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 Editorials | Opinions | May 2005 
Border Crisis Costly To Mexican-Americans, Too
 Hector Ayala - Tucson Citizen
| | Few areas in North America boast such natural diversity, yet cutting across this varied landscape is a unifying problem: Ecologically, Arizona's entire border region is getting hammered by wave after wave of illegal border crossers. |
These days, being a Mexican-American has become a perilous thing, especially if we show an allegiance for our country. The traditional agenda would require all Latinos to think alike regarding illegal immigration.
According to defenders of open borders, we must all agree that illegal immigrants are only reclaiming their land, or that they all come here to work, or that they deserve no scrutiny regarding requirements that even citizens have to abide by.
To think otherwise makes us racist and insensitive. But to many taxpaying American citizens, the illegal immigrant multitudes seem to be getting commensurately more rights than American citizens, and that's making people angry.
Illegal immigration is a serious problem that neither side of the political spectrum seems to want resolved.
Marshaled by militant Chicano separatists and sundry other activists and sympathy peddlers - like the nefarious ACLU, which sees illegal immigrants as weak and defenseless players unfairly placed on an uneven field - the left doesn't really care for the sovereignty of our nation.
Such a flippant attitude regarding our nation's laws is becoming less and less supportable for the American people.
The American taxpayer is beginning to resent so much money being spent on this issue.
We live in a nation of immigrants, yes, but an important point that gets lost in the shuffle is that legal and illegal immigration are two different things.
On the one hand, we want to help the immigrant; on the other, we see the illegal immigrant as a person who has little consideration for our laws or the expense - at least $10 billion a year spent on schooling, hospitals and medical care for more than 8 million illegal immigrants, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
And what's with the sanctuary cities, where no one is allowed to give up illegal immigrants? Cops can't; citizens can't. They have free citizenship rights, thanks to sensitive groups interested in political correctness.
For those in the baby seal camp, there is also the extreme cost in destruction of forest and protected wilderness. Saguaros are being destroyed.
"People trampling prehistoric stone sleeping circles created 10,000 years ago by Amerindians on their salt trail have eroded them away," reports Julie Watson of The Associated Press.
Not to mention diminished numbers of fauna, such as the pronghorn elk, and tons of garbage and trampling on private and government land that will take decades to bring back to normal, even if the trampling were to stop immediately.
Illegal immigration is patently unfair, and neither the American left nor the leaders of Mexico choose to resolve the problem.
For Mexico President Vicente Fox, accommodation of Mexican illegal immigrants is necessary, to be accepted without question, especially considering the billions of dollars sent back to his country. That is money that does not enter into our economy.
We have injustice piled on injustice, insult on insult, and the American people get little help from their own politicians. Instead, Ted Kennedy and John McCain get together to create a new amnesty bill for current illegal immigrants.
At this stage, deportation is neither practical nor politically expedient. Both parties see in illegal immigrants a fountain of votes, so that won't happen.
But there are the Minutemen, a good example of what ought to be happening and can be done by Americans with a real love for our country's sovereignty.
These are honest, concerned citizens who have exacted the attention of the government by showing how the issue ought to be handled.
These are not crazy, overzealous criminals, as the liberal media would have it, but the ultimate in neighborhood watch groups, as they say.
But the left want no part of that solution and, unfortunately, the right doesn't, either.
Of course, we could send the tab to the Mexican government. They could supply us prorated amounts of free oil per illegal immigrant. Or they could be held accountable for financial compensation based on the number of illegal immigrants. Such things could work and would take care of the economic problems.
But beyond those economic problems, another issue seems to grate the most. The problem many see as the most difficult is a philosophical one.
The one issue without which all others would pale is allegiance.
The American taxpayer doesn't like the idea that too many Mexican citizens end up in America with an arrogant attitude that they deserve to be here as much as any citizen.
They come with a sense of aversion to Americans and a resentment for our heritage that translates into a rude lack of allegiance - and they are applauded by liberal advocacy groups for it.
The American taxpayer has many economic problems with illegal immigrants, but the allegiance issue is definitely the worst.
Politicians need to understand that before the issue gets better, they will be required to make decisions that are sensible to American taxpayers if they expect to be re-elected. And that includes American taxpayers of Mexican descent, too. |
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