On a cold December evening in 1983, three gangsters entered the South Boston home of Stippo Rakes. They wanted Rakes to sell them his successful liquor store - Rakes’s hard-won piece of the American dream. One thug, Steve Flemmi, placed a loaded revolver on the negotiating table - Rakes’s own kitchen table - then reached down and picked up Rakes toddler daughter, not yet two years old, and placed her on his lap. From that moment forward, Rakes had to listen to the gang’s offer - while watching his daughter reach out in curiosity for the gun before her. The message was clear before Flemmi ever spoke: every moment you resist our offer, a dangerous situation will purposely be allowed to continue.
This scene, chillingly described by Boston author and talk show host Howie Carr in his true crime page-turner, The Brothers Bulger, has stuck with me as a something of political metaphor ever since I first read it – and not just because the gang leader seated beside Flemmi was James “Whitey” Bulger, the brother of Massachusetts Senate President Billy Bulger (a Democrat, surprisingly). No, the political symbolism for me lay in what a perfect, if exaggerated, metaphor the whole scene was for how the amnesty extremists in Congress and the White House treat the subject of border security.
We all know that America’s lawless border and broken visa system constitute a huge hazard - a bit of carefully orchestrated anarchy through which millions of unknown people flow at will into our homeland every year, along with limitless contraband. There was a time when American outlaws fled to the corrupt sanctuary of Mexico. Now foreign outlaws, some petty, some serious, flee to the corrupt sanctuary of life in America’s underground economy.
Supported by a network of fake documents, identity theft, tax evasion, sanctuary cities, off-the-books employment and flop-house living, America is now a perfect place to in which to disappear. No one knows for sure how much crime this system facilitates, since the federal government is careful not to keep track. But it is instructive that one out of three federal prison inmates is now a non-citizen, with most of those being illegal aliens - an astounding number, especially when one considers that catching such anonymous migrants is much harder than catching a simple American citizen forced to drag a paper trail behind him since birth.
As Heather MacDonald has pointed out, 95% of the outstanding murder warrants in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens, as well as two thirds of all fugitive felony warrants in general. An effective alliance of sell-outs in government and corrupt businesses has created a system expressly intended to put illegal aliens beyond the reach of the law, and what do you know –it has put even the murderers and rapists among them beyond the reach of the law. But this is a small price to pay for cheap lawn care and chicken processing, right?
And just as all comers, good and bad, flow across our broken borders uncontrolled, so do they fly in through our broken visa system. Three of the September 11th hijackers were illegal aliens on expired visas. But when expired visas trigger no search and you can always buy a fraudulent state driver’s license to get a job or board a plane - as the illegal alien hijackers did- why bother to stay within the system? It just makes you more traceable. Likewise, several of the conspirators in the first World Trade Center bombing were illegal aliens, as were some of the suspects in the recently foiled Fort Dix terror plot - smuggled across our open border as children. Even families with small children can infiltrate at will. The foiled Millennium bombing and the New York subway plots involved illegal aliens as well. But what price is too high for cheap busboys?
Yet nothing will be done about the threat from crime and terror sneaking into our country daily - unless that threat can be used to force the American people to buy wholesale amnesty as part of “comprehensive” immigration reform.
All the border security and visa reform measures ever floated as the sugar-coatings on various amnesty pills could be passed tomorrow with broad and deep support from the American electorate. But Congress and President Bush are not interested in removing the threat until they get what they want in the “negotiations” they force upon the American people every few months. Like the gangsters discussed above, they let the unnerving hazard persist in plain view - all the while making clear what they have to be given before they remove the danger they’ve orchestrated. Just give us the amnesty and no one gets hurt.
Amnesty was the only part of the immigration reform bill that caused widespread outrage. People did not reject tougher workplace enforcement. They did not reject de-funding sanctuary cities. They did not reject increased immigration law enforcement resources or building a fence or requiring better ID. All these security measures could be passed as individual bills, unburdened by being tied to bitter amnesty. But Congress will make no such move now. The American people have not yet accepted their final offer - amnesty or nothing.
We can assume that June 28th, when amnesty was defeated in the Senate, the border became magically secure - because apparently all the danger that demanded “immediate” action when amnesty was on the table can now wait months or even years - until Congress can again make amnesty part of an offer you can’t refuse.
And while that time passes, the danger persists, and hundreds of thousands of crimes will be committed - and perhaps much, much worse.
