ALPERN AT LARGE - President Barack Obama opened a major new chapter in the illegal immigration debate by allowing children brought here illegally to receive a reprieve from deportation—provided they stayed in school and out of trouble with the law. But while focusing only on these children’s plight is an effective end run around Congress and the GOP from a political perspective, from a moral perspective this focus is but a half-truth that—like all half-truths—remains condemned to be less than the whole truth.
It’s highly unlikely that Mitt Romney will support any repeal of President Obama’s executive order, regardless of how he (and probably most of the nation) opposes the method the President used to force the issue, because these are children, and while President Obama’s order might have been a political stunt, opposing it would certainly be politically harmful.
However, President Obama’s executive order, perhaps timed to jump ahead of a very similar effort by Republican Senator (and potential vice presidential running mate to Mitt Romney) Marco Rubio to craft a law halting deportations of these children, is still likely to remain the law of the land because so many (arguably most) Americans recognize that these children ARE, indeed, victims.
The tunnel-visioned focus on their victimhood, though, is just a half-truth—less than the whole truth—and therefore not really truthful at all. And perhaps those promulgating this tunnel-visioned focus are trying (again) to distort the whole, honest truth.
WHOLE TRUTH #1: These children ARE victims, but primarily victims of their PARENTS, and not of the United States.
It’s a painful truth that these children have parents who broke the law to enter and/or stay in the United States, but they DID break the law…and the amount of money their parents forced (or effectively stole from) American taxpayers to spend on the health, education and welfare of each child, the number comes out to approximately $50-100,000 per child. Probably more—and just as we do NOT give the children of thieves their parents’ ill-gotten earnings, it’s not appropriate to ignore the theft that their parents (and their employers!) perpetrated on the American taxpayers.
No politician is currently asking either these children or their law-breaking parents to pay for this theft from the American taxpayer; no politician is even asking their law-breaking employers (who garner the least sympathy) to pay for these children. At the very least, the families and/or their employers could come up with the money for out-of-state college tuition to help pay back their legitimate debt to the American taxpayers, along with a well-timed discussion about deporting their parents.
WHOLE TRUTH #2: As painful as it must be to acknowledge that your parents broke the law, it must be acknowledged if these children are to accept their role as law-abiding members in our nation, which IS a nation of laws.
Everyone understands how desperate parents would do anything to get access to the United States for their children to get a better life, but the need to demand WHY the parents REFUSED to play by the rules (like those who spent years getting to this country legally) isn’t being met. Are there efforts to have adults who broke the law pay their 5-6 digit figure of debt to the taxpayer by working a few years building and rebuilding our decaying infrastructure, for example?
Furthermore, what do these children who were brought here illegally and (to paraphrase our President) who pledge allegiance to our flag know about the laws and history of our nation? Is it the same as that which legal immigrants are expected to know? For that matter, with all schoolchildren usually not saying the Pledge of Allegiance and/or one of our national songs every morning, what does the average American child know? We ARE a society and nation of laws.
WHOLE TRUTH #3: Major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times are among the MOST racist, anti-immigrant entities that our nation must endure.
Perhaps our major newspapers have become so accustomed to framing the truth in their own way that they don’t even realize how bigoted and biased they’ve become, but how is any reasonable, law-abiding person supposed to respond to the barrage of references to “immigrants’ rights activists” who are anything but?
And do these activists struggle for these children as part of a larger effort to achieve a backdoor amnesty for their law-breaking parents? And what of the negative and divisive rhetoric of those who conflate “Latino rights” with the plight of adult illegal aliens who chose to break the law? And are we to imply that Latinos can’t follow the law like anyone else, or that non-Latino immigrants from Asia, Europe or Africa aren’t as welcome as Latinos…because no one is talking about them?
Legal immigrants ARE embraced by the entire American political spectrum, and by both political parties, but there are no stories about how legal immigrants or their children feel about illegal immigrants. There are no stories of those who play by the rules. And there are no stories connecting the dots between illegal immigration and our current unemployment rate…a rate that has been particularly cruel to legal immigrants and ethnic minorities.
WHOLE TRUTH #4: A recognition that breaking the law is NOT part of the American Dream, that supporting your adopted nation of the US is critical to being a true immigrant, and an honest and meaningful apology by those adults who knowingly broke the law, would all go a long way towards determining who really ARE Americans…and who really AREN’T.
Our American society is predicated on living by the rules, by a need to pursue (but not be guaranteed) happiness by working hard to achieve wealth or other goals, and by being part of the time-honored and cherished “melting pot” that blends individuals and families from all over the globe into new generations of Americans who can forsake the horrors and limitations under which most human beings on our planet suffer.
Tax evasion, identity theft, and using false documents to get more taxpayer-funded benefits have no room for either native-born or foreign-born Americans. A true effort by the children to dedicate themselves to their new country—and to acknowledge they’ve no interest in ignoring the wrongdoings of their parents—exists in the form of military service or other public service that can show their innate and worthy desire to become American citizens.
It’s very easy to demand something for yourself that others ultimately have to pay for, but it’s something else altogether when you admit and take responsibility for wrongdoing either on the part of the parents of those children brought here illegally, or on the part of the children themselves (who probably want to become full American citizens).
There’s no room for those living here illegally who seek balkanization, for those who refuse to speak the language of their neighbors, and for those who see themselves as something other than American—and, for the most part, that latter group is almost entirely limited to illegal aliens from only one foreign nation on this planet…right? (Or is that too much truth for us as a nation to handle?)
The time must come NOW for those children brought here illegally, and particularly their parents, and even more their employers, to have these children’s fate and future tied to an effort that unquestionably shows their desire to become Americans, and that they will ask NOT what their new country can do for them, but what THEY will do for their country.
And that really is the truth—the whole truth, and not merely a half-truth, and absolutely nothing but the truth.
So help us God.
(Ken Alpern is a former Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line, which strives to get the Green Line to LAX, at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
Tags: Ken Alpern, Alpern at Large, immigration, illegal immigrants, amnesty, Barack Obama
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 49
Pub: June 19, 2012