By Tony Elliott
My recent article concerning the SB 1070 law in Arizona seems to have generated
quite a stir of viewpoints on the subject. However one fact remains above all
else and this pertains to the laws of our land. It isn’t up to us as
individuals to pick and choose which laws we are going to obey. As citizens it
is our responsibility to abide them or pay the price for breaking them,
otherwise we have anarchy and the resulting chaos. Arizona’s SB 1070 simply gives law enforcement officials the right to exercise
existing Federal Laws concerning Illegal Immigration.
Many seem to have the idea that some laws are made to be broken if they are
deemed inappropriate according to a political viewpoint. Nothing could be
further from the truth, as anything less is criminal in itself.
Anyone agreeing with turning a blind eye to those who break the law simply by
coming into this country illegally in essence is choosing particular laws which
they will break on the basis of their own judgment. Such attitudes regarding
the laws of our land, for instance, would make the robbing of a convenience
store by a homeless person deemed lawful on the basis that the individual needed
money so bad that the crime should be overlooked and the store owner should
just collect the insurance to cover the loss.
Another example might be ignoring traffic laws based on individual judgment
that the 35 MPH speed limit on your street is too slow based on your desire to
drive 50 MPH. Hence the ensuing speeding ticket you get for breaking the law
should be discarded and ignored.
Of course we all realize that such examples are out of the question as such
individual actions of defiance would be considered criminal.
The issue of Illegal Immigration is no different in terms of law. These laws
are on the books to maintain civility, safety and order in our nation and have
to be treated as instruments of maintaining peace, harmony and civility to
our society.
The issue of Illegal Immigration is no different. Those who enter our country
illegally should have to pay the price for breaking the law.
As a person who has had the privilege of living in Southern California during
the late 60′s and 70′s, I can say without any reservations that many communities
there have taken a nosedive in status since then, and have been transformed from
desirable beautiful communities where one would be proud to live to cities
where drugs are ramped, gang violence is an overgrowing presence,
prostitution is part of the daily scene and neglect of overall appearance is
now accepted as common normalcy.
This has taken place because of the overwhelming influx of millions of Illegal
Immigrants from points south of the Mexican Border. Virtually all cities and
smaller towns in Mexico and Central America are populated by people on the
verge of starvation and desperate to the point of turning to crime as a
solution to their situation. This has become such a rampant problem that it is
dangerous for anyone from the United States to visit these countries, and has
placed the country of Mexico in a civil war situation.
Desperate situations create desperate people, and most here illegally from
these countries arrive here in desperation. Feeding on this desperation awaits
organized crime influences already here in this country to recruit more Illegal
Immigrants who gladly accept their offers of money for their illegal services.
Hence we have Illegal Immigration used as a tool to further the spread of
organized crime ambitions here in the U.S.
If we continue on our present course of ignoring this festering tumor which
threatens our very existence, the U.S. will eventually have no choice but to
invade Mexico and secure it as an American Territory. This would bring some
similarity of law to a lawless nation and immediately solve the problem of
Illegal Immigration, but the cost to the U.S. taxpayer would make
the Bailout seem minuscule in comparison.
Meanwhile many seem happy to let our country slip into a Third World status of
resembling that of Nigeria or Sudan by ignoring laws designed to prevent such a
perversion of our nation. I have traveled extensively over the past few decades and see the deterioration
of once great cities in the past to present day indigenous slums where the word
“hole” would be describing them lightly.
Just what does the interpretation of the word “Illegal” mean in our society?
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You see things in very black and white terms, End Bringer.
No, I don’t think that we should throw speeding laws out of the window. Without a speed limit of 55, the average speed on the freeway near where I live would likely be 90 rather than 70, and many more people would be killed in accidents.
I don’t think it is “ideal” for everyone to be caught and ticketed. It’s ideal for society to have a level of enforcement of speeding laws that keeps people reasonably safe without making them feel oppressed by their government. I’d say we do kind of have that, and that if we had a speed camera on every corner, it would feel oppressive.
For immigration, likewise, I’m interested in minimizing harm and maximizing freedom. You aren’t interested in maximizing freedom for those people, because as far as you’re concerned, no law can be too strongly enforced with respect to non-Americans. As one of “those people”, a non-American, I don’t have that same kind of rigid division in mind between the worthy and the unworthy that you seem to have.
I find it somewhat racist to believe illegal immigration is solely caused by those of Mexican descent. I say you’ll never find a more racially equal law in existence. Whether they be of Mexican descent, Canadian descent, African descent, Oriental descent, European descent, etc. if they aren’t born on American soil or immigrated legally – I say throw them out. How more equal can you get?
The simple facts that you may have missed Zander, is that ideally everyone who speeds should indeed be caught and ticketed. Key word being “ideally”. WILL everyone who speeds be caught? No, but then that isn’t an argument to throw speeding laws out the window all together. Which is tantamount to what you’re arguing.
As far as Arizona’s law is concerned, it’s just doing the job Big Government should have done to begin with. I frankly don’t see how you can complain that if an Illegal is caught it’s only OK so long as the officer has a federal badge instead of a local one. At least without demanding all immigration laws be thrown out simply because it’s logical to conclude that most people born in Mexico are of Mexican heritage.
Your analogy to speeding is very good.
In actual everyday fact, very few people who speed are caught and ticketed for doing so. I live near a freeway where the speed limit is 55. The average speed on it when traffic is flowing well is 70.
We choose as a society to enforce the law against only a few of the most egregious speeders. If we chose to enforce the law uniformly against everyone, by placing speed cameras on every corner, then people would find it oppressive and would protest (as has happened in Britain).
Immigration law is actually very like this. We have generally chosen as a society to enforce immigration law against people who overstay their visas or sneak across the border only when they are caught committing some other kind of more serious crime. We do this because on the whole, we feel that the kind of society where the police hassle people (especially people who look kind of Mexican) all the time for their papers would be oppressive.
Arizona is doing the equivalent for immigration law of putting speed cameras on every corner – if you can imagine, that is, a speed camera that is way more likely to ticket people who look Mexican. At least speed cameras are unlikely to have much of a disparate impact on people of a different color.
I used to live in California too. But California is no stranger to massive amounts of illegal immigration. Indeed, the US state of California could be said to have been founded on it. Do you seriously think that the government of Mexico looked kindly on the Gold Rush invasion of tens of thousands of scruffy fortune-seekers and ne’er-do-wells from another land? How’d that invasion work out? Pretty well, I’m thinking.
One final point. You depict California as having been overwhelmed by crime. In actual fact, crime has been falling in California, just as it has in other border states like Arizona and Texas. You want to argue against illegal immigration, feel free, but you can’t rationally premise it on a wave of other crimes caused by illegal immigrants, because there isn’t one.