And now a few words about immigration...

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... but we'll allow Bill Whittle to do it as he far more eloquent than we.


(video approx. 8 minutes long)

“Imagine a country where not only are the borders secured by armed guards, but once you entered the country, if you even spoke about politics — at all — if you even mentioned anything politically, you would be deported. Imagine a country where everyone is required to be tracked all the time. Where all of these immigrants are constantly monitored. Imagine where the idea of immigrants even having a word on the internal politics of a country would be enough to get them deported.”

“I can imagine a country like that. That country is Mexico.”

Illegal immigration is not just a slap in the face, it is a spit in the eye of every single legal immigrant throughout the world who has spent 7,8, 10 years of their lives, have spent thousands and thousands of dollars, have done things exactly right in order to come here permanently to become a new person, a new American just like the rest of us – not a hyphenated American, an American. An American who happened to be born overseas.

What Whittle says about Americans tearing up at the sight of citizenship ceremonies is certainly true. The deck of the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS MIDWAY here in San Diego serves as the site of a citizenship ceremony for our men and women in the armed forces who have gone through and successfully completed the process in order to be accorded the honor of U.S. citizen.

Short of a memorial for a soldier, Marine or sailor who died in combat, we challenge anyone to come up with something that better captures the essence of what it means to be an American.

And this is what the other side doesn’t understand: There is more to U.S. citizenship than merely bettering ones’ economic outlook and that of one’s family. Don’t get us wrong and we are not naïve in understanding that economics plays an overwhelming role in the vast majority of the cases of people wishing to reside here. But in becoming an American, you make an explicit pledge to value what the rest of your fellow Americans value: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, respect for property rights, a belief in free markets…. concepts espoused and fought for since the inception of this country. Hell, this country exists because of those concepts.

The other side wishes to ignore this and reduce the entire immigration debate to a case of race-based victimization against a backdrop of third-world socialism in the face of American capitalist hegemony.


That last paragraph represents why it is so hard for us to engage the other side in a serious debate regarding immigration. There are earnest open-border libertarians whom we respect but at the end of the day, the statist, racialist grievance mongers wind up stealing the show and poisoning the well with their skepticism if not downright disbelief in our core American values.

What "debate" is to be had when there is little if not any baseline set of beliefs from which the debate can get started?



For what can be done about our immigration policy, some of the best ideas and thinking on the subject can be found at The Liberator Today (word search: immigration). Do yourself a favor and check it out.