Cause and Effect

The feigned outrage at Arizona’s immigration bill is appalling.  While freedoms should never be sacrificed on the altar of security, the Left should get its act straight before attacking this measure. 

In large part the issue of illegal immigration has not been solved because politicians in Washington either fail to realize or choose to ignore what the problem really is – a welfare problem.   The issues Arizona, California, Texas, and other border states are facing have little to do with immigration and more to do with the burden the citizens of those states bear.  These border state citizens are forced to support a substantial distribution of their dollars to a large portion of the population that pay no taxes and ship the money to another country’s economy.  To solve this issue the U.S. does not need fences, civilian ID checks, a national ID card or deportation.  The solution is simply to end the flood of entitlements and other programs currently bleeding the American People dry.

Support for a bill that contributes to handing over more civil liberty, to accomplish yet another solution to a problem government created, will be hard to come by, especially by freedom loving individuals.  However, the left’s criticisms of the bill are generally unfounded.  Do they forget that it was Bill Clinton who passed immigration reform in the 90′s, authorizing partnerships with State authorities to enforce immigration laws?  The intent of those provisions sounds eerily similar to the current Arizona legislation, yet there was no outcry at its inception.  Do they forget that the tenth amendment to the constitution reserves powers not explicitly given to the federal government to the states or the people respectively? Which effectively allows people to show support or dissent by voting with their feet.  Do they understand that we currently bear the burden of providing proof of citizenship when applying for jobs as a result of U.S. social programs?  And, that burden will only increase as more and more of our lives are taken over in the form of socialized medicine? 

Currently, most individuals are required to provide their social security number whenever applying for or accepting a job, while there are many reasons for this, the result is the same;  “Are you a US citizen?” Whenever you are stopped by law enforcement the first question always involves identification.  Most enforcement actions currently involve the notion of reasonable suspicion and congressional democrats went as far as requiring Americans to provide proof of citizenship in order to attend recent town hall events.  Yet none of those things have created the supposed outrage now exhibited by the media and their liberal comrades.  Obama called the bill misguided, poorly conceived, and went as far as to ask how a Hispanic person would feel knowing that their “great-great-grandpa was [here] before Arizona was even a State.”  Is the president insinuating that Mexico, as a sovereign nation, should not take responsibility for the choices it made which resulted in it relinquishing control of a territory to another sovereign nation?  A more uneducated and incorrect view on this situation would be hard to come by.  Apparently the abdication of responsibility, preached by democrats, extends to foreign nations as well.   

The Left’s power grab mentality was predominately displayed by the ever arrogant mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, who issued a ban on travel to Arizona by all San Francisco city employees.  Where is the outrage associated with this action?  Are we now to assume that mayors of US cities have the power to limit where a free people may travel within their own free nation, or the world for that matter, simply because he finds something distasteful?  City employees should rise up and announce their intention to vacation in Phoenix this weekend simply to prove the point.  Funny that Mr. Newsom does not find running his city into a half billion dollar deficit more distasteful.  Maybe, he should limit his employees access to himself in an effort to promote responsibility.

Government is constantly encroaching on liberty as a means to solve problems it created.  The current Arizona law and other measures aimed at immigration, such as proposed national ID cards, are examples of this.  But this phony outrage, in the media and the Left, is complete hypocrisy and politically motivated.  The law does not promote racial profiling anymore than the screenings performed by TSA employees at airports, also supposedly based on “reasonable suspicion.”  The law does not force citizens to “show their papers” anymore than the other checks and rechecks citizens are currently subjected to. 

The bottom line is , none of these things are needed.  The country our founders envisioned was one where people came and made their own way and birthright citizenship did not exist.  Under this system, free immigration would not offend or upset any US citizen, simply because they would not be on the hook for the costs of supporting another nation’s people.  The current law will not solve the problem, it’s simply a Band-Aid for a larger problem, and it will lead to further erosion of Liberty.  However, that is not the reason for the recent outrage.  If the critics of the measure want to solve the issue, where laws like this aren’t needed,  we simply need to stop meddling in American’s lives.  The democrats and other politicians need to return this country to the time when people were responsible for themselves and not living off money and programs taken from taxpayers at the point of a gun.  The sad reality is the Left , or many other politicians for that matter, won’t do these things.  The liberal agenda is interested in maintaining and growing a permanent underclass of voters dependent on them.  Which, is one thing entitlements, welfare, and amnesty bills are really good at while laws leading to deportation are not.  Apparently , the mystery of their outrage is not really a mystery at all.