Has the President completely lost his mind? Did aliens abduct the real President Bush and replace him with this suddenly liberal dufus? And why hasn't Vice President Cheney had anything to say about the immigration bill? I'd be willing to bet it's because he disagrees with President Bush's craziness. I truly cannot believe the President is even considering this immigration amnesty bill. It's the dumbest thing President Bush has done since the Dubai ports idea. And I actually voted for President Bush, not once, but twice.
I don’t understand why President Bush and so many Republicans are betraying not only their so-called core values, but also their constituents by supporting amnesty. The President is willing to ‘pardon’ millions of illegals - meanwhile Border Patrol Agents who nobly defended our nation sit in prison, apparently not worthy of the same compassion. I sincerely hope Senator McCain, Senator Kyl and the rest of Congress remember where their loyalty is supposed to be and whose interests they are paid to represent. The reason nothing gets done in Washington is because everybody there is looking out for their own interests, and nobody’s representing America’s interests anymore. It’s time our politicians set aside party affiliation and personal career ambition to do what’s best for America.
Giving legal status to illegals doesn’t solve anything. Approving this recently reached immigration ‘deal’ would be the equivalent of making all drugs legal to get rid of the illegal drug problem. That’s ridiculous. Calling ‘illegals’ legal doesn’t solve anything. But if you buy into that logic, perhaps we could solve the nation’s DUI problem by making it legal to drive drunk. And while we’re at it, we can win the War on Terror too - we’ll just make it legal to blow stuff up and fly planes into buildings. And to solve the problem of identity theft, we’ll just legalize stealing social security numbers and using fraudulent documents. Hell, we can pretty much solve all our problems this way...but is that really a world you’d want to live in?
The first step in solving any problem is CORRECTLY identifying the problem. Our problem with immigration is that there are too many illegals getting into the country. But in their infinite wisdom, our Washington politicians are trying to change the fact that these immigrants are illegal instead of addressing the real problem, which is that THEY’RE HERE!
After you’ve correctly identified what the problem is, you must determine the real cause of the problem in order to solve it. The primary cause of our illegal immigration problem is the fact that Mexico is a severely impoverished country. There's no reason it has to be poor - it has great natural resources and a great location for commerce right next to America. We give Mexico a great deal of foreign aid and trade opportunities, yet many Mexicans feel they cannot provide for their families by staying in Mexico. Why? The reason for its poverty and lack of jobs is due to Mexico’s incompetent, corrupt government - the same corrupt government that endorses illegal immigration to the US and helps Mexican drug dealers get their poison to our children. If we as a nation permit these people (even the good, hard-working illegal immigrants) to bring their values of lawlessness and lack of respect for government, they will not assimilate and become Americans. We will become like Mexico. After recently visiting Mexico (legally and with respect for their laws, I might add), I have no desire to live in such a place. Therefore, we MUST insist that those who come here get the message loud and clear as soon as they set foot on US soil: America welcomes you but WE HAVE LAWS. We expect them to be obeyed, and there will be consequences if they are disobeyed. This is a concept we teach our children from birth - why shouldn’t we expect the same from grown adults?
Since we don’t have direct control over the primary cause of our immigration problem (Mexico’s economy), we must look to other (secondary) causes - primarily our wide open border. Like Mexico’s poverty, there’s simply no excuse for our nations’ unsecured borders. There’s plenty we can do about it - we can SECURE THE BORDERS for starters. In fact, even without the immigration bill passing, we’ve already been promised 700 miles of fence we’re not getting - SO WHERE’S THE FENCE? It’s not being built, because regardless of what they say, Washington is simply not interested in securing our borders. It's all just lip service because our politicians think Americans are too stupid to know what's good for them. And once Washington finishes giving away the farm to the 12-20 million+ illegals, they still won’t be interested in securing our borders. They’re just saying what they think we want to hear so we’ll agree to this amnesty sham that’s being shoved down the throats of hard-working American taxpayers.
No matter what you call it, the immigration deal recently reached is amnesty, and will no doubt end up just like the 1980's 'deal' that gave amnesty to millions but never seriously secured the border or enforced immigration law. The so called safeguards that are supposed to ensure enforcement are NOT real (the fence is already NOT really being built). And in addition to no border security plus a bunch of new uneducated citizens, Americans will also get an increased flow of illegals (hoping to cash in on future amnesty, and certainly not fearing enforcement). This deal also spells the end of the Republican party within the next few decades, and it'll also be the beginning of the end of America as a world Superpower. With 60% of those receiving 'amnesty' being dropouts, the burden on American taxpayer will be enormous (and by the way, these uneducated people will soon be voting and thus controlling our country - how many more BAD decisions can the US take?). How long does Washington think hard working Americans will foot the bill for this "immigration deal"? And how does Washington possibly expect the hard-working Americans who will pay for this deal in so many ways to NOT be resentful of these new ‘citizens’? Assimilation would be difficult enough if these people all wanted to assimilate, but they don't all want to assimilate. From the marches I've been to, it seems that many of these people want Americans to change to accommodate them - beginning with our laws.
How could Congress be so far away from what Americans really want? The last election was not a mandate on Iraq - it was a message from the American people that we are tired of being ignored by our elected officials. Washington politicians are representing their own interests instead of the interests of their constituents. We are tired of the sleazy political games, corruption, and yes, the last election was a message that we are tired of losing a war we should be winning. Securing the border should’ve been the first thing we did when this 'war on terror' began. Americans don't understand why our soldiers have to die in Iraq to make our country safer when we haven't even secured the homeland (border). Doesn't our Commander-in-Chief know the first thing you do when you're at war is secure your perimeter (border)? The President messed up SO BAD after 9/11 by not securing the border. He had great reason to secure it, and even Democrats would not have criticized him for doing so then. A huge missed opportunity.
America needs to do everything within its power to secure our borders NOW. We need to enforce existing laws and we need to encourage Mexico to help secure the border - but we cannot trust the Mexican government to truly work with us since their interests are different from ours. Therefore we need make it in their best interest to help us stop illegal immigration - perhaps tie their foreign aid dollars to border security and reduce the amount of money they get by a certain amount for unacceptable illegal immigration levels? I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that helping Mexico and Mexicans should NOT have to ruin America and hurt Americans.
Washington needs to GET REAL on immigration. Mr. Bush and those elected officials who support mass amnesty will go down in history as the people who could have saved our country's future, but didn't. Mexico will go down in history as the crappy little country that destroyed the big powerful US without ever firing a shot.
Bush and Rove are working to split the Hispanic voting bloc away from the Republicans in order to set up Jeb Bush as the inevitable choice for president in the next election cycle. Jeb with his Mexican wife and popularity in Florida and Texas along with he Bush money machine will be unstoppable, they just have to insure that the Republican loses this time.
Posted by: R Berle | June 07, 2007 at 03:40 PM