Illegal Immigrants’ Families

As a husband it’s difficult to imagine the suffering of a spouse or child who sees his/her family torn apart when a parent is arrested and deported for immigration violations.

Human Rights Watch says that’s happened to over 1.6 million illegals in the last 10 years.

The widespread impact on American families has been truly devastating, said Alison Parker, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

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“How do you explain to a child that her father has been sent thousands of miles away and can never come home simply because he forged a check?” Parker said.

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Steve Camorata, Center for Immigration Studies research director, said family members can leave with the deported immigrants. “Children constantly bear the consequences of their parents’ poor decisions,” he added.

1.6 million wives and children hurt. This sad number truly staggers the imagination. But what is even more shocking to me is that the head of a family would deliberately put his loved ones in jeopardy by illegally bringing them to the U.S. in the first place or, having come here alone, would proceed to incur family obligations without the legal basis to follow through on them.

Does the thought that the penalties proscribed in American law might actually be applied to them never enter the illegals’ minds?

Probably not – under Clinton and Bush we’ve been so lax at enforcing border security that there has been little reason for them to worry. And yet, 1.6 million family members have been split apart from each other by their failure to live within the law.

Whose fault is that?

Not Americans’, surely, despite our ridiculous internal dysfunctionality on the subject. This failure of logic has most recently manifested itself in Manassas, Virginia, where Prince William county recently passed a measure which would permit county workers to ensure people are in the country legally before providing services.

That’s an excellent idea! Or it would be if people where truly interested in solving the illegal immigration problem. Illegals come to America for jobs and free services. Remove the latter and the former is not nearly so attractive.

And yet:

The county’s police chief also spoke out strongly against the measure, saying it would diminish cooperation with law enforcement and further strain thinly stretched resources. Chief Charlie T. Deane said restricting access to recreation services would lead to increased crime among young people.

This despite the fact that the preamble of the resolution states the problem quite clearly:

Illegal immigration may be encouraged by public agencies within the county by failing to verify immigration status as a condition of providing services

Really? I wouldn’t have suspected that.

It’s actually worse than it appears. Illegals, despite having no legal right to be in the U.S. at all, seem to feel that they are entitled to American public services. Speaking at a recent protest rally:

“I am here because it’s against justice,” said Maria Hernandez, a U.S. citizen and former illegal immigrant from El Salvador, who stood outside the administration building with her year-old son and 3-year-old daughter hanging on her. “How is it possible that our children won’t have an education because they are illegal?”

How it is possible? Exactly. The utter lack of any guilt whatever is absolutely amazing.

What I want to know is how it is possible for such an utterly illogical, lawless, self-centered point of view to exist in this country? How is it possible that illegal aliens dare to claim as their right what Americans have paid for with the tax levies placed on their own labor?

How is it possible that Americans can defend this unearned claim on our infrastructure?

Yet some do:

immigrant rights advocates said they feared the intent [of the Manassas policy] was to deny a wide range of services, including medical care, library access and even the federally protected right to schooling. They say such restrictions will inevitably lead to discrimination based on race and ethnicity.

“Discrimination based on immigration status” is what these groups mean and are afraid to say. The fact that their “clients” are criminals in the eyes of the law means absolutely nothing to these so-called rights advocates.

What about the right of Americans to keep the social services that their tax dollars bought for their own use? Who will defend that right?

As sympathetic as we might be to individual illegals’ cases, the fundamental fact that the American government should rely on is that illegals have a choice to stay in their country of origin, whereas Americans have no choice when our hard-earned social services are misappropriated by illegals.

That fact is what we should stand on, proudly and without the least shame.

Thus forewarned, illegals should realize what they may be doing to themselves and their families when they choose to flout our laws.