One of the main themes of the president’s 2016 campaign, and a vital issue still, is illegal immigration. Whether this nation is merely a residence or a true home to its inhabitants is a question of great importance to every American and obviously also to those who desire to come here.
With the on-the-move caravan from Honduras and given what the matter means to the GOP base, immigration will also be a factor in the midterms. But it has a personal aspect to many as well.
I should know, because I am a first generation American, the product of a union between a 35-year-old married Colombian father and his 17-year-old mistress. That’s on my biological side, as I’m adopted. My adopted side sports a Cuban-born, U.S. naval officer, Jewish father and an American-born Cuban mother. So it’s only by the beneficent grace of God that I was born in a Jewish orphanage in Staten Island, NY, and was thus an American by birth.
So, the issue has some relevance for me.
If my birth parents would have consigned me to a Colombian orphanage, I like to think I would have grown up to be an ultimately tragic, yet quite materially successful, drug kingpin. Though much better dressed than the usual gauche variety of Latin drug lord.
But I digress.
A main underlying question is why do the hordes of Latin America risk life and limb to come here? We usually think primarily of a material motivation for immigration. True, many of them live in appalling poverty. What constitutes hideous destitution here is usually an improvement in their financial condition from whence they came. But it’s not only that. We must also recall that many of those nations have little history of stable government and hence life can be precarious there. The triumvirate of Army, church, and big landowners did not exactly make the joints Main Street U.S.A. The even worse scourge of authoritarian socialism, as in Venezuela, drives the trek north more so today. Remember, while the rest of Europe was undergoing The Enlightenment, Spain was still in the thrall of The Inquisition.
These nations, as do most in the Spanish diaspora, also practice an ethnic hierarchy that can make life difficult for those not exclusively of European blood. At the top of this cultural pyramid are the Spaniards, they of Europe. Immediately following are the Argies and the Chileans, the two South American countries thought to be the most Euro. Next down the scale is the rest of South America, then the Cubans, followed at the bottom by the Mexicans and those of Caribbean and Central American heritage. Though, inside any Latin American country this bigoted scale is also at work. The basic rule of this dirty little secret? More European blood gains you advantages. More slave or Indian blood, you need not apply to the country club. I do not aver this practice is right, just, or moral. Just the reality of the situation for centuries. Ergo, many at the bottom of said pyramid want out and have illegally landed here.
Given all that, how do we fix the problem of illegal immigration? How do we keep our house in order? Like most thorny issues we do so in a way that no side gets exactly what they want but all sides get what they can live with:
- Build the bloody wall. Nothing else happens on this issue until the wall is built, operating, and working successfully across our entire southern border. Fund it with a 10 percent tax on all personal money transfers between the U.S. and Latin America. Staff it with Border Patrol, U.S. Army National Guard, and Reserve components. If need be, establish a five-mile exclusion zone on this side of the border. In this area can be placed monitoring devices and “obstacles” to impede further approaches outside of legally established areas.
Think that last part harsh? I remember, as an Intel analyst with the DivArty of the First Infantry Division in the early 80s, that there was a rumored plan. If, after Nicaragua and Cuba, other Latin American nations had fallen to Soviet colonialism we expected millions of refugees to try and escape the tyranny. We would then announce and subsequently execute an operation to mine parts of the southern border with FASCAM. Brutal? Yes. And likely quickly effective. Thus, no second, much bigger Mariel.
- After the wall is built we have to come to a hard realization about the estimated 10-12 million, perhaps more, illegal immigrants in this country: they are not going anywhere. We as a nation have neither available manpower, budgetary elasticity, nor a national consensus to round all of them up and deport them, which would be the only real just punishment for violating our border. Sorry guys, it’s not practical and yes, they sort of get away with it. However, we can impose a penalty for unlawfully being here while putting those who qualify on a road to citizenship. First we give them ninety days to turn themselves in to the closest ICE office. We also make it a serious infraction of the law to hire them for anything without ICE clearance. We further make sure to prosecute some who do so in a very public and severe way, thus making it a deterrent to others who would.
If they don’t turn themselves in? Well then, so as not to incite the tender tears of the Left and break up families, any family member found not registered will incur the immediate deportation of themselves and their immediate family to their country of origin. Will this be foolproof? No. But the threat of it, and again highly publicized execution of it, may prove to be the incentive needed for them to register at an ICE office. At that point they will be given one year to do the following: learn practical English, get a tax-paying job, graduate from a traditionally structured class in American civics, and have a clean criminal record. That will earn them a probationary visa to stay for one more year. Non-compliance with any part of it will result in immediate deportation after the one-year deadline. By the end of the second year they must have obtained a GED or be enrolled in school on the way to such, not be receiving any government income or benefit assistance, and still have a clean record. If not, deportation. Enlistment and sound service in the U.S. military will serve for the requirements of the second year. If all these goals were met by the end of one further year of probation they would become Americans. As in most nations of the world, we would finally have again hard standards for citizenship
- To top it off, henceforth any and all business at all levels of government will solely be conducted in English. It has been the successful lingua franca of this nation and should be restored to such. This will discourage illegal immigration, as the nation will not be so culturally accommodating to this illegality as it has been in the past. The private sector will be able to do as they will in this regard.
How could this benefit America in the future? Well, these new citizens will economically sink or swim, as in any free market nation. This will give the ones who make it past the crucible an appreciation of American history through properly taught civics classes and they will gain the work ethic by employment to become productive citizens. Both these factors could give them a perspective to, shall we say, vote for candidates and a political party who espouse traditional values. As most Latins are very socially conservative anyway, if a political party stressed their record on social conservatism to these new voters they might very well win their allegiance at the polls.
All these proposals are essentially trying to do one thing: to restore the time-tested primacy of Judeo-Christian Western European social mores and values this nation was founded upon and which served it so well for over two hundred years. Am I saying other values and mores would be excluded? No. But global empirical evidence shows where the smart money is and we should act accordingly.
The United States of America should not only be a place where hundreds of millions share the same real estate. America is not just a piece of ground, but an ideal. It’s been a home to individualism, not the collective. A home to the free market, not socialism. To freedom, not PC groupthink or identitarian hogwash. This is what has made us a great people.
However, without proper nourishment and vigilance, the cultural and political ideal of a safe, free, and prosperous home could vanish in the mist of time. Then not only our citizens, but also future huddled masses who could legally come here to share in those ideals, would have no homeward-bound journey ever to make again.
