Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures
Posted on April 26, 2010
The Mexican drug war has spilled out over the border in the Southwest and has helped precipitate the new immigration law that just was signed into law in Arizona.Washington activists can cry out about the unfairness of the law all they want, but until the President and his Administration take seriously the threat posed by the Mexican drug gangs, the people of Arizona will have no choice but to take extreme measures.
70 percent of the people of Arizona support the law just enacted. That tells you something right there.
Both Arizona and New Mexico were in the top eight most violent states in the union last year. Most of that can be attributed to the fact that the drug war has spilled out over the border.
I was listening to NPR (the voice of communism as my friends used to call it) and the story I heard was chilling. The drug gangs now control the illegal passage ways into the United States, and if someone wants to come to America to find their version of the American dream, they can come illegally, which is very unlikely (given the cost and the time involved) or they can cut a deal with the drug lords. Most cut a deal with the drug lords, and they become a mule for illegal narcotics.
It doesn’t help that the President has basically said that he won’t enforce the pot laws anymore, which serves to increase to demand, as casual pot smokers decide that they might as well toke as long as the Feds don’t mind.
I don’t care if we ban pot or we don’t ban pot. I can make the case either way. What I don’t want to happen is that smoking weed is still technically illegal, but not enforced at the federal level. No situation makes the drug lords happier. They get more customers, but they get no legal competitors.
The President has called the new law in Arizona racial profiling, and maybe it is.
But the fact of the matter is that law enforcement in Arizona has to do something to get the situation under control. They have to bring law and order to a state that is careening out of control.
I believe we need comprehensive immigration reform. I believe we need to get more high-value immigrants (engineers, etc) into the country. I believe we should work out the Irish immigrant situation (lots of long-time Irish immigrants shouldn’t be kicked out of the country and should be able to get back to the old country every once in a while). I believe we need to expand the Farm guest worker program. And I believe we should increase the number of legal immigrants into this country.
But I also believe that we need to secure our southwestern border and need to offer more help to the Mexican government to deal with their drug war.
Franklin Roosevelt, when talking about the lend-lease program that he was pushing at the beginning of the Second World War, once compared the program to a fire hose that should be lent to a neighbor to put out a fire. “What do I do in such a crisis?” I don’t say, ... ‘Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it’ ... I don’t want $15 — I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.”
Well, there is a fire burning down in Mexico and many of our citizens are getting burned in Arizona and in other states on the border. The President is ignoring the fire and blaming those who are getting burned for their efforts to put out the flames.
He should start focusing on fighting the fire and stop doing things that will make the situation worse, like not enforcing the drug laws on one hand while working to stop the Arizonans from enforcing their laws on the other.
Arizona needs some help establishing law and order. The President should start helping.