It is a false choice only politicians could come up with.
Either you support granting amnesty to 12 million lawbreakers who are now in the U.S. illegally, or you are a racist whose political future is doomed by the coming influx of Hispanic voters.
This is as much a dishonest canard as it is a dirty dupe.
It is a dishonest canard because there is nothing remotely racist about believing in the rule of law. There is nothing “anti-Hispanic” about wanting to treat fairly the millions of Hispanics and other foreigners who have immigrated to this great country legally or are waiting in line to come here legally. On the contrary, those who equate lawlessness with being somehow pro-Hispanic or those who would punish law-abiding Hispanics waiting in line for the American Dream are far closer to being the racists.
The false choice is also a dirty dupe because it is an obvious ploy by politicians who simply want to turn immigration into a divisive tool for buying millions of new votes and sending the bill to the innocent taxpayer.
Yet this false choice is trumpeted at the highest levels by serious politicians. It is hailed as unquestioned gospel by the media. And it is a devious trap that has ensnared plenty of good, decent Republicans.
In fact, decency is a grave liability in these waters, just as it is with the sleaziest Internet and telephone scams that target the elderly, vulnerable, or overly trusting.
Republicans who aspire to recreate Ronald Reagan’s big tent and appeal to voters of every stripe are good, decent Americans. And with all the talk from the scammers in the political class about how racist Republicans want to punish Hispanic children, it is perfectly noble to want to reach out to Hispanic voters.
But doing so by flying the flag of amnesty — even for children — is as unprincipled and unfair as it is suicidal for the Republicans. And, we now see, it is exceedingly dangerous to the tens of thousands of orphaned children wandering hundreds of miles through desert and God knows what else to reach the southern border.
Like all the big promises from the political scammer class, this quest for “Dreamers” sounds good when they hear themselves talk about it. But in reality, it is a horrible nightmare for everyone involved, especially this generation of lost children left stranded by the false promises of heartless politicians.
What makes all of this so maddening is that we have been here before. The year was 1986; Ronald Reagan was president.
To finally stem the tide of illegals coming across the border from Mexico to find labor, a deal was reached to establish order on the border, give employers plenty of good workers, and bring millions of illegals “out of the shadows,” as the politicians say.
Three million illegals were granted amnesty if they were not otherwise criminals, paid fines, learned English, and all of the other requirements politicians are talking about again today. But the entire deal hung on the commitment by the federal government to enforce new laws that would prohibit the hiring of new illegals, close the border, and make sure we never faced such a crisis again.
Being the voter-horny politicians that they are, government officials raced with abandon to do the fun part and sign the new Americans up and start wooing them as voters. But they completely failed to do the hard part, which was to close the border. There is little evidence that they even tried.
So in typical federal government fashion, the 1986 compromise “solution” turned 3 million illegal aliens in 1986 into more than 12 million illegal aliens today.
And then President Obama comes along and dispatches a summons to children around the world that if they ditch their parents and arrive at the border, the U.S. will make them Americans. Who could have predicted that such a siren call might lead to tens of thousands of hungry orphans dumped on the border, charging up to border guards and begging to be apprehended?
Indeed, the president managed to pull off a real magic trick, something totally and completely unimaginable. He took the terrible disaster on the border and managed to make it even worse.
This time we must stand firm and make sure the politicians do all the hard things and finally choke off the flow of illegals before we let them even talk of doing anything fun.
Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com and on Twitter @charleshurt.
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