Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Illegal Immigration: Honesty Is in Short Supply

Ruben Navarrette, one of the more insightful writers on the subject, has a piece on RealClearPolitics today that I hope a lot of Congressional staffers read-- and then put in front of their bosses. Excerpt:

[Y]ou can support increasing the number of Border Patrol agents without supporting amateur hour in the form of the Minutemen. You can support fences along portions of the border without going along with building a 2,000-mile-long wall. You can support converting unauthorized presence in the United States from a civil violation to a criminal offense . . . without saying it should be a felony rather than a misdemeanor. And you can be alarmed over the cost of providing education and health care to the U.S-born children of illegal immigrants without concluding that the solution is to deprive those children of U.S. citizenship.

On the other side of the great divide, you can sympathize with the plight of illegal immigrants without convincing yourself that they haven't really committed a serious infraction by coming to the United States without the proper documents. You can admire the fact that demonstrators would protest for a cause they believe in and still feel uneasy about the waving of Mexican flags. You can support increased border security and fairer immigration laws without being branded a racist or a xenophobe.
Read the whole thing.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The big question is rather simple if not nuanced to death. It is not about additional inmmigration quotas or jobs no one wants to do or 2000 versus 700 mile walls. It is simple whether or not we and our politicians as a nation, will stand behind the laws that we have already made or whether we will instead, for political expediency, use relative morality and pick and choose which laws we prefer to acknowledge and which ones we don't. The inherent danger that most seem to miss is the consequences of failing to do so. We send a clear signal to the masses that they too can choose which laws to follow (IRS anyone) The clear message that breaking the law and taking to the streets in a foreign land, to protest the evils of that land, instead of using the the immigration law and the ballot box as a means of exercizing democratic and citizen rights in this area, is that anarchy and rule without law is acceptable. It is this sixties college campus mentallity that right makes right that will put the final lid on that once great experiment called Democracy. Already the desire to ignore the next election or throw all out all of the Bast...ds is permeating many who have given up hope that responsible people are running the country. The alternatives are revolution or complete capitulation to anarchy. It will be more than just interesting to see which shall win. It is doubtful that responsibility, love of law and order, and trust in democracy will prevail, for it has been rejected in the highest of places.. 

Posted by DL

Thursday, April 20, 2006 5:45:00 AM  

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