A Lawyer Plays the Race Card

A bottom-feeding immigration lawyer we know about favors illegal aliens over his own nation and the wishes of his own fellow citizens. It isn’t much of a stretch from there to what we would call gross disloyalty. He places more value on his immigrant law business than he does on the national interest, the national character, our national sovereignty, quality of life, and standard of living. He seems to believe that the U.S. can accommodate all the impoverished peoples of the world without any adverse impact. Alternatively, he must believe that we should endure the negative effects of excessive immigration in good spirits as a humanitarian gesture to the rest of the world. He must know that we already take more immigrants than any other country in the world.

To support his immigration law practice, he argues for what amounts to open borders based on a belief that our common humanity transcends what he considers to be arbitrary accidents of geography. The borders of a sovereign nation are hardly arbitrary accidents of geography. They were the result of conflicts, negotiations, or purchases. For example, when the Allies acquiesced to the movement of the USSR border westward to the Vistula River in what was formerly Eastern Poland that was hardly an accident of geography. In fact, the irony is that this is the same boundary that was established when the Soviets and the Nazis carved up Poland in 1939. The Louisiana and Alaska purchases are two other examples that established national boundaries that obviously were not arbitrary accidents of geography.

This lawyer believes that realization of our common humanity can lead us toward policies that benefit migrants and citizens alike in the best tradition of this migrant nation. Indeed, such policies already exist as temporary migrant workers are admitted to the U.S. to help with the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of fruits and vegetables. This policy enables them to earn more than they could in their homelands and enables Americans to have a greater variety in their diets.

The U.S. was once a nation where slavery was legal, where women were denied the vote, and which began as a nation of immigrants. We abolished slavery almost 150 years ago and granted woman suffrage in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

In the early days of our Republic, a vast, largely unsettled continent lay before the Founding Fathers and their successors. Natural resources like arable land, timber, fish, water, and minerals seemed limitless. Immigrants were welcomed in large numbers. Now we know natural resources are not unlimited and our policies have changed to reflect that fact. The last major wave of immigration ended in the early 20th century. Those who keep referring to our “immigrant past” are missing the point that the operative word is the word “past.” Our country is now fully developed, settled, and populated. We therefore have a very limited need for more immigrants.

We should, of course, treat immigrants exactly as their status warrants. We allow them to perform a service for us in the fields and in return they earn much more than they could in their homelands or they would not be here. We accord them basic human rights but not all the rights of citizens or legal residents. In return we ask them to abide by our laws and to leave our country before their visas expire. And we ask that they enter our country only if they have the proper authorization.

The immigration lawyer believes that we should focus all our Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement resources on the apprehension of just the drug and weapon traffickers, as if they would be willing to self-identify to make that approach possible. He would let the others go and not worry about them.

The Governor of California has been singularly negligent in his failure to aid the federal government in the discharge of its duty to secure our borders and prevent the establishment of sanctuary cities. He has finally seen the light and has recently deployed some National Guard troops to the border. Schwarzenegger's office said the governor believes more Border Patrol agents are needed to reduce illegal border crossings, human trafficking and the influx of narcotics. The point that he and so many others have failed to recognize is that, without vigorous internal enforcement, more agents or troops at the border will only minimally reduce, not stop, the flood of illegals.

The East Germans found to their dismay that people would brave machine gun towers, mine fields, and multi-layered fences and walls to escape to the West, Why? Answer: because if they were successful, they knew they would never be repatriated.

Similarly, illegal aliens know if they can escape the immediate environs of the border, they will be home free. Under the Administration’s current nonenforcement policies, the probability of illegal aliens being apprehended and repatriated is extremely low unless they run afoul of the law by committing serious crimes. What the Administration refuses to admit is that to secure the borders requires more than improvements in staffing, infrastructure, and the rules of engagement; it requires vigorous and continuous internal enforcement with expeditious repatriation of all of those who are apprehended. That is the missing ingredient of border security in depth. Under current policies the borders can never be secure. Without the threat and the actuality of repatriation, border violations will continue.

The immigration lawyer seems to think that it is easy to tell a drug smuggler from a run-of-the mill illegal alien when they appear at the border or are found in the Arizona desert. According to the immigration lawyer, as soon as a Border Patrol officer has made this easy distinction, he can turn the illegal alien loose and just arrest the drug smuggler. I can hear their conversation now. The illegal alien, who has the drugs on his person or in his vehicle, turns to the agent and points at the other alien and says, “He forced me to carry his drugs.” So the agent says, “Of course, I understand, you are free to go” and proceeds to clap the handcuffs or restraints on the other guy who is actually just a routine border jumper.

This lawyer further asserts that to sort out the drug smugglers from the legitimate tourists and visa holders at the airport ports of entry, we would have to do a body cavity search of everyone including citizens. The most important distinction that he overlooks here is that those apprehended in the desert are not likely to have papers of any kind. Those arriving at an airport would certainly have appropriate documents that could easily be checked. The two cases are entirely different in that sense and that makes it easier to hold those apprehended near the borders for processing. At the airport, those with legitimate papers may still be recognized as smugglers by experienced agents who understand how they act and the subterfuges they employ.

Young people who get into the trade are often asked to swallow many condom-wrapped packages of drugs. After they arrive in the U.S., they go to the specified address to deliver the goods. Of course, if the packages break and release the drugs, the courier could die of an overdose.

The lawyer adds that anyone who wants to enforce the law has an unspoken agenda based on the proposition that if you can’t tell drug dealers from basketball players from rappers, because they all look alike, then we should lock ‘em all up. This, of course, is a ridiculous statement on the face of it. As a lawyer, he knows that no one is suggesting that because it would be illegal and would infringe on the civil rights of citizens. That is quite a different story from those apprehended at the border or internally who have fraudulent documents or no papers at all and who may be subject a law like SB 1070. But he knows that. He, like so many others, sees everything through a glass darkly and when he has no substantive arguments, he plays the race card, or as he put it “I find it hard to be civil in the face of straight racism.”

Anyone, especially a word merchant or lawyer, who uses the term “racism” should at least be conversant with its definition. My dictionary provides the following definition: Racism--“An excessive and irrational belief in or advocacy of the superiority of a given group, people, or nation, usually one’s own, on the basis of racial differences having no scientific validity.”

The word "superiority" may be the key word in that that definition. That definition didn't stop the lawyer from drawing his own biased conclusions and labeling just about anything he disagrees with as racism. Nevertheless, we can say with certainty that in accordance with the definition none of the following beliefs constitute racism.

1. The belief that, as President Obama put it in his immigration speech, “Our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable."
2. A belief in national sovereignty, the national interest, and national character.
3. A belief that America is fully settled and developed and has a limited need for more immigrants.
4. A belief in or advocacy of a reduction in quotas for new immigrants to about 250,000 per year in all categories except tourists, students, and temporary migrant farm workers but including the number of all chain immigrations and family reunifications.
5. A belief that chain (family unification) immigrations should be limited to the spouses and minor children of citizens and that adult relatives of citizens should compete with all other applicants for admission on an even playing field.
5. A belief that the “limit” of finite natural resources per capita as population increases without bounds is zero. (The more there are of us, the less there is for each of us.)
6. A belief that the environment will be severely damaged by a doubling of our population.
7. A belief that homophilia is often mistaken for homophobia.
8. A belief that one can prefer his own culture to one that is loud and obscene without being a racist; and that culture can cut across races and ethnicity.
9. A belief that nations have no obligation to accept more immigrants than they can readily assimilate and who are needed by their economies.
10. A belief that the focus on immigration enforcement in the states bordering Mexico is fully justified by the great preponderance of illegal aliens and drug smugglers who come from that direction.
11. A belief that internal enforcement is an essential element of border security.
12. A belief that E-verification should be mandatory across the board for all employers, public and private, and all employees, current and prospective.
13. A belief that individuals who have been unlawfully present in the United States for a continuous period of more than 180 days, but less than one year, and who voluntarily depart the U.S. should barred from re-entry for 3 years and those who have been here longer should be barred for 10 years. (This is the current law.)
14. A belief that all individuals who have been unlawfully present in the U.S. or who have attempted to enter unlawfully should serve a six month sentence working on border infrastructure before they are repatriated with the admonition that if they return they will do hard time for a minimum of two years.
15. A belief that all local law enforcement authorities should be required to check the immigration status of anyone who is stopped for another infraction and who the officer has reason to believe could be in the U.S. illegally.
16. A belief that minor children, regardless of citizenship, should accompany their parents under a removal order as the best way to maintain family unity.
17. A belief that population growth in the U.S. is due almost solely to legal immigrants, illegal aliens, their higer fertility rates, and their progeny.
18. A belief that to reduce the future demand for energy we must stabilize our population.

I think this lawyer must be one of those small-minded, bleeding heart liberals, the ones who care nothing about the welfare of their country and whose myopia will surely destroy the greatest country on earth. I'm sorry but I find it hard to be civil in the face of straight incivility and name-calling.