They’re Lawbreakers, Not Neighbors

The Quote Below: More Misinformation from the Media

“It has been more than 100 years since sociologist Georg Simmel argued that nothing unites people like having a common enemy. . . . President Trump has gone out of his way to convince Americans we have a common enemy: undocumented immigrants. He has repeatedly demonized people who are in the United States illegally, even referring to them as bad hombres.

“Undocumented immigrants are not enemies. They are our neighbors. They sit next to us at church and school. . . . They work jobs that would otherwise be unfilled on farms and in restaurants. . . . Government workers with little accountability taking people into custody should bother all Iowans, regardless of their thoughts on immigration. The lack of humanity of this act should also transcend politics.” – Mount Pleasant Immigration Raid Does Not Make Iowans Safer, The Des Moines Register, editorial, 5/15/18. [Link]

Fact Check of Quote: It seems that nothing unites immigration enthusiasts than making President Trump their common enemy. In doing so, they don’t seem to mind telling falsehoods about him. In truth, he did not “demonize” all illegal aliens by calling them “bad hombres.” His use of that phrase is clearly in reference to those illegal aliens, such as drug traffickers, who are particularly vicious and dangerous.

Interestingly, the article acknowledges that illegal aliens are indeed in the country illegally, but then goes on to refer to them in politically correct fashion as “undocumented”—as if the problem they pose is a mere lack of paperwork rather than lawbreaking.

And indeed they are lawbreakers if not necessarily enemies. It’s point that the Register’s editorialists seem to have trouble acknowledging. To illustrate, would they say that “Pickpockets are not our enemies. They are our friends and neighbors.” If they said that someone could reasonably conclude that they don’t think stealing is really a crime. Similarly, they don’t seem to think illegal immigration is truly a crime—even though illegal aliens take jobs and benefits that belong to legal residents.

Illegal aliens are indeed violators of the law, and their offenses are not victimless. The notion that they only take jobs Americans won’t do is belied by the fact than in almost every job category native-born Americans comprise the majority of workers. They use more in services than they pay in taxes, and data suggest that they commit crimes at a higher rate than legal residents.

Thus it is reasonable that we have “government workers,” i.e., law enforcement agents, to apprehend and deport illegal aliens. They have as much “accountability” as any other law officers who take people into custody. Immigration officers enforce the laws enacted by the American people through their elected representatives.

If the Register’s editorials don’t think immigration law enforcement is legitimate, then it follows that they don’t think that our democracy is very legitimate either. And the same would seem to apply to our national sovereignty and the significance and worth of our citizenship. After all, if illegal aliens are our neighbors and really just like us, then citizen and noncitizen are pretty meaningless categories.

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