Will we squander a gem in an immigration boondogle?
One of the most beautiful things about newspapers is that
they’re kind of like satellite TV. If one feature insults or bores
you, there’s another. And with newspapers, you don’t even need to
look under the sofa cushions for the remote.
So if the next paragraph wounds you, please move along. Nothing
to see here, just move along.
Will we squander a gem in an immigration boondogle?
One of the most beautiful things about newspapers is that they’re kind of like satellite TV. If one feature insults or bores you, there’s another. And with newspapers, you don’t even need to look under the sofa cushions for the remote.
So if the next paragraph wounds you, please move along. Nothing to see here, just move along.
The whole “illegal immigration problem” is almost entirely a shuck perpetrated by opportunistic politicians eager to whip up fear and frenzy, the better to avoid more difficult-to-solve real problems confronting the country.
To make it short, the “problem” of illegal immigration could be solved in weeks, not years, if criminal penalties were assessed of employers. Most of the people who come to the United States to work, deprived of employment, would be hard-pressed to stay.
With an answer that simple available, why hasn’t the “problem” been solved?
Because we have come to depend on a cheap source of hard-working laborers. With border restrictions growing tighter in recent years, Central Valley farmers are occasionally finding it impossible to secure adequate crews.
Because the expensive make-work programs wrapped up in border fences and the patrols by the Immigration and Naturalization Service are a convenient way to spread your tax dollars around to help shore up the economy.
Because people don’t stay in office by claiming the emperor wears no clothes.
The folly does not get weirder anyplace than at the very tip of the horn of Texas, where Brownsville snuggles up against the Mexican border near the Gulf of Mexico.
Outside of Brownsville sits the Sabal Palm Audubon Center. Chances are you may never have heard of it, but if you are a serious birder then you certainly have.
There birds more common south of the United States reach the northern tip of their distribution. Wildlife thrives in an improbably lush desert landscape.
There, birders bring tourist dollars to one of the poorest cities in the nation.
There, you will encounter the Border Fence.
A recent feature in the New York Times (April 7) describes the situation best. As the fence creeps from sea to shining sea across our southern border, Homeland Security’s plans apparently have not ruled out routing the fence north of the sanctuary.
That’s right. In the name of safeguarding our nation, we may give 550 acres of it to Mexico. That’s 550 economically and ecologically important acres.
Further, conservationists and landowners in the region fear the fence will slash through several Texas counties along a riverside corridor that forms a highway for much wildlife.
Right now, Homeland Security is putting the hurry-up on. Congress has ordered fencing and security measures along the border completed this year. There’s talk of a gate. But so much remains unclear. Will visitors be crossing an international border? Will Audubon staff be checking passports?
Is this what we’ve come to? Is this where the discussion leads us?
Will we someday say that we loved our country so much we had to start giving valuable pieces of it away?
What part of San Benito County would you give away in fealty to a boondoggle that’s bound to fail?
God help us.
