Your wife, while preparing a salad, seriously cuts herself with a knife. She bleeds all over your kitchen. What do you do first? Try to stop the bleeding? Or wipe up the blood from the floor and sink?
Immigrants from Mexico and Central America are pouring across our open Southern border. What should Congress do first? Shut off the flow of illegal immigrants? Or worry about giving them a "pathway to citizenship?"
Eight U.S. Senators, inanely referred to as "The Gang of Eight," have cobbled together a 1,200-page bill which purports to solve "the immigration problem." (America's first immigration bill ran a page and a half!) Does it close the border? Not exactly.
Instead, according to Fox News,"The measure voted on (June 24, 2013) ... would double the size of the U.S. Border Patrol at a cost of around $30 billion and complete 700 miles of fencing. At the same time it sets out a pathway to citizenship for some11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, who would be permitted to get permanent resident green cards only once all the border changes had been put in place, about a decade after enactment of the legislation. The Department of Homeland Security already has fenced off 651miles of the 1,969-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico. If 700 more miles are fenced off, 1,351 miles would be fenced off, leaving 618 unfenced.
Do fences work? Ask the Israelis.
In early 2013, Israel completed a 144-mile section of fence along its southern border with Egypt to keep out "illegal infiltrators." It is 16 feet high and is augmented with barbed wire, surveillance cameras and radar. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Wall Street Journal, states that illegal crossings have declined 99.9 percent from 2,000 per month to only two. The 144-mile section cost $416 million. (So, what would 1,318 miles of fence cost?)
The new Israeli fence is separate from the fence that runs along the West Bank, which began in 2003. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, "During the 34 months from the beginning of the violence in September 2000 until the construction of the first continuous segment of the security fence at the end of July 2003, Samaria-based terrorists carried out 73 attacks in which 293 Israelis were killed and 1950 wounded. In the 11 months between the erection of the first segment at the beginning of August 2003 and the end of June 2004, only three attacks were successful, and all three occurred in the first half of 2003."
In 2002 alone, Israel suffered 55 suicide bomber attacks that resulted in 220 deaths. As the West Bank fence was completed, both attacks and deaths declined. By 2005, there were but seven attacks which took 22 lives. In 2006, there were four attacks that killed 15. In 2007, there only was one attack that took three lives. According to the Israeli Security Agency, there were no suicide attacks in 2009 and 2010.
The U.S. would not be building a fence to stop suicide bombers. But if a fence can stop Muslim fanatics determined to plant bombs in Israel, even at the cost of their own lives, it certainly should be able to stop Mexican men, women and children trying to escape Mexican poverty and drug violence from entering the U.S.
A U.S. fence also would have a second critical use. It would make it far more difficult for Mexican drug lords to send their drugs, violence and agents into our country. If you think this isn't a major problem, consider the words of Jack Riley, special agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office:"While Chicago is 1,500 miles from Mexico, the Sinaloa drug cartel is so deeply embedded in the city that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are on the border."
Our open southern border facilitates the transport of deadly illicit drugs into our country. It allows the cartels to send in their hitmen. And it allows them be become rich and powerful enough to control governments.
If drug operatives are easily crossing our open border, why can't Muslim terrorists? Does it make any sense that we leave our border unfenced, while our National Security Agency is reading the emails and monitoring the other Internet traffic of every American in a effort to keep the country safe from Muslim terrorists? This is nuts!
It's like barring the front door, while leaving the back door and windows open!
Sadly, it appears, that in the eyes of the Senate and the President, that illegal immigrants and narco-violence "specialists" less are worthy of less government scrutiny than are law-abiding Americans using the internet!
Our immigration policy should not exist to create little "Democrats" or little"Republicans" or to provide a power base to keep politicians in office who put party over country.
We are a nation of immigrants. Our doors are not closed. Every year, America admits over a million immigrants legally. A spreadsheet prepared by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that no other nation even comes close.
Our immigration policy should have two goals: First, close the border to illegal immigration, Mexican drug violence and potential terrorists; then, once that is done, create a fair bipartisan path to citizenship for those who are here illegally but who haven't created felonies and/or do not pose a danger to this country.
Posted Online: July 06, 2013, 11:00 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea
Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea
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