Immigration and Tough Love

When a system is broken, it leads to lawlessness and weakens our own rule of law. ~John Lukacs.

The hopeful assertion is this: History shows that the most ambitious, self-reliant individuals risk life and limb to immigrate into a new land.

However, we are dealing with millions each year of illegal immigration from a third-world country that threatens the cultural and sovereign aspects of our nation. This is not an “exceptionalism” view, rather a realistic one taken from world history. A nation cannot take in millions of people a year from a different region, holding vastly different political ideals, a different language and a potentially different moral code and hold on to who she is.

Everyone agrees immigration reform is needed, but few will acknowledge that a physical barrier will ensure reform and upholding of the law of the land is meaningful to everyone on both sides of the literal fence. Current immigration rules only allow a certain number of legal immigrants into the U.S. each year. Wait times for VISAs can be up to eight years even with good legitimate sponsors. The reality is, that no fence, virtual or physical, is going to keep ambitious people concerned with bettering themselves from coming to the Land of Promise.

Modern progressives feel a physical fence and laws like the one recently enacted in Arizona are cruel and fly in the face of progressive Kumbaya campfire, One-World-Nation philosophies. To that I assert this: You cannot offer amnesty without simultaneously upholding the law of the land which means respecting the states’ sovereign rights to enforce the existing law. The U.S. or a state cannot freely take in millions of economic refugees each year without her face changing.

At the root of this conflict is the same argument we see over and over. Is the U.S.A. worth protecting or is she inherently broken and need fixing? I support the former ideal. Does that make me a racist? On the contrary, it is a tough love philosophy of recognizing and upholding laws and rights of citizens at all costs. What is a citizen? One who is entitled to be here, is committed to holding our values close to their heart and has made the enormous sacrifice to obey the rules to earn the right of U.S. citizenship. Have you ever heard the phrase “one does not know the worth of something until they have to pay for it”? Ponder that.

President Obama recognized the need for an orderly method for controlling immigration on the campaign trail. Amnesty can never be a one-time deal. It lays the groundwork for a perpetual flow of illegal immigrants without meeting the problem at its source.

I advocate peaceful organized protests and boycotts of businesses that utilize now or have ever utilized illegal immigrant or migrant workers. Such businesses exist everywhere in this nation, not only in the south. It is the grass roots that drive change, and currently, the only signs I see on the news are from amnesty seekers. Voting with your wallet or your feet is often the most powerful.

Switzerland was among the poorest of European nations just over two hundred years ago. Then, ingenuity set in and they emerged as one of the wealthiest, most successful civilizations on the planet. All the while, Switzerland’s humanitarian traditions made them a safe-haven for political refugees. With the emergence of their industrial leadership and pride in craftsmanship in their cultural perspective, they more dramatically curtailed immigration during the 20th century than any other nation in Western Europe.

Japan is another fine example. After WWII, their resources were no longer permitted by the world economy to establish a large military presence. Their redirected industrial energies made them a leading manufacturing and economic world power. The last 40 years has shown marked restriction in their immigration policies. Do the Swiss and Japanese understand something about sociology and the economic and cultural impacts of unbridled immigration that we do not?

Obama on the campaign trail with Larry King said “I think all Americans think that we should be able to regulate who comes in and out of this country in an orderly way. Not only for sake of our sovereignty but also to avoid the hundreds of people who have been dying across the desert.” While turning a blind eye to the physical structure already in progress from the Bush administration along the Mexican border, Obama simultaneously cut the budget almost in half, hindering the effort toward reform, as assuredly, reform cannot be effective without a physical structure deterring the simple means of coming into to the U.S. against U.S. laws.

Although logic and compassion both argue against the rationale of a physical barrier between Mexico and the U.S., the reality is that no reform will slow the human flow without one. An alternative to the physical structure is supporting states’ such as Arizona for enacting legislation to uphold the existing law, when the federal government sits idle. Other examples of such action provide evidence that crime is reduced and other burdens on a state will be reduced with local enforcement of the law.

~H.L. Whitley