Leo Blog: Bush must get tough on illegal immigration
Last June, I managed to get lost in one of the rugged canyons of southeast Arizona near the Mexican border. While pondering the interesting question of whether I would be able to find my way out before nightfall (there are bears, cougars, and rattlers in there), I stumbled upon two campsites or staging areas apparently used by illegal immigrants. Each site was maybe 2,000 square feet. No people, but lots of backpacks, food tins, shirts, pants, underwear, water bottles, tampons, toilet paper, documents, and candy wrappers–about as much debris as you might expect in a similar patch in Times Square after a Mets World Series victory.
It's hard to travel through Cochise County without coming across illegals.
The endless torrent has deeply affected the psyche of Arizonans, probably to the point where President Bush's latest attempt at immigration reform will earn him little more than a collective shrug. A few weeks ago the Maricopa County (Phoenix) attorney's office sponsored a conference on immigration, featuring panelists and speakers representing all sides, from the ACLU (politely welcomed ) to Minutemen (wildly applaud ed). It's a sign of the times in Arizona that prosecutors now run their own conferences on illegals.
Andrew Thomas, the young county attorney and conference host, spoke bluntly at the main luncheon, dismissing the politically correct argument that illegals are victims of coyotes (human smugglers who bring them in).
"The grown adults who do this in violation of multiple laws are certainly not victims," he said. "We–the citizens of the United States who are being overrun by illegal immigration–we are the victims."
In Thomas's account, Arizona and Maricopa County now lead the nation in crime. He said the state has the highest crime rate, the highest property crime rate, the second-highest larceny/theft rate, and a phenomenally growing rate of ID theft, all "directly related to our illegal-immigration problems." Each prosecution for ID and other white-collar crime costs more than $11,000, plus $50 a day to keep a convict in prison, "so keep that in mind when someone tells you that illegal immigration helps our economy."
Those who want to secure our borders run afoul of the compassion industry, which is determined to keep showering benefits on illegals–voting rights in some jurisdictions, cut-rate college tuitions, drivers' licenses, even demands for water stations in the Arizona desert for the benefit of thirsty illegals. Each new benefit helps erode the distinction between those invited in or who belong here and those who broke in. Presumably blurring the distinction is a conscious goal of the compassion industry.
The Mexican government is now a heavy player in the game of promoting more illegals. It produced a comic book telling illegals how to cross the border and how to evade border officials. President Bush needs to lean on his alleged friend Vicente Fox to take responsibility for the poor people of Mexico instead of dumping them over the border. Bush, beholden to businesses that hire illegals and donate heavily to the Republicans, has been unusually slow to appreciate the mounting opposition to the flood of illegals. In its November 7 issue, the New Republic said immigration is no longer just a border-state issue. "It's the future of politics in the South," with Minutemen franchises appearing in Alabama, Tennessee, and Virginia.
No more amnesties described as nonamnesties, please. Demonstrate first that we can cut the flow sharply. Then we can talk about guest-worker programs.
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