How Do You Say “You’re Supposed to Stop at the Border” in Spanish?
by John T. Johnson, III
With 60,000 illegal immigrants giving birth to children in Texas each year; with thousands of illegal immigrants being sent to our prisons each year; with thousands receiving free medical care at our county hospitals each year; with the cost to educate each child in Texas public schools reaching almost $11,000 each year; and with the number of free meals being handed out in our public schools growing each year, how do we pay for all of this? Many states are asking this same question because they are facing the same crisis… just on a lesser scale.
We know that illegal’s are not paying their way. While they are paying some taxes and fees into the system, there is no way that the menial jobs most find are covering these costs, and only a fraction of the money they make here stays here, and is spent here. Millions of dollars are sent out of the country each month to support families back home.
Everyone seems to want to make this a racial issue, but it is not. It is just easier for the other side to debate their case when they bring race into the equation.
What if all Latinos coming across our southern borders were light complexioned, sandy headed, and had surnames like Smith and Jones? Would we not still be faced with the same problems? Would not the ground swell of support for reform be the same? I think it would.
I liken it to Texas being a large life boat. We have been floating around for years plucking illegal’s out of the choppy water. The life boat is now full. Some want to keep on pulling them in; others say we can’t afford to.
Commonsense tells us that if we overload the boat, everyone is going to drown. I think we are at this crossroad.
Tough decisions have to be made and they have nothing to do with race. They have to do with what is best for future generations of Americans….for my children and grandchildren.
Our federal government is responsible by law for protecting our borders, yet their efforts are rudimentary, at best. Some would say that this is because both political parties have a vested interest in seeing that the status quo is maintained. The Dem’s want to come across as kind hearted and the Latino’s best friend because it means votes; the Repub’s large business and agricultural base needs the cheap labor to stay competitive. Therefore, the fence gets ridden.
Arizona took bold steps to protect themselves from the ongoing illegal migration, but the fed’s took exception and have thrown up roadblocks and brought the courts into the battle. I’m going to have to side with Arizona.
Let’s say that the local laws in your area make it the responsibility of the local fire department to rush to your home and extinguish a blaze if your house catches on fire.
Let’s say that your house does catch on fire, and you call the fire department but they don’t come. The flame leaps over to a neighbor’s house; he calls the fire department, but they still don’t respond. When a third neighbor’s house is set ablaze, he grabs water hoses and begins fighting the fire himself knowing that two structures have burned to the ground due to the fire department’s failure to show. Once he gets the fire put out, the fire marshal appears and arrests the man for performing a job that he is not authorized to do.
What is the difference with this scenario and the battle that Arizona is fighting right now with the federal government? Arizona after repeated calls for help takes matters into their own hands to protect their state and way of life. They are threatened and rebuked by the federal government when they do so. Where is the commonsense in D.C.?
We need definitive federal action to shore up our porous borders and determine how to handle the illegal’s already here. We need it now.
John T. Johnson, III. is a Texas entrepreneur who has been involved with everything from the travel business, to specialty tool design for nuclear power plants, to food brokerage, to heavy construction equipment sales to S.E. Asia, to pond raised shrimp in Central America, to the design and patenting of new products for the military and oil production industries. He has been married to his wife, Donna, for 37 years, has two grown children, and resides in Arlington. He can be contacted at [email protected]