Thread: Lou Dobbs: US Immigration Policy a Tragic Joke

U.S. policy on immigration is a tragic joke

By Lou Dobbs
Special for "The Republic"
Aug. 28, 2005 12:00 AM

There is a common front in our illegal-alien crisis, the war on drugs and the global war on terror. That front line is easily defined as our nation's borders, airports and seaports. And Arizonans know only too well the pain and problems of living and working on the front line of our border with Mexico.

South of that border is a corrupt and ineffective government run by President Vicente Fox, who has no apparent incentive to control the flow of drugs being shipped from Mexico into the United States and every incentive to continue the exportation of illegal aliens into this country. This year, in fact, remittances back to Mexico from the estimated 20 million Mexican citizens living in the United States, most of them illegally, surpassed oil as Mexico's No. 1 source of foreign revenue.

In the United States, an obscene alliance of corporate supremacists, desperate labor unions, certain ethnocentric Latino activist organizations and a majority of our elected officials in Washington works diligently to keep our borders open, wages suppressed and the American people all but helpless to resist the crushing financial and economic burden created by the millions of illegal aliens who crash our borders each year.

They work just as hard to deny the truth to the American public. That's why almost every evening on my CNN broadcast we report on this country's "Broken Borders." The truth is that U.S. immigration policy is a tragic joke at the expense of hard-working middle-class Americans.

What has been the response of the Bush administration? It proposed a guest-worker program giving legal status to millions of illegal aliens. But national opinion polls reveal an overwhelming majority of Americans are contemptuous of such cynical proposals. The latest Zogby poll shows only 35 percent of those surveyed support the president's approach. The American people want our borders secure, want our immigration laws enforced and want those who hire illegal aliens both punished and held liable for the economic and social costs of breaking our laws.

We are a nation of immigrants, and there is no more diverse and welcoming society than ours. But we are first a nation of laws, and upholding those laws and our national values makes this great country of ours possible.

Arizonans are to be commended for passing Proposition 200 and creating the political will that led to last week's declaration of the state of emergency by Gov. Janet Napolitano. Neither act is sufficient to solve our illegal-immigration crisis, but both acts constitute a beginning in resolving what may well be the most critical issue facing the United States.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he wanted to "stabilize" our borders and create more detainee beds and expedite more deportations. Stabilizing our borders is not enough. If we do not take control of our borders, deportations amount to little more than inconvenience to illegal aliens and whomever else wants to enter our country.

Failure to secure our borders means that we will continue to lose the war on drugs and lose a generation of Americans to those drugs. It also means the crushing burden of our failed immigration and homeland security policies will continue to fall exclusively on the shoulders of working men and women. Not only do illegal aliens and those who employ them cost the nation tens of billions of dollars in social services, principally in health care and education, they also depress wages for American citizens by an estimated $200 billion a year.

The most reasonable response I have seen to this illegal-immigration crisis is legislation introduced by one of your state's distinguished senators, Jon Kyl, who co-sponsored a bill with Sen. John Cornyn. That bill seeks 10,000 new Border Patrol agents and detention beds, fraud-resistant Social Security cards, increased penalties for employers and current illegal aliens would have to leave the United States to apply for permanent citizenship.

Reform begins with the truth. And our elected officials must begin to recognize the reality that a war on terror and war on drugs can be won only by securing our borders and that any reform of our immigration policies must begin first at the front line of the crisis: our border with Mexico.

Anything less is just another sad joke, and we know at whose expense.

Lou Dobbs is the anchor and managing editor of CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight."

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... 0828.html#

Lou has hit the nail on the head. As always, an outstanding piece of work.

If it's a joke, why am I not laughing?