Posted on 07/01/2011 1:32:16 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
I’m the first to acknowledge that among the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, many are hardworking, law-abiding members of our society. A very small percentage were brought here by their parents, and did not choose to break the law themselves.
The media endlessly reports on these hard cases to implicitly — and sometimes explicitly — promote bad laws, like the DREAM Act and in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.
The latest of these hard cases involves the former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, who revealed he was an illegal immigrant in a new New York Times Magazine article.
His account is compelling. Vargas is a Philippines native. His parents sent him at age 12 to live with his grandparents in the U.S., in 1993 He excelled in school, went to college and pursued a career in journalism — eventually sharing a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. He did not know he was here illegally until age 16, when he applied for a driver’s license.
By revealing himself to be an illegal immigrant, Vargas has won praise from liberal immigration advocates. A blogger for the San Francisco Chronicle called it, the “most courageous act I’ve seen in quite a while” — and then calls for passage of the DREAM Act. “The bar,” Noreen Malone of New York magazine argued, “just got a whole lot higher for describing personal essays as ‘brave.’”
Vargas writes, “I don’t know what the consequences will be of telling my story.”
I’ll be glad to tell him. There’s a good chance that he will get legal status if a liberal senator writes him a private bill, or if the Obama administration grants him deferred action. I am absolutely certain that no one from Immigration and Customs Enforcement will detain him, and no immigration judge will deport him. It is already the administration policy to use “prosecutorial discretion” for illegal immigrants who could be eligible for the DREAM Act.
Vargas wrote that he was inspired to go public because of four illegal immigrant college students’ decision to take a high-profile walk from Miami to D.C. in support of the DREAM Act. Of course, although they were publicizing the fact that they were here illegally, no ICE agents took action against them.
Every month, there seems to be a news story about a young illegal immigrant publicly flaunting illegal status. They testify before Congress, give graduation speeches, organize rallies and, in some cases, break additional laws by blocking traffic.
One popular sign that illegal immigrants hold up at rallies reads “Undocumented, Unafraid” for good reason. To the best of my knowledge, not one of the dozens of illegal immigrants who publicly disclosed their status has been deported, or even detained, by the ICE.
I truly sympathize with Vargas’ story, but there is nothing courageous about revealing himself. The worst consequence he may face is another Pulitzer prize.
If we had a president who was serious about enforcing our immigration laws, it would be another story.
Last week, I read about a less sympathetic immigrant, Pablo Bergen. Adding to his already long criminal history, Bergen was arrested as the leader of a 33-man heroin trafficking operation. Despite being in this country illegally from the Dominican Republic, he is receiving $900 a month in food stamps.
But the only news story I could find about Bergen was from the Tampa ABC affiliate.
Meanwhile, an informal search of Google News found more than 600 stories about Vargas
Of course, most illegal immigrants are not drug-dealing. welfare abusers like Bergen. But they are also not Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, who did not even know they were coming here illegally.
Almost 10 years ago, I was at the center of one these hard case controversies, when the Denver Post ran a sob story about Jesus Apodaca, an illegal immigrant honor student, who could not afford college.
I found out the story had been planted by the Mexican consulate in Denver, to build support for a bill that would give illegal immigrants in-state tuition, a privilege denied U.S. citizens from other states.
I contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service and asked if they planned to do anything when the name, picture and high school of a self-professed illegal immigrant was published on the cover of a major newspaper. Politicians and media went into an uproar over how insensitive I was.
Ultimately, no action was taken against the Apodacas. A donor to then-Gov. Bill Owens paid for him to go to college. He is still living here without consequence.
At the time, I said the Apodacas “seem like good people, people I’d be happy to have as a neighbor and friends. But it is irrelevant to the issue of whether they have broken the law.”
In response, a columnist at the Rocky Mountain News compared me to Inspector Jarvet from “Les Misérables,” “the literary symbol of doctrinaire and unfeeling justice.”
Unlike the France of “Les Misérables” — where Jean Valjean spends 19 years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread — our immigration laws are hardly authoritarian. We offer more legal immigration visas and more civil protections to illegal immigrants than any other country.
Most illegal immigrants are not bad people. But our immigration policy must be based on what is in the best interest of all U.S. citizens. With 9 percent unemployment, a crumbling common culture, overcrowded schools and hospitals and trillion dollar deficits, we cannot afford to ignore our immigration laws — even in the hard cases.
Tom Tancredo served as a Republican congressman from Colorado 1999-2009, and was chairman of the bipartisan Immigration Reform Caucus. He now serves as chairman of Team America PAC and the Rocky Mountain Foundation.
The first show of ignorance is the low ball number of illegals, they number about 30 million plus, and they are from all over the world, it is just a very large number of them are Latino, probably 2/3.
And that percentage is shrinking. The real growth in legal and illegal immigration in the past several years has come from Asia.
Republicans are wimps.
The fact is that the United States, because of the Obama Administration, now has de facto open borders, and no illegal will get deported for violating our immigration laws.
Basically, we have sent a message to the whole world, if you can get in illegally, we won’t touch you, that all foreign criminals are above the law.
That means visas and passports have become meaningless.
If the Republican Party had any balls, it would force the Obama Administration to acknowledge that we have open borders and our immigration laws are meaningless.
What is frightening to me is that every single 911 hijacker was an illegal in violation of the law, and would have been allowed to go free and kill Americans, because the federal government refused to deport them.
Are we just going to wait for another 911 to happen?
How many sleeper cells are already here, just waiting for the moment to strike?
Guess what? When they do strike, not one open borders liberal will take any responsibility for it, not one Republican open borders advocate will take responsibility.
If another 911 happens, we were forewarned and our politicians chose treason before the security of the American people.
Ping!
Where do you get your numbers?
The vast majority of illegal immigrants all over the United States are from Mexico. More than half.
About Pablo Bergen,After a year of roundups, the Polk County Sheriff’s office made the final six arrests in what it describes as a 33-man heroin ring that stretched from Nassau County, NY., to Lakeland.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd calls it the largest heroin bust in the county’s history. Arrests included suppliers, sellers and users, he said.
The ring was headed by Pablo Borgen, 1806 Jupiter St., Lakeland, Judd said. Borgen was arrested Tuesday morning on three counts of trafficking heroin, he said.
Borgen, 43, also was arrested in 2008 for trafficking more than 4 grams of heroin and possessing meth, according to a sheriff’s office report. His arrest record dates back to 1997 and includes 16 charges, such as battery, grand larceny and drug sale.
Borgen used seven other houses, which belonged to other members of his trafficking organization, as stash houses for the heroin, a report said.
The sheriff’s office and Immigration Customs Enforcement tried to deport Pablo Borgen, originally from the Dominican Republic, but he appealed and was able to stay.
Judd said Borgen took in shipments of brown heroin from New York City, cutting and selling the drug at $10 a hit, packaged in his trademark gold floral wrapping paper.
The undercover investigation found five “lieutenants” in the drug circle whom deputies arrested today. One of them was Jose Allende Jr., 25, 5152 Cornell St., Lakeland, deputies said. This was Allende’s 20th run-in with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office since 2003, a report said.
After Borgen’s last arrest in 2008, he was sentenced to two years of community control and three years of probation. Judd said the court went easy on him because he pleaded guilty.
“It was a heck of a deal,” Judd said.
Judd said the bust was a message to state and federal law enforcement agencies, who he said are too lenient on drug defendants.
“The message is this,” he said. “We need to first put these people in prison.”
Deputies also arrested four members of a rival trafficking organization that the sheriff’s office said was led by Israel Cintron-Vazquez, 39, 5167 Canbry Lane, Lakeland.
http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2011/jun/14/2/major-heroin-bust-reported-in-polk-ar-237292/
Staying Papers The documentation that Vargas obtained over the years - a fake green card, a fake passport, a driver’s license - allowed him to remain in the U.S. In Oregon, a friend provided a mailing address.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/06/26/magazine/26illegal2.html
ICE is no where to be found.
There are that many in California and Texas.
In fact at just one single Texas hospital in Dallas, about 1000 anchor babies and forced onto the tax payers, every single month.
The 11 million number is pure BS.
That eleven million number was trotted about over a decade ago.
“Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, who revealed he was an illegal immigrant “.
BZZZZZT Wrong!
He was exposed as the illegal INVADER he is, he took a good job from an American citizen, for years, and should be deported immediately after seizure of all his illegally acquired assets.
Also do not give me that “Hard Working immigrant” line, the true hard work would be cleaning up their own home countries rather than taking the easier way out by sneaking into the U.S.
Enough American educated and experienced illegals have been sent home that if any were truly hard working we should have seen significant progress in cleaning out the corruption in their government.
We should have seen progress in sanitation and education, farming, infrastructure, legal procedure, etc.
Apparently they actually PREFER the corruption, poverty, lawlessness and filth.
None appear to be making any effort to apply what they learned while here.
And yet we're constantly told that they are terrified and cowering in the shadows. Truth is, illegals are incredibly arrogant and revel in rubbing our noses in it.
It would be funny as hell if a new conservative president made a point of simply enforcing existing law, starting with all these “heroes” who have attracted media publicity to themselves.
Call it Operation “Whack-a-Mole”, begin by simply rounding up the ones who have gleefully drawn media attention to themselves and make an example of them.
Several hundred high-profile cases going down all across the country simultaneously. The psychological effect would be stunning. We would also find out that all these “immigrant rights” groups are not as all-powerful as they like us to think. They would find their resources overtaxed, especially if they were themselves investigated and found to be violating the laws against aiding lawbreakers.
The histrionic screams of the liberal media would be quite useful as an unwitting megaphone amplifying the panic among the rest of the illegal population. As they would see all these people who thought they were untouchable being ruthlessly deported.
That would constitute a good Phase 1 of dealing with the problem.
From your lips to Her ears.
Enforcing existing law - an outstanding place to start.
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