"Honest talk" and other deceptions

San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Ruben Navarre has a column today on the IndyStar website purporting to provide “honest talk” on immigration. Navarre says it’s time for Americans to be honest about the conflict:

Much of it really is about clashing cultures and a concern that immigrants aren't assimilating. When someone complains that San Diego is "becoming like Tijuana," or when someone else says -- as an Idaho woman recently told the Los Angeles Times -- that her neighborhood has become a Spanish-speaking "shanty town," it's a dead giveaway that, for many Americans, the problem is not with people coming into the country illegally, but with the effect they have on their surroundings once here.

This week's student walkouts, in protest of efforts to control illegal immigration, brought this sentiment to light. When more than 25,000 students in Los Angeles, and thousands of young people in other cities, took to the streets, what enraged many observers -- judging from talk radio and television shows -- was the fact that the protesters waved Mexican flags.

His statement may be somewhat true; some people are undoubtedly upset with the changing cultural climate of some areas of the United States. However, the premise of Mr. Navarre’s op-ed is a flawed by dishonesty and deception at its root.

The heated battle underway nationwide is about illegal immigration, not immigration itself, though some would have you believe otherwise. Proponents of amnesty and open borders uniformly keep from mentioning that fact. They likewise refrain from using the term illegal, preferring instead to use the term “undocumented,” as though the border-crossers must have left the wallet containing all their proper immigration papers in their other pants.

Michelle Malkin has more on that fallacy.

Navarre says “most Republicans in Congress insist they're not anti-immigrant. If that's the case, the time has come to prove it by allowing higher levels of legal immigration.”

Oh, okay. It’s all so clear now. The way to stem the tide of people illegally crossing the border from Mexico is to allow more people to cross legally? I somehow doubt the people fording the rivers/climbing the fences/using the smuggler paths/hiding in trucks are people who have been patiently waiting in line for their chance to come into this country legally. They are people who have, with their country’s blessing, decided that the laws of the United States do not apply to them – they’re rarely enforced, so why worry? Why bother jumping through legal hoops when the border’s right there?

And Navarre thinks more immigration is the answer? Now, would that increased immigration quota be divided among all countries or just be set aside for our neighbor to the south?

That honesty thing’s a bitch, isn’t it?

The truth is the U.S. is a sovereign nation with its own rules and policies. This country has the right and the responsibility to regulate who comes here, and lamenting the plight of the poor, scorned immigrant is not going to change that. We have a generous system in place whereby people from other countries, including Mexico, can immigrate here.

You want some honesty? Millions of Mexican citizens have chosen to flout our laws and our sovereignty and come here illegally. They are criminals and should be treated as such. Any further discourse about legal immigration must wait until the illegal flood through the border has been staunched.