By Donald A. Collins | 1 April 2015
Progressives for Immigration Reform
As the violence continues to escalate around the world one cannot help but ask the question, “Are US citizens becoming refugees in our own country?”
Whose country is this anyway? Does it belong to the scores who have already been allowed to immigrate us since immigration laws were eviscerated in 1965?
Answer: Apparently, if our current President’s open border, executive order to anyone wishing to immigrate to the US applies.
One of the many facts that prompted the above feeling was the Center for Immigration Studies March 27, 2015 article entitled, New Data Show Immigrant Gang Arrests, based on data obtained by CIS Research Director Jessica Vaughn.
A quote from the article’s summary tells us:
Violent immigrant and transnational gangs such as MS-13, Surenos, and 18th Street continue to present a significant public safety threat in many parts of the United States, according to arrest records released by ICE to the Center for Immigration Studies. In 2013 (the most recent year available) ICE arrested significant numbers of gang members in California, Texas, Chicago, and the New York City and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas. Large concentrations also were arrested by ICE agents in Atlanta, Charlotte, and south Florida.
In addition to the large transnational gangs, smaller immigrant gangs that operate locally or regionally are a problem all over the United States, in urban, suburban and rural areas. Since 2005, ICE has arrested more than 32,200 gang members, leaders and associates. Arrests peaked in 2012, then dropped by more than 25 percent in 2013, and continued to decline in 2014.
This recent record calls into question President Obama’s claim that gang members are among the highest priorities for enforcement. The administration has been severely criticized for legalizing known illegal alien gang members in the controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, including Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez, who has been arrested in North Carolina for the murder of four people.
When we read in the papers of the kind of violence which is erupting worldwide, one has to be brain dead not to believe that more violence is coming our way.
Like some amorphous monster fish, the photo in the March 27, 2015 Wall Street Journal article, “Europe’s Cargo Ships Diverted To Sea Rescues” actually shows hundreds of shipwrecked migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
Being the WSJ, the article couches the story in financial terms, which in a way is apt, as excess migration means extra costs, as the US is now experiencing in nearly every aspect of our lives.
At what point will US citizens become refugees due to the overwhelming burdens of excess human numbers?
Think about it! Many US citizens have long left California for nearby states with lower taxes and more open space as the golden state became more and more overcrowded and expensive. Were those folks refugees? I think so.
When our numbers grew from under 200 million in about 1970 to 325 million today, were we pressed to find smaller places to live but at hugely higher prices? Are we thus refugees?
I built a 4 bedroom, 3,000 square foot house on an acre of land in a small Pennsylvania town for under $40,000 in 1965. Today a similar house in that neighborhood would cost multiple times that much. Do the rows of tract houses which snake like pythons over the landscapes of exurbia offer refuges or just costly escape capsules which now take so much longer to reach after a long work day than before?
Pensions used to be common and reasonable health care packages were offered by many employers. But we migrated out of those perks, due in part to increased numbers.
With 25 million US citizens out of work or under-employed, we could postulate that the influx of cheap labor was at the root of these conditions. Are these citizens to be dubbed economic refugees?
We hear constant cries of how the economy is improving that the employment rate is going down to under 6% which of course does not count those refugees who have stopped looking for work and yet, the chasm between the rich and poor continues to widen.
Despite these facts our President demands that more aliens be allowed to enter the US and remain unaccounted for in a world where we know at least some of these individuals would seek to do us harm.
The world is far from a safe place these days and America has been the bastion of hope and safety for immigrants throughout our history. We need to continue to receive the vital flow of immigrant talent, desire, and comity but not at current unprecedented levels.
If we do not, we will undoubtedly become refugees, refugees from the favorable living conditions which our forebearers carved out and bequeathed to us all.
Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.
From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013
By Donald A. Collins
Publisher: Church and State Press (July 30, 2014)
ASIN: B00MA40TVE
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A Discussion of US Immigration Policy and the Effect of Population on Environmental Sustainability
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