withdrawal slips.” <\/p>\n
And not even THEY seem to be suffering much in the shadows, so far as I can see. I wait behind them in the post office all the time — people who need translators because they speak no language but Spanish (unlike legal immigrants, who often have a larger English vocabulary than the native-born.) So why try to confuse people by pretending to describe the plight of people who came here legally and played by the rules? <\/p>\n
Furthermore, I submit none of the 50 people who staged their photo op down by the courthouse last Monday have any interest in seeing U.S. immigration laws liberalized. Let\u2019s say Congress were to decide tomorrow to double, triple — heck, to multiply by five — the number of foreign folks to be allowed to immigrate to this country, legally, next year: five times more people from all over the world invited to apply, demonstrate they have no criminal history or infectious diseases, that they have either a big enough bank account or enough education and training in a needed skill to guarantee them employment upon arrival here. <\/p>\n
Would even that massive a \u201creform\u201d please these protesters? Of course not. No such real \u201creform\u201d would make any difference to the illegal trespassers already here, since they\u2019ve demonstrated they have no interest in obeying the law, no matter what it says. If they were to go back to Mexico or Guatemala or El Salvador and try to apply for legal emigration to the United States, the fact they they\u2019re functionally illiterate and have no notable skills means they STILL wouldn\u2019t get to emigrate legally — not just to America, but to any other First World country, since they ALL set similar, sensible standards. <\/p>\n
Heck, even MEXICO has such standards! <\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we next get the code words about \u201ckeeping families together.\u201d The only qualification these protesters want to see for mass amnesty is \u201ca family member already here, even if it\u2019s only an anchor baby, to help show us how to sign up for all the free stuff\u201d — starting with our vastly expensive welfare schools. <\/p>\n
If the radicals who gathered downtown on June the first want to demonstrate in favor of a mass amnesty — for open borders, over which hundreds of millions of the world\u2019s poor and oppressed would be invited to come here and swarm our free public schools and free hospital emergency rooms until our current socialist policies drive us finally, completely, bankrupt — let them at least say what they mean. <\/p>\n
Nowhere in U.S. law does it say those who sneak across our borders can \u201cpay a fine and stay.\u201d These radicals can use all the euphemisms they please to avoid the word, but anyone who believes illegal trespassers should not be deported — or imprisoned and THEN deported — is promoting amnesty, and needs to answer the question: How does giving amnesty to a couple million knowing law-breakers not encourage the next set of knowing law-breakers, inviting them in no uncertain terms to \u201cCome on in and enjoy all the free stuff; after a few years you can get \u2018amnestied\u2019, too!\u201d? <\/p>\n
\u201cRemoving the undocumented population\u201d is \u201ctoo costly, unworkable and un-American,\u201d Mr. Ashman? It \u201chas not worked\u201d? <\/p>\n
Harry Truman did it. Dwight Eisenhower did it, with remarkable effectiveness, and at no great cost, in \u201cOperation Wetback.\u201d (http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2006\/0706\/p09s01-coop.html.) <\/p>\n
Calling that mere enforcement of our laws \u201cStalinesque,\u201d as the ideological descendants of Stalin now do, is mere name-calling, intended not to clarify, but to intimidate and silence. Stalin imprisoned, tortured, and murdered millions — often through purposeful starvation — for the \u201ccrimes\u201d of owning property, or simple not going along with his collectivist schemes. <\/p>\n
During \u201cOperation Wetback,\u201d so far as I know, no one was killed, beaten, or tortured. If any court found such humane law enforcement \u201cillegal,\u201d please cite the case. <\/p>\n
And note that once a few tens of thousands had been legally deported, back in 1954, hundreds of thousands more caught the drift and headed home on their own. <\/p>\n
Which one of those great men was \u201cun-American,\u201d Mr. Ashman? Truman or Eisenhower? How can it be \u201cun-American\u201d to insist that Congress has a constitutional power to set even-handed immigration policies, or that America\u2019s laws be enforced? <\/p>\n
And how on earth can anyone say rounding up and deporting our population of illegal alien trespassers \u201chas not worked,\u201d when — with the exception of a few token raids on meatpacking plants, apparently now suspended by the scofflaw Obama — it hasn\u2019t been seriously tried in 50 years? <\/p>\n
(Those token packing plant raids, by the by, disproved in spades the claim that these are \u201cjobs Americans won\u2019t do,\u201d as thousands of legal residents applied for those jobs in the days after the raids.) <\/p>\n
It worked in 1954. It would work again. So what\u2019s the real objection? That it would leave too big a gap in current Democratic voter rolls? <\/p>\n
REFUTING SOME STALE LIES<\/strong><\/p>\n p.s.<\/strong> — What’s that? Trespassing illegal aliens don’t cause any trouble, they’re just here to peacefully support their families? None of them kill people on our highways and then run away? Hey, good one. Check out: <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.amren.com\/news\/2012\/10\/report-illegal-drivers-behind-high-hit-and-run-rate-in-la\/<\/a> , or<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.usillegalaliens.com\/impacts_of_illegal_immigration_traffic_accidents.html<\/a> , or<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.immigrationshumancost.org\/text\/crimevictims_2.html<\/a> , or<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.ojjpac.org\/memorial.asp<\/a> , or<\/p>\n http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/communities\/driveon\/post\/2011\/12\/california-police-illegal-immigrant-alien-towing-immigration\/1#.VPkr9y6TuUk<\/a> , or<\/p>\n