Immigrants: Legal versus illegal

I just don’t get it.

What part of illegal immigration is unclear? First, there’s legal immigration where people follow the rules, fill out their forms and paperwork, and wait patiently for the United States to grant them legal immigrant status. Then there’s illegal immigration, where people wade through the river, stowaway in trucks or use some well-established route into this country, all the while cognizant of the fact that what they’re doing is illegal.

You see, one of those strategies is legal…a word we Americans admire because it means following the rules. My ancestors came here legally. Then there’s the illegal strategy employed by the line-cutters coming here in contempt of our rules and national sovereignty…and we Americans don’t care much for line-cutters. We care even less for people from other countries who demand that our established policies be reshaped to their liking.

So now there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of illegal immigrants taking to the streets nationwide to protest legislation attempting to curb the problem by upgrading the charges for illegally entering this country to a felony. “Don’t Criminalize Us,” they say. “Illegal immigration is not a problem.”

Did Wal-Mart just have a sale on stupid pills? It has to be the height of irony for an illegal immigrant to carry a sign saying “Don’t Criminalize Us.” Uh, sorry, you did that yourself when you waded the river. The irony meter pegged itself when hordes of illegal aliens clogged the streets to downplay illegal immigration as a trivial matter.

Much of the blame for this straw poised over the camel’s back can be laid at the feet of businesses, which like the cheap labor provided by the illegal immigrant workers. Produce growers in California, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona have worked hard for non-enforcement of immigration rules. Heck, undocumented (nice euphemism for illegal) Mexican workers have even pushed out the Puerto Rican laborers who used to do the grunt work for the plant nurseries in my locale. Some grape farmers have also turned to cash-at-the-end of the day Mexican workers to do the mindless task of trimming the grape vines for the coming season.

The lure of saving the almighty dollar is a powerful temptation for business owners. The perception that “everyone’s doing it” without penalty is a strong inducement for businessmen to abandon principle in favor of profit.

Saying this doesn’t make me a racist, as some members of the ironic hordes maintain. As a matter of fact, I love the Mexican people and culture. We even – legally – hosted a Mexican exchange student for a year.

I simply maintain that our immigration laws are there for a reason – they funnel people into our society at such a rate they can be absorbed. Our quotas make sure the new legal immigrants are on the grid so they contribute taxes and thus do not overburden our socials services, including public education, Social Security and healthcare. Our legal immigration process also removes the riffraff, including convicted criminals and drug runners, from those who seek to reside here.

So I think we need to pay more than lip service to controlling immigration. Absent strong cooperation from the Mexican government, a hard border fence is a necessity. And I think elevating illegal immigration to felony status, enforced by deportation, will do wonders to encourage respect for our national sovereignty. We can not have competing governmental agencies which both facilitate illegal immigration and condemn it.

Illegals sent packing to their country of origin? Too bad. Not fair? Don’t make me laugh. They chose that consequence when they decided to circumvent our legal immigration process in favor of line-cutting.