1/13/2019
- Bruce Bialosky Townhall.com
California welcomed a new governor this week – Gavin Newsom.
Newsom has set as priorities that anyone in the state would be provided
health care at no cost and that the state will remain a sanctuary state.
Is there any wonder that the caravans from Central America that were
supposedly coming here for humanitarian reasons diverted the path of the
caravan from going to Texas and added over 500 miles to their trek to arrive at
the border of California?
Another year has gone by and yet there has been zero
progress on confronting our dysfunctional immigration policies. Our
government in Washington remains stalemated while Democrats refuse to provide
funding for border security where people wish to illegally enter our country.
We need solutions.
I thought about this while we were going through our annual
Christmas day trek for Chinese food. After being told it was an hour
wait, I exited the restaurant to find out the top on my son’s car was not
properly closing. I ended up driving the car to our local gas station
that does our repairs.
Unfortunately, the next day neither our Jewish maven nor his
friend who does electrical repairs could figure it out. One friend
suggested another Jewish mechanic, but our gas station maven recommended three
Mexican brothers who have an upholstery shop. Sure enough, my new
Mexican-American friends had it fixed in less than four hours.
Being in Southern California, we have a lot of
Mexican-Americans and many others from Central America plus people from all
corners of the world. My experience is they are wonderful people with a
great sense of humor. Certainly they really are interested in supporting
themselves and their families. And we are interested they enter the
country legally.
There are a lot of charges and countercharges thrown around
and our president has used inflammatory language at times. The bottom
line is no matter the rhetoric, he wants people to enter legally and he does
not care where they come from – South of the border or Eastern Europe; Africa
or Asia. The charges of racism are just as inflammatory as any statement
Trump has made. It is an old, tired canard that any Republican is racist
because they want immigrants to enter the country legally.
In fact, you really have to look at people who insist on
allowing people who come across our southern border without legal justification
as the racists. They are the ones insisting on people from a certain
origin to be able to flood across the border to the detriment of people from
Asia, Africa and Europe who are trying to come here legally. If anyone is
racist, it is these people.
What continues to be a difference between the parties is
that Republicans want legal immigrants. The Democrats
recently referred to illegal immigrants as “undocumented workers.” Now
they just refer to them as the “immigrant community.” They refuse to even
differentiate between people who came here through legal processes and those
who came here through illegal means. That was why The Left was so
perplexed on how to respond when an illegal immigrant recently killed a legal
non-white immigrant who was a police officer. They could not find the means
to even comment and certainly they were not wildly defending the family of the
dead officer.
Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York recently exemplified the
matter in a complete manner. He pardoned 22 people and commuted the
sentences of another seven. He started his news release by stating “With
President Trump and the Federal Government waging a war on our border against
immigrant communities …” That in itself is nonsensical because immigrant communities
are not trying to get into our country illegally – individuals are.
Reading the biographies as written by the governor’s office
of the people he pardoned, you would think he was the pope naming saints.
First, they start by saying they were minor crimes. Well, yes;
they were minor because they were plea-bargained to lesser offenses. Some
were drug dealers, which means they were dealing cocaine or heroin because the
ones dealing marijuana were identified as such to lessen the perception of
their crimes.
Perhaps some of these people were worthy of being
pardoned and have led a fine, law-abiding life since their release from prison.
Some were even senior citizens. But sugar-coating what they did is
demeaning. It was not stated any of them had been unjustly charged.
Not one was identified as being here legally. A couple
came here legally because the Governor trumpeted that, but were not identified
as being here legally now. As for the others, their status—past and
present—was not stated. Yet, they are just members of our immigrant community.
Recently, Speaker Pelosi suggested it was better to settle
the budget deal and then negotiate on immigration. She must think
Republicans are really stupid. Senator Schumer suggested the same thing
in his speech rebutting the president on this past Tuesday. They know the
press will move on to their next attack on Trump and never hold the Dems
accountable for not negotiating.
Speaker Pelosi further validated this in the meeting with
President Trump when she made clear she was not going to provide any more money
for border security. Democrats argue that only a third of the people
coming here illegally come across our Southern border as if a third is not a
significant amount. But Pelosi did not say, by the way, we want to
increase immigration control at seaports and airports. We want to provide
money for visa control. She has stated none of that.
Republicans know that something Dems care about more than
even illegal immigrants is federal employees who vote for Democrats in droves
and feed the Dems’ campaign coffers. Pelosi knows where her bread is
buttered and she also knows that she will never come to the table on
immigration without a gun to her head.
Better yet, she should define these experts that she and
Senator Schumer keep referring to that are saying they have alternatives to the
border wall. No one believes the wall by itself is the solution or that
it will run along our entire Southern border, but continuing to mouth
ridiculous statements that walls don’t work defies the logic of the most
basic-thinking person. It appears the other solutions for border security
by these so-called experts are just statements in the wind because you know
they would be out there with charts and graphs showing the other solutions.
Yet the press negligently never pushes for a definition of the
alternatives.
Republicans on more than one occasion have agreed to a
legalization of illegal immigrants with assurances that proper controls will be
put in place at a further time. President Bush proposed comprehensive
immigration reform with border security measures, but did not set that as the
first priority. It is good someone is drawing the line. Any
wavering Republicans should realize elections are so far away that maybe five
people will vote based on this budget shutdown. It has no political
relevance.
What has political relevance is moving along border security
for our country. Then visa control. Then a proper system to assure only
people here legally are hired by employers – e-verify. Then straightening
out the court system for immigration to properly handle legal immigration on a
timely basis. Then we can deal with the DACA people and the rest of the
people here illegally.
Now there is a plan.
No comments:
Post a Comment