The Why's of Missing Leadership on Immigration

Killer week at work, including an 11 hour day Saturday, so I've blogged-lite this week and weekend to keep up with my real life. This is another killer week at work that will probably end up with another long Saturday, but I still managed to look in on what’s going on in the well-traveled parts of the Blogosphere. I wanted to wait until something came to me that wasn’t being beaten to death elsewhere, but that hasn’t happened, so I thought I’d ruminate on some of the less talked-about aspects to something that was widely covered.

There is a lot to pick from, but no other topic seems as fertile as the illegal alien issue. Any discussion of the problem with our borders raises a lot of questions (so far) that seem to go unanswered, Tom Tancredo aside, in Washington. I guess my biggest questions on the issue all begin with a “Why?”

Why was the first instinct for a large number of Republican lawmakers either to drag their feet or work to subvert any effort to secure our borders and enforce our laws?

Why are elected officials who are otherwise security-conscious, trying to turn a blind eye to the near and long term security threats of an open border?

Why are so many in Congress, who haven’t met a piece of not-one-more-dead-child legislation they didn’t pass lest they appear to be indifferent to any American’s health, and the President, who thought no price was too high to pay for yet another federally funded health care giveaway, ignoring the enormous threat the unchecked flow of illegal aliens pose to our health and health care system?

We will catch this problem in time, I think, but no thanks to the so-called ‘leaders’ (of any stripe) in Government.

The answer to all these "whys", I believe, might be very simple. The National Legislators and Administration, are gun-shy on any issue that could be framed as a ‘rights’ or ‘discrimination’ issue. And in the end we the Public are to blame. Over the last four decades, either we’ve been raving liberal moonbats who see oppression in every corner of public discourse and browbeat anyone who dares challenge the ‘Cause’, or we’re the chronic apologists who let them do it.

Bottom line: in a free society, we get the government we collectively deserve.

Again, I think (hope it isn’t just ‘hope’) we are catching this problem in time. The national mood is swinging towards a rational point of view. The mainstream dialog seems to have shifted quickly into a ‘facts-based’ discussion rather than an emotive one. This should bode us well and prevent irrational counter-movements that could give rise to an American sympathy similar to those that gave energy to France’s LePen or England’s BNP.

I guess we will see.