Broken Dreams

In response to the comments of my last post...

The assertion that the problem regarding illegal immigration lies not only along our southern border but in Washington, D.C. is right on. Out of the official ten million plus illegal aliens who are thought to be within our borders (personally, I think that figure tops twenty million), only 124 companies were fined in 2003 for hiring them. More than anything I would wish for significantly greater enforcement and justice (including significant jail time and soaringly stiffer fines) against such employers because they hurt everyone - illegals through exploitation and Americans through unemployment.

We diverge however on how the Minutemen should carry out their goals. There’s a love triangle between the White House, big business & illegal aliens and I doubt that several hundred volunteers from the southwest could generate as much attention to the topic as they did last week if they tried lobbying in our capital or protesting outside a manufacturing plant - the players who like illegal immigration are just too big and powerful. Patrolling the fields of corporate farms would also be to tresspass, something the Minutemen aren’t doing now. But by taking their efforts to the field, the Minutemen have (legally) proven that with enough agents, the government can very well drastically cut the number of border hoppers making it across successfully. Now it’s up to the rest of us to press the issue on Washington, against both illegal aliens and their employers.

We should also keep in mind that illegal-aliens would come north with or without the prospect of work. Even if we did curb the hiring of illegals (which we could and should do in less than twelve months according to Social Security Administratio experts), they’d still come anyway and join the underground instead to further contribute to what is a $1trillion black market. For those reasons, I feel like dotting troops along the border might not be such a bad thing.

"Since when did the rights and privelages of non-citizens become more important than our own?"

Last but not least, open borders do violate the rights and privelages of every American. Tied in with that same paragraph were recent examples of security threats posed by criminals and terrorists. It is the right of every American citizen to be safe, especially on home soil. That (security) and freedom are the most inalienable rights one can have and never should an American citizen have to forfeit either, which porous borders ask us to do (& Patriot Act, too). Being an illegal alien is still to have commited an illegal crime which in the eyes of justice is to forfeit at least one of your “inalienable” rights - liberty. Try telling the victims and their families of the first WTC bombing in 1993 that weak immigration controls didn’t violate their rights went Ramzi Yousef slipped through the system.