The Border & Immigration

Here's a campaign issue to throw in the face of Bush appointee John W. Ashcroft, who promised to enforce the laws as they were written. Here's something to demand of John Kerry.

Where we reject the word of the border vigilantes out of hand, we all too eagerly accept without question the word of those whose authority derives from nothing other than their office stationary.

The logic is telling: if the law changes to allow a person to become legitimized, then that person is no longer illegal and therefore no longer morally suspect. The question which must follow is this: if the only thing that has changed is the status of the person under the law and not the behavior, why declare them morally reprehensible in the first place?

If those who live here without INS approval are "illegal aliens", then those who do not register for the draft are "illegal citizens".

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch is a major co-sponsor in the Senate.

Yes, I am sure that a recently laid off industrial worker making $35,000 a year (the supposed family average for the United States -- poverty level for a family of four living in metropolitan California) is going to jump at the chance to pick grapes and lettuce for much less.

Yes, I should trust the same media which failed to investigate the truthfulness of the President's rationale for war (among other things) when it relates a factoid about illegal aliens on the eve of a California election.

Question ALL Authority, including Your Own.

I thought I'd follow up on my MECHA views with a links to thoughtful blogs on the subject.

The Right -- led by censorship king Bill O'Reilly -- has been flooding the airwaves with the accusation that Cruz Bustamonte and MECHA implicitly endorse the violent takeover and reannexation of the Southwest by Mexico. Note that second word: reannexation. The land we're on was Mexico's to begin with.

Before the war, Anglo-Americans insinuated themselves into lands owned by Mexico. Then they screamed persecution and brought the force of the United States to bear in favor of what was their minority rule. The land was seized -- by force -- from Mexico and ethnically cleansed of Latinos despite the assurances of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago.

The people in Mexico City have been kind and friendly without resorting to the grabby tactics I know so well from Tijuana and other places on the south side of the friendly strands of barbed wire.