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VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Letting the looters vote on who's for lunch

A recent column on the euphemisms used by proponents of illegal-immigrant amnesty brought some irate buzzing from all seven members of the Young Anarchists' League.

As near as I can figure, I'm "not allowed" to call for the enforcement of current immigration laws -- or possibly of any laws, even those few (like the immigration laws) enacted within the powers delegated to Congress under the Constitution -- because any such enforcement of the law amounts to some kind of "collectivist police state fascism" against people who have "not initiated force or fraud."


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  • I'm not sure how you cut through a border fence without "initiating force," or how you rent an apartment, register a car and go to work every day using someone else's Social Security number without "initiating fraud."

    I'm further "not allowed" to cite the cost to taxpayers of illegal alien trespassers swarming our public schools and hospitals, lest I be accused of somehow "supporting" tax subsidies for schools and hospitals.

    As it so happens, as a libertarian (not an anarchist) I do stand proudly and publicly against tax subsidies for schools and hospitals. People should pay their own way, and seek private charity if unable to do so. This would bring down costs for everyone. But that's not enough for my young anarchist friends. Instead, I am apparently obliged to pretend these current, swelling tax burdens do not exist.

    Perhaps this is an easier position to maintain if Mommy and Daddy still pay all your taxes, while allowing you to live in the basement, pounding your keyboard.

    I do remember hearing my friend Jackie Casey, former head of the college Libertarians at the University of Arizona, regaling me with tales of how she would join her mother to visit rental properties the family owned south of Tucson.

    Virtually every night, the human waves pouring north through the area would invade these residence units, using the sinks and other available surfaces for bodily activities which most of us reserve for actual toilets. Jackie and her mom would don elbow-length rubber gloves and go to work with their ammonia and bleach, cleaning up the human feces deposited by our noble wave of "harmless guest workers" who I'm "not allowed" to call trespassers because they "never initiative force or fraud" against anyone, merely going "where landlords and employers want them."

    "How does giving amnesty to a couple million knowing law-breakers not encourage the next set of knowing law-breakers, inviting them in no uncertain terms to 'Come on in and enjoy all the free stuff; after a few years you can get amnestied, too!'?" I asked in my June 14 column.

    "You say 'knowing law-breakers' like it's supposed to be a bad thing to knowingly break the law," objected one of my irate young correspondents. "Coming from someone who so vocally praises the American Revolution, this seems odd."

    Wow.

    Tara Cleveland was a lovely Las Vegas beauty pageant runner-up, an all-A student who wanted to go to law school and who sang at an annual "Spring Fling" employee party here at the Review-Journal 15 years ago. A short time later she was involved in a minor traffic accident in nearby North Las Vegas in which her car was struck by another car driven by two illegal Mexicans.

    These two honored Latino guest workers immediately thought, "What would brave freedom fighters like George Washington and Nathan Hale have done, in these circumstances?" So, of course, they ran away.

    Tara pursued and confronted the pair. At that point, channeling the spirits of brave patriots like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, these two south-of-the-border freedom fighters shot Tara Cleveland in the face with a double-barrelled shotgun, which had the predictable effect of killing her. They then stole her car and ran away again, eventually reaching Mexico.

    It sure puts me in mind of the courage, the principles, the self-sacrifice of the men who risked their lives and their personal fortunes to fight the American Revolution, doesn't it you?

    One of the pair, Joseph Villezcas, was turned over by Mexican authorities in 2006, after they determined he was not actually a Mexican national. He was returned to Nevada and convicted of second-degree murder. But the other, now-33-year-old Fernando Garcia Valenzuela, received sanctuary in Mexico.

    Clearly a genius on the order of Ben Franklin, freedom-fighter Valenzuela was not about to stay home, though. He was arrested in California in 1998 and 1999, though authorities there did not link him to the outstanding Las Vegas warrant, possibly because he used fake ID and a fake date of birth -- while somehow still not "initiating force or fraud," you understand.

    What an inspiration, that Fernando Garcia Valenzuela. They should put a flintlock in his hand and add his image to that statue of the Minuteman on Lexington green, don't you think?

    Valenzuela, who does not seem to be God's most brilliant criminal, was pulled over by police in Whiteville, Tenn., again last month, arrested on three felony drug charges, and -- guess what? -- finally linked to the 15-year-old warrant for the murder of Tara Cleveland.

    "I'm sure there are some individual illegal immigrants who are irresponsible," responded Buzz, one of the armchair anarchists who wrote to take me to task for my police-state leanings, last month. But "So what?" he continued. "I hear some native-born Americans are irresponsible, too."

    Where do these people live?

    The Federation for American Immigration Reform (www.fairus.org) reports "criminal," criminal aliens now account for 29 percent of prisoners in federal Bureau of Prisons facilities. Even if there are now 30 million illegals in this country -- sounds high to me, but who really knows? -- that means they're overrepresented in our prisons by a factor of three. And none of those inmates is in there for their initial crime of violating the immigration laws, you understand.

    Taxpayers now spend more than $1 billion per year maintaining "criminal," criminal aliens in federal and state prisons, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice.

    And ask those charged with collecting hospital bills how many illegal aliens make good faith efforts to pay the huge bills for the emergency rooms they use in lieu of paying a hundred bucks for a routine doctor visit.

    If there is no right to exclude looters from our midst; if we must allow free entry to anyone who wants to come to our community -- and the smallest community is my house -- and then allow them to decide how my stuff shall be redistributed "by majority vote," then freedom of a family of three can last only until four "guest workers" break down our front door and "vote" on how to divvy up the food in my refrigerator.

    I would wish Buzz a happy life in the Looters' Carnival he prescribes for all of us ... if only I were not forced at gunpoint to share it with him.

    Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "The Ballad of Carl Drega" and "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/ and http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/vin/

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    Titus wrote on July 09, 2009 01:37 PM: I'm going to ignore hss46's trollish race-baiting and just point out that the reason to deport illegal aliens is the same reason you'd “deport" someone who broke into your home: they're not supposed to be there. It really doesn't matter if they're only there to steal a little bit, a lot, or, in an amazing display of generosity, repair your busted appliances at no charge.

    The fact is, we don't know specifically who they are, and there's no special reason why lawbreakers should be allowed to jump the queue by virtue of being *successful* lawbreakers, not while there are honest immigrants waiting their turn.


    hss46 wrote on July 09, 2009 01:01 PM: Some facts:

    There are 12 million illegals, not 30 million. Fewer than 40% are mexican, with Canada being the single largest supplier of illegals to this country. There is no documented evidence that a higher percentage of illegals are paid in cash than citizens and legal residents are paid in cash. More cash is remitted to foreign countries (especially Europe) by legal residents/citizens than by illegals.

    If the big reason for wanting to deport illegals is that they don't pay taxes and suck our welfare dry, then make them legal, allow them to work at good jobs (not at Meat Packers in Iowa), collect taxes and they won't need welfare. But of course they still wouldn't be 'white' would they? Forget it, ship them back to Mexico.


    Titus wrote on July 08, 2009 02:43 PM: Rob, you can call reality "fear-mongering" if you like, but reality is impervious to your epithets. The evasion of reality is a standard tactic of the Left -- I'm saddened that anyone who purports to be a libertarian would resort to that.

    Should the ancient Greeks have had an open-door policy for the Persians? If they did, Western civilization would have perished in the cradle -- but hey, they'd have conformed to your perfect libertarian ideal.

    Very well, I leave the value of allowing America's enemies a free, lethal first-strike to the reader -- it needs no further commentary on my part.


    Bob_Robertson wrote on July 08, 2009 11:19 AM: Titus, I bow to your greater power of flag-waving fear-mongering.

    "Would you like Al Queda to walk among us, free...so they could destroy us all in one coordinated explosion"?

    Yes. In fact I do want individuals to walk where they will, free people, armed to their teeth if that's what they want.

    That's because I believe that the initiation of force against others is wrong. It's wrong for Al Quieda, it's wrong for me, and it's wrong for you, too.


    Titus wrote on July 07, 2009 10:55 AM: Rob asks, "...are you going to claim that the government owns all the land inside its borders?"

    Actually, it does -- apart from all the land not owned by private citizens. Public land is just that -- it's owned by "the public" and the government, on behalf of the people, determines who is and who is not allowed to be on "public" land at any given time.

    Further, the philosophy of "borders shouldn't exist" is naive and dangerous -- it would be granting de facto citizenship to the entire would. Would you like Al Queda to walk among us, free and unfettered with unknown amounts of ordnance so they could destroy us all in one coordinated explosion on some "blessed day?" If not, then we need borders, and those borders must mean something.

    Even libertarians embrace some form of government, of by and for the people, right? Which people? I would hope that refers to the home-grown citizens, educated under the light of liberty to appreciate freedom and respect the rights of others, and those who've immigrated here legally with honest intentions to embrace those values.

    Unchecked movements of persons unknown? In an ideal world where all of humanity has embraced American ideals, sure. In the real world, that's not an option.


    Bob_Robertson wrote on July 07, 2009 10:11 AM: Titus, are you going to claim that the government owns all the land inside its borders?

    Certainly property tax does lead one to believe that one's land isn't actually owned, but merely rented from government.

    Go ahead and protect your land from trespassers. I certainly wouldn't stop you from doing that, which is why I'm not angry with the owners of border properties who are doing that themselves.

    I object to being taxed to turn the US into a prison. It didn't work for the Iron Curtain, it won't work for the Mexican-American Wall either.

    So "we" can either address the underlying cause, or the abuse will just continue like any other disease when merely treating symptoms.


    Titus wrote on July 07, 2009 08:14 AM: Bob, your property line is, "an arbitrary barrier across some line on a map," as are the property lines of Americans who have their lands used as illegal entry points.

    If we're going to invoke libertarian stereotypes, allow me to conjure the New Hampshire-esque shotgun-toting one who will pump buckshot into anyone with the temerity to trespass onto his land.


    Bob_Robertson wrote on July 06, 2009 05:46 PM: So I guess I'm not a "Libertarian" any more, since I'm against both welfare and prohibitions on immigration.

    In fact, I'm against red-blooded Americans using tax-funded schools and hospitals. Roads too. Ooops, that's just too "libertarian", I'll get dismissed as an "anarchist" now.

    So I'm supposed to be for making immigration "illegal", just because of tax-funded freebees that such "illegal" immigrants utilize?

    That's just circular reasoning.

    Sounds a lot like sending American soldiers overseas to fight, kill and die in wars of aggression, and then claim that because I am opposed to wars of aggression I somehow don't "support the troops".

    Let's have a thought experiment: Why not have Massachusetts prevent immigration from the poor workers of Alabama, since we all know how they just go to Mass for the welfare goodies.

    But that would be a barrier to free travel and the division of labor that turned America into the largest free trade zone in the world, and fueled the engine of American industry to become the weathiest country in the world.

    Now, remind me why putting an arbitrary barrier across some line on a map is supposed to work, "this time"?

    To paraphrase someone Vin liked,

    "Hey, Vin Suprynowicz, Tear Down This Wall!"


    Interesting wrote on July 06, 2009 11:44 AM: http://www.reason.com/news/show/134579.html?bunfingers


    Titus wrote on July 06, 2009 09:08 AM: Note well how all the pro-illegal-immigration folks, when presented with a sound argument against their pro-chaos viewpoint, cease to defend the practice of illegally entering the country and predictably turn to red herrings and ad hominem attacks.

    They've clearly learned their "debate" skills second-hand from the tradition of Saul Alinsky, whether they know it or not. It shows their true color: red.

    Personally, I think the illegal alien issue has the potential to be the next flash-point for the next American crisis war. No one here (I hope) wants that, which is why it must be brought under control immediately.


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