You may not have noticed, what with the news being filled with . . . another terrorist army taking over Iraq, this time an outfit so vicious that even al-Qaida distances itself from it, the administration in Washington's cozying up to Iran of all regimes in a desperate effort to keep Iraq from falling completely apart, Russian troops' (remember them?) still massing on Ukraine's eastern border, more Taliban attacks on NATO convoys in Afghanistan, troops in Israel scrambling to find three teenagers who've gone missing, including an American one . . . .
This is what happens when the United States retreats from the world. Or, to use the current euphemism, leads from behind. Suddenly the papers are full of stories about the world's coming apart and dangers multiplying all over. Imagine that.
Back here in the States, if anybody is still paying attention, there's a problem on the border. Specifically, our southern-most border, the one down there in Texas and Arizona.
The problem with that border is there doesn't seem to be much of one. It's disappearing. Falling apart. And every bulletin that comes across the wires makes it sound as if it's getting more porous by the hour.
For some of us who've pushed for immigration reform over the years, the one standard requirement for reform has been: The border first. For what's a nation if it can't even draw its own borders?
Dispatches from along the Rio Grande say that parents and their children from all across Central America, fleeing gang violence in their home countries, have been crossing the Mexican-U.S. border in increasing numbers. And sometimes the parents send the kids across by themselves, knowing that the Americans aren't likely to push innocent kids back into Mexico, not right away. Not without due process and maybe even a bus ticket back to El Salvador.
Whatever the anti-American propaganda out there, and even some haters on this side of the border who try to live up to it, we are basically a decent people, even a God-fearing one. And we have our souls to think about. And so, in addition to faith and hope, we exercise charity. And here is a classic case of its being needed. Why? Because can you imagine a worse predicament than being a little stranger in a strange land? In this case, Mexico, if somehow you've managed to make your way there from Guatemala or some other violence-riddled place in Central America?
Yes, crossing the border illegally should still be a crime, but it shouldn't carry the death penalty. Talk about Suffer Little Children: As if these kids don't have enough problems, some news bulletins note their health--or lack of it. The least of these don't need just refuge but medical treatment. Or at least nourishment.
The Washington Post says the problem is made worse by gossip in Central America that the United States will allow such children to stay here, no matter what our laws say.
USA TODAY reports that American taxpayers are paying to house these littlest offenders at military bases like those at San Antonio, Ventura, Calif., and even as far north as Fort Sill, Okla.
The U.S. government has now released information showing that hundreds of Mexican cops and military types--fully armed--have crossed that same border since 2004, most of the time in pursuit of suspects. Not even the law in Mexico, such that it is, respects the law here.
But isn't a U.S. Marine being held in Mexico right now because he accidentally crossed into Mexico with firearms in his car? Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi says he didn't even mean to cross the border, but he's been held in Tecate, Mexico, for two and a half months. As he sat in his cell last week, a report in the Washington Times noted that more than 500 Mexican troops have violated our border in the last decade. Pancho Villa still rides.
What this nation needs is another Surge, this time of border agents, G-men, the National Guard . . . . When it comes to fixing our broken immigration system, our borders need to come first.
Immigration reform will happen eventually. As an Englishman named Winston Churchill once observed, Americans will do the right thing--after we've tried everything else.
Some of us had hoped that immigration reform would come this year, and still hope and pray it will come soon--speedily in our day. There has got to be a way to bring these millions of illegal immigrants out of the shadows, get them to pay fines and make safe, secure, law-abiding taxpayers out of them. So they can work, legally and safely, while contributing their labor and skill and dreams to our Gross National Product. Instead of having to do it under cover.
But none of that should happen--politically it can't happen--while more news arrives like this new evidence of anarchy along our border with Mexico.
Borders First.
Once that challenge is met, this country can start talking about reforming the immigration laws in general. And do more than talking about it. All that can't happen soon enough. But it won't happen at all if we just keep fighting the problem instead of fixing it at last.
Editorial on 06/25/2014