What Message Are We Sending?

As has been pointed out both at T-FIRE public events, and even at T-FIRE board meetings in discussions among our most active members, our organization is not opposed to immigration or to immigrants. We are opposed to illegal immigration-or more precisely, we are opposed to illegal aliens entering our country without going through the prescribed process for legal entry. The influx of illegal aliens places a strain on every fabric of our social structure from the health care system to education to the welfare apparatus.

Since it is often pointed out by those on both sides of the debate that we are a nation of immigrants, we must ask ourselves a much deeper question: What does it teach this latest batch of new arrivals about the meaning of law and civic duty in America if the government does not enforce the law regarding who may enter the United States and how they may do so? If you are a new arrival to the United States in the present climate, and the government allows you to simply waltz across the border as you please in violation of the law, and then expends little or no effort to apprehend and punish you for breaking your first law in America, what does that teach you about the value of law and order in American society?

It would seem to teach the new arrivals that in America, the law is only selectively enforced whenever Americans find it convenient to enforce the law.

If those who are coming here as illegal aliens are to be accepted as part of American society as many would have it, are these same people comfortable with the message they are sending to the latest arrivals-that it is okay to break the law in America?