I oppose amnesty – totally and unconditionally reject any form of amnesty.  I want to block people from crashing our southern border, and I want to send back those who got through.  I make no apologies for wanting to stop the Black Friday mentality of mobs pushing and shoving their way across the border to get the good stuff before it’s gone.

Opposing amnesty doesn’t make me heartless, selfish, or cruel, because the U.S. Constitution, our nation’s law, is not mine to give away.  It’s not mine, yours, or anyone’s to simply hand over.

The Constitution of the United States Preamble states that the new government will provide  the “Blessings of Liberty” for themselves and their posterity.  Webster defines posterity as future or succeeding generations.  Therefore, our role is of sentinel, like security guards in a museum we’re to protect – to preserve priceless objects, irreplaceable works created by geniuses no longer with us.

But we’ve failed, much like the guards on duty the night of the greatest art theft in history, the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist.  On that night, two thieves bypassed security doors, silenced the alarms, and stole 13 paintings, including Rembrandt's only seascape, "Storm on the Sea of Galilee."  The looters ripped masterpieces from their frames like they were paint-by-number canvases, then disappeared and took irreplaceable, centuries-old masterpieces with them.  The thieves were never caught, and now the statute of limitations shields them from prosecution.  So the thieves are now free to  sell off their stolen goods to the highest bidder because they avoided capture long enough to make their crime null and void, to rule out prosecution, to receive amnesty. 

Like patrons of the Gardner Museum, we trusted others to guard our most valuable possessions.  Like visitors to the museum, we wandered through, appreciated the art and its message, but that's all we did.  We left it up to a few to do their job and keep the thieves away – a few who let us down. 

These people who break our laws with impunity are indeed stealing our democracy, in essence ripping the Constitution from its frame.  “Constitutional law can only be fully and effectively implemented when the laws of a country or region as a whole are respected by the citizenry and the Government.”  Translation: we can’t have America as it is if we refuse to enforce the law.  Yet our government continues to allow these people to openly break the law, ignore the law, and trash the law.  And for those of you who aid them, who fight for this cause and encourage the illegal invasion of this country, know that your efforts don’t make you a more caring, generous person with a noble cause; they simply make you an accomplice.

So no, I don't want amnesty.  I don't want to reward those who knowingly broke the law with backdoor citizenship.  I don’t want our government to override our Constitution with their version of jury nullification.  And I don’t want to establish a de facto statute of limitations for their crimes.  If we’re going to protect our freedom, if we’re going to pass down to our children the same great country we inherited, then we have to close the border and protect the treasure we were given to watch over, our laws, our freedom, the American Dream.  As with the Gardner art heist, once we let others take it, we won't be able to get it back.  There's no getting it back, not ever. 

As Gardner Museum curator, Alan Chong, said after the theft, "[t]housands of people are now unable to experience these works of art.  Something that might inspire people – that might transform lives – is missing."  So it will be with America if we don't stop the intruders, sound the alarm, and protect our legacy. 

But hurry – the thieves are already in the building.