President Bush, Build Up This Wall!

When the early Chinese were being constantly invaded by Mongolian hordes, they built a wall to protect themselves. Not so surprisingly, the wall worked, keeping out the invaders – or “undocumented warriors,” as liberals today would call them. Nowadays, we in the United States are faced with a similar problem, and while our typical invader is on average less violent than an armed Mongolian, the United States is certainly threatened by what seems to be an unstoppable and dangerous trend.

Millions of illegal immigrants live in the U.S. today, and our southern border continues to be the major unlawful entrance into the country. Although it is true that they have already broken the law by sheer presence in the U.S., many of these illegals have become domestic criminals, engaged in murder, rape, and the drug trade. This is far from saying that illegal immigrants are the only ones who engage in such activities, but their dangerous behavior could have been averted by preventing their entrance into the country in the first place.

Only weeks ago, law enforcement officers in Texas confronted heavily armed men, some in Mexican military uniforms, as they appeared to cover up a drug smuggling operation. Also recently, materials for explosive devices, machine guns, and assault weapons intended for Mexican criminals were found at the border. These reports come in light of the revelation by law enforcement officials that attacks on Border Patrol agents is increasing significantly, reaching about 200 acts of violence in four months.

Our southern border is starting to sound a little bit like Iraq’s Sunni Triangle. Yet for some strange reason, the U.S. federal government does not seem to put much weight into the seriousness of illegal immigration, and especially not into the problems on our southern border. Most disappointingly, however, is the fact that this failure to act on immigration is to be blamed as much on the Republicans as on the Democrats.

Two years ago, President Bush attempted to mediate between the American people and illegal immigrants by proposing what for all intents and purposes was a nicely decorated amnesty for those who reside unlawfully in the country. When he realized that his proposal garnered neither liberal nor conservative support, he became quiet about it – and has not come up with a real alternative since. In the meantime, illegal aliens continue to benefit, and the Mexican economy continues to grow, off of the back of hard-working Americans. And of course, high levels of illegals continue to pour in.

In new so-called action against illegal immigration, President Bush has proposed increasing the Homeland Security Department’s budget by about six percent. Such an increase would serve to hire a mind-blowing 1,500 Border Patrol agents to help secure a roughly 7,500 mile long border; which, for those of us who are less mathematically inclined (such as Washington politicians), signifies one extra agent per five miles of borders.

Whew! And there I thought the government was not doing enough. But in all fairness to the White House, the budget increase would also provide 6,700 additional beds in order to detain more lawbreaking aliens; apparently so that they spend more nights on taxpayer money before they are released into society to live on, umm, taxpayer money.

What is most incomprehensible is that there really are no constituencies that politicians could be pleasing by refusing to act on the border issue. Illegal immigrants cannot vote (for now, at least), and many Hispanic citizens, some of whom have themselves stood in line to enter the country legally, are not, on the whole, supporters of illegal immigration. The only people who are pleased by the government’s lack of action are the rare kind of liberals who would label anti-immigration activists “racist,” as well as Mexican nationals whose economy is surviving partly because of the lawbreakers.

Clearly, serious steps need to be taken in order to resolve the illegal immigration issue. God bless the Minutemen, but private citizens should not have to take matters into their own hands when the government fails to fulfill one of its most basic duties – securing the country’s borders. We need to build a wall along our southern border, and we need to do it now. Decades from now, when the Mexican economy will have caught up with ours and we no longer have to fear the invasion of millions of lawbreakers through our southern border, we can then take down the wall.

Surely, we must keep our legal immigration gateways open, and arguably, Mexican and other Latin American labor is nowadays essential to our economy. As a result, along with closing off the physical border, we would significantly increase the quota for friendly immigrants from the south. Such a process would at least insure that we keep track of the resident population, that we be selective with the background and skills of potential immigrants, and most importantly, that no terrorists can set foot in the U.S.

This country loves immigrants. I am one myself. But it is only fair to the immigrants to be able to stand in line to get into the greatest nation on the planet, and in turn, it is only fair to the U.S. to be able to select who can come in. As it stands right now, both law-abiding Central Americans and the American populace are losing out to illegal invaders. In the meantime, Congress is too busy building bridges in Alaska and attempting to filibuster judicial nominees, while the President draws up amnesty plans. It is about time they build the wall, secure our borders, clean up our interior, and end one of the greatest sins that the U.S. government has committed against its people in at least a century.