President Obama made it crystal clear Friday, for the few left
who doubted it, that he has no intention of ever making any useful
distinction between people who are citizens of the United States
and those who are not. Another part of the Democratic base pandered
to, though he didn’t need to “evolve” on this one. He’s never
thought keeping undocumented Democrats out of the country was a
good idea.
Obama created somewhere north or south of a million new
“Americans” Friday when he declared that his administration will no
longer attempt to deport citizens of other countries illegally here
who were brought here when they were children. Not that his
administration was attempting all that hard anyway. The southern
border to the United States remains a line on the map that all
members of one of our major political parties wish to ignore, as do
too many of the other. (Border? What’s a mean old border between
friends?)
Obama perfumed his most recent brazen run around Congress and
the U.S. Constitution by draping it in terms of “fairness,” as he
does most of his hustles, and setting out phony standards for his
amnesty plan that certainly can’t and won’t be enforced. Young
citizens of other countries can avoid being even concerned about
the heave-ho if they were brought to the United States before they
turned 16 and have been in the country for at least five continuous
years.
Even if sufficient bureaucrats and document stampers existed to
check these two items, there’s no way of reliably ascertaining when
someone came to El Norte. Obama must be under the impression that
illegals have their butts date-stamped when they sneak across the
border.
“This is not amnesty,” Obama said Friday. “This is not immunity.
This is not a path to citizenship. This is not a permanent fix.
This is the right thing to do.”
Of course it’s amnesty and it’s immunity. It’s far from the
right thing to do (or not do in this case). Obama is only right
that it’s not a fix, permanent or temporary, beyond the fact that
America will be in a hell of a fix if we don’t decide to have real
borders and real, enforceable standards for citizenship.
Doubtless many of the people included in this blanket amnesty
will make fine Americans, and it would take a heart of stone not to
sympathize with the yearnings of people in poor countries who want
to enjoy the advantages of life in America. But at the present
America is a nation of unemployed immigrants. There is no way we
can accommodate tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of people who
would rather live in America than where they are. Borders and
standards for citizenship are not hate crimes, they are necessities
of sovereignty.
America has immigration law on top of immigration law. But most
are ignored most of the time. In practice anyone on Earth or the
closer planets with a Spanish last name has a get-into-America-free
card. This has been the case under Democratic and Republican
administrations for crass political reasons.
Democrats don’t want to oblige Mexicans, Colombians, Peruvians,
et al. to return to their own countries because these folks vote
for Democrats when they become U.S. citizens, and too often before.
Republicans don’t have the nerve to attempt to deport people with
Spanish last names who are citizens of other countries because
they’re afraid people with Spanish last names who are Americans
will not vote for them if they do. One side in this sorry business
is motivated by raw political opportunism, the other by a
testosterone deficiency.
The Big Lie on this one, which has been pushed by the Left for
so long that even people on the Right have begun to believe it, is
that any coherent and consistent effort to maintain a southern
border to the United States and to set standards for American
citizenship is anti-Hispanic. It’s not. And conservatives,
especially conservative Republicans running for office, should say
so. They should call the folks retailing this nonsense what they
are, demagogues and cheap political hustlers.
Why should an American with a Spanish last name be offended if
his government prevents a citizen of another country with a Spanish
last name from coming here or staying here illegally to compete for
the American’s job and to suck up government services the American
will have to help pay for? It certainly wouldn’t ruin my day to
learn of a Brit here illegally who was obliged to get on back to
Old Blighty where he belongs. And when large numbers of Belgians
and Norwegians start pouring over our southern border, we’ll have
to deal firmly, intelligently, and fairly with them as well.
Some Americans with Spanish last names do favor an almost open
immigration policy. But the number of these folks is exaggerated by
the Left for political effect. Even those Americans who believe in
a free flow between Latin America and the U.S. are more interested
in a job and a bright future for their children than they are in
shoe-horning every person on the planet with even the most tenuous
connection to Spain or the Spanish language into the United
States.
Republicans regularly anguish over how they can win the votes of
Americans with Spanish last names. The answer isn’t to fall down
the hopeless rabbit hole of identity politics, but to fashion and
promote policies that lead to freedom and prosperity for all
Americans, hyphenated and otherwise.
While we’re up, I have to wonder that more people with Spanish
last names are not offended by that cow-patty of a word, Hispanic.
The folks at the U.S. Census Bureau dreamed up this clunker back in
Tricky Dick days to aid in the butt-insky type of stuff they do. It
applies to anyone with a connection to Spain or Spanish, which
covers a lot of very different people with different outlooks.
People rudely corralled under the designation Hispanic are as
various as those of Non-Spanish backgrounds. Most would rather be
identified by their nation of origin – Mexicans, Colombians,
Peruvians, etc. – or as just Americans, and resonate to Hispanic
about as much as I would resonate to Europanic.
Sadly, immigration is, and for the foreseeable future will
likely remain, an area suffused with fear and resentment and base
political opportunism. It’s an issue, like race or the relations
between the sexes (the standard two as well as all the new niche
sexes), where few politicians have the nerve to implement the
policies we need, and almost no one is willing to utter the truth.
In any review of our national conversation on immigration over the
past couple of decades, the words “courage” and “coherence” will
not figure prominently. That’s too bad for us all, not least
Americans with Spanish last names, who are being badly used.
