By Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry, US Army (Ret.)
A complete resolution of the illegal immigrant problem can’t be expected over night. It is the old story of how do you eat an elephant? The answer is one mouthful at a time. There is no need to hurry. The only pressure on us is self- generated. It didn’t happen overnight and it can’t be fixed overnight. Fundamental change is on the way, but not the kind of change the American people thought they were going to get when they elected and reelected Obama President.
Since no one in the United States government, Democrat or Republican, seems able to gain control of our southern border, perhaps we should consider outsourcing the job to the East Germans. For nearly forty years they and the Russians did a first rate job of maintaining and controlling the “Berlin Wall.” The wall began as a concertina barbed wire fence which was erected during one night – all ninety-seven miles of it – then followed by the construction of a brick and mortar wall.
When President Obama took office he bragged that his strategic vision included a plan to fundamentally change the nation. Most Americans assumed the change would be for the better. Only a few suspected the reverse, which is what actually happened.
Back then America was mostly a middle class, college educated nation of free, English speaking white men and women. Martin Luther King, Jr. set the stage for what most Americans hoped would be the nation’s guiding light for future race relations: character based on content not skin color. At the time minorities were welcomed into American society with open arms and hearts.
Evidently President Obama didn’t agree with Dr. King’s solution. He seemed to feel that because illegal immigrants were here in volume, we should disregard the nation’s immigration laws and make the illegals automatic citizens — casting aside a system which had served us well for two centuries.
This was before President Obama set about introducing his “fundamental change” to America. Until then it had been customary for immigrants migrating to this country to quickly adopt American ways and mores. But the new class of immigrants the President attracted, like him, seemed to have little respect for America or its ways. Rather, they seemed to believe that America should adjust to them rather than that they should adjust to America.
The result was that America started changing into a third world nation of poor, under educated, brown people who speak a language foreign to English. Where racial tension and class warfare were once not rampant in America they are now. And the President seems to have done his best to stir up racial tension and stoke racial warfare where ever he goes, at every turn in the road.
An easy way for Obama to institute fundamental change was for him to ignore and violate U.S. immigration laws. That is what he did. He threw open America’s southern border with Mexico and imported tens of thousands of brown faced, Spanish speaking children and teenagers from Central and South America. Thirty percent of these illegals are ‘other than Mexican’ including all kinds of middle easterners a few of whom are most likely terrorists.
When mixed with millions of other illegals who previously infiltrated our southern border, these illegal imports may have changed the face and color of American society for ever. Additionally, the President has sprinkled and dispersed illegal immigrants all over the nation, evidently hoping to make it impossible for them to be deported without causing an uncontrollable mess.
It took unmeasurable millions of illegal immigrants to create the situation the nation faces today and logic tells us that a mess of such magnitude can’t be undone overnight, or in one or two years. It is physically impossible to round up untold millions of illegal immigrants, like John Wayne rounded up cattle in his Hollywood westerns, and herd them back across the Rio Grande River in one big bunch.
The illegal immigrant problem can be controlled but it will take wisdom, patience, will power, and an intelligent long range strategy. For example in border states, those who break or violate our laws can be taken to the nearest border crossing, headed south and sent on their way home — whether they want to go or not. Those who have committed capital crimes should be subjected to the vagaries of our full criminal justice system. Then from time to time we will have to reevaluate the problem and readjust its resolution.
Dealing with the physical aspects of border law violations is not nearly as difficult as dealing with the political ramifications of the problem. Illegal immigrants are often housed and cared for by “for-profit” prisons and “non-profit” do-gooder corporations. The illegal immigrant problem has been a virtual gold mine for these organizations. As a result, they make enormous political donations and contributions to the politicians who profit by keeping our southern border open to a flood of illegal immigrant traffic.
Hopefully when President Obama leaves office we will be able to get our political leaders, both Democrat and Republican, back on track. If not, and if worse comes to worse, we can always outsource the control and maintenance of our southern border to the East Germans.
Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry, US Army Ret.; U of Nebraska, Omaha, BGE; Boston U, MA International Relations; Luther Rice U and Seminary, D. Min; Harvard, Kennedy School. Mr. Curry is a retired Army Major General, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Carter administration; Acting Press Secretary to the Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration; and Administrator of the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration in the Bush Sr. administration.
