Some years ago I owned some apartment buildings, a venture that
ended badly. When asked to explain my downfall, I said that it was
because my apartments resembled Anna Nicole Smith: low-rent and
high-maintenance. Those two themes came together again yesterday
when Smith won at the Supreme Court while illegal immigrants
nationwide engaged in a boycott. The boycott is a practice named
after Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, a landlord so ruthless in
his evictions that his employees quit and refused to have anything
to do with him.
Not that this nation has been particularly eager to evict, or
deport, these visitors without visas. Quite the contrary. Once they
have managed to pass Go by hook or by crook, they are likely to
collect their $200, take a ride on the Reading, dip liberally into
the Community Chest, settle into Free Parking, and eventually take
a walk on the Boardwalk. On the rare occasions that they end up in
jail, they usually turn on the Water Works and wind up Just
Visiting. So why boycott us?
Now there are many legal applicants for green cards whose
paperwork has yellowed without action being taken yet. There are
prospective citizens who spend years in sitting zones outside
bureaucratic offices. They are trying to do it by the book, not to
be heels who perform coolie labor; instead, they’re cooling their
heels in Uncle Sam’s anterooms. Those are folks who could
theoretically earn some sympathy with a boycott. They are in the
right; they perform the rites we require; they write the forms we
demand; their riot might be forgivable. Yet they are more pliant
than perhaps we deserve. They keep cooler heads despite struggling
to prevail.
Who then are the hotheads? Who are the ones demanding things?
The very people who have chosen the open window over the partially
open door. Chosen to work under the table instead of under the
microscope. To take the license of driving without a license. To
tax the hospitality of the hospitals without insuring the payment
by buying insurance. To take the low road on the highways by
driving uninsured. The ones who have chosen to beat the system now
demand that it work on their behalf? No one knifed them from
behind; if their backs are wet, there must be some other cause.
And so once again, it is the low-rent people who turn out to be
high-maintenance. Honorable people play by the rules and accept the
rule of the place.
WHICH IS NOT TO SAY that there are no legitimate victims among the
illegal population. There are some very heartbreaking stories of
families divided by arbitrary bureaucrats or by cases falling into
lacunae of the existing structures. People who know the INS and
outs of immigration can tell you horror stories, cases that deserve
to be rectified, perhaps by the creation of a special multi-agency
arbitration board to decide in exceptional or anomalous
instances.
However, there again the good guys lose out because of the
troublemakers. While the squeaky wheel keeps getting greased, the
others fall into neglect. Because these vast mobs of illegals have
arrogated the role of grievants, the individuals who are entitled
to special consideration are less likely to be identified.
The sum total of all this is that we are being confronted by the
core principle of our age, the one hill that is still worth dying
on: namely, that terrorism must never win. It’s not enough to point
out that, unlike the French frying of Beetles and the French
toasting of Tauruses, our street-agitator illegals congregated
without mayhem. They are still trying to grab by intimidation and
muscle what they could not earn by cooperation and loyalty. We have
no choice, if we hope to survive as a civilization, but to withhold
political reward from terrorist activity, even the bloodless
variety.
If someone wishes to solve the illegal immigration problem short
of deportation, it cannot be done by capitulation. Among other
things, that will lead to recapitulation of today’s events before
very long, this time by newly arrived millions. In order for any
solution to provide resolution, it must clearly specify that any
deal allowing illegals to apply now for legal status to avoid
deportation must not include any credit for “time served.” Their
clock starts now, and they get on the back of the line like any new
applicant.
It is high time that lowlifes who come here to get high or live
high on the hog are made to hightail it out of here. As one legal
Colombian immigrant put it during a counter-demonstration: “They
are like someone manipulating their way into your house and then
demanding a share of the inheritance.” And that wouldn’t be right,
Anna Nicole, now would it?
