COLUMN: Mexican Standoff

COLUMN: Mexican Standoff
May 30, 2010 8:05 AM
By Ron Hart, The Heart Beat

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all..." – Theodore Roosevelt, 1907



The Three Amigos — Obama, Pelosi and Reid — allowed Mexico's President Felipe Calderon to appear before Congress and hypocritically lecture us on how we should treat illegal immigrants. Listening to this browbeating while Vice President Joe "Plugs" Biden and House Speaker "Nanny" Pelosi sat motionless in the background (and it wasn't just Nancy's Botox this time), I thought we had been invaded by Mexico and that our government was surrendering a ceremonial sword in defeat.

Mexico's immigration laws are archaic, Draconian, and much tougher than ours. You have to prove you can pay your own way and support your family to move there — basically, just the opposite of what it takes to be a Democrat here.

It does not matter what Mexico's immigration laws are anyway. They are unevenly applied and designed only to extort money or to intimidate political adversaries. Hey, Wall Street, AMA, and the Cambridge Police Department — sound familiar?

Obama lashed out against Arizona's new immigration law, which basically says the state can do what the federal government is unwilling to do: round up illegal immigrants and deport them. His attorney general indicated he would sue Arizona over the 16-page law, which he later admitted he had not read — you know, the same way Congress passed health care.

Might I suggest some summer beach reading for the attorney general — the Constitution of the United States?

From what I can tell, Obama opposes Arizona's law mainly in hopes of gaining more victim-class votes from the growing Hispanic community. With his agenda, to get re-elected he must manufacture votes and voters — like he did with ACORN. Obama says this law is racist because it will round up Mexicans. Wrong! It will round up illegal Guatemalans, too.

It has gotten bad in Arizona.

I think the last straw was when citizens called the cable company for information and had to "press dos for English." And when the Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott Arizona businesses, Arizona responded by saying it would cut off the 25 percent of the power it supplies to L.A. It turns out, upon further review, that the only product L.A. exports is arrogance.

The Arizona law is so popular (70 percent national approval rating) that Sen. John McCain finds himself in a tough re-election battle because of his seemingly "inside the Beltway" indifference on illegal immigration. In fairness to McCain, he might not understand the problem. When he was first elected, the only immigrants were white Protestants getting off the Mayflower. Things have changed; now we cannot even find a Protestant on the Supreme Court.

If the Arizona police suspect you of being illegal, they give you a simple test. They ask you to identify the last three winners of "America Idol" and the contents of a super-sized McDonald's meal.

As I have long said, I am all for legal immigrants who want to come here and be productive citizens. This law is about illegal immigrants.

Arizona's immigration law might serve all concerned well if it drives moocher illegal immigrants out of Arizona and back to their native California. We already have enough freeloaders in this country: 53 percent of the population, based on the November 2008 election. It seems we need to be reminded every 12 years or so why liberals cannot govern.

With Obama's regulations and union thuggery on the rise in the U.S., illegal immigrants need not worry about employment. They can just go back to Mexico if they want jobs from all the American companies that will soon be moving there.



Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist columnist, author, TV and radio commentator. He can be reached at Ron@RonaldHart.com or www.RonaldHart.com.


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