Although there are some heartbreaking stories of “otherwise innocent” illegal aliens being deported after living in the U.S. for 20 or more years, it must be remembered that these people would not have attracted the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were it not for the immigration crisis created by the Biden administration. The blame lies there.
That fact presents a clear opportunity for a humanitarian solution that satisfies the needs of the nation. There is room for granting leniency to some illegal aliens, but not for twenty million of them.
The political and social left, of course, has no desire to satisfy the needs of the nation, nor in fact does it care about humanitarian measures. Illegal aliens are, for the left, a tool to be exploited, whether for political purposes or for toilet-cleaning purposes, but not compassionately. The left opposes the deportation of anyone who arrived or overstayed in the U.S. illegally, even violent felons and terrorists.
The Republican Party, however, has a golden opportunity to display to independents and traditional (JFK) liberals that it can be compassionate in exceptional cases, while on the other hand being fair to the American people, whose jobs are being stolen by “otherwise innocent” illegal aliens.
Many of the “otherwise innocents” were, in fact, entrapped by the Biden administration, which actually sent airliners to foreign countries, loaded them up with emigrants, and shipped them to various localities in the U.S. with false promises. They should be removed but treated with the knowledge that, except for those guilty of violent crimes, they were victimized by officials of the U.S. government. Those officials, complicit in this crisis, should be held to account.
Unfortunately, the “population well” has already been poisoned. Deporting twenty million illegal aliens is a massively difficult and expensive task, made the more so by Democrat politicians and by politically motivated obstructionist judges. Yet it must be done, or else a fatal precedent will have been set, which emboldens future government officials to further poison the nation.
There are many elements to the problem and therefore many elements of any solution. The terrible question is first and foremost: how to defeat the political enemies of those solutions. It can already be seen that they have clogged up the wheels of justice so badly that the restoration of sane immigration policy would require decades or more if we follow “normal procedure.” That is simply unacceptable if we are to survive as a republic.
Once any machinery has been similarly clogged up, the first step is to disassemble the gearworks and clean out the sludge. Doing that to a political system is not so easy. It cannot be done by normal procedure. That is the scary part.
History has shown that before a fatally flawed political body can be reformed, matters must first deteriorate to the point where the system must be completely reorganized. Problem people have to be fired — all of them. The system will not take kindly to that. Democrat congressmen have repeatedly used words that suggest violent resistance to policies with which they disagree. Riots will be the mildest form of their resistance if the present administration imposes any effective solution.
Among the elements that must be changed:
Only after all that can we safely afford to feel sorry for the “otherwise innocent” illegal aliens, and not before.
Yes, this is a fantasy wish list at the moment, but if the system deteriorates much further, we should have a plan in place and the means to execute it.
The Founders did.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.