What are you going to do with the illegal immigrants when you find them, Joe?
“I’m going to put them in tents.â€
What if you run out of tents?
“Tents are cheap. I’ll put more up.â€
Aren’t you worried about the lawsuits from Hispanic immigration advocacy groups?
“I get sued when I go to the toilet. It doesn’t bother me.â€
Owing to the failure of the United States government to adequately control the US/Mexico border, it has fallen to others to do the job. One such man is Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio - the man famous for making inmates wear pink clothes and live in tents while interned at the Maricopa County Jail. His authority to round up illegals came only recently.
Last August, legislators passed an anti-smuggling law intended to prevent human trafficking in Arizona. A few weeks ago, county attorneys advised Sheriff Joe that he may be able to use this law to go after illegal immigrants, by making the immigrants being smuggled co-conspirators in their own smuggling. Neat. Now, two nights ago, Joe mobilised a 3000-strong volunteer posse who have been provided with an elaborate ensemble of helicopters, trucks, jeeps and planes. Their mission: to seek out and arrest undocumented immigrants in Joe’s jurisdiction, bring them back to Joe and have them booked into accommodations at Tent City (not merely dropped off at the border). So far the effort has netted 62 arrests, along with weapons, cars and cash.
“It’s important to send the message out to stay in Mexico and don’t come roaming around here hoping you’re going to get amnesty,” Arpaio told the AP. “They ought to stay cool, stay in Mexico and wait until this illegal immigration problem is solved. If they don’t do that and they come to Maricopa County, they’re going straight to jail.”
Tough.
But Sheriff Joe isn’t encountering opposition from the masses in general. In the past couple of days alone, he claims to have received thousands of messages of support. This correlates well with support for the Minuteman Project (which uses armed volunteers to patrol the border), several other agencies with similar positions on illegal immigration and 62 percent of respondents to a recent Opinion Dynamics poll who said they were convinced of the need for better border security.
With 12 million estimated illegal immigrants in America and an estimated 200,000 new smugglees every year, its clear that immigration policy isn’t exactly working. Jim Gilchrist, director of the Minuteman Project, has given President Bush an ultimatum: effectively control the border by May 25th or he will co-ordinate volunteers to build a security fence along the border using private cash. Such an effort may or may not be effective, but at least they’re doing something. That citizens find themselves having to actively seek ways to do what their government has failed to do is bad enough. That the issue at stake is national security - in the post-9/11 world - is nothing short of astounding.
The news today is that there is finally some action at the federal level on this. A political stalemate that has lingered for weeks has been broken at long last with an agreement led by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Meantime Sheriff Joe will be locking them all up in his tents. And I have to say I had a huge grin on my face when I heard about it. Immigration needs to be governed, and border control is an integral part of that for America today. If efforts by private groups with untrained volunteers can be so effective, the government should be ashamed of its record. I realise that my libertarian readers will be complaining that my position is not a libertarian one. Allow me to respond, in two ways.
(1) In order for a libertarian society to exist, the infrastructure of that society needs to be protected. Such protection is only possible with the existence of a secure border. If libertarians ever wish to see their positions enacted in law, they need to acknowledge that the law will only take effect within that jurisdiction, and that what is beyond the border will not be a libertarian society. The United States can only make laws which affect citizens of the United States and the security of the nation is inherently dependent on governing and securing the border. Ideally we would not need a border because Mexico too would be governed by a libertarian doctrine. Until that is the case, the border is a necessary fact of life.
(2) It could be argued that, even if we insist on a border, libertarianism simply prescribes allowing peaceful people to move freely. I agree. But libertarianism also precludes people from receiving state welfare. And the illegal immigrant population is costing average Americans more and more every year, as they take advantage of redistributionist programs which reach into the public pocket to prop up the lives of the lethargic minority. Until government welfare is the mere memory of a statist past, immigration is a tool of collectivist policy, by providing the political victims needed by the Left to impose its ideology. That clearly does not help a libertarian cause. Besides, it’s economic suicide. The numbers just don’t work, long-term.
Bottom line: nobody is suggesting disallowing immigration, least of all me. And not one of the sensible commentators have a motive of racism of any kind, despite the insinuations of some on the Left. Hell, Jennifer Lopez was a Hispanic immigrant: I have no problem with it whatsoever. What the American people want is for immigration to be done legally. I personally came to the USA at a cost of thousands of dollars, weeks of complicated paperwork and lots of patience. It irritates me that people are being allowed to circumvent the entire process and -moreover- protest on the streets of American cities at the prospect of being forced to do it legally. I have sympathy and compassion when I hear some of their stories. But what they’re asking is unreasonable: to leave the system broken. It needs fixed… NOW.
Until it is, go Sheriff Joe.
John Wright
