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Aaiiieeee!
Run for your lives! The aliens are invading! Lock up your women and children! Grab your guns! Hide in the basement! The aliens are coming! They want to destroy our way of live! Take over our country! Run! Run!
Aaiiieeee!
Sounds like a well-worn plot for a science-fiction movie. Beings different from ourselves. Stealthily infiltrating our nation. By the time we realize the peril, it's too late. We're doomed. Doomed, I tell you! Doomed...
But, of course, this latest episode in xenophobic paranoia has nothing to do with little green men from outer space. Just little brown men (and women...) from south of the border.
From listening to the blowhards and whack jobs from both "ends" of the political "spectrum," you would think our society is on the verge of collapse. After all, the amount of time and emotional energy devoted to this non-issue consumes a vast amount of the airwaves and Web space and pages of our newspapers and magazines.
All manner of horrors are imputed to these dastardly souls who dare seek to better their lives. Why, they steal our jobs. They suck off the public teat by flooding our schools and hospitals. They are the direst of security risks, ready to subvert The American Way and kill us all. No doubt, those dark-skinned roustabouts lust after our God-fearin' white daughters and wives, too. They probably smoke pot and consume large quantities of mind-altering substances that they smuggle into this country so they can turn our children into slavering drug addicts. They surely Speak in Tongues most real Americans can't understand and despoil our cities with their odd preferences in food and drink and clothes. Why, they even hang out on street corners in gangs, talkin' in their strange ways, intimidatin' and frightenin' the good citizens whose world they upset.
Bastards...
To deal with these heinous aliens, we must built huge, impenetrable walls spanning hundreds and hundreds of miles along our border. (I mean, those East Germans had the right idea, even if the flow of undesirables was in the opposite direction...) We need to militarize the hot zone and shoot any stupid, arrogant SOBs who refuse to comply with our demands. (The old Soviets had a thing or two they could teach us there.) Establish massive surveillance systems to watch every square inch of desert between the good ol' U.S. of A. and Mexico. (Hats off, of course, to our fellow statist allies who are much more advanced at this than are we.) Construct huge containment camps to house these criminal interlopers and any other illegals already here we can roust from the farm fields and construction sites and meat packing plants across this great land of ours. (I mean, we had some good practice at interning Japs last century, but we need to get serious, folks!)
We have to void the longstanding policy that merely being born on American soil makes you an American. After all, those babies are no doubt fronts for Islamic al-Qaeda operatives cleverly disguised as Hispanic Roman Catholics. We must create a nationwide database for everyone and a forge-proof national identification card so only those folks with the proper papers can obtain jobs. Make felons of any scofflaw who dares to work without proper permission and likewise for any money-grubbing employer who seeks to evade the law and hire these devious folks at nonliving wage wages.
Guest-worker program, my ass! Deport 'em all! Send 'em back to where they came from! It's what the lazy, welfare-cheaters deserve for taking away the jobs that no one else here will work at for ten or twelve hours a day in sweltering heat and crummy conditions for low pay!
Yes. Yes, indeed.
The final message to all those alien invaders, of course, is:
STAY OUT!
From the mouths of babes. Or was that babbling idi--... Oops.
As I stated earlier, immigration is -- or should be -- a non-issue. How to handle those who want to move to or work in this country only becomes a problem when the State begins to interfere. It's an old story.
Imagine totally private education: no acrimonious controversies over evolution or creationism; over school prayer or the pledge of allegiance; over dress codes; over which books to use or classes to teach; over student-teacher ratios; over funding and increases in property taxes and school levies and surcharges; over combining schools or which school you are allowed to attend; over student clubs using school facilities; over soft drinks and candy in vending machines; over sports or drug testing or student newspapers or speech codes or affirmative action...
Imagine the end of the Drug War and the recognition that adults may consume whatever they so desire: no assaults on the Fourth Amendment with no-knock raids; no militarization of our police; no anti-financial privacy laws to stop money "laundering"; no restrictions on weapons to "disarm" the drug dealers; no drug-related violence on the streets as rival gangs vie for territory; no soliciting young children to use and/or peddle drugs because they get lighter sentences if caught; no deaths from poor schleps acting as drug mules; the emptying of our prisons of nonviolent drug users or sellers; minimal problems with unsafe, adulterated drugs; no need to get a doctor's okay and spend money on an unwanted office visit to obtain a prescription; no signing a form and showing an ID to get a frigging cold pill; no denial of risky or unproved treatments that might save your life; no dying from the inability to keep meds down for cancer and other patients; no unnecessary suffering for those in intractable agony whose doctors fear being reported for "excessive" use of pain killers; no exorbitant drug prices from a convoluted drug approval system dictated by a politicized FDA; no denial of your moral autonomy or right to control your own body.
Imagine energy and gasoline production and sales sans State laws and regulations and subsidies. Imagine business and job creation, the development and sale of products without State mandates, permits, and lawsuits, without affirmative action and the Americans with Disabilities Act and non-free trade "free trade" agreements. Do away with the nonsense over smoking and guns and fireworks and television and censorship and retirement and health care and toilets and Freon and the size of the holes in Swiss cheese.
Do away with the nonsense over immigration.
One point needs to be reinforced over all the venom and anger and hatred embroiling our nation about this issue:
The only involvement the State should have in this -- or any other -- subject involving what private individuals do is to punish those engaged in fraud or the threat or use of violence. Otherwise, the State has overstepped its bounds.
Freedom means:
...no passports or visas. For anyone.
Freedom means:
...no national ID cards. For anyone.
Freedom means:
...no job restrictions. For anyone (who is an adult). People have the right to work at any job at any agreed-upon wage under any agreed-upon conditions. Or to start their own businesses without any restrictions from the State.
Freedom means:
...no automatic admission to any school or hospital to be paid by unwilling others.
Freedom means:
...no immigration quotas; no deportation for non-crime crimes; no INS; no Border Patrol; no checkpoints; no searches of persons or vehicles without a warrant obtained under probable cause.
Freedom means:
...IT IS NONE OF YOUR F*CK*NG BUSINESS WHAT OTHER (PEACEFUL) PEOPLE DO.
As Ayn Rand so cogently said, there are no conflicts among rational people. As long as people do not desire the unearned and hew to reason as their guiding principle, no conflicts are possible.
The operative word here, of course, is "rational." Sadly, though, how the vast majority of people approach the subject of immigration is the epitome of irrationality: elevation of emotion over logic; evasion of the facts; violation of rights and morality; initiation of violence on a massive scale.
It doesn't have to be that way.
To keep immigration from becoming a national problem, all we have to do is tell the State to...
...STAY OUT!
To reduce all the issues mentioned above to manageable or nonexistent levels, all we have to do is tell the State to...
...STAY OUT!
To restore freedom in our individual lives, all we have to do is tell the State to...
...STAY OUT!
Stay out of my job. Stay out of my church. Stay out of my hospital. Stay out of my school. Stay out of my house. Stay out of my food. Stay out of my drugs. Stay out of my bedroom. Stay out of my body. Stay out of my mind.
STAY OUT OF MY LIFE.
I mean it. Go away. Now. Goodbye.
Good riddance...
