Our Greatest Failures Part 4: Border Control

     Just in case you’ve spent the last eighteen months in a medically induced coma, it appears that, barring a development that would probably put an end to the Republican Party, its nominee for president in this year of Our Lord 2016 will be Donald J. Trump. The issue that brought Trump to the top of the lists was none other than illegal immigration and its effects upon these United States.

     Americans have become increasingly concerned about our border control these past few decades. The last significant immigration-relevant bill was passed in 1986 and signed by President Reagan. It was the fruit of a compromise: the bill granted amnesty to illegal aliens already within our borders, in exchange for a guarantee that much tighter border control would follow. According to some commentators, the Democrat caucus in the Senate promised during negotiations not to impede any subsequent bill that pertained to border control.

     Unfortunately, Democrats don’t keep promises.

     The amnesty the 1986 bill granted to certain illegals encouraged still more illegal entries to the U.S., especially over our southern border. The consequences have steadily become more visible. Urban and suburban residents can all testify to the concentrations of working-age men of Hispanic appearance congregating at certain public places in the mornings: because the employers of temporary low-skill labor know that they can be found there. Along with that, of course, has come a flood of news stories about heinous crimes committed by illegals. Hardly a week goes by without some lurid new entry – usually murder or rape – in that procession.

     There’s only one direct and immediate solution for lax border control: tight border control. However, there are certain impediments to such a solution:

• It’s costly;
• It excites cries of “racism,” however absurd;
• The Democrats see the flood of illegals as politically favorable to them.

     First, let’s look at some important aspects of policy. Trump’s proposed wall along the southern border is one approach to tightening our border control. It would have some effect, but fences can be surmounted or penetrated; therefore, it would not be cost-effective unless it were fairly heavily monitored and manned. Moreover, there will always be ways to enter a country illegally for those sufficiently determined to do so, as the tunnels the Palestinians have dug for unsanctioned access to Israel should demonstrate. Thus, a maximally effective border control policy would require buttressing by enhancements to federal law concerning the detection and reporting of illegals, especially by prospective employers – and that comes with impediments of its own.

     Let all that stand to the side. Most significant for Americans today is the political potency of the illegal-immigration issue – an issue that Barack Hussein Obama is inflaming still further by importing Middle Easter Muslim “refugees” to the U.S. by executive fiat.

     Why is illegal immigration a hotter topic than virtually any other in our contemporary discourse?

     The labor and crime aspects of the matter are certainly potent enough on their own. They become even more so when one factors cultural matters into the equation. The flood of Hispanic immigrants to the western U.S. has resulted in the creation of Hispanic exclaves within which the only language spoken is Spanish, non-Hispanics are unwelcome, and the law is whatever the residents want it to be, regardless of the laws that nominally govern that region. Irredentist movements such as MEChA and La Raza are strong in such areas.

     Add to the above the steady proliferation of even more threatening Islamic exclaves, and the reluctance of the authorities to deal with Muslim violations of the peace, and Americans have good reason to believe that much tighter border control, and much less lip service to “cultural relativism,” should be at the top of our political priorities.

     I see the following changes as indispensable in this matter:

• A physical barrier along the southern border;
• Patrols of that border by men, drones, and electronic monitors;
• Changes to federal law that intensify the penalties for entering the U.S. illegally;
• Reinvigorated enforcement of federal laws that pertain to immigration and illegal entry;
• Above all, compatible cultural changes:
  • Reassertion of the American national culture;
  • Imposition of an English-only policy by our public institutions, especially the schools;
  • Absolute rejection of all accusations of “racism” concerning the preservation of our borders and culture.

     The last of those conditions might be the most important of all, for Americans are irrationally sensitive to accusations of discrimination. Yet discrimination is merely a synonym for choice – and freedom of choice, including freedom of association both social and commercial, is an essential component of freedom.

     If we cannot discriminate, we are not free. More to the point of today’s tirade, every law discriminates between lawbreakers and the law-abiding. Laws that dictate immigration policy, including what constitutes legal entry to the U.S. and what shall be done with those who enter in some other way, are as discriminatory as any others. But three hundred million Americans must grasp this both intellectually and viscerally before the other changes required can be implemented.