Arizona Update: Coat Check

Looks like a particular class of American politician, wrapped in the flag. Tan is a little too deep for a Republican.

Gallagher:

No law is ever enforced absolutely. People cheat on their taxes, exceed the speed limit, use cocaine. Laws are broken all the time. The question, as I see it, is about how much effort, money, and manpower we devote to enforcing our laws. None of these resources is limitless. Unless you live in a country where a huge percentage of the economy is devoted to forcing people to conform and obey. North Korea and Iran probably get a lot closer to absolute obedience to the law than we do. But I wouldn’t want to live in either place.

The War on Drugs is a prime example. How many billions have we dumped into that effort? How many thousands are sitting in jail cells? But no one would argue that the drug trade has been defeated. Why? Well, a lot of Americans like getting high. Also, impoverished peoples to the south have crappy economies. Until those factors change (and I wouldn’t hold my breath), the War on Drugs will fail. And this is no less true of the War on Illegal Immigration.

Because this is not about law or morality, primarily. It’s about economics. The marketplace. Supply. Demand.

You essentially equate illegal immigration with terrorism, which I think is nothing more than paranoid hyperbole. If an illegal immigrant steals or hurts someone, I think he should of course be treated like any other criminal. But most illegal immigrants in America are like Manuel pictured above. He does not wish harm on the United States or its people. He simply lives in a failed state just over our southern border, and he can plainly see a land of opportunity to the north. If I were in his shoes, and I had a family to feed, I would do anything I could to get to America. Would I wait in line while my paperwork crept its way through bureaucratic levels? Would you? If I were a Mexican, why in God’s name would I have any respect for the written law? My only experience with government and law enforcement tells me that such institutions are corrupt and abusive to little people like me, to a degree that Americans cannot fathom.

It’s not just members of the media who “refuse to understand” where you are coming from. I am a regular old American citizen, and I don’t get it, either. When I see a migrant immigrant, I see a hard-working person with a family to feed, doing jobs no American wants to do, working for peanuts with no benefits. That man is helping to put food on my table, as well as his. Surely there is a third way other than turning a blind eye on one hand, or jailing and deporting him on the other.