RUTHFULLY YOURS

Many police departments around the United States have adopted the motto, “To Serve and Protect,” to describe their primary missions. Police departments are almost always underfunded, suffer severe shortages in staffing and often face overwhelming challenges. The phrase, “Thin Blue Line,” sums up just how tenuous their ability is to overcome myriad challenges and protect the people who are present in their jurisdictions.

It should be a “no brainer” that our nation must do as effective a job as possible to prevent criminals and terrorists from entering the U.S. and embedding themselves in communities here. The 9/11 Commission cited the failures of the immigration system to prevent terrorists (and not only the terrorists who carried out the attacks on September 11, 2001, but others) from entering the U.S. and then hiding in plain sight as they went about their deadly preparations.

It should similarly be understood that effective border security and immigration law enforcement can prevent the entry and continued presence of transnational criminals in towns and cities across the U.S.

Incredibly, where immigration is concerned, the (false) narrative about foreign workers doing the work Americans won’t do and the need to treat illegal aliens with compassion has trumped common sense and facts.

Not unlike the slogans that for decades convinced people to take up smoking, causing so many of them to suffer and ultimately succumb to lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and other terrible illnesses, the current campaign being mounted by individuals, corporations and special interest groups deceives the majority of our fellow citizens by promoting the idea that it is unfair to enforce our immigration laws. At their foundation, these laws were enacted to protect the lives and jobs of American workers.

One of the key concepts is that of “family reunification.” This is the notion that when illegal aliens manage to enter the U.S. it is humane to then enable them to bring their family members here. Of course this blithely ignores the fact that each year the U.S. admits roughly one million lawful immigrants. As a nation of finite resources, we cannot simply invite the entire world’s population to enter the country.

This concept also ignores that by enabling and, indeed, enticing millions of illegal aliens to enter the U.S. families are being split up in the countries from which these aliens come. Dysfunctional families create all sorts of societal problems for those countries, including the rise of violent gangs comprised of young people.

It is also rarely noted that by enabling millions of aliens to flee the conditions of their home countries that the governments of those countries will never be pressured into creating better opportunities for their own citizens in their countries.

Meanwhile, criminals, including fugitives, are among those aliens who manage to run our borders. Too often these criminals then commit crimes in the U.S. On October 28, 2014, the Los Angeles Daily News article, “Immigration policies a ticking time bomb,” focused on the killing of two police officers by an illegal alien who had been twice previously deported. Here is how this important report begins:

As it turns out I was wrong. Our immigration policies do split up families.

A few week s ago, a twice-deported undocumented immigrant named Luis Monroy Bracamonte allegedly murdered Sacramento County sheriff’s Deputy Danny Oliver with a shot to the head in a Motel 6 parking lot in Northern California. Shortly thereafter Monroy Bracamonte, aka Marcelo Marquez (and possibly multiple other identities), allegedly murdered Placer County Sheriff Detective Michael David Davis Jr.

Oliver and Davis were husbands and fathers, sons and brothers. Because of our unwillingness to enforce our own immigration laws their families will never see Danny or Michael again.

While investigators try to figure out what Monroy Bracamonte and his wife and co-defendant, Janelle Monroy, were up to when they allegedly went on their rampage, we already know who created the conditions that led to this disaster.

It starts with Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. It trickles down through the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security. Responsibility falls on the head of Gov. Jerry Brown and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In my recent article for FrontPage Magazine, “Immigration Politics: Where Facts and Commonsense Are Ignored,” I discussed how New York City is about to boot ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents from the prison at Rikers Island. As well, Senator Schumer, one of the “Gang of Eight,” is now proposing tough new penalties for those who would trespass on important buildings and structures, such as bridges. Yet, Schumer is adamant about providing a “pathway to United States Citizenship” to those illegal aliens who trespass on America and have absolutely no inherent right to be present in the country.

Not long after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, I addressed the issue of “family reunification” and noted that the sort of family reunification I would love to see would require nothing short of divine intervention. I would love to see those who lost family members to international terrorists, transnational criminals and unlicensed drivers reunited with their loved ones. Had our immigration system worked as it should, the many present in the U.S. to commit those violent crimes wouldn’t have been able to commit them, and many Americans would still be living.