Security of Our Borders Too Complex for Soundbite Solutions
On this prelude to Memorial Day weekend I am pressed to make comment on the wildly controversial and emotional subject of security at our borders and illegal immigration.
This matter hits much closer to home for me than probably to any of you for reasons which I’ll not go into at this time.
To be certain, the considerations surrounding the issue are more complex than the 30 second sound bites we are treated to by Fox News or CBS. So I will address the matter, only tangentially, from a perspective of which I am confident.
We are above all else, a nation of laws; laws which have been enacted through due process rather than fiat. And we pride ourselves on the laudable axiom that in America, no one is above the law. We have many examples of this seeing that even the men who occupy the White House are not above the law. In my short history on Earth, I have seen one president impeached, and a President and Vice President compelled to resign in scandal.
So for everything else that can, and should be said about illegal immigration, with certainty I state that we must remain a nation ruled by law not by caprice.
Given that premise, we must do one of two things. We must either change the laws of the land--which are flagrantly and habitually being trampled and ignored--or we must enforce the laws which have been duly enacted.
The long-standing pattern concerning illegal immigration, of half-hearted, inconsistent,
and confusing enforcement cannot be allowed to continue. Which means, like it or not, until and unless the law of the land is changed, the laws that exist should be enforced.
All the political manipulation of a hot button issue--at the expense of this rule of law--is tearing away the very fabric of a nation’s stability where no person and no group of persons is above it.
So while equality, charity and fairness demand wholesale revision of the subject matter, for the time being it is, “Lex Rex,” the law is king, and if we dethrone the king through personal opinion, expedience of preference rather than due process, we are only a breath away from anarchy. For if laws are allowed to be ignored in any arena they can be ignored in all arenas and that is a deadly precedent.
This matter hits much closer to home for me than probably to any of you for reasons which I’ll not go into at this time.
To be certain, the considerations surrounding the issue are more complex than the 30 second sound bites we are treated to by Fox News or CBS. So I will address the matter, only tangentially, from a perspective of which I am confident.
We are above all else, a nation of laws; laws which have been enacted through due process rather than fiat. And we pride ourselves on the laudable axiom that in America, no one is above the law. We have many examples of this seeing that even the men who occupy the White House are not above the law. In my short history on Earth, I have seen one president impeached, and a President and Vice President compelled to resign in scandal.
So for everything else that can, and should be said about illegal immigration, with certainty I state that we must remain a nation ruled by law not by caprice.
Given that premise, we must do one of two things. We must either change the laws of the land--which are flagrantly and habitually being trampled and ignored--or we must enforce the laws which have been duly enacted.
The long-standing pattern concerning illegal immigration, of half-hearted, inconsistent,
and confusing enforcement cannot be allowed to continue. Which means, like it or not, until and unless the law of the land is changed, the laws that exist should be enforced.
All the political manipulation of a hot button issue--at the expense of this rule of law--is tearing away the very fabric of a nation’s stability where no person and no group of persons is above it.
So while equality, charity and fairness demand wholesale revision of the subject matter, for the time being it is, “Lex Rex,” the law is king, and if we dethrone the king through personal opinion, expedience of preference rather than due process, we are only a breath away from anarchy. For if laws are allowed to be ignored in any arena they can be ignored in all arenas and that is a deadly precedent.
posted by PB at 8:18 AM
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