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Vin Suprynowicz
Illegals get amnesty, rest are on the dole
I see where our drug police found and seized 4 acres of marijuana plants growing on Mount Charleston, northwest of Las Vegas. The pot farmers are bad people because they litter and sometimes hunt wildlife out of season, says Forest Service spokesgal Judy Suing.
Suing says the field was accidentally discovered by a police rescue helicopter months ago. By waiting all summer, authorities can claim more tonnage destroyed. It's unlikely that accidents led to the discovery of the six other local fields Suing says authorities are soon planning to exterminate, though.
In fact, these outfits spend millions of tax dollars overflying sparsely inhabited areas, employing high-resolution thermal imaging. Then, lots more is spent eradicating a harmless ditch weed that Nevadans -- like residents of a whole bunch of other states -- have said should be legalized for medical use and otherwise treated as the lowest law enforcement priority.
Because the courts keep ruling people can't sell this herb -- even where voters have legalized its use (see http://tinyurl.com/3gaboel) -- wouldn't it be more appropriate to simply publicize the location of the plants, so those who need them can go pick the stuff for free, without engaging in any federally regulated "interstate commerce"?
Elsewhere, people grow indoors. So the federal government has spent small fortunes on undercover operations to catch and imprison people who sell "grow lights," arguing before juries sworn in advance to enforce unconstitutional edicts that the sellers "must have known" buyers intended to use them to grow the harmless medicinal plant (http://www.fear.org/960115.html).
Meantime, legitimate American collectors of old firearms are frightened -- with good reason -- that if they try to sell off more than a few of their artifacts to other collectors they could be imprisoned by undercover feds for "operating a gun sales business without a federal firearms license" -- a license that's now virtually impossible for a part-time seller to acquire.
But how much high-tech aerial surveillance, how complicated a sting operation would it take to start rounding up the illegal aliens that swarm the southwestern United States? How hard would it be for federal agents to stop someone who's just wired money to Latin America from a storefront?
So what did the White House most recently announce? On Aug. 18, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Munoz blogged that the Department of Homeland Security will review its entire deportation caseload -- that's 300,000 cases -- to "clear out low-priority" cases." Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., likened the Obama policy to the stalled Dream Act, that being the up-to-age-35 amnesty that's opposed by most Americans and can't pass Congress.
Worse, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, points out the new policy will allow individuals who have been caught to apply for work permits, which makes getting arrested equivalent to winning the lottery, because "fellow illegal aliens who were not arrested don't get work authorization." Mr. Krikorian calls the new policy "administrative amnesty."
The problem here is not with Mexicans. Plenty of people of Hispanic extraction are great Americans and a vital part of our culture.
The problem is that American citizens increasingly fear a federal government that will spend vast sums to entrap, arrest and imprison them for violating edicts that are absurd, which do not enjoy majority informed public support, and which blatantly violate the Second, Ninth or 10th amendments -- while this same government won't lift a finger to round up and question likely immigration lawbreakers who anyone can spot in a typical day driving around town, to enforce immigration laws that are a specified constitutional duty of the central government.
This is supposed to enhance respect for the law? Sure, our immigration laws should be reformed. Right now, an entire restaurant can close, costing American jobs, if a chef has to return to his home country and then can't get back in because his work visa expired. Just ask Raj Patel at the Saffron restaurant, Craig Road and Tenaya Way, who now hopes to get his chef back from the Punjab and re-open in late October.
Before the Democratic Party turned "immigration reform" into a euphemism for "yet another amnesty," plenty of sensible souls were pointing out the need to bring back some version of the old bracero program, allowing willing Latin workers to come here and work the harvests, without bringing their families to burden our public schools and other welfare rolls.
One thing you have to say for a lot of these illegal immigrants is that they do come here to work. I regularly drive by the U-Haul lot at Rancho Drive and Jones Boulevard. Even in the heat of the Mojave summer, you'll frequently spot a dozen men squatting or standing in the vacant lot across Jones, hoping someone who's just rented a truck will wave them over and offer to pay them for a few hours of physical labor.
The official Southern Nevada unemployment rate now hovers around 14 percent. Nationally, black teenage unemployment is reported around 27 percent. Hereabouts, I'd bet it's closer to 35 percent. So why are the men hanging around in the sun, anxious for day work, almost exclusively Mexican?
I suspect the answer is the same as the answer to the question "Why are Americans so complacent as our screwed-up federal government claims to be in favor of job creation, at the same time it bans employment in manufacturing and sales of high-capacity toilets and shower heads; at the same time it blocks new oil wells and refineries and coal-fired power plants; at the same time it wastes tax money on subsidies and otherwise seeks to coerce automakers to churn out glorified electric golf carts that Americans refuse to buy; at the same time its EPA is gearing up to lay on American businesses a trillion dollars in new annual costs regulating virtually harmless ozone?"
The answer to both questions, I suspect, is that hardly any Americans today are truly unemployed, if you count as a form of employment "going to the post office to pick up your welfare check, your unemployment check or your check for some made-up 'disability' " (http://tinyurl.com/3ztlh83).
This is why the politicians are so terrified of slashing entitlement spending. Once those Americans are off the dole -- once they need work as badly as an illegal Mexican -- the question of why state-socialist government regulators are systematically destroying our job-producing economy will suddenly become a whole lot less academic.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.
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Migration is fine for birds, but humans, no way, not without a hall pass. All lands are federal lands, come down to the office for your snipe hunting license. Another record snipe harvest is forecast. A snipe in every pot, courtesy of your stimulus dollars.
If you expect the sheeple to do anything you will be waiting along time.....
.....Frankly, this country is due for a revolution.....and A BIG ONE AT THAT......politicians, special interests, law enforcement, and incompetence have ruined America....time to RID America of stupid policies like the failed drug war.....the unwarranted war....the wasteful spending......police audacity, incompetence, criminal actions, corruption and wasteful spending.........fearmongers.....religious insanity.....GREEDY people.....tolerance of gangs and gang activity per the constitution........failure to secure and control our southern border.....immigration failures......failure to repatiate ALL the illegals in a timely fashion......all this and more have ruined America.....
@David-
I didn't twist the word "liberty" at all. I used the definition of "liberty" and compared it to "freedom". There's a huge difference. A nation of liberty that can be overrun by people who may place less value on liberty will soon be a nation of former liberty.
Gov Jerry Brown cut funds for California's CAMP campaign against marijuana planting program. Sandoval seems to love the drug war, congratulating law enforcement over the biggest coke seizure in history (not the biggest.)
Brian and Gillespie, those people from California or Arizona can stay home, smoke their medical pot and gamble at the Indian Casinos or at card clubs. Pot is pretty well legal in Canada and Europe too. Some sin City. More laws here, pot, prostitution, etc. than many places.
Blah, just call it freedom of travel then. Everyone is born with it and it does not an organized (read: government approval) idea to do so. Way to twist the word "liberty" into something icky, GDR.
@John F-
Your response fell on its face in your 1st sentence- you have switched the concept of liberty for freedom. As abstractions, liberty is more concrete than freedom in that it speaks of a more narrow definition of freedom, which, as an absolute abstract is paradoxical (no one with choice can truly be completely free). Liberty is essentially freedom that exists under a society's organizing principals, and the original organizing principal of any society is for war. Requisite to that is a defining territory, without which any organizing principals, including those that guarantee certain freedoms (liberty) are like a body without a skeleton. If the founding documents existed solely as organized ideas looking for a country, they would have very little force on whatever society existed. It is the land and the idea that enable the execution of concept enshrined in those documents. Nobody is saying people can't immigrate to the U.S. They are saying they have the liberty to do so. A liberty, not a freedom, that puts terms on the freedom of movement in order to protect the borders that define the land tied to the concept of liberty. Take away the border and the concept is mortally weakened.
Vin, honey, someone been spiking your coffee with Kool-Aid?
Sorry, but your rant about the environmental changes shows who's paying your bills and has little to do with the "illegals" problem. It also shows you don't read your own paper.
Several times over the last few years, the RJ has published stories about the "hidden" taxes the undocumented pay as a "reward" for living and working in the valley. Property taxes for school are included in the rent one pays to a landlord. Police, fire and UMC? Out of sales taxes. Roads? Gas taxes (and we have some of the highest in the nation, though you wouldn't know it by looking at our streets). Utilities, phones, entertainment (10% "live entertainment tax" for a movie?!), fast food, etc. etc. etc. Even with a fake Social Security number, the money is collected and goes to the general fund to pay for our parents and grandparents and their "made up" (yeah, that is some BS, too) disabilities.
FTR, I work full time, own my house and was born in the Midwest of this country--just in case you want to immediately attack me as being an undocumented alien or just a "foreigner". I probably also work harder than some pundit who spends all his time finding ways to bash everyone he can for not being like-minded.
@Justin.in.NLV ----------- You forgot to mention - "WHEN REAGAN GAVE AMNESTY TO 3 MILLION ILLEGALS --- HE ONLY AGREED TO IT BECAUSE THE """" DEMOCRATS """ AGREED TO BUILD A FENCE" --------- but, we know how those "DEMOCRATS LIE" don't we ???
Winston.Smith: The problem with the question that you asked is that the question has no context therefore no rational answer is possible. I mean "too much"? What does that mean without context? How much air is too much? Doesn't the answer to this question require more information? I mean, too much for what? Under what circumstances? The question I asked though is pretty simple and does not require any context at all and I notice that you didn't answer, but then again we all know the answer don't we? Which might be why the people trying to tell this country that we have "too much debt" refuse to answer it.