MIKE INGLES
“This emancipation should be through executive order, thereby allowing both sides of the isle to escape political persecution. It is the only way that our ideals will match our rhetoric…”
Imagine Abraham Lincoln placing an asterisk in the Emaciation Proclamation that said, in effect, now that you’re free, you must wait a lifetime for liberty.
That’s pretty much what this gang of eight senators is proposing for immigration reform. They explain that before you can enjoy the fruits of your labor, you must go to the back of the line and wait until a no-man zone, similar to the 39th parallel in Korea, has been created at the border with Mexico. When the construction has been completed, when the barbed-wire and machine-gun towers have been erected, you can then apply for citizenship—although, regardless of how long you have been working here, how long you’ve been paying taxes, how long your sons and daughters have served in the military—regardless of all that, now, get to the back of the line.
There’s a loophole, there’s always a loophole in America; I call it the Joseph Mengele rule—if you are smart, if you have the correct genome makeup, if your offspring will probably be smart and so you and your linage can help us by becoming scientists and allowing us to extract the proper DNA from as yet unborn fetuses, WELCOME to the home of the free and the brave! No discrimination on these plutonium shores—by the way, if you have a better idea of how to build plutonium bombs, we’ll let your crazy aunt in the basement come across the DMZ.
The senators would probably cry that we can’t compare black people who were forced to come to America, with brown people who choose to be here. Fair enough. But the overriding issue today is the same regardless whether your heritage was born after being shanghaied into the keel of a boat or if it occurred because your forefather fought his way through a desert to provide for his family—the issue is not what if? The issue is liberty for 11 million people. In 1862 the number was 2.7 million; Mr. Lincoln did not demand that they register with the federal government.
You can’t put a beacon in the ocean and ask for the world’s tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to be free and add the Lincoln asterisk * does not apply to Latinos or people with average intelligence.
There is only one solution, just as there was in 1862; I’m baffled that a black president cannot understand this. This emancipation should be through executive order, thereby allowing both sides of the isle to escape political persecution. It is the only way that our ideals will match our rhetoric.
It will be expensive, adding 3% costs to each entitlement program. But we are a capitalist country and expect to pay a fair price for the goods and services that people produce—regardless of the way their family arrived in this country.
And, we must find a way to protect our borders. I would suggest that barbed wire is not a solution. Desperate people are not going to stop their migration north and will find ingenious ways to bridge our borders. I’m thinking that Canada should be the prototype; the Canadians are not rushing to pick fruit in California. Any real-world solution must include raising the standard of living for Mexican people. It’s a daunting task. There are 115 million Mexican people. Social media, advertising and television bombard these disenfranchised folks with promises of unlimited opportunities and freedom from persecution. Sound familiar?
I know. Mine is a radical solution. But, consider how radical Mr. Lincoln’s solution was back in 1862. Our country was divided, as it is today, but we are not killing each other in farm fields in Virginia or Tennessee or Mississippi or at Gettysburg, Pa.
President Obama will not accomplish any of his modest goals; divided government will stop any serious legislation. Gun control will be so watered-down that any legislation passed will never protect a single six-year old from leaving a bullet-ridden corpse. Not one. Any laws proposed by Republican will be killed in the senate and any laws proposed in the senate won’t even come to a vote in the People’s House. We are a dysfunctional society. Only by executive order, leadership and self-assured courage, characteristics exhibited by Mr. Lincoln, will much needed real reform take place.
*If not, we can always send the Statue of Liberty back to France.
MIKE INGLES looks at the world, often with despair, from Ohio.