July 10, 2009

Inger Eberhart letter to the editor in today’s Athens Banner Herald: Coming to America?

Posted by D.A. King at 9:52 am

Athens Banner Herald
July 10, 2009
Opinion page

Letters

The illegal immigration crisis, now being all but ignored by the media in hopeful preparation for the Obama amnesty scheme, took more than 30 years to develop. It cannot and will not be solved overnight or with the stroke of a pen.

The amnesty-again crowd urges that it would be difficult to deport approximately 20 million illegal aliens in a short period; therefore, its only solution is legalization and citizenship.

We tried legalization in 1986. Amnesty was granted to approximately 3 million illegal aliens. Today, we have approximately 20 million. Amnesty does not stop illegal immigration.

Rewarding criminals with exactly what they broke the law to obtain is not a workable or sensible method of stopping the crime of illegal immigration.

The reasonable choice is to work toward the gradual but steady attrition of the illegal population through enforcement of the laws already in place. It is enforcement of our laws that stops and deters crime, including illegal immigration. Having tried rewarding illegals with a path to citizenship in 1986, it is past time to try strict and fair enforcement of existing laws.

By objecting to any and all enforcement of the law, the open-borders lobby shows us what works at stopping illegal immigration. Enforcement works.

In a 2007 Associated Press report on a then-new Arizona law aimed at employers who hire illegal immigrants, one illegal alien said, “I don’t want to live here because of the new law and the oppressive environment, I’ll be better in my country.â€