Thread: Alien Speed Racers

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Alien Speed Racers
Editorial
Posted: 4/6/06
Apparently, Mexicans are genetically predisposed toward speeding on highways. According to Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum, "illegal aliens for some reason drive hundreds of miles per hour, on the wrong side of the road, without headlights." Foreigners may cause automobile accidents, which is a key reason for keeping them out of the United States, she reasoned in a speech at Cornell on Tuesday.

The Eagle Forum is a national organization for conservatives focused on public policy. Schlafly and her group disapprove of legislation under discussion in the U.S. Senate that would legalize the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants by granting them guest worker status. Illegal immigrants pose a risk to the well-being of American citizens, and allowing them to enter our country is "immoral," she said.

We are appalled. While Schlafly does, eventually, launch into some logical solutions to the problems she perceives in the Immigration Bill in her speech, her underlying qualms are wholly irrational. She uses the example of one illegal immigrant who had been caught 17 times and who killed a girl in Georgia in a car accident as a reason for banning the legislation.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that males between the ages of 15-20 are far and away the fastest and most dangerous drivers on the road. It seems illogical that much of this category would be comprised of illegal immigrants, since they stand to lose so much if they are ever caught. Still, if immigrants speeding on the road truly is a problem, a solution would be to give them legal status and subject them to the same driver's education and road tests as would be given to an American citizen.

Another reason to tighten our borders, Schlafly says, is to keep out diseases that have already been eradicated in the United States. Some diseases she claims immigrants are "bringing back" include tuberculosis and malaria.

Tuberculosis, says the Center for Disease Control (CDC), never entirely disappeared, with an especially large resurgence between 1985 and 1992. Moreover, while Schlafly is correct is asserting that the rate of TB decline is slowing, the overall rate of tuberculosis in the United States is still dropping. Additionally, a disproportionately large number of TB cases are reported among blacks, most of who were born in the United States.

And malaria is not a disease that can be transmitted from human to human; it must first go through an insect vector. That is to say, it is probably coming from mosquitoes; are we to legislate against them, too?

As students at a school with a long-standing program - the Cornell Migrant Program (CMP) - to advocate for the rights of migrant farmworkers, we disagree with Schlafly's assessment that impoverished Mexicans have no place in the United States. The suffering Mexican economy is a problem for which the United States is partially responsible: NAFTA has dumped so much excess corn into Mexico that the crop's price continually plummets into the toilet.

Furthermore, we are disappointed that The Cornell American, the Cornell College Republicans and the Young America's Foundation could not find a more rational speaker with more relevant arguments to articulate their position.

With Schlafly in the driver's seat, their argument is sure to crash; putting fences on our border will do nothing to stop the racing Mexicans from speeding right through them.

An area attorney whose claim to fame is that he was a former State Farm claims adjuster and now "car wrecks are his only business" had a new ad on TV tonight. It encouraged everyone to make certain they carry liability insurance now that the "immigration bill has been passed" and he claimed 1 in 4 drivers on the road are uninsured. He said many more "people" will be on the road.

I know at least a dozen people that have been hit by illegals only to have them speed away from the scene.