PrintApril 30, 2010
Retaking the Offensive in the Illegals Fight
Arizona's new law clamping down on illegals has given Barack Obama and the left an opening to unlimber their big guns. The incoming fire has been brutal. The rounds landing have been charges of racism. But conservatives, Republicans, and all pro-law Americans need to get out of their foxholes and return fire. Better yet, pro-law forces need to outflank Mr. Obama's army. A battle plan follows.
The key to end-running Mr. Obama is to factually assert that he's failing his oath of office. The president of the United States is firing off charges of racism because he doesn't want to do anything substantive to seal the nation's borders, staunch the flow of illegals, and send illegals on American soil packing. His partisan agenda to legalize illegals and harvest their votes trumps American national security interests. Mr. Obama aims to keep the illegals pipeline open between Mexico and the United States. A steady supply of new Democratic voters is a very good thing for Democrats.
Most Americans see the Democrats' harvest of illegals has a Harvest of Shame. To turn a blind eye to America's porous southern border makes a mockery of Mr. Obama's constitutional oath to protect and defend the United States. It flouts the nation's immigration laws, thereby undermining respect for law generally. It tells those immigrants and their American sponsors who are playing by the rules and jumping through every hoop to obtain and keep legal residence that they're awfully big suckers.
The charge of dereliction of duty against Mr. Obama needs to be made over and over again until it sticks like superglue. Is this a tough line of attack? You bet. But charging Americans as being racists because they simply want state and national laws against illegals upheld and enforced ain't exactly beanbag. When it comes to grabbing power and holding it, the left and Democrats never play beanbag.
Mr. Obama's abdication on southern border security is permitting an increasing number of ruthless drug dealers and other criminals (coyotes, mostly) to enter the United States. Crime along the Mexican-American border is high, rising, and moving north. The vicious Mexican Drug War, pitting cartels against one another and the Mexican government, has begun to spill over the American border.
Go asks citizens in Laredo, Brownsville, and El Paso about the Mexican Drug War and the impact on their communities. Ask especially the citizens of El Paso, who live across the Rio Grande, a stone's throw from Ciudad Juarez, where drug gangs routinely murder Juarez police, engage in combat with elite federal troops, and kill Americans, and where they forced Juarez's public safety secretary, Roberto Orduna Cruz, to forfeit his office under threat that gangs would kill police officers every forty-eight hours until he resigned.
Ask any American who lives along or near the I-35 corridor, which runs out of Mexico into Texas and north into the nation's heartland, about the criminals that are traveling that route north. Ask the family, friends, and neighbors of the Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, who was murdered by a suspected Mexican drug smuggler, about the criminals that are infesting the country.
In fact, conservatives and Republicans need to go to America's southern border communities to harvest testimonies from Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans about the heartbreak of having loved ones kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered; having daughters, sisters, and wives raped and abducted; and having to live in fear for property and lives.
It's time for conservatives and pro-law Americans to humanize and broadcast the violence being done to American citizens, regardless of race, by the criminal element coming north from Mexico. Make Americans from Bangor, Maine to Portland, Oregon, from Georgia's piney woods to Alaska's snowy mountains, uneasily familiar with the names and faces of the victims of border crime. Let them know that that crime is coming their way, if it hasn't touched their communities already.
Short-term, Mr. Obama and his handlers are trying to leverage the new Arizona law to gin up Hispanic votes this November. In states with larger concentrations of Hispanic voters, Mr. Obama and his handlers wish to more than offset an expected surge in voters disgruntled with Mr. Obama's big-government raw deal.
Perhaps Mr. Obama's ploy will work, but it's guaranteed to work if conservatives and Republicans fail to contest Mr. Obama in Hispanic communities. Despite the left's propaganda, there is an abundance of Hispanic Americans who are offended by and worried about the violations of law that illegals present. Hispanics see and fear the disruptions that illegals -- especially the criminal element -- are bringing to their neighborhoods.
To paraphrase the late Barry Goldwater, in their hearts, many Hispanics know that conservatives are right about illegal immigration. Hispanic-Americans need to be encouraged to vote their hearts in the secrecy of voting booths. Conservatives and the GOP may be nicely surprised by the outcome.
Finally, no American who favors the rule of law can permit President Obama to pay mere lip service to stronger border security, nor can Mr. Obama be permitted to cite his scant efforts along the border as proof positive of his commitment to tighter security. The counter is simple: Each fresh failure along the nation's southern border, each new crime, needs to be publicized and made Mr. Obama's responsibility. Mr. Obama may not favor an ownership society, but he darned well needs to be an ownership president, and that goes for every failure along the Mexican-American border.
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is do Washington conservatives -- moreover, Republicans -- have the guts to make a tough fight against Mr. Obama and the left on the terms outlined? Or will quaking conservative and Republican establishmentarians continue to huddle in foxholes, hoping to avoid a battering on charges of racism?
Who said that victory belongs to the stout of heart, to those willing to brave enemy fire and audaciously take the fight to the enemy? It doesn't really matter, on second thought. What matters is the doing of it.
