It is undeniable that America has a rich history of immigration, without which the United States would hardly have grown to the world power it has become. Given the present situation however, the deniability stops there, in spite of, and even on account of the verbosity emanating from the White House. Indeed, a real concern is the lack of transparency. Regardless of Psaki Speak daily uttered by the President’s surrogate, the present conditions at the southern border are mostly hidden, as needs be under the present political schematics. When asked when the press will be allowed to fully record the situation, the President himself uttered “I don’t know.” And even without proper press coverage, a recent poll found 53% of those questioned disapproved of the present Administration’s agenda on immigration.
In 1882 the 47th Congress passed what is considered to be the first immigration legislation. The law collected a “head tax” of 50¢ per immigrant and excluded certain groups including persons likely to become a public charge, and idiots, lunatics and convicts, those who in many ways were not unlike many of the present day members of Congress itself, on both sides. In 1924, apparently shame-faced at its own inablity to recognize the idiots, lunatics and convicts among it, Congress repealed the 1882 Act and installed in its place legislation which enacted quotas. This essentially remained in place until 1965 when legislation was enacted abolishing quotas based on national origins and installing a scheme based on reuniting immigrant families, allowing entry to those whose skills were deemed useful to the United States and granting asylum to those fleeing violence or unrest. This led to an influx of 18 million immigrants, more than three times the number admitted over the previous thirty years. The Reagan Administration succeeded in passing immigration reform that granted amnesty to nearly three million, but did not apply to those who were not in the U.S. prior to 1982. In 1990 Congress expanded the ’65 Act to include those from “under-represented” countries, in other words, not Western Europe.
Fast forward to today and we witness a distressing and intolerable situation. Taking the President at his word, or lack of words, flooding at the Southern Border is overflowing with anyone with a sturdy pairs of sneakers and the will to test their luck, and lucky they are. Official accounts claim that all but children are being returned, but unoffical accounts report that only 20% of adults are being returned from whence they came, or at least to Mexico, to await processing. More than eighteen thousand children are kept, according to the Administration, in conditions better than the past, but the few images that have emerged seem to dispute that claim. In any event, up to 80% of the would-be settlers are being transported by bus and plane to the interior with instructions
to return, 12 to 18 months from now, on average, to face a judge. Depending on which spin you credit, anywhere from 44% to 90% do not appear.
It needs to be remembered in this shambles and wreckage of policy co-opted by present day politics, that the intent of the applicable statutes is, and of course remains, a worthy one. Nevertheless, wide-eyed winking at proper and constitutional statutory restraints, along with mere lip service for the good of the few, and here the immigrant is not necessarily the intended beneficiary can, and often does, lead to the misfortune of the greater good. Border officials have voiced real concerns regarding humanitarian, safety and terrorism concerns. Further, according to the agents, while they are tending to this unprecedented influx, the cartels are busy ramping up the drug trade with an influx of their own. This ruse engineered by radical policymakers and political rhetoric, both ascribing blame to predecessor administrations for the sheer purpose of promoting and thereby hopefully entrenchng singular control of a populace, while hiding behind a proclaimed desire to provide freedom to those oppressed, can and will only lead to the suppression of all voices, from whichever side of the aisle they may be heard, except of course the voice which holds the gavel at the time.
Nor does labelling sentiment opposed to such one-minded entrenchment betray a “racist” mindset. Here too we see the weakness of the demagogue. Attack, but never engage is the playbook, for an honest exchange of ideas might expose the partisanship for what it truly is, an attempt to single out for censure and cancellation a proletariat which may dare disagree with the efforts of those who seek control eternally, not for the benefit of all, newly minted immigrants included, but for the mere sake of firm and rooted authority over all aspects of the American Way, according to their view.
America cannot be the world’s orphanage. The present attempt to make it so, will first, stop just as soon as the influx has served its purpose, and secondly must presently and with urgency be looked upon as an aspect of an all-encompassing assault upon the system given to us by those white males of the 18th century, who by the way were risking their lives to proclaim and establish a system espousing equality for all, their own personal failings notwithstanding. Denouncing their human defects now, merely to advance a mentality of hostility and resistance toward all things in conflict with the “enlightened” intolerants, belies the movement itself.
Immigration good; suppression of freedoms bad!