Andy McCarthy Is Ticked

I'm posting the whole thing cuz it's so damn good...

John, this seems like an issue in which rationality long ago took a holiday. Calling illegal aliens “undocumented workers” is about as transparently deliberate an effort to pervert the language of a debate as it gets. The way the Big Business guys portray themselves as noble when they are transparently scheming to legitimize the way they are circumventing the labor laws and depressing wages is insulting. (It’s also infuriating for people trying to play by the rules – Ever get a load of the reaction these days when you try to hire household help and tell people you do things on the up-and-up and the job is on the books? I can tell you first-hand: that frequently ends the conversation.)

And can you imagine if we handled any other law enforcement problem in this country by just throwing up our hands and saying the functional equivalent of you can’t just deport 12 million people? Like how 'bout: “You can’t just prosecute every single drug deal”? Or, better yet: “Identity theft is too pervasive to deal with as an enforcement problem – the better solution here would be to create a legal path to legitimize these fraudulent identities”?

As someone who spent over 20 years in law enforcement, I have to confess that it makes my skin crawl every time I hear that moronic "you just can't deport ..." slogan. You don’t have to deport 12 million people. You just start enforcing the law reasonably – something that has never been tried before. When you set that example, some people will leave voluntarily, others who would otherwise come won’t, and in a few years the number of illegals will be 4 million rather than 40 million – which is to say, it will be a typical, manageable law enforcement problem.

You are right that slings and arrows like “interlopers” and “invaders” don’t turn the temperature down, but I’m not sure the temperature ought to be turned down. The people on the pro-side of the immigration question have not been engaging in rational argument. Their rhetoric is Orwellian. They rationalize illegality as if it were somehow a social good and rig the game in a way that brazenly screws the law-abiding -- and they put on airs that assume the rest of us are too stupid to see through it all.

Then, to add insult to injury, they are enabling these demonstrations in which people who came here understanding the deal was that their presence was unlawful now have the nerve, not to respectfully request, but to claim entitlement to be regularized. Meanwhile, the schmucks who try to do it the lawful way – much like the Americans who try to comply with the Byzantine rules for dealing with legal immigrants, and the Americans who have to pick up the tab for the exorbitant added welfare state subsidies for illegals – are left out in the cold, with the message that the only way to get America’s attention is to break her laws.

I’m a New Yorker with an immigrant heritage. I did not start out whipped up by this issue. But I’ve gotten angry listening to this jive, and I can understand why other people have, too. You can only have your intelligence insulted like this for so long -- and by your leaders, no less, telling you it's all for your own good.

Source: NRO

Technorati Tags: illegal immigration, Andy McCarthy, National review,