Immigration Part 3: The Threat In Plain Sight
Even Washington sees it - they just don't care
When we as a nation discuss “immigration”, Democrats like to conjure sepia-toned images of Ellis Island and hard-working, striving immigrants of years past, as if we still have a need for millions of new citizens to tame the west, break the sod and fill the factories. But even Ellis Island was orderly and selective. The immigrants arrived on ships, formed queues, underwent physical and mental scrutiny, filled out government forms, stood for detailed and often intrusive medical examinations, and most importantly, were accountable. Each immigrant was expected to provide details of who they were, where they came from and what skills they possessed as well as providing physical assurance they weren’t bearing dread diseases of the day.
Today’s immigration, by contrast, consists of millions who simply walk across the border and actively evade any accountability. At best, they’re apprehended and “processed” for an amnesty hearing 30 months hence - then released, into America often without any medical exam whatsoever. Most have minimal documentation, the Third World not being particularly scrupulous with tracking individual births, health, education or employment status. Virtually nothing is known about these people when they present themselves inside our border. What little documentation we do collect is raw biometric data, to be associated with a name and a date of apprehension. And lest we forget, this is only for those we catch.
By contrast, here’s what the US government knows about me: they know where and when I was born, who my parents were, who my siblings are, who I’m married to, where I live today along with everywhere I’ve ever lived, who my children are, where they live, my education level, every detail of my employment over the past 45 years, detailed accounting of every dollar I’ve made or borrowed, its source, where I put my money and what taxes I’ve paid - and because I was in the military, a great deal more personal information, including everything detail about my health. The government possesses enormous troves of data on its actual citizens and yet we are expected to accept tens of millions among us who are effectively cyphers - virtual unknowns.
One time presidential candidate John Edwards described his version of “Two Americas” in a speech in 2004, likely plagiarizing MLK. Democrats, strongly influenced by Marx, have always used division among class, race, sex and religion to divide - it’s their specialty. It’s also what they do when they are given the chance to rule - create more division. They’re championing division now with non-citizens - illegal immigration - creating an underground America. One in which an altogether separate nation hides in plain sight, tens of millions of people, largely unknown and unknowable.
This separate America exists within our borders and yet resides wholly outside our legal system in general - it being much easier to conduct crime at wholesale levels when nothing is known about you or anyone with whom you conduct yourself. And when it comes to the most serious of crimes, this second America becomes a virtual sanctuary for criminal activity, including drugs and human trafficking. Overdose death from synthetic opioids like Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death among Americans 18-45. We like to think methamphetamines are mainly a homegrown problem - but the meth industry has largely shifted to import channels because it’s much easier to get the finished product across our border than it is to manufacture it here. Frequent meth abuse, those who use it 100 days or more in the past year, increased by 66% in 2019. It’s become all but impossible to get the ingredients to cook meth inside America, so the drugs are coming through the border now.
Most of America’s largest cities - habitually run by Democrats - have become war zones with unceasing double digit increases in homicide rates year over year, every year. With violent crime spiraling out of control, one is left to wonder what comes of all the lesser crimes a citizenry might expect to be prosecuted in a safer society. How long before burglary and common shoplifting are no longer prosecuted? Oh, wait….we already have that! We ask ourselves: where is this headed? Is this how dystopia arrives? Is this how America finally succumbs?
We also worry about terrorists stealing across our border among the millions of other lawless cyphers who traverse our border with impunity. And as an interesting aside, the key finding of the 9-11 Commission was a lack of imagination in our security and intelligence communities’ spotting threats. No imagination is needed here as we’re catching terrorists and suspected terrorists coming across the border all the time. But these shouldn’t be nearly as concerning as the ones we’re certainly not catching. I’m no counterterrorism expert, but my imagination isn’t so stunted that I can’t envision the drug and human trafficking cartels secretly standing up their own armies within our borders - they have interests here after all. Crime on an industrial scale is indistinguishable from terrorism.
When it comes to immigration, this is what Americans worry about. Others, like me, also worry about the gravitational effect this separate, non-citizenry has on American wages and economic competitiveness. We can argue all day long about what to do about immigration eventually, but what we’re damn near unanimous about right now is that the border must be secured today. Donald Trump tapped into this justified anxiety as generations of politicians stood idly by and did nothing (see Immigration Part 2 for more on this).
In the two Americas we have today, our political elites don’t have to worry about the other America they’ve created. They live in gated communities, their kids attend private schools and they benefit from the cheap labor pool that does the jobs their kids will never have to. Their lives will likely never be impacted by the ruthless, violent crime that infects so many of our communities on a daily basis. This is the truth that is hiding in plain sight.