11/3/2018 - Deroy Murdock Townhall.com
“Daddy, I don’t want a
Volkswagen. I want a BMW. And I want it NOW!”
This attitude is
grating enough among spoiled teenagers. Even worse, this sense of entitlement
permeates the pedestrian invasion forces — euphemized as “migrant caravans” —
now marching up from Central America, through Mexico.
Undetermined thousands
of illegal aliens, largely from Honduras and El Salvador, have broken into
Guatemala and then broken into Mexico. They intend to break into America. Last
month, news cameras caught them swamping the gate that separates Guatemala’s
Ciudad Tecun Uman and Mexico’s Ciudad Hidalgo. They banged on the barrier, and
down it came. A wave of humanity rushed forth, like floodwaters pouring through
a ruptured levee on the mighty Mississippi.
Hondurans are poor, and
their nation is no hotbed of hope. Most of these people seek to brighten their
life prospects. But the path to greener pastures must be legal. These people
all should stand down, retreat, and apply for visas at the embassies of the
countries to which they wish to emigrate. No land — not least the USA — is
obligated to accept these people. They have no right to live anywhere else
without their destination nation’s permission.
A complex set of international customs and legal
precedents holds that those in distress should seek relief in the
“first country of asylum” safe enough for them to take refuge. International
law does not recognize a right for those fleeing chaos or squalor to shop from
one nation to the next, as if they were homebuyers who skin up their noses at
houses A and B and demand house C.
Beyond Cancun, Mexico
is not quite paradise. However, with a per-capita income of $19,900, according
to the CIA World Fact Book,
it is more than twice as prosperous as El Salvador ($8,900) and Guatemala
($8,100) and nearly four times wealthier than Honduras ($5,600). The frightful,
deadly MS-13 gang is far less influential in Mexico than it is in those three
Central American countries. So, maybe the people snaking our way should stop in
Mexico and enjoy that country’s relative prosperity and comparative
tranquility.
In fact, as NBC News
reported, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto unveiled his “You are at home”
plan. Last week, he offered housing, healthcare, education,
and employment to itinerant Central Americans who had reached
Chiapas and Oaxaca states. He asked them to apply for this first step toward
permanent refugee designation.
Between 1,700 and 2,000
migrants reportedly have accepted Mexico’s generosity. The majority, however,
have rebuffed Peña Nieto and continue trudging toward America.
“Thank you!” a group of
invaders shouted in a town called Arriaga. They just had voted down Peña
Nieto’s plan with a show of hands. According to CBS News, they added: “No.We’re heading north!”
“Our goal is not to
remain in Mexico,” said Honduran Oscar Sosa, 58. “Our goal is to make it to
[the USA.] We want passage. That’s all.”
Even before reaching
San Diego or El Paso, some of these marauders are behaving like…entitled,
litigious Americans.
A dozen Hondurans
launched a lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump and the Department of
Homeland Security. The plaintiff’s action, filed in U.S. District Court in
Washington, D.C., claims that the Trump Administration’s deployment of the U.S.
military to block these Hondurans violates their Fifth Amendment due-process
right to asylum proceedings.
As the late, great Yogi
Berra must be saying in Heaven: “Only in Central America.”
So, who are these
ingrates who spurn Mexico’s hand of friendship and insist on a right to enter
America? The Left/media portray these invaders as a sort of floating PTA
meeting.CNN anchor Chris Cuomo purrs: “They’re more mothers than monsters.”
In fact, only “about 20
to 30 percent” of these illegals are parents and unaccompanied minors, Roy
Villareal, deputy chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector,
told the Washington Examiner. The remaining 70 to 80 percent of those on
the move, Villareal says, are “single, adult males.” Even more worrisome,
these unattached grown men have been rough. “We have been trying to avoid, at
all costs, violence on the border,” Mexico’s ambassador to Washington, Gerónimo
Gutiérrez, told National Public Radio on Monday. “Unfortunately, some of the
people in the caravan have been very violent against authority.”
To sample such
aggression, watch this video of what appear to be masked male migrantshurling rocks at a Mexican helicopter as it
flies overhead. The chopper twice takes evasive action, lest it get struck and
crash.
This violence is not
isolated, and the mayhem could get much, much worse.
Mexico’s Interior
Minister Alfonso Navarrete told Radio Enfoque (Focus Radio) 100.1 FM last
Tuesday: “I have videos from Guatemala that show men dressed in identical
clothing, sporting the same haircuts, handing out money to women to persuade
them to move to the front of the caravan,” to serve as the soft, vulnerable,
tear-inducing tip of this human spear.
Navarette added: “We
know, for a fact, that some members of the caravan threatened [Mexican]
Migration Institute personnel, and we have images showing many of them
preparing Molotov cocktails.” He explained that, thanks to the pedestrian
invaders, “the wounded we have on the Mexican side are policemen, more than
ten, two of them are serious, with traumatic brain injury.”
The U.S. Department of
Homeland Security on Thursday released this disturbing statement:
“We continue to be
concerned about individuals along the caravan route. In fact, over 270
individuals along the caravan route have criminal histories, including known
gang membership. Those include a number of violent criminals — examples
include aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, sexual assault
on a child, and assault on a female. Mexican officials have also publicly
stated that criminal groups have infiltrated the caravan. We also continue to
see individuals from over 20 countries in this flow from countries such as
Somalia, India, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. There is a large segment of
this population that we know nothing about and we must be prepared to defend
our border and enforce our laws to protect the citizens of our country.”
This is what America
faces: Wave after wave after wave of thousands of uninvited, unidentified,
jobless, predominantly male, somewhat sue-happy, increasingly violent, illegal
aliens determined to penetrate our southern border and make themselves at home
in our country.
Too bad they don’t
follow my mother and father’s example.
When they wanted to
pursue better lives by moving from Costa Rica to America in 1962, my parents
did something likely considered racist today: They visited the U.S. Embassy in
San José, filled out visa applications, got their passports stamped, and then
came to America. The Land of the Free greeted them with tremendous warmth,
love, and opportunity — and then did the same for our other relatives who
arrived, mainly after my birth in Los Angles in 1963.
Lucky us.
Remember: these people
all walked in after they knocked on America’s front door and were invited in.
Those who now fill our
TV screens around the clock, however, have no claim on our sympathy. Unlike
lawful immigrants, those who are determined to barge into America illegally
deserve nothing but water cannons and tear gas if they reach the southern
frontier. These pedestrian invaders could have rung our collective bell and
waited for us to answer. Instead, they have organized themselves into a human
battering ram and are poised to smash our door into splinters, run inside, and
help themselves to America’s bounty. They should think long and hard before
triggering the righteous rage of this home’s overburdened owners.
Deroy Murdock is a
Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor and an emeritus media fellow with the
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
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