The Administration may not want to call it amnesty, but it still smells terrible

The Bard, (Again) Getting It Right

William Shakespeare, as usual, exhibited a firm grasp of human nature with his deconstruction of the semantic word play in which we engage to avoid the unpleasantness that accompanies the utilization of unpleasant terms. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet waxes poetic about her newfound love Romeo, and ruefully ponders his last name and the attending negative associations encumbering it.

The Capulets, Juliet's family, simply refused to play nicely with her beloved's Montagues, rendering her affair with the lad to that of the classic star-crossed variety, and as she ponders a thorny flower and admires it's aromatic effervescence, she comes to the realization of one of the universal truths, that, like Romeo Montague, "a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet".

As good is good, no matter the terminology used to describe it, so too is bad bad. And despite President Bush's attempts to assign terms other than "amnesty" to his new immigration policy proposal, it is indeed amnesty, and it is still less than aromatically pleasant.

I admire (the illegal immigrants') effort, their vigor, and their gumption. What I do not admire is their breaching our borders and breaking our laws to exhibit these fine traits.

His call for "guest worker visas" and large increases in immigration totals is nothing more than a redux of one of the few mistakes of the Ronald Reagan Administration, the 1987 amnesty for the roughly three million illegals that then resided here in the United States.

Then, too, the new policy was to be accompanied by stricter border enforcement and other offsetting safeguards (and conservative placations). As per usual, we got the liberal, destined-for-failure portion of the program, but the conservative accompaniment never followed.

At Least He Copped to the "A" Word

The borders remained (and remain) porous, and the plan that was supposed to curtail illegal immigration has led to the three million total at the time of Reagan's folly swelling to ten million "undocumented" immigrants today.

Shocking, is it not, that when you provide an incentive for illegal activity (rewarding illegal border crossing with legal resident status), you get more illegal activity?

One of the justifications the President gives for this policy proposal is that the illegals come here to do the jobs that Americans will not do. This belies such a horrendous state of affairs, on so many levels, that one barely knows where to begin.

The fact that any unemployed person, anywhere in this country, has the audacity to deem any work beneath them and not worthy of their doing is morally abhorrent. But it should not be surprising, given that this attitudinal adjustment is one facet of the legacy of Lyndon Baines Johnson's horrendous Great Society.

Strip Mining Our Once Great Society

We have spent the last forty years paying able-bodied men to not work, and then we act stunned when these same able-bodied people won’t take jobs when they are available. Again, of anything you subsidize you will get more; after forty years of subsidizing sloth, this is the (lack of) work ethic that results.

We should not be shocked at the gaping hole this scenario creates. I do not entirely blame the illegals for rushing to fill the void; if we are going to insist on being so stupid as to pay our citizens to do nothing, when there is clearly so many things that need to be done, then these illegal immigrants are more than happy to close the gap.

I admire their effort, their vigor, and their gumption. What I do not admire is their breaching our borders and breaking our laws to exhibit these fine traits. But, again, their answering the Clarion call of opportunity by illegally entering our nation is as much our failure as theirs, ours probably more.

It is our responsibility to ensure border security, and to make sure our unemployed become dis-unemployed when the opportunity to become so exists. Our refusal to do this over the last quarter century has created our current disorder.

Much like the homeowner who leaves his doors unlocked and is robbed, the thief is culpable, but the person who owns the house has to feel pretty stupid. And here we are.

The solution to this, of course, is not more of what got us into this mess in the first place. The answer to liberalism isn’t more liberalism. People are pouring across the borders; giving up, getting out of the way and waving them all in is not the answer. (People are still committing murder, despite our enforcement efforts; should we legalize homicide as well?)

We need to start taking border enforcement seriously. This should include vast increases in technology and manpower, all the way up to and including the utilization of the military to ensure border integrity.

Especially since the advent of the War on Terror, protecting our national boundaries is an issue of national security. Osama Bin Laden's henchmen can get across the border just as easily as anyone else. Therefore, our security as a nation is at risk under the current conditions, precisely the reason our military exists. Use it.

Listening, But Not Hearing

But hand in hand with this is the utilization of the at-rest labor force that is already here. Do not allow welfare to continue to be a lifestyle. Nothing clarifies what work is or is not beneath a person quite like being hungry.

We need to stop subsidizing sloth (and business, by the way, by allowing an endless supply of low-pay and no-benefit labor), and get Americans back to work again.

As Ronald Reagan said, "There are no easy answers, but there are simple ones". This is a no-brainer, but it does require some intestinal fortitude.

Let us hope President Bush applies some of his ample reserve of it, as exemplified in the war against Islamic fascism, in this equally important endeavor.