The Northern Line

By Lineman

If a law has no teeth, there is no law. Establishing a firm, fair, reasonable structure of immigration laws and law enforcement in the border region is secondary--first it must have teeth. The border fence will be the teeth; it is first priority. Once that physical barrier is in place the people on both sides who scoff at America''a ability to defend herself will think again before they doubt our resolve.

After the fence(#1)will come the establishment of laws and law enforcement (#2), then the repatriation of illegal aliens now within American borders (#3) and the simultaneous, steady process of legal immigration (#4). There is no need for laws about language or acculturation--if we control who enters, we will admit only those from the great majority of applicants who want to be Americans anyway, people who know the importance of English internationally and want their children to have this ability. No law will negate the old rule of immigrants, that 1/3 adopt readily to their new home; 1/3 do so reluctantly but hold to the past, and 1/3 never acculturate--they stay in the ghettoe and wish they hadn''t had to leave home. That''s human nature--any time spent by our government trying to regulate it is wasted, perhaps a source of interesting news stories, something for the public to chew so they feel like they''re doing something.

Controlling who enters is the key and we cannot do this without a fence. The fence is not racist or xenophobic, neither is it related to the Belin wall. In El Paso, Texas there is a problem of drivers coming over from Juarez, driving like they''re in Mexico then roaring home after they''ve caused their damage. El Paso residents, largely people born in Mexico or second generation Tejanos, avoid people with Mexican license plates because they know there is no one to answer for the damage they cause. El Pasoans look directly across the Rio Grande at Juarez and say thank heavens there''s a river, otherwise it would be one great city and there would be no traffic law. They also say thank heavens because they know better than most Americans what''s going on in Juarez--politically, socially and in every other way. These are some of the most conservative, law-abiding, decent people in the United States, the kernel of knowledge needed to draw up immigration laws. What matters is their common decency and respect for God and their having to earn a living, traditional American values. If they had their way, they would draw every decent person in Mexico over that river to live under the system of laws that is the American government, get them away from the government of individuals who rule Juarez. With no barrier they cannot seperate the good from the bad, even though they know how to choose better than anyone else.

The Rio Grande, for them, is the dividing line between the ancient hell of corruption and injustice and the modern, liberal state where our fellow man decides issues of justice. Thank heavens the river is there.

When we talk about building a fence, we mean extending the Rio Grande all the way to the ocean at Tijuana and enhancing the river itself so it is not so easily crossed. When this is done, the people on the American side can go about their business, not living in fear of the mess to the south spilling over. Many people far to the north would like to see a fence so their backs would be covered; we in the border region, of every ethnicity, with relatives and many other connections in Mexico, would like to see a fence so we would be protected tomorrow on the way to work.

Who would object to this fence, and why? It will not be too expensive and not too much of a construction problem--we have to think in terms of building the Interstate Highway system fifty years ago, an internal national defence mechanism that will take years to build, but a tiny fraction of the work that went into the Interstates, and very interesting to our engineers--they''ll figure it out.

The fence will not be politically offensive--once Aemricans have voted to build it, and even now, it''s an internal affair. Other soveriegn countries are welcome to comment but, as to their negotiating with us about our laws, only internationalists and collectivists--and people who can''t take care of their own affairs--would think they have such a right; and they are out to destroy America anyway, so who cares about them. They can sit out there and debate all they want.

Will illegal aleins now in the USA object? Of course--when they get repatriated they will be stuck outside the fence and, in many cases, they have built good lives in America and are decent, hard-working people; but Latin America needs people of this quality to reform their own governments. I think North Americans will be amazed at what effect they have once they''re back home. It will do them good, too, because many of them are subject to leftist propoganda in the Southwest, believing that this chunk of the USA should be given back to Mexico. They will soon find how choice positions are assigned under the Mexican system, no matter their accomplishments and merit, and how well their children will be educated in Mexican public schools, one of the richest nations in the world. Perhaps El Grito will be heard again.

That covers financial, physical, social and political barriers to completing the fence. Objectors are just obfuscating. Next: establishing fair, enforceable immigration laws and procedures.

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At last!
By
Lineman

At last the nation''s attention turns to this bleeding wound of a border problem and, again, the blunt hammer of politics is trying to quickly repair a delicate, simple situation that has grown confusing and complex due to neglect.

At last I can turn my attention to working on it, too.

If we care about our fellow man and the will of the founding fathers--including the founding fathers of Mexico--we must guide that political hammer as well as we can towards protecting the common people on both sides of the borders. Our system of laws was intended as a restriction on government, not an empowering instrument, so any legislation that sweeps either the taxpayers of the USA or any citizens of Mexico under the carpet is inaffective and abusive, actually magnifies the problem. Legislation must eliminate the programs that bait illegal immigrants, respecting American taxpayers and unburdening them from laws that have them paying the medical bills of the third world; legislation must define and establish clear law enforcement procedures in the border region--not just along the borders; legislation must see to the needs of our neighbors to the south by clarifying that the USA is not a dumping ground for their social ills. Allowing the current authorities in Mexico to think they can affect our national sense of right and wrong, to use guilt by displaying their open sores like street beggars, is an insult to the Mexican nation--their common people are far better than that; they are poorly represented.

How many American politicians have any idea of conditions on the border? How many have waited at an emergency room, bleeding or passing out with fever, while the tax payer-supported medical staff tends to the ills of illegal citizens of another country? How many Mexican citizens have died in the desert seeking help that should have been available at home? How many American politicians have ever been stuck for a job while their families starve, or spent a night outdoors against their will, or even ever missed a meal? Precious few, you can bet, yet they are debating the fates of millions, of the Americas, from their comfortable offices. This is the blunt hammer of politics, the same that put these social programs in place forty years ago, backed by 2/3''s of American voters. Is America still that ignorant and uncaring? My candidate said back then that you cannot legislate morality--and he has been proven right. LBJ''s programs continue to act as acid on American decency, taking hard-earned income from working people and pouring it slowly over people at their hour of need, dissolving any instinct of self-sufficiency or dignity they may have, as if these programs were designed by intellectuals who actually intended to destroy the moral fiber of a free people. The majority of Americans see this now, and they elect supposedly conservative representatives--then those representatives do nothing but line up at the trough like their predecessors, proof of ancient wisdom concerning politics and power. Most Americans now laugh at the shallowness of LBJ''s thinking--but he was supported by that 2/3 majority. Are Americans any smarter or more knowledgeable than then?

Are they disgusted enough by this border issue to make wise choices or will they take the first feel-good legislation and go with it like they did in ''64?

Part of the bluntness of politics is its desire to fix things with one blow, or a series of sharp blows. That won''t work on our border; it will only make it worse and hurt a lot of people who are already suffering. We are looking for a long-term repair, attention that may last several years. For example, can we really locate and repatriate 11 million illegal aliens? Yes! We have to think a bit more Asian-style here, the same way Ho Chi Minh beat us--time is on our side. We blunt Americns are used to thinking of the number 11 million as if they were barley seeds in a basket--too huge a pile of barley seeds to grasp, mentally--wow, what a bunch of barley seeds. But the way we move them is by designing a moderate-sized scoop that handles well, doesn''t drop too many on the floor, then finding scoop operators of steady demeanor who will be there every day, searching and scooping, year after year until the job is done. I bet they get to the pont in a very few years where illegals are hard to find and we have to worry about their hiding a few to preserve their federal jobs, then promise them another assignment.

When it is known in Latin America that the horrible, selfish American citizenry is effectively pushing all illegals back over the border the people won''t be so tempted to leave home, maybe won''t make as many babies and will demand effective leadership to solve their social problems right where they live. It worked for the Communists in Southeast Asia; it works in middle school classrooms--why not here? Americans just aren''t thinking right.
To eliminate social programs, we need to rescind them all but keep people currently on assistance on the dole until all the kids are 18 years old. That will give plenty of time for the welfare bureaucracy to retire or be moved to other government jobs; those seeking to apply will have to move to Midland/Odessa where KFC pays $8.50/hr. to start and can''t get enough applicants. People in other countries will get the word plenty quick and, again, take their frustrations out on their local authorities, as they should. The rest of us just have to decide we want this done, that we are willing to commit to a reform that will take 18 years, like paying off credit cards that indebted us in one brief vacation but take years to pay off. LBJ''s platform sounded nice but it just wasn''t a very good idea.

The border is a delicate situation because millions of people are involved who live hand-to-mouth, day-to-day. Their sustenance and medical conditions are life and death; their gullibility to swindlers and violent criminals on both sides of the border is infamous, though unknown to people who have not lived with them. A man once told me he had been robbed the night before by cholos who were waiting for him when he passed through a hedge, a place where all the field hands had to pass to get back to the canyon where they lived at the end of the day. Twenty years ago all the hands kept their pay rolled up in their sock (the Bank of America has gone a long way to resolve this matter), so all the cholos had to do was ambush my friend and rob him.

I asked if he had called the police and he said, no, that he would have to wait an hour for them to arrive, that they could do nothing, really, and that they would take the knife he used to protect himself. He would spend an hour to lose his knife and miss his dinner--better to stoically accept his fate, part of being illegal in the USA.

Interviewing a woman one morning who had no ID, she told me that she had been fully prepared to work in the USA but when she was running no-man''s-land the night before from Tijuana she had come to a ditch with the migra right behind her. She had tried to jump the ditch but it was too wide and when she landed hard on the other side the bag with all her belongings popped open and they fell into the ditch. What was she to do? Stop and pick them up and get arrested, or keep going and enter the USA with nothing? She kept going.

Another lady in the room, listening quietly, asked, "was it a while bag with a big red letter K on it?" Yes, the interviewee answered. "That was a K-Mart bag. Next time use the blue bag from Walmart--they don''t pop." This is the level of materialism of these people. They have nothing, are mostly decent people who are easily crushed. Their native land owes them the chance to acquire stability--they need to stay there and hammer on their own political system, not come here and beg from ours. And they soon lose the dignity of beggars and become demanding, unable to survive in anything but a welfare state--American taxpayers money used to corrupt the citizens of another country--amazing, on top of the horror we have created in our own society.

The situation is simple in its essence: people often seek work in other countries; it''s up to the host country to decide who may come to do what job, for how long, and to establish simple procedures to accomplish this. The vast amount of money involved between American agiculture and Mexican politicians has spoiled the affair into a rotten mess, though this will take decades to work out. I know a municipal judge in West Texas who told an illegal alien convicted of misdemeanor DWI that if he would work on the judge''s farm for six years the offender wouldn''t have to go to prison. We found the man five years later, listed as an absconder, still afraid of the authorities and wanting to get back out to the judge''s farm where he felt protected. No passing of a new law will root all this filth out.
The situation, the region has been neglected while all this corruption has been growing for years. It''s so easy for the American people to throw more money at poverty hoping it will go away so they can go to the mall instead of volunteering through a church program to help someone. It''s so easy to take a racist or xenophobic perspective and say all those different-looking people just need to get out, then turn away while they rush in. It''s smart politically to tell the people of your country to leave, to go north over the line when they need something--here, here''s a bottle of water, a map and a bag lunch. And the people who are making millions on this don''t want the nation''s attention--they want it to continue as is. About 1/3 of all American agents from every agency are compromised in their first year.

I once applied to University of San Diego law school, disgusted with the corruption and abuse I''d seen as a welfare worker and Amnesty teacher. The admissions counselor told me that if I wanted to become an honest immigration lawyer I would make less than I did as a welfare worker, and did I want to put myself in the position to decide what my price would be?

Are we, as a nation, ready to make that decision?