Mayday-Mayday

Illegal aliens from Mexico are pouring into our country. It’s the federal government’s responsibility, but the feds don’t really want to stop the invasion. Washington feigns concern and wants to appear to be trying to prevent it - while avoiding measures that would actually stop it, like building a real fence. This has been true for both Democrats in the Obama Administration and Republicans in the Bush Administration, as well as congresses controlled by both parties for twenty-five years. Citizens, meanwhile, are getting angrier by the day. They resent pressing one for English in their own country.Somewhere between twelve and twenty million illegals are here already and tens of thousands sneak in every month, mostly into border states like Arizona. They go on welfare, work under the table, or with a stolen identity. They use hospital emergency rooms when sick or injured and don’t pay. They send children to public schools costing at least $10-15 thousand a year per child. They fill prisons at $45,000 a year per prisoner. Hospitals in border states are going bankrupt. School budgets are at the breaking point. According the Federation for Immigration Reform, California’s illegal aliens cost that state more than $10 billion in 2004. Today, California is nearly bankrupt.Illegal immigrant crime is exploding. A month ago, an Arizona rancher and his dog were shot and killed. The murder seems to have been the final straw leading to the passage of SB 1070, a law allowing making illegal immigration a state crime in Arizona. Demonized by leftists as Nazi-like, the law makes illegal immigration a major issue for the November elections. The left sponsored demonstrations in cities all over the country last Saturday, May 1st. I drove down to the one in Portland, Maine to watch.The Arizona law was definitely the aiming point for the few hundred in attendance. They came in from two directions on Congress Street singing a song in Spanish I couldn’t understand and chanting “Si se puede!” I looked that up and it means: “Yes we can!” or “It is possible!” Along with Hispanics and blacks carrying signs were white people with rainbow flags, SIEU and Obama T-shirts, Palestinian keffiyehs, and lots of tattoos. It was slickly organized by the Maine People’s Alliance, a left-wing group of “community organizers” with offices in Portland, Lewiston, and Bangor. The MPA pushes the usual panoply of government-expanding issues like socialized medicine, special rights for homosexuals, fluorescent light bulbs, amnesty for illegal aliens, and more taxes to pay for it all. It’s affiliated with national “progressive” groups like USAction and has an annual budget of over $800,000 with which it lobbies for the above issues.Portland, Maine demonstration

Mike Tipping, communications director for MPA, gave me a press kit which included endorsements by the Maine Civil Liberties Union. He told me his fiance would have had to wait ten years to get into the country if she were not engaged to him, implying that legal restrictions on immigration aren’t reasonable. “There aren’t enough busses to deport all the immigrants living here,” he said, and “families shouldn’t be broken up.”“Then let’s deport them intact,” I said.

He paused and he stared at me for a second. I had tipped my hand.

“But I don’t think that would be necessary,” I continued. “If we fined their employers and stopped giving them welfare, illegals would leave the same way they came.”

“Don’t you think it’s time for immigration reform?” he asked.

“You mean amnesty,” I said. “President Reagan did that twenty-five years ago, but 12-20 million more illegal aliens have sneaked in here since. No. I don’t think it’s time for amnesty. Arizona is doing what it has to do because the federal government isn’t doing its job.”

After the demonstrators gathered in Congress Square, various speakers railed against SB 1070 as “racial profiling.” However, the Arizona law only requires immigrants stopped for something else to show proof they’re in our country legally. Consider how many times we citizens must show our papers in the course of living our lives: at airports, banks, traffic stops, checkout counters, etc. It’s not racial profiling. Liberal Affirmative Action policies are racial profiling.MPA’s Tipping would seem to allow anyone from anywhere in whatever numbers to sneak the United States and stay - and anyone who objects is accused of racism. Hypocritical Mexican President Felipe Calderone called SB 1070 “racial discrimination,” although Mexico’s own laws against illegal immigrants coming into Mexico from poorer countries to his south are much tougher. US law requires resident aliens to carry registration papers on them at all times, yet President Obama says Arizona’s law would “undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.” Presidential hypocrisy is rampant on both sides of the border.On May 1st four years ago, illegals carried Mexican flags and “Amnesty” signs in similar demonstrations. That indicated where their true loyalties lay but it backfired with Americans who watched it on television. Leftist organizers have since corrected that mistake. All I could see this year in Portland and elsewhere were American flags and “Immigration Reform” signs. Appearances have changed, but their motive hasn’t.

May 1st is Mayday, and Mayday is a warning. We’ll see how it plays out in November.

ADDENDUM:
For those who question immigrant welfare benefits, consider this from the Center For Immigration Studies: