PrintAmnesty: Equal-Opportunity Endangerment
The popular notion that anti-amnesty equals anti-Latino has proved a surprisingly effective cap on opposing opinions in the daily forum of mainstreet conversations.
This presumption, however, implies that the massive number of illegal immigrants living in the United States is the issue in and of itself.
It is not.
It is only the symptom of an infinitely more serious problem: the virtually open southwestern border. Make no mistake, this cannot be separated from the illegal immigration debate. Without an open border, there would not be millions of undocumented people living in the US.
Of course, the popular contention is that "the people coming here are honest, hard-working, family-oriented people who just want a better life." That is true in many cases--but--common sense as well a 2006 congressional report tell us that not everyone coming here illegally fits that mold. In fact, the dirty little secret that is all but shunned in the national political arena is that terrorists are infiltrating through the basically unguarded border. The 2006 congressional report entitled "A Line in the Sand" revealed that Hezbollah has already infiltrated the United States by coming through the southern border. This is especially eerie in light of the recent incident of a Hezbollah-like car bombing in the Mexico. One cannot help but fear that severe damage to national security has already occurred because of the reckless idiocy of leaving our back door open.
In a 2009 written testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., sheriff of Zapata County in Texas stated:
We are seeing more and more persons coming across our southwestern border than ever before. From what we are seeing, we feel that most of these persons are not coming into the country to look for legitimate employment. We feel that terrorists are already here and continue to enter our country on a daily basis...It has been almost eight years since the worst terrorist attack in this country and we are still as vulnerable, if not worst, that before September 11, 2001. We have seen no funding for any projects along the southwest border. On the contrary, as time goes by we see less funding opportunities.
Terrorists do not discriminate among the victims of their attacks. The jihadists who carried out September 11th didn't even care if they killed fellow Muslims in the act. Why would anyone living in the US, whether legal or undocumented, suppose that they are in less danger from the terrorists infiltrating our border?
The fact is that amnesty (which historically has led to increased illegal immigration or any other policy that makes Border Patrol's job even more difficult than it already is, is a policy that inevitably makes the job of terrorists that much easier.
How then is supporting amnesty showing true compassion to the Latino community or anyone else for that matter? It isn't, unless one's notion of compassion is equal-opportunity endangerment.
