Posted on 10/19/2006 4:25:08 PM PDT by lancer
I respectfully submit the following commentary on illegal immigration for your benefit and consideration. I was not only born and raised in California, but was a San Diego police officer from the late 60's through the early 90's. More specifically, I was a police supervisor from 1976 on, and was head of the police department's anti-gang unit during the latter 70's.
There is a saying, "As California goes, so goes the rest of the country." In the matter of illegal immigration, Pennsylvania's leaders would better serve its citizens by not following California's lead. It would be my pleasure to discuss any of these issues with you or answer any questions you may have.
In the mid-70's the City of San Diego ordered all its police officers, me included, to stop detaining - or even questioning - the illegal aliens we frequently encountered in the course of our duties. Ignore the issue of illegal immigration altogether, the directive said. The reason for this new order? The city had come under ferocious attack for its long-standing, reasoned policy towards illegal aliens. Along with the threat of lawsuits, such words as "racism", "xenophobia," "bigotry" and "discrimination" were being bandied about by shadowy, strangely-aligned illegal alien advocacy groups from both sides of the border. The common denominator linking these leftists was their alliance with the American Civil Liberties Union. And they all kept to the same script, as they do even today; they would never acknowledge that the only issue on the table was illegal Mexican immigration. None of the city's leaders at that time - or since then, for that matter - had the stomach for the vitriolic, in-your-face gutter fight these belligerents were looking for. Against all common sense, the city put its head in the sand and capitulated to the inflammatory rhetoric of a few, loud militants....to the detriment of its own citizens' best interests.
By the late 70's, the unabated flow of illegal aliens into San Diego resulted in the melt down of its criminal justice system. The jails were filled beyond capacity, and - because of an ACLU lawsuit - under a court order to start releasing criminals, including illegal aliens, into the streets. Prosecutors and the courts were overwhelmed, unable to keep up with the load. Mexican street gangs comprised of illegal aliens were on the rise in all parts of the city. The police department responded to this crisis, in part, by instituting a policy wherein only violent offenders and felony suspects actually went to jail. Those arrested for misdemeanor crimes, including illegal aliens with no local address or identification, were issued "citations" on the spot and told to appear in court at a later time. That policy, of course, only served to exacerbate the already sky-rocketing crime rate. And though there was indisputable proof that the root cause of the crisis was illegal immigration, none of the city's leaders had the personal courage to actually do anything about it for fear of being tagged "racist" or "bigot." It was around that time San Diegans were beginning to hear those slurs from a new quarter - the Mexican Consulate's office.
In the early 80's, San Diego taxpayers learned that Mexican children were entering the United States daily to attend local public schools. At the end of the school day, these children would walk across the border and return to their homes in Mexico. Outrage over the fact California taxpayers were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the public education of foreigners was lost to those now familiar screams of "racism," "bigotry" and...because they were children..."mean-spiritedness." The local school boards said it wasn't their problem to address, that laws prevented them from asking such intrusive questions as, "Who are you and where do you live?" when enrolling students. And, they added, what harm was there really in educating those poor Mexican kids. They also said they needed a lot more tax money to hire new Spanish-speaking teachers because, inexplicably, more and more of their students didn't speak a word of English.
By the late 80's, the illegal immigration crisis brought San Diego's tax-paid social services programs to their knees. Local tax money earmarked for indigent emergency health care - money set aside as the last safety net for those resident citizens who needed it most - was being spent almost exclusively on the flood of illegal aliens now in the city. Compounding the problem was the U.S. Border Patrol's new policy of "unarresting" in-custody illegals when they needed medical care, and dropping them off at the entrances to local hospital emergency rooms. This new practice, of course, was the federal government's ingenious way of avoiding its legal responsibility for medical bills incurred by in-custody illegal aliens. As the tax money dried up, hospitals received less and less government reimbursement for the medical care given to illegals - who had no money, no health insurance, and no means whatsoever of ever paying their medical bills. Politically savvy hospital administrators weren't about to take the steps necessary to remedy the situation, and risk incurring the public wrath of the illegals' advocacy groups. They chose instead to artificially inflate medical care costs across the board for everyone. That prompted the health insurance companies to raise premium rates for their policy holders, and it was once again demonstrated to San Diegans the many ways in which they were going to pay for the presence of illegal aliens in their city.
By the early 90's, San Diego's long-running illegal alien crisis had become California's nightmare. Public policy regarding illegal immigration degenerated into theater of the absurd throughout much of the state. Because of fraudulent voter registration schemes concocted by those leftists, illegal aliens were now voting in both local and federal elections - and in one case, actually making the difference in a congressional district race. Many communities witnessed the collapse of entire medical care systems under the weight of illegal immigration alone. Billions of public dollars were being spent annually just for the medical care and education of illegals. It was driving the state ever closer to bankruptcy, and severely strained the bounds of civil discourse on the issue. It was time to draw a line in the sand, and millions of California citizens did just that in 1994. Through the state's initiative process, a grass-roots proposition was put on the statewide ballot which would finally and absolutely put an end to "business as usual." It sought to end all government subsidies to illegals in the state, including public welfare, public housing, public education, and all medical care except in the cases of true emergencies. In spite of the leftists' rabid campaign of slurs and name calling, common sense ruled the day and Proposition 187 overwhelmingly passed on a two-to-one vote.
The victory was short-lived. The ink had barely dried on the governor's signature when the leftists found a single sympathetic federal judge to claim the new law unconstitutional. Since then, California's illegal immigration nightmare has blossomed to become this nation's cancer, and it's destroying the very fabric of our society. No matter how you slice it, there is nothing benign about immigration fraud, identification fraud, welfare fraud, voting fraud, social security fraud, and tax evasion. It all boils down to deceit and theft. Illegal aliens in our country today are committing these crimes on such a massive scale it boggles the mind, and no community in this nation will survive the scourge. There is nothing an illegal alien can bring to a community by way of beneficial productivity which will compensate for his/her drain on that community's social services, criminal justice, educational, and medical care systems. It's never happened and it isn't going to happen. Local tax dollars are a community's life-blood and are not infinite. History has shown that illegal immigration bleeds that critical supply dry. In spite of these facts, and against all logic, politicians across the country are seriously debating whether to give illegal aliens the "right" to vote, the "right" to higher education, the "right" to state-issued drivers' licenses, and even the "right" to accumulate social security credits while using stolen or counterfeit identification. The leftists' mantra, "immigration (illegal immigration, if you please!) is the sole responsibility of the federal government," is a lie. The federal government has proven over the past 30 years it isn't capable of, or even willing to, control illegal immigration. The ugly fact of the matter is - the feds alone will not, and cannot, do it. This is precisely why the battle against illegal immigration is an absolute and moral responsibility of every elected official in this country, including county commissioners and local township supervisors.
I've been a student of illegal immigration since the late 60's, when I was a rookie cop assigned to the police department's border sector adjoining Tijuana, Mexico. During those early years, and over the span of my police career, I witnessed events and had first-hand, personal experiences with illegal immigration few other Pennsylvanians have had. And I've seen the devastating consequences illegal immigration can have on a city, a region, an entire state. These are the lessons I learned and my advice to anyone concerned about the presence of illegal aliens in their community:
§ Be suspicious of public officials - with control over tax dollars - who claim illegal immigration isn't a crisis....or worse yet say, "it isn't MY crisis." Hold on to your wallet if you see that happening!
§ Be skeptical of any media that reveals a transparent leftist agenda in support of illegals. You'll recognize this when the editorials and reporting are slanted and one-sided, and when illegal aliens are continually referred to as "undocumented workers" and characterized as victims rather than suspects.
§ And be very, very wary of those self-appointed, self-proclaimed "community activists" who profess to be the guardians of ethnic sensitivities - but whose real motives for involvement are murky and self-serving. These will be the ones who seem to be afforded a little too much legitimacy and garner a little too much attention by the media. These will be the only ones spewing personal insults and slurs, and threatening lawsuits at township meetings.
Finally, if nothing you've read here has hit a familiar chord or raised a flaming red flag, consider this scenario - which isn't all that implausible, believe me....There is only one tax dollar left in the government treasury which is to be used for the public good. You are an honest, law-abiding American citizen and desperately need that dollar just to survive the day. So does the criminal illegal alien who just snuck into your country and is standing in line next to you. Your only witness to this event is your personal sense of decency and fair play. His witnesses include an ACLU attorney, several "community activists" holding inflammatory placards, and a few media types with cameras rolling. And the bureaucrat, about to decide who gets that last dollar bill, tells you the law forbids him from acknowledging the obvious in making a decision.
L. Ernie Foucault, Sergeant (Retired)
San Diego Police Department
Bttt!
Bump!!!
Bump!!!
Good post!
Thank you all for the interest in the post, but truth is, I'd eather live in a country where such reportage was unnecessary.
What happened to California is no different than what's happened to Wheaton, Gaithersburg and Takoma Park Maryland...all in Montgomery County.
Californians should grin and continue to bear it.
The USA needs more taxpayers thanks to Roe v Wade and the switch from an industrial economy to a service economy.
I still see beautiful blonde and tanned Californians so it can't be THAT bad.
Can it?
Juan doesn't pay taxes.
I guess if many of us share your level of concern, we'll find out soon enough...
(You wouldn't be one of those politicians he speaks of...would you?) :-)
But their children will possibly keep Social Security solvent.
And....they'll speak English fluently.
I live in San Diego, You are in fly over country.
You are like a holocaust denier.
Please don't show off your ingorance.
AND, they will walk out of local high schools in solidarity with their illegal brethren, and hang the American flag upside down. They will refuse to stand for the national anthem at a local football game. They will become politicians and vote to give benefits that rightfully belong to US citizens to their illegal brethren...and so on ad infinitum.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
And they will work cheap, right.
Congratulations! You win the prize for most idiotic statement of the day.
My message was stop complaining.
You re-elect the officials that allow it for what? Reads like 36 years.
Our political correctness run amok because a rich country shouldn't really refuse to give an education to some disadvantaged Mexican children that crossed the border every day for the privilege.
Education grew to health care and here we are.
Yet... it didn't happen in a vacuum. Why suddenly demand a 180 out of the current crop...a republican majority?
How can you hand the democrats a campaign issue of such magnitude? That's a huge voting bloc there to lose by alienating them.
And we sure do a good job of that in here, don't we? /s
So, I say, let's make lemonade out of the lemons and welcome them.
Seal the borders all you want, but don't send anybody back.
We are talking thousand and thousands of illegals in the San Diego school system.
They refuse to learn English, their culture and language is taught in our schools and our history & culture is tossed aside.
It is also costing the tax payers millions to educate and the large percent of them drop out early in high school.
Most are not like other cultures who believe in education.
Gang banging, etc. is their thing.
When on the buses, you see a lot of Mexican gals around 19 with two, 3 or more kids, paid for and supported by San Diego Tax payers. They don't work because they have their kids on this side of the border so the kids are US citiz. and the illegals get welfare, foodstamps, medical, etc.
I know loads of liberal democrats who are fed up with this also.
The drug cartels are running the show as seen on FOX the past days and on Rep. Peter Kings web site.
The cartels are the same as the mafia only worse.
There are more and more beheadings, kidnapping is sport to them, I could go on for pages on this.
Maybe the grandson of the current druglord will grow up to be president.
I find it hard to believe it's a bad as you describe. Aren't you exaggerating just a little bit?
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