Author: The W.H. shouldn't make exceptions for special cases such as Carlos Roa, an illegal immigrant who walk from Miami to D.C. to support the Dream ACT. The need to enforce immigration laws

I’m the first to acknowledge that among the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, many are hardworking, law-abiding members of our society. A very small percentage were brought here by their parents, and did not choose to break the law themselves.

The media endlessly reports on these hard cases to implicitly — and sometimes explicitly — promote bad laws, like the DREAM Act and in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.


The latest of these hard cases involves the former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, who revealed he was an illegal immigrant in a new New York Times Magazine article.

His account is compelling. Vargas is a Philippines native. His parents sent him at age 12 to live with his grandparents in the U.S., in 1993 He excelled in school, went to college and pursued a career in journalism — eventually sharing a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. He did not know he was here illegally until age 16, when he applied for a driver’s license.

By revealing himself to be an illegal immigrant, Vargas has won praise from liberal immigration advocates. A blogger for the San Francisco Chronicle called it, the “most courageous act I’ve seen in quite a while” — and then calls for passage of the DREAM Act. “The bar,” Noreen Malone of New York magazine argued, “just got a whole lot higher for describing personal essays as ‘brave.’”

Vargas writes, “I don’t know what the consequences will be of telling my story.”

I’ll be glad to tell him. There’s a good chance that he will get legal status if a liberal senator writes him a private bill, or if the Obama administration grants him deferred action. I am absolutely certain that no one from Immigration and Customs Enforcement will detain him, and no immigration judge will deport him. It is already the administration policy to use “prosecutorial discretion” for illegal immigrants who could be eligible for the DREAM Act.

Vargas wrote that he was inspired to go public because of four illegal immigrant college students’ decision to take a high-profile walk from Miami to D.C. in support of the DREAM Act. Of course, although they were publicizing the fact that they were here illegally, no ICE agents took action against them.

Every month, there seems to be a news story about a young illegal immigrant publicly flaunting illegal status. They testify before Congress, give graduation speeches, organize rallies and, in some cases, break additional laws by blocking traffic.

One popular sign that illegal immigrants hold up at rallies reads “Undocumented, Unafraid” for good reason. To the best of my knowledge, not one of the dozens of illegal immigrants who publicly disclosed their status has been deported, or even detained, by the ICE.

I truly sympathize with Vargas’ story, but there is nothing courageous about revealing himself. The worst consequence he may face is another Pulitzer prize.

If we had a president who was serious about enforcing our immigration laws, it would be another story.

Last week, I read about a less sympathetic immigrant, Pablo Bergen. Adding to his already long criminal history, Bergen was arrested as the leader of a 33-man heroin trafficking operation. Despite being in this country illegally from the Dominican Republic, he is receiving $900 a month in food stamps.

But the only news story I could find about Bergen was from the Tampa ABC affiliate.

Meanwhile, an informal search of Google News found more than 600 stories about Vargas

Of course, most illegal immigrants are not drug-dealing. welfare abusers like Bergen. But they are also not Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, who did not even know they were coming here illegally.

Almost 10 years ago, I was at the center of one these hard case controversies, when the Denver Post ran a sob story about Jesus Apodaca, an illegal immigrant honor student, who could not afford college.

I found out the story had been planted by the Mexican consulate in Denver, to build support for a bill that would give illegal immigrants in-state tuition, a privilege denied U.S. citizens from other states.

I contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service and asked if they planned to do anything when the name, picture and high school of a self-professed illegal immigrant was published on the cover of a major newspaper. Politicians and media went into an uproar over how insensitive I was.

Ultimately, no action was taken against the Apodacas. A donor to then-Gov. Bill Owens paid for him to go to college. He is still living here without consequence.

At the time, I said the Apodacas “seem like good people, people I’d be happy to have as a neighbor and friends. But it is irrelevant to the issue of whether they have broken the law.”

In response, a columnist at the Rocky Mountain News compared me to Inspector Jarvet from “Les Misérables,” “the literary symbol of doctrinaire and unfeeling justice.”

Unlike the France of “Les Misérables” — where Jean Valjean spends 19 years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread — our immigration laws are hardly authoritarian. We offer more legal immigration visas and more civil protections to illegal immigrants than any other country.

Most illegal immigrants are not bad people. But our immigration policy must be based on what is in the best interest of all U.S. citizens. With 9 percent unemployment, a crumbling common culture, overcrowded schools and hospitals and trillion dollar deficits, we cannot afford to ignore our immigration laws — even in the hard cases.

Tom Tancredo served as a Republican congressman from Colorado 1999-2009, and was chairman of the bipartisan Immigration Reform Caucus. He now serves as chairman of Team America PAC and the Rocky Mountain Foundation.

This article tagged under: Immigration

Jose Vargas