We are constantly referred to as the “melting pot” of the world. But have you ever left a pot of boiling soup on the burner too long? If so, you know what happens. The mixture becomes dried out and eventually burns up, destroying the pot altogether. That’s what happens to any country that will accept anyone who wishes to join their society, legally or illegally. This must stop somewhere and the time has long passed, so enough is enough with the “melting pot” mentality.

 

We, as a country, must take a stand and decide that the stew is done and take it off the heat, or at least stop adding more ingredients. Continuing with the same “open door” policy has lead to cities around the US instituting ridiculous “sanctuary city policies” that undermine the rights and safety of our natural born and legal citizens.

 

            What is a “sanctuary city”? It is a city like San Francisco that publicly decides that the police should not enforce federal laws and regulations concerning illegal immigrants. More specifically, they look the other way when arresting or questioning a person who does not have a legal right to be in this country. Cities like San Francisco have decided to completely ignore laws requiring them to, at a minimum, report the incident to DHS or other Federal authorities. They should consider the consequences of ignoring these laws.

Recently a family from San Francisco suffered through the worst-case scenario when a father and his two sons were gunned down by an illegal immigrant. Danielle Bologna lost her entire family on June 22 when Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, murdered her husband and two sons in a road rage incident. Now, the wife of the murdered husband, Anthony, mother to the murdered sons, Matthew and Michael,  is demanding the city do something about its sanctuary law.

The Bolognas were driving home from a Sunday afternoon barbecue, when they inadvertently blocked another car from completing a left turn. Police said the shooting occurred after the elder Bologna backed up and let the car by. Witnesses say that Ramos got out of his car and unloaded a gun into the Bologna’s car. Tony Bologna, the night shift supervisor at a San Mateo grocery store, and his son Michael, a student at the College of San Mateo, were pronounced dead at the scene. Matthew, who attended Lincoln High School, died two days later at San Francisco General Hospital.

Here’s the kicker… Ramos should never have been in the US to commit this horrific crime in the first place. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that he had been convicted of two gang-related felonies, yet remained in San Francisco because the Juvenile Probation Department did not alert federal authorities.

San Francisco's 1989 "City of Refuge" ordinance prohibits city agencies from contacting the feds on immigration matters. Even though the Feds were not contacted, the newspaper found that they knew about Ramos' immigration status in March, when he was arrested on another gun charge. They couldn't tell the Chronicle why they didn't put an immigration hold on Ramos right then.

A gun charge??? This illegal immigrant was arrested on gun charges just 3 months before executing a law abiding American family! This should not be possible.

The “melting pot” will burn the entire country unless we work together to form a reasonable system of immigration. Then, we can continue to be the leaders of the free world. But the first step, in all of this, is the deportation of anyone here illegally.

 

 Immigration to the American Continent spans an incredibly long time period. Most anthropologists assert that America was originally inhabited by wanderers from Northeast Asia about 20,000 years ago. These nomads were the ancestors of the Inca, the Maya, the Aztecs, and today's Native Americans so even the American Indians emigrated here. Whether it was 20,000 years ago or yesterday, one fact remains: immigrants come here in search of opportunity, in search of a new life, in search of “The Promised Land”.

 

You see, early immigrants to the US did not pay admission to this country. Many people might think the free admission should have been cut off long ago, and to some degree, positive changes in American Immigration policy have taken place that aimed to limit the cascade of foreigners.

But, three years after our country was founded; the Naturalization Act of 1790 stated that any alien…may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States. There were a few other stipulations like the requirement of living in the country for 2 years, being a person of “good character”, and supporting the Constitution.

Some say that the vast culture differences among the American people led to one of the first immigration restrictions in US history: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This Act prohibited certain laborers from immigrating due, in part, to unsavory practices like drug use and prostitution. But from 1882 until 1907, we were still pretty much in an 18^th century mentality of open borders.

It wasn’t until 1907 when The US immigration Act of 1907 reorganized the states bordering Mexico (Arizona, New Mexico and a large part of Texas) into the Mexican Border District in an attempt to further curb the flow of immigrants. This was the first recognition of something much, much bigger to come, something that haunts us today.

Some would call it “the Mexican Problem”.

More Acts were added between 1917 and 1924 to further limit the number of immigrants. These laws established a quota system and imposed passport requirements. The Government expanded the criteria for excludable aliens, banning all Asians except Japanese. These laws eventually led to The 1940 Alien Registration Actwhichrequired all aliens within the United States to register with the Government and receive an Alien Registration Receipt Card (the predecessor of the "Green Card").

For most our great country’s existence, our policies on immigration have been rather open door, even with these changes. That open door policy and lack of border enforcement has grown into today’s problems of 12 million illegal immigrants, how they affect our economy, healthcare, schooling, culture, and unfortunately, our criminal justice system.

Right now, about thirteen hundred people run or pay their way across our borders every day. What are the consequences this may cause for our country?

If the ruthless murder of a family in San Francisco isn’t bad enough, then maybe one of the hundreds of our children that are killed each year in gang shootings will convince you. The Salvadorian gang MS-13, with ten thousand members, has infiltrated our country and law enforcement estimates that 9 out of 10 are illegal aliens. Over 100 FBI agents, at any given time, are dedicated to this gang alone. This is not a desirable allocation of resources.

Some of the most violent criminals from other countries have found a safe harbor in “sanctuary cities” likeSan Francisco that will not report them to federal authorities, no matter what the crime.

Isat down with a former illegal alien, who went through the process to become legal in the early 80’s, to gather his opinions and insight. “Pedro” claims that crossing the border is “easy” and “Deportation would not stop us from returning, it would just delay us.”

He also claimed that “many Mexicans do not want to become citizens, they are proud of Mexico very much so they just come here for the work and money.” 

Pedro was born in a small village just outside Mexico City. I asked him when he first came to the country and his answer was an apathetic joke: “legally or illegally?”

            He explained, “My first visit was illegally when I was a teenager. My uncle was legal and I always wanted to see what my uncle did for work and to see America. I actually rode in the trunk of my uncle’s car across the US border in Texas. I never thought I would meet so many illegals like me working in plain sight in the fields and factories. There were more of them in the town we visited than gringos; or white people in English. I realized later that I had not really visited a town but rather a makeshift village for illegals who worked for rich factory and land owners who paid them as little as possible. I realized then this was the opportunity I had been told of.”

Pedro said that he would not be able to make it across in a trunk anymore because “in recent years the border has been secured better, there are more check points and more guards and they check everything from the trunk to under the hood. Besides” he added “there are much safer ways of crossing illegally.”

Today, people “just ride in a car across the border right through the customs check point. We take the Freedom Taxi; the Amarillo Senorita or Yellow Woman.”

Apparently the business of transporting illegals across the border has developed quite a market. It is run by “a woman who for the past 30 years has been taking the more wealthy Mexicans across the border for a fee” Pedro says.

He went into further detail “She usually makes two runs a week on a certain two days. Everything is prepaid and arranged very professionally. The person who wants the ride meets at a location on the Mexican side of the border and pays the woman driver. She has already made the arrangements of the place and time she will cross the border. There is always a trusted border agent on both sides who are also paid, usually weekly depending on the number of crossings and the number of people coming in. The Mexicans you see on the news being rounded up by border patrol in the hot desert are either too poor to pay for the taxi or just too desperate to wait for the ride.”

I had to speak up. “WAIT!! So you are telling me that there are actually American Border Agents who are being paid to allow fast easy crossings into my country almost every day???” I asked.

“Sí, and this is just one service that my family has known of for 30 years. There are probably hundreds of less organized ones crossing every second, and it’s not slowing down either. As more Mexicans cross more money comes back to Mexico and more people can afford an air conditioned ride into America anytime they would like. We find it very funny that you Americans come to Mexico expecting to run into dirty or dishonest policia and in reality you probably showed your passport to one in your country as you left.”

Pedro says that some doctors are even in on the payoffs. “My older brother actually had a back surgery done in Arizona by a Mexican doctor who did the surgery at 1 a.m. without record. My brother would rather pay twice the money for the illegal surgery than get it done in Mexico or become legal for it.” His brother returned to Mexico after the surgery.

It would seem that most of the immigrants are completely careless about the laws of the United States. Pedro tried to justify it by saying “most of the Mexicans who come for work will work very hard and send money back to their homes to help support their families or to help pay to bring the entire family to America.” He says it is “a cycle that helps many achieve the “American Dream”.

The problem is that although “most” may come here to work, too many come here to collect welfare and to commit crime. Republican Steve King of Iowa has claimed that 25 Americans are killed every day by illegal immigrants.

Pedro said it was not even hard to become legal. “I needed to be legal to legally own a home so I did what I needed to make this happen. I eventually took the steps to make myself legal after I had earned a good deal of money working in Florida as a construction worker. I have worked very hard over the last 25 years and now I own my own construction business with 3 trucks, I have a 3500 sq foot home I built with my own hands, 2 children and money in the bank to send them to college. I would say I am a success story of the American Dream.”

I wondered how Pedro still knew so much about the current process of entering the country illegally. I asked if his company hired illegals.

His answer: “I hire anyone who will work hard.”

“What does that mean?” I probed.

“It means I am a businessman and if I can get good work cheaper then why would I pay more?”

I retorted, “Maybe because employing them just is as illegal as crossing the border and also because it ruins the ability of qualified American workers to earn a reasonable wage.” In a Wall Street Journal poll, a majority of Americans agreed that immigration is an “economic threat” because they take jobs that “otherwise would be fulfilled by American citizens.”

Pedro responded, “I feel I am just giving others the same opportunity I was given.”

I had to retort, “But, what about the opportunity for them to come into America legally? We still allow Mexicans to become citizens the last time I checked. This illegal entry allows for any types of people even convicted murderers and terrorists to come unchecked into our country and do horrible things to our citizens without us knowing they are even here. It is bad enough that we have citizens or people on legit VISAs committing crimes and terrorist acts on our soil. It would be nice to think our borders were at least secure enough to keep tabs on who comes in, but sadly that is not the case as we learned on 9/11.”

Pedro replied, “I love Mexico and I also love America. I do not wish horrible acts on anyone and wish the events in recent years never took place. But at the same time it seems that it is getting harder and harder to become a citizen of this country legally. It is getting much more expensive for a poor Mexican to come here and try to be a citizen. It is actually cheaper for us to pay the Amarillo Senorita to bring us here 2 times a year than it is to apply to be a citizen in some cases so why would we consider that? Not to mention we have to pay your IRS for the money we make if we are legal!!”

Pedro’s final point was appalling. Tax free wages, a drain on the wages of American workers, criminal behavior, and a seemingly unchecked, unregulated, and undeniable opportunity are the results of the lack of immigration enforcement.

It seems our own people are working against our government, our laws, and our security for money. The people of the US should have figured that since so many people came to America hundreds of years ago for the same reason: Money, or greed. Call it what you want. Call it today’s American Dream.

The US has to end this tainting of what the American Dream really is, and it needs to start with the deportation of every illegal immigrant in the country.

In a CBS poll, 69% of Americans interviewed promote the prosecution and/or deportation of an illegal immigrant back to their native countries. Some people may call it bigotry or xenophobia, but as a law abiding citizen of democracy, I call it patriotism. The enforcement of laws is not optional, and it is not an act of bigotry. It is what makes civilization function.

So what does it matter if our border is not 100% secure and anyone could get in anytime? What could be the worst that could happen? The price of a quart of strawberries goes down? I wish that was the worst case but unfortunately for Mrs. Bologna and countless others, the consequences of the current lack of enforcement are much worse.

We do not currently know who is coming into or already in our country and what their intentions may be. We don’t have enough security and we are vulnerable to attack because of this. Current restrictions are not enough to keep us safe. Our lax attitude towards immigration and border security helped lead to the events of 9/11 and if we don’t start monitoring who we let in then we have no way of guaranteeing our own safety. We must act now and start the process of deportation.