I&I Editorial

Americans’ steadfast adherence to the rule of law separates the United States from almost every other country, even other free societies. There is nothing more contrary to the rule of law, however, than the current lack of control over our southern border, across which thousands now pass illegally every day.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the young French diplomat who toured America extensively in 1831 then wrote De la démocratie en Amerique, the most celebrated portrait of the young nation’s society, marveled at the operation of the rule of law here.

He wrote that “in America one man never obeys another man, only justice or the law.” And Tocqueville observed: “I doubt whether crime evades punishment less often in any other country … During my stay in the United States, I saw the inhabitants of a county where a major crime has been perpetrated spontaneously form committees with the aim of arresting the guilty man and handing him over to the courts.”

That spirit is why the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that began days ago against thousands of illegal aliens who have been served final deportation orders from the courts are a political loser for the Democrats so convinced of the opposite.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, rising in the polls in her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, last week unveiled “a sweeping plan to change the country’s immigration system” and decriminalize illegal immigration, while giving away $1.5 billion “to fund programs targeting crime, poverty, sexual violence, and trafficking in Central America” – the operative principle being that if you can’t end a crisis, normalize it.

Warren’s rival for the nomination, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, also rising in the polls, last week expressed the left’s perspective on illegal entry with perfect elegance. “We have to have a secure border,” she told ABC, “but I am in favor of saying that we’re not going to treat people who are undocumented [and] cross the borders as criminals, that is correct.”

So illegal immigration becomes akin to a traffic ticket.

Instead, Harris said, “we have got to have policy that is about passing comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway toward citizenship.”

A Pathway Toward Permanent Socialist Rule

That pathway is a yellow brick road to amnesty, on which perhaps as many as 20 million illegals are off to see the wonderful ballot box as final destination, the vast majority of them certain to vote for liberal Democrats. Those who broke the law get away with it. They begin their legal residency here, after years of illegal residency, laughing at our system and knowing that crime pays.

As much as most of the Democrats running for the White House want to depict them fantastically as Gestapo-like round-ups, ICE’s raids are delivering a message that is exactly the opposite from “pathway to amnesty.” As Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, remarked on Fox last month, “if you can’t deport an illegal alien who has a valid and final order of removal that’s adjudicated by an immigration judge, who can you deport?”

Until our federal law enforcement system proves it can deport large numbers of aliens with final orders to, paraphrasing President Trump referring to the wrong people, “go back to where they came from,” all will see that our laws are made to be broken, not respected.

But we can’t wait until authorized deportations are routine, a wall is completed and functioning effectively, and the U.S. government has full control of who establishes residency here, before embarking a long-overdue debate over the level of legal immigration.

Democrats far nearer to the center than “The Squad” consider even launching such a debate to be racist. But the fact is that lily-white legal immigrants from socialist-oriented Europe, boasting high-level professional skills coveted by American business, will as Americans vote left-of-center as often, or nearly so, as the invaders from the south, supposedly feared and loathed for their brown skin.

Ethnicity is not what the debate must address but the permanent turn to the left America will take only a few years down the road if the present high levels of immigration continue. The public must become aware that this trend will nullify the U.S. Constitution’s limitations on the powers of government – even if the text of our Constitution remains formally intact.

“America was founded on liberty and independence, not government coercion, domination, and control,” President Trump told Congress in February. “We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Unless immigration is reduced, in just a few years a future president will look back upon this affirmation of America’s founding principles as famous last words.

— Written by Thomas McArdle

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