Introduction
[As a newcomer to Arizona with only a couple of months experience of living in Payson, North-East of Phoenix, I have no right to pass comment on what has been big news both inside and outside the State. I have observed that feelings run strong about illegal immigrants, with many reacting to the complicated process that I am going through applying for US residency by saying “It’s not fair”. Not fair in the sense that they see so many Mexicans just walking over the long border that Arizona has with it’s neighbour to the south.
Thus this thoughtful Post from Gordon Coons is a chance for Learning from Dogs to air a point of view from someone who does have a right to an opinion. Ed.]
My fellow Americans, friends and relatives:
I am writing you to express my concerns over the recently passed law regarding immigration in my former state of Arizona.
As most (if not all) of you know, I lived in Arizona for 10 years, my children still live there and Linda and I have been living in Mexico. I mention this only in that it gives me a certain perspective on the events that have transpired recently.
The spate of marches and protests around the country would lead us to believe that the state of Arizona has completely lost its collective and legislative mind. The feeling is that enforcing such a law would lead to rampant profiling of Mexicans (and other Chicanos) who DO live in this country legally.
First of all, let’s examine WHY all of those Latinos want to come here. There are 2 basic, and yet profound, reasons:
- they want jobs and
- they want their children to be born here so that they become naturalized citizens and are the beneficiaries of all of our rights.
Do I blame them? Of course not….if I were in their shoes, I would want to come here as well.
I do take exception to the growing group of “banditos Mexicano” who are bent on illegal activities on both sides of the border.
It is interesting to note that if you move to Mexico as an American citizen, you cannot get a job by law. They do not allow you to take a position that would be available to any Mexican citizen. Neither would any children born to you become citizens of their country. This is common, by the way, in most industrialized countries in the world today.
Great Britain and France, for example, both amended their naturalization laws some time ago stating that it was not enough to just be born in the country, but that basically you had to be born to naturalized citizens.
So, who is to blame for this problem? It is very simple, in my mind….WE ARE!
It is illegal in this country to hire undocumented aliens of any nationality, but we hire them anyway and do not enforce the law! The Mexicans know this and that is why they come here. We do not need new laws to stop the problem, we need only enforce the laws that are already on the books.
Illegal’s have a network of information exchanging that would be the marvel of the CIA. If they knew no employment
was available to undocumented aliens, the flow would stop or drastically be reduced. If the network knew that the children born to them in this country would not automatically become U S citizens, the flow would stop or drastically be reduced.
The state of Arizona passed the immigration law mostly because the Federal Government won’t simply enforce existing law. I have strong connections in my former state and can avow that there is real fear and concern in that state and those 60% that favor the new law felt they had no choice in the matter.
By necessity, the United States of America was founded and developed by immigrants. As such, we became the marvel of the world.
Ironically, my earliest immigrant ancestors were undocumented aliens. I am directly descended from Ensign Thomas Savage (Jamestown, 1607), William Brewster (Plymouth Colony, 1620) and Jost and Johann Cunze (Germanna Colony, 1714 and 1737, respectively). All of them came to this country before it became the United states and many fought in the Revolutionary War to make us a free country.
Their reasons were not much different than those who seek to enter our country now. There were no immigration laws back then. Furthermore, once we became a nation with a constitution, we encouraged other lands to send us “their huddled masses, yearning to be free“.
And they came here by the millions, legally, learned our common language, went to work and paid taxes to support our way of life. Their descendants fought wars to keep us free and prosperous and we became the most powerful and admired nation on Earth. However, times have changed and we seem to have been foisted by our own petard.
Those laws regarding immigration have been mostly ignored, our needs have changed and we are suffering financially because of it. Our whole system of immigration does NOT need to changed. We must simply enforce what we have. Denying jobs and housing to undocumented immigrants and changing the naturalization laws are the focal points required. If illegal’s don’t have a reason to come here, we needn’t worry about profiling. If the illegal’s don’t have a reason to come here, we needn’t worry about draining our resources by providing welfare to them.
This, of course, would free up manpower and resources to battle the drug problem in this country. Here, once again, we must look for the cause of this problem. And, once again, we find ourselves largely to blame.
The reason the cartels smuggle drugs into our country is simple economics. We provide a major market for them. If there was no market, no demand….there would be no supply. Furthermore, the outbreak of violence along the border would cease if guns, both legal and illegal, were not being supplied from the U. S.
Crossing the border many times like I have, I know the major concern coming south is guns and money and the concern going north is drugs. Interestingly, the ownership of firearms is illegal in Mexico.Since we have done such a poor job of controlling illegal drugs, maybe we should just legalize them and tax the hell out of them.
This would eliminate the cartel market and provide a needed boost to the federal coffers as well as allowing us to reduce or eliminate our growing debt and deficit.
I am so tired of hearing news reports based on mistaken facts and fear-mongering on both sides. The first comparison is that our duly authorized enforcers would begin rampant profiling and would, in fact, become the later day Gestapo agents of the Nazi regime that harassed and badgered the Jewish population of Germany in the 1930’s.
First of all, Jews were not residing illegally in Germany, were not largely involved in crime and did not receive any compensation from the state. The Hitler regime was bent on eliminating those members of society by proving who they were and invoking a “final solution”.
The focus of the Arizona law is to identify illegal immigrants. Last year, that state identified, retained and deported almost 700,00 illegal immigrants. The operative word here is “illegal’. What part of that word do these protester’s not understand?
Maybe Mexico has found a new way to invade and conquer America. Just keep coming until they so outnumber the legal citizens and immigrants and have control. I do look for other states to adopt these types of laws out of necessity in the future if the federal government continues to ignore existing laws. Maybe Vermont will start arresting those pesky Canadians illegally crossing the border to take advantage of the exchange rate.
In conclusion, change the laws that need to be changed and enforce the ones we have now. I am a strong supporter of our Constitution and thank goodness our founding fathers saw the potential need for change and allowed a method for doing it. Thank you for listening to my rant and I encourage response and debate. Tell me where I am wrong. I want to know.
By Gordon Coons
Learning from Dogs 
For more than 25 years, I lived just west of Tucson, in the pathway of hundreds of illegals. I often fed and sheltered them and, more than a few times, put them in my car and drove them to Eloy which is a farming community north of Tucson.
Of the hundreds of illegals I personally met, most were returning to the same job they had held the year before. Nonetheless, most illegals live and work at the same job for years. They raise their kids and they pay taxes such as FICA even though they never expect to see the return we get from Social Security.
My land was adjacent to government owned land and I often saw, heard or had to clean up after hunters. I never felt threatened by the Mexican illegals but was threatened by hunters more than a few times. All things considered, I’d take the illegals any day.
According to the FBI, violent crime and crimes against property have steadily decreased since 2005. Last year, the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson reported that illegals were entering the country in much lower numbers than every before simply because there was no work.
There are three other very similar laws on the books, including the so-called “stop and question” law of the mid 60s. That law already allows law enforcement to check ID. One of those three laws is federal.
In is incorrect to say these laws are not enforced. In point of fact, the law enforcement in Pima county catch more illegals than any other law enforcement in the United States (FBI records again). The federal government does indeed enforce federal law. There are more than 20,000 Border Control agents and ancillary personnel who patrol the border. And, when city, county or park enforcement encounter illegal immigrants, they turn them over to Border Patrol for deportation.
One huge factor that no one seems willing to address is the expense of enforcing this law. The language of the law invites law suits from both sides and some have already been filed. In addition, where local law enforcement had always been able to turn illegal immigrants over to federally funded Border Patrol, they must now keep them in local lockups for an “unspecified” period of time. If any are injured, their hospital care will now be paid by local taxes. This law will most certainly bankrupt Arizona and yet it contains no language that speaks to the number of illegal immigrants who simply walk across the border every day.
Some seem to want to hang this on President Obama, as though illegal immigrants have been a problem for only the past 16 months. In fact. then-Governor Janet Napolitano requested additional assistance in securing the southern border of Arizona from Senators McCain, Kyl and then-president Bush. They refused. They had also refused Governor Hull’s similar request.
Senator John McCain did come up with control measures. All of them became known as McCain’s Folly. He pushed through a bill that enabled him to outfit several helicopters with night vision camera equipment. For a while, the nightly news showed ghostly green images of coyotes trotting along in the dark. Once in a while, there were films of groups of probably illegals but that’s as far as it went because the helicopters could only film them. They had no way of catching them. Another of McCain’s ideas was the fence. The illegals pretty much ignored it. They went over it or under it or cut through it. And, of course, their tunnels are legendary. McCain also came up with the idea of having Border Patrol agents climb up poles and sit in little chairs, in the blistering heat, looking out over the desert. If you have never been in the Arizona desert, you can’t possibly know just how ridiculous these “look out” chairs were. From that vantage point, the agents would not have seen an elephant lumbering by.
I received an email from a friend who teaches the 5ht grade in Tucson. She said that Mexican-American children are not allowed to walk to and from school any more. They don’t buy from the ice cream man and elderly Mexican-Americans don’t leave their homes.
The law originally read that a valid driver’s license, state ID or tribal ID is all that is necessary to prove citizenship. Obviously, if a college kid can get fake ID, so can an illegal immigrant. The law was amended to read that a passport or birth certificate was required. Does anyone really believe that the drug cartels are concerned about getting fake IDs?
Illegal immigrants from Mexico come here because we invite them. We give them jobs that Americans will not do and they’ll work those jobs at a fraction of what American labor would cost. We buy drugs from them and se sell them guns. And, thanks to gun laws getting weaker by the moment, gun runners can and do buy more and more guns to resell to Mexicans. At its most simple, this problem will not be fixed until those factors are address by the United States.
To understand why this law was quickly pushed through, all one needs to do is look who wrote the law – Senator Russell Pierce – a known white supremacist.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2007/06/tonopahs_white_knights_of_amer_1.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es3hq0XM-cw
Note the date – two years ago.
If you are not shocked yet, here’s a recent news story covering an email between Russell Pearce and FAIR lawyer Kris Kobach which explains how they would use city code violations such as tall weeds of cars on blocks in peoples yards, to go to peoples homes and demand papers or I.D.
http://www.kpho.com/video/23315330/index.html
http://www.gregpalast.com/behind-the-arizona-immigration-lawgop-game-to-swipe-the-november-election/
Governor Brewer is a throw-away. She has no education and was fired from her job as an x-ray tech before being tapped by Republicans. She never elected and the Republican party is now using her to throw this red herring in front of the voters.
We need REAL immigration reform. We need to make all four of our borders safe and secure. We need to address the real cause of illegal immigration which includes our own drug use and gun runners.
LikeLike
Ben, your lengthy contribution is really appreciated. Thanks for the comment, Paul
LikeLike
Thanks Paul. I want to add another facet of this mess is medical care.
President Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill plainly states that it covers only citizens of the United States. It states that non-citizens cannot get coverage even if they can afford to pay for it.
However, a law passed by Ronald Reagan guarantees medical care to anyone who walks into an American hospital’s emergency department. The question of nationality is never asked. The hospital will make ever attempt to collect the bill but it is the poorest of the poor who have been forced to use our emergency rooms as their primary care physicians.
It should be noted that, while illegal aliens all over the US do get health care in this way, the majority of people being treated without payment in our ER’s are US citizens.
I also wanted to add three more links that further illustrate that white supremacists are behind the new Arizona law.
These people must be stopped.
http://trueslant.com/charlesjohnson/2010/04/27/video-the-white-supremacist-roots-of-arizonas-immigration-law/
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2008/spring/the-nativists?page=0,11
http://krazykriskobach.com/
In Missouri, another white supremacist wants into congress
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/03/1919789/missouri-white-supremacist-says.html
LikeLike
From Huffington Post today –
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/kris-kobach-architect-of_n_570662.html
Kris Kobach, Architect Of Arizona Immigration Law SB1070, Is Behind Other Controversial Laws
LikeLike