There are a lot of really offensive aspects to the illegal immigration debate. We refer to a couple of them in the bottom of a prior post. What really ticks us off at the moment are these two points, however: (a) the discussion highlights how many US laws are a joke — you can get arrested for smoking, but you will not be apprehended for being in the country illegally; and (b) we get to see on display how incredibly incompetent and foolish the government is, while simltaneously being lectured by our government elites on the respect we should have for the awful job they are doing, and the ‘family values’ we should exhibit. Mark Steyn makes the points well:

Here’s another place where family values stops: The rubble of the World Trade Center. Deena Gilbey is a British subject whose late husband worked on the 84th floor: On the morning of Sept. 11, instead of fleeing, he returned to the building to help evacuate his co-workers. A few days later, Mrs. Gilbey receives a letter from the INS noting that as she’s now widowed her immigration status has changed and she’s obliged to leave the country along with her two children (both U.S. citizens). Think about that: Having legally admitted to the country the terrorists who killed her husband, the U.S. government’s first act on having facilitated his murder is to add insult to grievous injury by serving his widow with a deportation order. Why should illegal Mexicans be the unique beneficiaries of a sentimental blather about “family values” to which U.S. immigration is otherwise notoriously antipathetic?….

Meanwhile, U.S. immigration is cracking down on classical violinists. Don’t ask me why. Presumably, Brahms’ violin concerto falls into the ever dwindling category of jobs Americans will do. At any rate, the Halle Orchestra of Manchester, one of England’s great orchestras, has just canceled its 2007 concerts at Lincoln Center. Why? Because all 80 musicians plus the 20 support staff are required — under new “homeland security” regulations — to be interviewed personally at the U.S. Embassy in London before each visa can be issued. They can’t go en masse on the tour bus: They have to make individual appointments stretched out over several weeks. And they can’t go to the local U.S. consulate in Manchester because — and this detail is worth savoring five years after 9/11 — the consulate’s computers cannot handle the biometric data. The orchestra worked out that in train fares and accommodation it would cost about $80,000 to get the visas and decided it would rather cancel the tour. The good news is that Lincoln Center subscribers don’t have to worry about the tuba player having plastic explosives packed down there. The bad news is, if a rogue tuba player ever breaks through the system, Homeland Security won’t be able to e-mail his data back to the U.S. consulate in Manchester for a background check.

We’re now expected to believe that this system will be able to stop hassling 68-year-old cello players long enough to process an extra 10 million-plus immigration applications, and that furthermore an agency that keeps no reliable records of legal entry into the United States will somehow be able to determine on the basis of utility bills whether this or that undocumented alien falls into amnesty-eligibility category.

The US government elites would do well to lighten up on the lectures and tighten up on the border. Here’s a suggestion: when the US does as good a job controlling immigration as Mexico, then maybe our government officials can have something to say that is actually worth listening to.

The US government is making one of the most grevious mistakes possible for a government when it so publicly and extravangantly reduces respect for the rule of law.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 9th, 2006 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, Law, Republicans, idiots!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.