Further Thoughts on Illegal Immigration

Immediately below this post is a report from the massive rally in support of "rights" for illegal immigrants held in Chicago last week from a blogger who attended the event. Here's my take.

1) I am not opposed to legal immigration. It's a very good thing. We should increase the number of people, especially from Mexico and other Latin American countries, who are allowed to enter the country legally each year. It is a straw man to say that those of us who are concerned about illegal immigration are somehow nativist or racist or anti-immigration. Nope. That's simply a tool to try to discredit those of us who are standing in the street screaming "Fire" as the smoke and flames billow unchecked into the night sky.

2) Our government--both political parties--is the chief enabler of this illegal immigration. The Democrats love it because they are getting a whole new group of voters (voters who may not be legal to vote, but hey, as long as it counts!) and the Republicans love it because their small business base is getting cheap labor. Both sides are committed to looking the other way while hundreds of thousands illegally pour over the border. The latest estimates I've seen are that some 12 million people are here illegally! That simply could not happen without the full cooperation of the government.

3) If the government cared at all about the issue, there would have been thousands of National Guard troops standing by in Chicago to round up everyone at this event, check their identification, and IMMEDIATELY deport every single person--man, woman and child--who was not a citizen or legal immigrant. Although most of our citizens (and apparently most of our politicians) have forgotten it, we are at war. And the simplest and easiest way for our enemies to strike at us is not through gaining ownership of operations at a few ports...it's simply walking across an undefended border.

4) The problem of illegal immigration would be 99% solved over night if the government would simply issue secure Social Security cards, using the same anti-counterfeiting technology we use for money...and then enforcing the penalties against businesses who hire illegal immigrants. If the job supply dried up, so would the flood. Of course this will not happen.

The problem I see is not primarily that a large group of immigrants for the first time is refusing to assimilate into our culture--although that is a problem. The problem is not that a group of people with a different skin color is rapidly growing--that is not a problem at all. The problem is that EVERY time we refuse to enforce our laws, we take another step down the road toward becoming a lawless society, and every time we fail to take defending our national security seriously, we take another step toward the next 9/11.