Ms. Napolitano, Show Us the Border
Out of sight is out of mind. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano can give the impression she’s doing her job and keeping Americans safe when Americans are unaware of the dangers lurking next door.
Napolitano can’t stop natural oppressors like tropical storms, hurricanes or earthquakes but she can impede the drug cartel violence on the U.S.-Mexico border. Nevertheless, Napolitano refuses to publicly acknowledge the extent of border violence from drug cartels. She also refrains from pressuring the media to cover the preventable destruction and bloodshed on the border as much as it covers natural disasters.
Between 35,000 and 40,000 people were killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón launched his war against drugs in 2006, reports the Associated Press.
I think Americans deserve to know about the drug cartel violence spilling onto our border. It should be printed on the front page of every major newspaper and discussed nightly on prime time television. We’re not talking about violence occurring across the ocean in Libya. We’re talking about brutal gangs operating out of our next-door neighbor, Mexico.
Let’s say you look outside and catch your next-door neighbor decapitating, scalping and removing the skin from the faces of a family that lives across town. Then, you watch him stuff the skin from the faces and scalps into a woman’s purse and showcase the purse as a bloody “trophy” (this happened last month outside a Sam’s Club store in Acapulco).
Assuming you can’t move, what would you do? Close your blinds, grab a beer and turn on the football game? Or, would you build a 21-foot-high wall around your house?
On March 24, Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture Todd Staples wrote a letter to Napolitano asking her to “recognize the threat of Mexican drug cartels as being a clear and present danger to our citizens and to the safe production of the United States food supply.”
Staples asked Napolitano to visit the site ProtectYourTexasBorder.com where Texas farmers and ranchers explain how drug cartels drive them to “abandon their land, leaving it vulnerable to criminal occupation, while retreating from farming and ranching and jeopardizing the food supply upon which we’ve all come to rely.”
Perhaps Napolitano was too busy fine-tuning her “If You See Something, Say Something” Walmart infomercials to bother replying. She delegated the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Betsy Markey, to respond to Staples on her behalf.
Markey wrote: “Unfortunately, there is a widespread misperception that the Southwest border is overrun by violence spilling from Mexico’s ongoing drug war. The reality is that some of America’s safest communities are in the Southwest border region…” Markey’s note reveals Napolitano’s brazen refusal to acknowledge the drug-induced violence on the border.
Napolitano’s “boss,” President Obama, seems more concerned with sweet-talking Hispanic voters than acknowledging cartel violence. He told the city of El Paso on May 10 that the 700-mile border fence was “basically complete” when it was really only five percent complete, five years after approval.
Napolitano’s “partner” in fighting the drug war, Attorney General Eric Holder, struggles to oversee the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The ATF’s “Fast and Furious” program lost track of over 2,000 major weapons crossing the border. Drug cartels likely acquired hundreds of powerful firearms and a significant leg up thanks to Holder’s mismanagement.
This September, PBS launches a new series featuring Calderón. Time Magazine reports: "In an effort to boost Mexico's weakened tourism industry ... (Calderón) will bravely lead camera crews into caverns, up rivers and down sink-holes, often while wearing an Indiana Jones-style hat."
So Napolitano stands by as the American public subsidizes a PBS show enabling Calderón to lure wealthy American tourists into drug cartel country. Does Napolitano work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or Mexico’s Secretaría de Turismo?
Ms. Napolitano and her partners should acknowledge the brutality on the border instead of ignoring or underestimating it. They should show Americans the border by asking their pals in the mainstream media to cover drug cartel border violence 24/7/365 (just like a hurricane) until it ceases.
If Americans fully understood the drug cartels on the border, they would be more open to decriminalizing drugs. A strategic, states’ rights approach to decriminalization is worth trying, but Americans won’t approach the war on drugs differently if Napolitano keeps telling the public: “some of America’s safest communities are in the Southwest border region.”
A November 2010 UK medical study published by The Lancet shows that alcohol is more lethal than heroin and crack cocaine and drastically more harmful than marijuana, ecstasy and LSD. Meanwhile, Forbes reports that drug abuse dropped by 50 percent in Portugal just 10 years after decriminalizing all drugs.
Show us the border, Ms. Napolitano. Acknowledge the national security threat from drug cartels. Modify your approach and protect Americans.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. Obama's Immigration Fiat (Op-Ed)
2. Thinking of First Responders (Blog)
3. 9/11 + 10: Time to Keep Extremists Out (Blog)
4. A Thought About Uncle Omar (Blog)
5. WARNING: Obama's Drunk-Driving Illegal-Alien Uncle Back on the Streets (Blog)
6. Protest at Hershey Gaining Support (Blog)
7. Financial Losses Due to USCIS Fee Waivers Soar to $87 Million a Year (Blog)
8. Milford, Mass., Tells Ecuador (and ICE): Enough Already! (Blog)
9. Limbaugh Mistakenly Warns GOP: Don't Be 'Distracted' by Illegal Immigration (Blog)
10. Census Report Shows Enforcement Works (Blog)
11. Immigration: A Litmus Test for the GOP? (Blog)
12. 'Illegals Raiding the U.S. Treasury' – The Civics Lesson Therein (Blog)
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
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