"It's a Crime" - Commentary by Tony Seton

It’s a Crime

The immigration debate, in the halls of Congress and in the streets, illuminates the seriousness of a problem that has been allowed to worsen because of incompetence and immorality. The issues are simple, but as with so many other situations, the government has gridlocked on the matter out of political cowardice and corruption.

Back in the Seventies, I interviewed Charles Silberman. He had a book out about criminal justice and the failure of our system to handle matters intelligently. He talked about the critical issue of assimilation and gave as an example his experience on a minesweeper in the Pacific toward the end of the Second World War. He said when the fighting was still underway in Europe, the Navy would rotate a handful of men at a time onto his ship. That meant that the few new men would learn the culture of being on the minesweeper from the many who had been living aboard for a while. They learned to preserve water; they understood the sanctity of a man’s bunk.

But when the fighting was over in Europe, they started rotating larger numbers of men. This meant that the culture of the ship was not inculcated as easily. Water was wasted, and a sailor could no longer leave a pack of cigarettes on his bunk.

We have twelve million people in the United States who aren’t citizens, and who according to our immigration laws are here illegally. Half are from south of the border. Many don’t speak English. Many have retained their own culture, which includes having large families they can’t afford and other tendencies of violence toward women.

This is not a Republican or Democratic problem, though the elephants seem to be getting squeezed the most at this point since they control Congress and they are badly split on the issue. But the Democrats certainly deserve plenty of opprobrium for their mismanagement of the ideas. Consider that during the ‘04 campaign, John Kerry wanted to facilitate illegals sending money back to their relatives, John Edwards proposed that American taxpayers should be funding translators in hospital emergency rooms, and Dennis Kucinich suggested that Spanish be a second national language.

No wonder the Dems lost. Even voters who couldn’t stand Bush realized the stultifying ignorance behind this shameless political supplication. First, that people who send money "home" make their local communities poorer, which means there’s less general commerce which means fewer legitimate jobs and it means a lower tax base for education, health care, police and fire, and repair of the infrastructure.

Second, people who live here should speak the language so that money spent in American hospitals can go to medical care instead of linguists; not to mention that the use of ERs for basic health care is what’s driving costs through the roof. Also, when people aren’t on the tax roles, it means that the government -- local, state and federal -- doesn’t "know" they’re there so they don’t allocate necessary funds to their communities, which means poorer health care, security, and educational services.

And third, while we don’t speak English goodly in this country, it is the language of our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, two of the most important documents written in any language. Speaking our languages is vital to the health of the country, which is why it is required for citizenship. When people can’t speak to their neighbors, it means that terrorists can live safely in our midst.

Our nation is dangerously polarized, widely off-track, deeply in debt, the object of global fear and derision, and failing by almost every important social measure because we aren’t a national community any more. It was a path we’d been plying through several decades of sloth, greed and miscreance. Briefly after Nine-Eleven we were one, albeit united in fear and hatred, but since the attacks, we’ve been coming apart at the seems.

It’s more than political -- Dem/Rep, lib/con, red/blue -- and it’s more than haves and haven’ts. We have lost our moral compass. We have shrugged away 200 years of our legacy of leadership. We have invaded foreign countries -- Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq -- with disastrous results. We rank 40^th in the world in infant mortality. Our children rank behind Third World countries when it comes to education. Our own elected representatives made it possible for the pharmaceuticals industry to charge Americans more for the drugs they produce than everyone else on the planet. They have legislated tax breaks for the oil giants that has converted our national resources into obscene corporate profits. They had delivered our once-vaunted free press into the hands of business shills and propagandists

We consume more and pollute more and do less about it than almost any other country. The only nations that support us are those whose governments we bribe. The federal bureaucracy is peopled by dangerously inept campaign flunkies. Special interest lobbyists literally write our laws. The mainstream media would be useless as fishwrap.

And to make matters worse, we have millions of people living among us who put the United States of America second to their own foreign interests. They won’t learn our language so that they might create a secure community. They work off the books instead of paying taxes need for public services. They support more illegal immigration, increasing the financial and social burdens on towns, states and the country.

Not all illegals are ill-motivated. Those who would like to become citizens and are willing to learn the language, support their families, and benefit the common weal should be encouraged to participate in a process of legalization. Those who won’t should be repatriated. Those who provide them with assistance should be prosecuted and punished. That includes families and friends, churches and businesses.

Some mindless political harpies claim opposition to illegal immigration is based on racism; a disgracefully familiar smear. The truth is that many who oppose illegal immigrants are immigrants themselves. They became citizens of the United States for the right reasons and believe others should be held to the same standards of compliance.

Many businesses don’t care a whit about the color of the skin of their employees; their interest is exclusively on the color green, and the lower wages they can get away with paying the illegals. Seeking political cover, they insist the presence of illegals in their factories and fields is benign. They claim disingenuously that illegals take jobs that Americans refuse. The truth is that if illegals weren’t filling those jobs, wages would rise significantly and more Americans would take them.

Legal immigration is important for the United States; illegal immigration is lethally corrosive. The bottom line is that a nation fragments when only some of the people are required to abide by the rules, when the people don’t even speak the same language. This is not some multi-culturalist walk in the parque. It is about justice and decency, and if our country doesn’t stand for that, we don’t stand for anything at all.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.