A Frame for a Bigger Picture

While much debate surrounds the whole so-called "Illegal Immigration" issue, I can't help but take a huge step backwards, out from amongst the trees, for a better look at the forest here.

Many, here and around the blogosphere and inside the MSM, have beaten more dead horses than there are in the pasture...and have waxed far more eloquent than I ever could. I could jump into any of these exhortations and pick the side giving the best sales pitch of the moment, or I could try to re-frame these discussions into my own words; either approach only serves to further beat an already dead herd of horses.

For me the real story in this is the reality that our Government has failed us, our elected and appointed Political heros have failed us, our sytem of checks and balances and the notion of the rule of law has failed us, and ultimately we should be men and women enough to admit we have failed ourselves...over a very long period of years.

As your standard run-of-the-mill John Q. Citizen, let me encourage folks with a little time and energy to look at this from a different perspective, and consider the suckers we have ALL become to the sound bite and the feel-good rhetoric that has gotten us here.

You can all search Google yourselves, so no links are needed from me, but in review let's see if I have this right:

We gave illegals amnesty and promised tighter border controls. They got their amnesty, we got MORE POROUS borders with budget and staff and resource cuts at Customs and INS (pre-Homeland Security).

We tightened the rules for getting and retaining the various visas available for purchase (at the right price...but more than impoverished "sincere" emigrees could ever hope to be able to afford...isn't that why they are coming here in the first place?).

We bloated the bureaucracy so dramatically that we can't get out of our own way to communicate across agencies on matters of surveillance and intelligence about "bad guys" we seem to know are here but can't or won't go find and remove.

We wink at our local business leaders about their employment practices regarding documentation of legal status for their employees. We seem to ALL know who works for them, who hires them, and that some of them pick SOME of these workers up at the local Home Depot, but we can't be bothered to gather up the employees, deport them, and fine the offending employer (a law that has long been on the books). We even have "safe cities" where illegals can not be approached by Law Enforcement unless they commit a crime...they can not be approached solely for suspicion of being an illegal.

Those that we actually DO catch get rushed thru a review hearing, a plea(sometimes) is entered, and a follow up court appearance date is set before we cut them loose BACK on to our streets to never be heard from again.

We know there is a huge market for stolen identification and forged Social Security cards and counterfeit birth certificates, but we never seem to break up these crime rings... at least not that I ever hear much about in the news. We DO, however, chase down a 14 year old hacker that steals info off the web, and splash him all over the news.

It became abundantly clear after 9/11 that we had a serious problem with expired visas that we couldn't or wouldn't be bothered to allocate resources to finding and apprehending and removing from our country. Instead, we heard more rhetoric about fences and the National Guard...remember the birth of the Minutemen? All THEY got for their troubles was to be villified and marginalized and stereotyped as nazis or racists or vigilantes.

When we decided to start telling ourselves border security was a more serious problem than we realized and we met this realization in time for the 04 Presidential campaign, we were convinced we needed to vote "security". We did...by re-lecting all the Political heros that made this mess in the first place (or have done bupkus during their tenure to fix), in deference to votes from illegally obtained voter registrations, or the special interests and advocacy groups insisting they speak out in soft, soothing, reassuring tones about immigrants and how we are a NATION of immigrants, and how immigration is the soul of our country, lest they not get elected or re-elected.

While I would rather elect Homer Simpson to the White House than John Kerry, at least the Decorated Viet Nam War Hero (tm) TRIED to remind us that border security isn't just Mexico and Canada but every container and every ship and every vessel and every vehicle and every person in every Port and every Harbor on the Left and Right border...the Oceans.

We insisted in the most recent hair-on-fire-Dubai-Ports-World-debacle that we were going to make ABSOLUTELY sure security took precedence over sweetheart deals with a company and a Country we apparently have no compunction about being in-your-face discriminatory against solely on the basis of their race and their creed (which smacks in the face of our collective soft-spot for getting along in the world, embracing other religions and cultures, and engaging even-handedly with other countries); most especially Arab world countries we want to get along better with.

And, if that's not enough, consider the genius behind we, the people, actually voting in favor of things like driver's licenses for illegals, in-state tuition rates for illegals going to college, welfare for illegals, food stamps for illegals, WIC for illegals, Medicare for illegals, Medicaid for illegals, Social Security for illegals, and free medical care for illegals (redundant and repetitive here by design).

Now, I admit and am proud to be a good ole country boy living in the heartland, but I am sick of hearing all the feel good fluff about immigration generically, and pragmatism about immigration specifically. I am AWARE that we can not easily round up 12 million people and ship them out. I am aware that it will take a lot of money and a very long time to build fences and walls. I, too, recognize that we are, after all, supposed to be charitable and generous and sensitive to the needs of the downtrodden as the good Americans we all aspire to be. What frustrates me the most is that I ALSO am aware that we are generically lazy, often have the attention span of a Mayfly, and are typically inclined to defer to our Politicians...after all, isn't that why we HIRED them? And surely, the all-reliable media will hold them to account for our expectations and will tell us how they're doing; News at 6!.

But as the cynic I have become, I warn you now of what lies ahead.

We will keep them here, and we will create a new class of citizens for all our Political heros and special interests to pander to. We will watch them coddled and hand-fed, and cow-towed to. We will then drive the need for more services and more government and more Political heros (by newly created representation districts). We will half- heartedly build a chain link fence (knowing the tunnels underneath them are still in place...wink wink) under the auspices of enhanced security (I have 5 english mastiffs...they SCOFF at chain link fences...but I digress). We will hire more Customs and INS and Security technology companies and personnel...we will throw money at every leaking dribble in this "dam" we keep trying to shore up to minimize the flow of bodies into this country...and where will we be when that is done?

Look at the big picture. This is, as has been said elsewhere just lipstick on a pig. Unless they are ALL removed, and the doors locked and bolted, the bleeding of America at her borders will continue.

We will only serve to create even MORE bureaucracy, MORE Politicians, MORE of our money being re-allocated and re-distributed to our new "fellow citizens" of the newly created "Immigrant Class" and the programs we will need to design and fund to help and sustain them...and guess who gets to control that money? The panderers, and whiners, and hand-wringers that got us here in the first place...OUR Political Heros.