Hitchhikers and Illegal Immigrants

By Philip Geiger

Conservatives should frame our arguments against illegal immigration in terms of our state laws against hitchhiking.

I doubt that a liberal such as Joy Behar would be willing to pull her car to the edge of the freeway to pick up a seedy character with an extended thumb. While protecting their own personal security, liberals are quite capable of balancing compassion with common sense. However, administering matters of public security, such as immigration, liberals are often will too willing sacrifice the lives and property of other people in order to achieve their own neurotic version of compassion.

Here is the conservative view: Hitchhikers need transportation, sometimes desperately. However, the needs of the motorists to be safe in their property and their persons, overrides the hitchhikers economic need for a free ride. Similarly, most illegal immigrants need economic opportunity, sometimes desperately. However, the needs of the nation and the individual states to be safe from the economic burdens and social problems brought about by massive uncontrolled immigration override the illegal immigrants' need for a "free ride."

This does not mean conservatives "hate" either hitchhikers or illegal immigrants. We never hate people; just dislike some of things they do. This is especially true if these things are dangerous, costly and (in the case of illegal immigration) threaten the very rule of law.

There is also a dark side to hitchhiking: Although most hitchhikers are friendly and pleasant, some hitchhikers are really murderers, rapists and carjackers. Similarly, I suspect that most illegal immigrants are pleasant, honest and hardworking individuals --even the ones who refuse to learn English. Unfortunately, there are many illegal immigrants who are not so pleasant. If this were not true, why do illegal aliens make up such a large part of our prison population?

How long will fools and demagogues prevent us from protecting our own borders? How long before Eric Holder concludes that Arizona's hitchhiking laws are discriminatory and need to be reversed? Do we wait until the Obama Justice department decrees that every motorist in Arizona should be required to pick up hitchhikers or else be charged with a "hate crime?"

Enough is enough. It is high time the America people and our new congress "deport" the Obama administration back to Chicago.