Yes, the president has a lot on his plate. There was the mine explosion and the media mishandling of the reports concerning the fate of the trapped men.
There's the illness of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the consequences in the Middle East.
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We're at war in Iraq and at war against terrorism.
There's the economy, the price of oil, the Supreme Court nominee battle which is shaping up to be one of the dirtiest on record, the allegations of political and financial scandal, the security leaks, and then there's the issue that's getting worse, but which too many people hope will just go away.
It won't.
The fox is already in the henhouse; the milk is spilled, so don't cry; it's too late to shut the barn door, the horses got out.
Do you get the picture? It's too late.
The situation is out of control, too many people are blind to the reality of the problem, Congress gives the situation only token notice playing the usual politics and the administration, led by President Bush, is playing a deadly game with the future of this country.
The issue is immigration – the issue is illegal aliens in this country.
And before any of you get on your high horse at my choice of words, note that I like accuracy. Citizens of other countries who are in the United States are "aliens" and if they got here by jumping the border or not having the proper papers, they are ILLEGAL ALIENS.
Get used to it!
They're not immigrants, no matter what the loony left says.
They're not migrants, no matter what Mexico's president Vicente Fox says.
They're not people we must care for because they need a home, no matter what the misguided religious folk claim.
They are illegal aliens and this country has the right and the obligation to prevent such illegal entries and to deport the people who have committed their crime. Yes, it is a crime. Like it or not, those people are criminals by the very fact of their being here. Those people break federal law by entering the country illegally.
It is the obligation of our government to put a stop to it. It is the obligation of our government to protect the sovereignty of this country for the benefit and protection of our citizens.
That the situation of illegals has been allowed – yes, allowed – to become one of the magnitude we face, is shameful. It's not a few people who jump the fences or wade across the Rio Grande – where do you think the phrase "wetbacks" came from? But that was years ago when the problem was almost laughable compared with today.
In those days, we had the Bracero program, which enabled those people to work in the fields and then return to their country. Today, we don't have that program and the illegals are in every state, doing much more than farm labor.
When you're talking about estimates of 11 million or more illegals, you're talking about more than a crowd of poor Mexicans swimming the river to work on a farm. Who are these people? Where did they come from? Where are they now? What are they doing?
Mostly, we don't know who they are. There are individuals and there are families. Some come here with the intent to stay but not to become American. Others come to earn money to send home. Some, officials fear, have terrorist connections and are spreading their poisonous treasons across the land, hidden in the sub rosa world of illegals in our midst.
They come from across the world. The bulk are from Mexico, but illegals also come from Central and South America – and, Southeast Asia and China and Russia and other Eastern European nations, and the Middle East, and just about anywhere else that the right amount of money can be paid to those who make a career (and a lucrative one at that) of smuggling people across the world and illegally into our country.
Once they're here, where are they? We know where some of them are, but foolish people protect their illegality. Police and other authorities are often forbidden from inquiring as to the legality of their status in this country. Free medical care and other social services, schooling, housing aid and other benefits are provided for the asking with no questions as to immigration status asked or allowed.
Do-gooders among us have forced authorities to cast a blind eye on immigration status. The reality that the financial burden on legal, taxpaying citizens has grown to the point of collapse, is ignored by those who claim our borders don't count if someone chooses to be here. Emergency rooms are closing, hospitals are bankrupt, social services overburdened, schools crowded and filled with students who are neither literate nor English speaking. Our jails and prisons bulge with illegals convicted of the whole gamut of crimes, but not, I might note, their border crossing.
People who ignore all this enable criminal activity, burden taxpayers with unnecessary expenditures and are literally changing the face of this country.
There are others who ignore all this and only think of the bottom line and profit margins. Businesses across the country employ illegals. That is, in itself, illegal. But they do it and get away with it because the authorities, who should be enforcing the law, do nothing.
Politicians either ignore the problem or insist it doesn't matter, protecting political contributions. They also make it nearly impossible for a conscientious employer to discover immigration status before a person is hired. The system to check legality is flawed – and most employers simply accept whatever documentation is shown. That a huge proportion of the Social Security cards and birth certificates are fraudulent is winked at.
It's so ridiculous now that politicians, clerics, educators and average people think it's perfectly OK to issue U.S. driver's licenses to illegals. They ignore that such legal ID implies legitimacy and opens the door to banking, housing, social services, education and anything else. In fact, it opens the door to all the rights of citizenship, including voting. Except, those people are not citizens.
Why doesn't the system care? Why don't our elected government representatives care? Why doesn't our president care? We hear the rhetoric about a guest-workers program, but that's just a politically correct way of saying "amnesty." President Bush wants to reward lawbreakers with the most precious gift there is: citizenship in the United States of America.
Too many people sacrificed to create this country and our form of government, too many people have spilled their blood and given their lives to protect what we have, too many people worked to preserve and maintain what we have.
It is neither the right nor privilege of the president or any other elected official or any business owner to undermine our system and give it away for any reason.
President Bush should know better.