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July 2, 2010
Exclusive: Congressional Immigration Speech - Rewarding Those Who Break the Law?
The president speaks.
The issue of border security is one of utmost importance to a majority of voters. Yesterday, Barack Obama made a speech in which he urged Congress to work together to try to find a bipartisan solution to this issue, to fix a “system that seems fundamentally broken.” This is the first time that the president has made immigration the topic of a major address.
What will worry many Americans is that the president does not seem keen to take tough measures against those who have broken the law by arriving illegally. It is true, as he said, that
“The overwhelming majority of these men and women are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their children.”
But there are means to enter a country, and procedures, and those who have chosen to deliberately ignore those procedures are not supporting the laws of the country they have decided to inhabit. The duty of a civilized society is to balance compassion for the downtrodden against its primary duty of upholding the law. And the duty of a migrant is to be committed to citizenship, and committed to paying taxes.
The president suggested that there should be a “pathway to legal status” for the estimated 11 million illegal aliens living in the country:
“Being a citizen of this country comes not only with rights but also with certain fundamental responsibilities. We can create a pathway for legal status that is fair, reflective of our values, and works.”
For a migrant to the United States, being a citizen also should begin with making an Oath of Allegiance, or at least it was, back in the days when laws were laws. Remember those days? When senior officials did not undermine and pervert the meaning of laws by attempting to reinterpret them according their own political perspectives?
The president suggested imposing a fine for those who have been illegal.
Would this be a small fine, or a fixed penalty? What if an illegal owned property, and had been in America for years. Would he or she be asked to pay back a proportion of wealth commensurate with the taxes that every other genuine citizen would have paid over that period? If not, would this be fair? If a fixed penalty fine were imposed, would that not make it easy to buy” citizenship? And even if the fine were high, the people who would be better able to pay would not be the poor folk who illicitly do menial jobs or scrubbing floors, but the drug lords, human traffickers and pimps, those whose destructive presence in Arizona caused the state to introduce its immigration law SB 1070 on April 30th.
The Arizona law, introduced in desperation because the federal government had failed to adequately protect the border, was probably the main reason that President Obama felt he had to speak publicly. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona had claimed on June 18 that the president had told him that
“If we secure the border, then you all won't have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform,” in other words they're holding it hostage. They don't want to secure the border unless and until it's combined with comprehensive immigration reform.”
White House aides had denied that the president had said this and that conversation was not brought up in his speech. But Obama did refer to the Arizona law, stating that a “national standard” was needed. It is generally assumed that as early as next week, federal lawyers will push to legally challenge the bill, before it becomes law on July 29th.
Television ads that aired in Arizona this week featured Governor Jan Brewer saying: “Washington is broken, Mr President. Do your job. Secure our borders.”
The president told Congress that:
“I'm ready to move forward, the majority of Democrats are ready to move forward, and I believe the majority of Americans are ready to move forward.”
But forward to where? The president said he did not agree with an outright amnesty, but offering a fine to those who have lived without paying taxes could easily be seen as a form of amnesty.
What a porous border really means.
Last week on FSM, Tom McLaughlin wrote of the flimsiness of the fencing at Nogales, close to the Mexican border. Yesterday he wrote about visiting a construction crew at Douglas, sixty miles east of Nogales.
There I saw a new border fence under construction, but the construction bosses I spoke to on site told me they were pulling out after building only a mile for $5 million. What they’d built was a formidable double fence with a ditch in between, but as one supervisor said, “They’ll just go a mile further east and jump there as we saw two of them do this morning right over there.” He pointed to the end of the new fence he built to an older section just like the one in Nogales. At nearly sixty, I believe I could climb over it easily. I looked east to see a straight line of such fencing clear to a distant horizon.
Jeff Kirkham, Police Chief of Nogales, said last week that he and his officers had been warned by a Mexican drug cartel that if they carried out off-duty drug busts, then they would be targeted. He said:
“The warning was ... that the officers, if they are off duty, are to look the other way and ignore any drug trafficking loads that are coming across the border, otherwise they will be targeted.”
The killings and violence connected with Mexico’s drug trade are horrific. In late 2006, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico urged a crackdown of the drug cartels that had operated with impunity. The army was to tackle the gangs in a militaristic fashion. The drug gangs responded in military fashion. The center of the drug cartels appears to be in Apatzingan. Using assault weapons, the drug gangs made attacks upon soldiers in broad daylight, with bloodshed occurring on a daily basis. In April 2007, a severed head was left outside a military barracks.
Since Calderon ordered the military to confront the gangs, a total of more than 25,000 people have been killed. Many of these are civilians, who are intimidated into compliance through acts of horrific violence. In the Sunday Times of June 26, 2010, it was reported that beheadings are so common that in Apatzingan, priests had to consult the bishop to work out the best manner of conducting funeral mass for for a head whose body cannot be found.
In the Western state of Michoacan, the activities of a Christian fundamentalist group of drug dealers called “La Familia” are stoking up the levels of vilence and mutilations. Their leader is named Nazario Moreno Gonzalez
Also known as El Mas or The Craziest One, the group first made headlines in 2006 by decapitating five members of the Zetas gang then rolling their heads onto a crowded dance floor at a disco called Sol y Sombra (Sun and Shade).
The problem in Mexico is now one that is so bad, that something needs to be done. The measures suggested by the president will do nothing to quash the ambitions off the drug cartels. They are destined to migrate northward where American citizens are seen as wealthy targets whose self-indulgence or addiction will fund their industry. Small amounts off fencing are not enough. Industrial quantities of drugs, assault weapons and even terrorists are crossing the border into America on a daily basis.
Associated Press on Tuesday this week claimed that drug cartels now fund one tenth of Mexico’s economy. It was reported that in 12 Mexican states, there will be elections on July 4, and already the drug gangs were trying to influence the results of the election by killing the lead candidate for one of the northern states.
The killing took place in Tamaulipas state, leading a national Mexican newspaper to declare: “What's the point of having elections when a de-facto power is imposing its will over the will of citizens?”
In Quintana Roo state, a town mayor who was running as candidate for state governorship was arrested in May, charged with protecting two drug cartels. Late on Wednesday night this week in Oaxaca state, a mayor was killed, along with a council member. On June 19, the mayor of Guadelupe was shot down in front of his children.
These are the methods that are being employed by drug cartels to sabotage Mexico’s fragile democratic system. The solution is not to speak of offering a “legal way” for illegal aliens to be able to work their way into American citizenship. The issue is to firstly ensure that there is no way that any unregistered person can get through the border. China built walls, and India recently built a fence around Bangladesh to prevent terrorist incursions.
The majority of Mexican illegals are harmless, but there must be a means to protect the border. If the border were protected, national security would be ensured for the next generation. Protecting the border and securing ports would ensure that the importation of cocaine would be reduced. The cocaine that is ruining the lives of countless Americans comes from South America via Mexico and across that border. Where cocaine is produced, the trade is already involved with armed gangs (from FARC and AUC) who are now working with Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.
Not fixing the problem now will mean it will need fixing again and again.
The issue of trying to deal with the illegals should not be made until the borders are no longer porous. Their human plight is secondary to the bigger problem that an unsecured border represents to American national security.
A nation is only as strong as its borders and the will to defend itself. If there is no plan to prevent further illegal alien migration, then future administrations will always be in the act of damage limitation.
This weekend is the anniversary of the writing of the Declaration of Independence, and the forming of America as a strong nation, built upon principles, 234 years ago. America needs to truly examine what it means to be an American. Theodore Roosevelt would turn in his grave at the amount of people openly declaring that they are “hyphenated” Americans. For a nation to be one, all should share the same outlook, the same goals, irrespective of racial or ethnic origins.
On a humanitarian level, pandering to those who tried to bypass standard immigration procedure is not morally wrong. But it is a shallow action when it is proposed by an administration that is lacking in the bravery that is really required to ensure that drugs and armed gangs have absolutely no ability to get across the border. To say that the system “seems fundamentally broken,” is defeatist, and it is un-American. More so when no further action is made to prevent such a situation happening again in the future.
The Founding Fathers had foresight. They built a political system that was designed to make America the greatest nation on earth. To capitulate to circumstance in such an abject manner is not following in the brave tradition of those who first argued for America to be a bastion of freedom and independence.
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (2) | Sign Up for FSM Updates!
The Prevaricator in Chief has spoken and having done so, as always, has said nothing, and of course will do nothing to seal our borders.
We're on our own boys and girls. Our Muslim president is selling us out while the Islamists are setting up training camps all over our country with full knowledge of the Federal Government.
I can't explain that.
We're entering the "cakes and circuses" phase.
Buy bottled water, canned/dried food and ammunition. Wait for the major crisis which brings about a declaration of martial law. There's your sign.
posted by: OregonBuzz
Friday, July 2, 2010 at 10:15 AM
1.Not a word about unemployed Americans.
2. No mention of the many crimes committed by illegal aliens.
3. No word on how long it will take to "check" all the background of illegals. With the many fake names and false papers, how long do you think it will take to check ll million people? That figure is the government's. The rest of us know better.
4. No mention of his plan to let illegals stay in this country while the big investigation is going on. Too much trouble to deport them, he says. Why not let them leave the same way they got in?
5. No mention that they'll still get the benefits and will never pay a penny, nor will they learn English. Why should they? The Government has made it easy with everyting printed in Spanish.
5. Why did he even bother to speak. We didn't learn anything new.
posted by: June
Friday, July 2, 2010 at 10:37 AM
