What to do About the Border?
There are those who want to turn the illegal immigration issue into an issue about race, bringing back memories of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the march on Selma. But illegal immigration affects all of us, black, brown, yellow and white. It is not about race. Tony Blankley writing for Real Clear Politics pretty well sums up why we need to secure our borders.
Ultimately, this country of 300 million can absorb the current 10 to 20 million illegals in the country. It probably cannot absorb and culturally integrate the further scores of millions who inevitably will come if the border is not soon secured.
Blankley goes on to denounce the very idea of granting citizenship to these illegal aliens because they broke the law to get here.
On the other hand, the path to citizenship is not inevitable and should be fiercely resisted. Granting sacred citizenship to scofflaws is reprehensible, and if we pass nothing, at least we won’t pass such a citizenship provision.
Blankley goes on to make an excellent example from history how people who do not stand up for their principles can lead this country down a dark path. The only question I have about the example he uses is that the 3/5 Compromise, sometimes called the Crittenden Compromise after John Crittenden, saying that slaves were only 3/5th of a person. This is not correct. The compromise was about how to count slaves towards representation in Congress. The South wanted to count all the slaves, while the North wanted to count none of them. This led to the 3/5th Compromise in which three fifths of slaves would be counted. It was all about power in Congress, both sides wanted more. Of course it should be remembered that slavery was not considered all that bad in the 1700s as all nations had slavery at one time or another. The issue of slavery would not be decided until the end of the Civil War thanks in part to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. But Blankley was right about the scourge of slavery giving the entire nation a black eye.
Even sordid compromises were indulged in to gain even larger objectives. Slavery was permitted and Black slaves were designated three-fifths of a person. That compromise with slavery permitted the union to be born, but necessitated a civil war and 600,000 deaths 80 years later to remedy.
At our founding we needed a union, and we got it at a high price. Today, we need a genuinely secure border, and we should be prepared to pay a price for that, too.
Many of our founding fathers did not hold to their principas on slavery and the nation paid a heavy price. And now we have before us the hot button issue of illegal immigration as we decide how to protect our country. How high of a price are we willing to pay to secure our borders? An equally important question would be are we prepared to pay the price of not securing our borders?
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