Thursday, May 3, 2007 - First, an unrelated comment. As my last blog entry more than half-a-year ago indicated,
I was diagnosed with macular pucker. My condition has since improved. However, I will continue to follow my doctor's
advice to avoid inordinate eyestrain. I've ceased design work on all non-personal websites and will continue to refrain
from doing this work. Instead, I will concentrate the lion's share of my computer time on writing and submitting
both fiction and nonfiction to publishers for their consideration - a process made much easier on my eyes by use of large
fonts during the development process - and made easier on a publisher's eyes by my recent acquisition of a Hewlett-Packard
Color LaserJet 2600n printer. I will never go back to inkjet printing.
Now ... the topic at hand.
What happened in Los Angeles is only the beginning. It was called an immigrant rights protest march. Sorry, but I
continue to believe that only LEGAL immigrants should have RIGHTS in this country. The rest should be deported, imprisoned, or shot. And the same goes for those who smuggle illegals across the border, employ them, or give them safe haven - since those who enable lawbreakers in their breaking of the law are ACCOMPLICES to the crime.
As long as liberals embrace an open-borders philosophy, and as long as conservatives tacitly support illegal immigrants by dressing them up in fancy names like GUEST WORKERS, and as long as illegals consider their breaking of our border laws a RIGHT, the violence will continue and only get worse. It is getting to the point where citizens and legal immigrants (whose petition approvals are delayed each time an illegal crosses the border) will lose all faith in their government to protect the border. And when that happens, they will take the law into their own hands. It will be sad to see this happen ... but it WILL happen if our governmental and political nonchalance toward illegal immigration continues on its present course.
Some will rationalize that human migration has gone on since the beginning of human history ... that universal national boundaries have only existed for a few hundred years. And they ask which is more likely to predominate in the long run. The answer is simple. We have a choice between respecting the rule of law ... or anarchy. Take your pick because there's no middle ground.
Hands up ... all those who think that ONLY Mexicans are crossing our borders illegally. Hmm, not many hands went up. Border Patrol agent, Dan Green, has gone on record saying that one out of 10 illegals he caught in one Mexican/US border crossing were from either Yemen or Egypt. It wasn't noticed until, on the way to a processing center, some of the aliens were heard speaking Arabic. But illegals from a whole host of countries have been caught crossing the Mexican border into the US. Cubans? Who knows?
Criminals (including border violators) are like electricity ... they travel the path of least resistance. And our level of border security has made us a laughingstock among nations.
But, even if only illegal Mexicans were crossing the Mexico/US border, it would be best to ask the opinion of a legal immigrant to all this. I was married to one for 20 years. She was a legal immigrant from the Philippines, working in Los Angeles when we met. And when we married, and later when she became a naturalized US citizen, we petitioned 4 of her siblings (3 sisters, 1 brother). Not long after the time when their petitions SHOULD have been approved, we asked an INS office in Seattle what the delay was. The INS officer told us that petition approvals for legal petitioners are PUSHED BACK every time an illegal alien crosses the border ... since the INS has good estimates on their numbers.
Six years from the time when they were petitioned (at the time, the normal wait was three years), they were finally approved and arrived in this country. And when they got here, three of them went to work picking vegetables at a local farm ... the fourth got a job as a maid for a motel chain. So, when I hear someone say that Mexican illegals are "...only doing the work Americans won't do," I'd like to throttle them and yell into their faces:
"NO, THEY'RE DOING THE WORK LEGAL IMMIGRANTS WOULD DO IF THEY COULD ONLY GET HERE!!!"
Illegal immigrants indirectly took THREE YEARS of income out of the pockets of my ex-wife's siblings and put it into their own pockets ... all because they had the gall to waltz across the border into the arms of a government that didn't give a damn that they did. All her siblings wanted to do was obey the law - and this is how the government rewarded them.
Frankly, I know a few Filipinos who would like nothing better than to pack a few deer rifles into a pickup, drive down to the Mexican border, and pick off a few illegals as they attempt a crossing. And I imagine they might be joined by legal immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the post-Soviet republics who work along side them in the fields, the motels, the fast-food restaurants, etc., who've petitioned their OWN siblings ... and are dealing with the same delays caused by the same reason.
Seriously, a lot of people are worrying about the Minutemen patrolling the border. But if I were them, I'd be more worried about legal immigrant petitioners told that their spouses, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters have to GO TO THE BACK OF THE IMMIGRATION BUS to let the preferentially treated Mexican illegals take their places.
So, who's at fault here? To determine who caused a multiple-vehicle accident, the blame always goes to the first vehicle in the chain. In this case, it is the Federal Government which, for a long time, has taken a laissez-faire attitude toward enforcing our border laws. How many people here honestly believe that this protest march would have even taken place if the laws already on the Federal books were enforced? The mess was created by the Feds ... who are safely sheltered from blame by those who would blame the janitors (LAPD) left to clean up after the mess.
The solution to this mess? Here's the two-step process.
STEP ONE - Right now, it is optional for some employers to require employees to fill out an I9 form ... which also requires them to produce documents to back up the information on it. Simply make it mandatory. Then, make it mandatory to run only two pieces of information past our Social Security computers - the name on an I9 form and the SSN. If the name and SSN don't match (or is currently in use by another person in a different job), it becomes a Federal crime (falsifying information on a Federal document). After that, it's merely a matter of enforcing the document law (felony) as opposed to illegal immigration law (misdemeanor).
STEP TWO - When illegal Mexican immigrants are deported, don't just drive them to a border town in Mexico and drop them off. Put them on military troop-transport planes and fly them by the planeload to Chetumal - the southernmost Mexican town on the border with Belize. That way, to recross the US border, illegals would have to traverse the entire length of Mexico to reach it again ... a task very very few of them would be up for. Mind you, these 2 steps wouldn't stop all illegal border crossings. But they would so greatly reduce them as to make the problem much more manageable.
Do these two things and, by May Day 2008, I guarantee you'll see only a token march, a token protest, and little if any violence.
BUT ... you'll also see one more thing.
Earlier, I mentioned my ex-wife's siblings. We petitioned them to come here the legal way from the Philippines. When they got here, three of them immediately went to work at a local farm while one of them got a job as a maid for a motel chain. My in-laws working at the farm were working alongside immigrants from post-Soviet republics, from Asia, from Kenya, and from Mexico.
One day, the farm owner made a decision ... not out of any racist reason but merely to simplify his accounting. He decided that after a certain date, he would no longer make daily cash payments to workers. Instead, they all had to fill out I9 forms and would receive weekly paychecks (with appropriate taxes, if any, withheld). These were quick payments, too. Checks were available for pickup Saturday morning for work done during the previous Saturday-through-Friday period.
On the date he instituted this policy, the post-Soviets, the Asians, and Kenyans all showed up. But only a tiny fraction of the Mexicans showed up. However, that day, the farm owner asked his remaining employees to spread the word that he needed workers to make up for the missing Mexicans. In less than two days, his fields were full of workers again.
It is a myth to believe that illegal aliens are necessary to our economy. They are merely occupying jobs that legal aliens would fill given the opportunity to fill them. And who is more entitled to fill those jobs ... an immigrant who respects and obeys our laws or an immigrant who openly defies them?
When I voice my opinions to some people, I'm called a racist. OK, let's define racist. How many people here would be willing to walk up to a legal immigrant petitioner from Asia, a legal immigrant petitioner from Africa, and a legal immigrant petitioner from one of the post-Soviet republics, and tell them that it's OK to force them to have their petitions put on hold for twice as long as they'd normally have to wait in order to give illegal immigrants from Mexico first crack at the jobs they'd take? What makes an illegal Mexican immigrant more deserving of that job than an Asian? What makes an illegal Mexican immigrant more deserving of that job than an African? Who's the REAL racist here ... the person who demands equal treatment of immigrants regardless of their national origin ... or the person who demands preferential treatment of illegal Mexican immigrants at the expense of others?
Now, before I leave this pulpit entirely, I'll leave you with a joke. And though you might call me a racist for even mentioning this joke, I suspect my Filipino ex-wife and biracial son might disagree with you. OK, here goes.
One day, an undocumented worker walks into a bank and pulls a gun on the teller, demanding all the money in her cash drawer. She complies with the gunman but, unknown to him, presses down on a foot-activated silent alarm that summons the police. The police arrive swiftly and arrest the gunman before he can escape. However, as they're reading him his Miranda rights and telling him he's under arrest for bank robbery, he loudly protests - saying:
"No, you don't understand me at all!!! I wasn't robbing this bank, I was merely making an undocumented withdrawal!"
(sigh)
Undocumented worker my aunt Fanny! Illegal aliens should be referred to as what they are - illegal aliens.
Period.