Posted by
William D. Dannenmaier on Saturday, May 29, 2010 4:54:31 PM
Peggy Noonan’s article, “The Big Alienation,” (Wall Street Journal, May 1) was thought provoking. She discusses the lack of trust of citizens of the United States in the Federal Government and gives as major reasons the massive spending bills Congress has passed and the failure of the Federal Government to protect our borders: the failure to protect citizens.
Drug dealers and other criminals enter the United States across the Mexican border. One article reported that one third of all prisoners in California penitentiaries are illegal aliens. But not all of our illegal aliens are criminals – if one ignores laws about entry to the United States. A problem is that they take up the low skilled and beginning jobs leaving our citizens unemployed. About three years ago the electric company sent crews through Cumberland Furnace cutting trees which might fall on electric lines. I went down to talk to them when they were on my land. Only one person, the crew chief, spoke English, heavily accented English. All of the others spoke Spanish and appeared to be Mexican. At the time, I knew United States citizens in our area who would have been glad to have those low-skilled, high-paying jobs.
Our political leaders, an entire stream of Democratic and Republican members of Congress and Presidents, have been reluctant to close our borders. Open borders may improve their chances of re-election but have nothing to do with the good of the citizens. Many, perhaps most, of those crossing the Mexican border illegally are unskilled people who are seeking a better life than they can obtain in Mexico. That is the problem. They take away jobs from our young and unskilled workers. This is why the Black Caucus puzzles me. They are elected by Black voters who expect them to do things which help them, but this open border appears to be the worst possible thing for many Blacks. If one divides the population by races, as the Democratic Party seems inclined to do, Blacks have the highest percentage of young, unskilled and uneducated workers. The members of the Black Caucus are not helping the people who elected them. Not all Blacks want to live on welfare; many would welcome beginning jobs that might lead to a better life. We need protected borders, not just to stop terrorists, drug dealers and criminals, but also for those seeking jobs, which reduces the possibility of paid work for our own citizens.
Discussing this, Sheila talked about Arizona and the difficulty of establishing and coordinating State National Guard units to protect the border. When I commented that the army could do it, she argued that the army was not to operate in the United States. But aren’t borders different?
The army established and protected our borders in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Mexican Wars, and the Second World War. Why is it wrong now? Currently, we protect the borders of Taiwan, South Korea, the separated parts of former Yugoslavia, Iraq and now we are trying to establish and protect borders in Afghanistan. If we maintain and protect all of those borders, why not our own? If the Army will not protect the United States and its citizens from an invasion of illegal entrants – invading foreigners - why do we have an Army?
Just think, if the Army is not to control the borders, and I suppose, not the Navy the shores, the Germans and Japanese didn’t have to bomb or shoot at us, all they needed to do was load their troops onto barges and land them in Mexico. They could have walked in. As illegal aliens, they would have been entitled to all the rights of citizens.
Since writing the above, President Obama has announced that he is sending fifteen hundred National Guard troops to assist in patrolling the border. Let’s see: ten to twenty thousand American soldiers guard the Iraq border, twenty to thirty thousand guard the South Korean border, ten thousand Marines on Okinawa and more thousands in Germany, the Philippines and elsewhere. Sending fifteen hundred to the Mexican border is like telling a child to water the garden, watching him spit on it and then hearing him say, “I did it.” The difference is that Obama is spitting on the citizens of the United States.
The State Department has clarified Obama’s decision. The Guard is only to stop drug smugglers. How will they know? Do the smugglers wear signs? Hand out price lists? Could this be racial profiling? It’s nice publicity from the President, but still spit.