1200 National Guard Troops to Arizona-Mexico Border
BY Herschel Smith
14 years, 6 months ago
Mr. Obama plans to send up to 1200 National Guard troops to the Arizona-Mexico border. It’s important to realize what this is – and what it isn’t. The solution to immigration is rather simple, but involves actions that we deem too painful. I have pointed out before that piracy exists because we want it to. Rather, we want it more than we want to implement the solution (which we deem to be too violent for our sensibilities). The same holds true for illegal immigration.
One such cornerstone in the undoing of illegal immigration is to imprison the CEOs of companies who hire illegal aliens. Add to this the imprisonment of those who hire illegals as nannies, house workers, and gardeners, and those construction superintendents who drop by Home Depot or Lowe’s early in the morning to pick up their workers, and we will begin to make a dent in the illegal population in the U.S.
But illegal immigrants is big business in America. It is a form of corporate welfare. Rather than pay for benefits, the cheap CEOs (and construction superintendents) can rely on the U.S. taxpayers (and medical insurance premium payers) to pay them for him. It’s a win-lose arrangement. The CEO wins and the taxpayer loses. There are even seminars that teach these cheap CEOs how to get away with it.
But there is another supremely important issue for border enforcement, one that has gotten scant attention. It has to do with whether the National Guard can in any way really help the border guards, and in fact, whether the border guards themselves can even do their job. When National Guardsmen were deployed to the border before, they were attacked and overrun by a small army on the payroll of the drug lords. They weren’t even allowed to fire warning shots according to the rules for the use of force.
The war on the Southern border is being treated as an exercise in law enforcement, and the stipulations of the SCOTUS decision in Tennessee v. Garner 471 U.S. 1 (1985) apply. Deadly force can only be used in self defense, and thus did Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean serve time in prison (until their sentences were commuted by President Bush) for shooting a known drug dealer who was both threatening these two former border guards and fleeing arrest.
Whether one agrees with the SCOTUS decision, its application on the border with hundreds of thousands of illegals flowing across combined with a heavily armed drug army is dubious at the very best. There simply aren’t enough border agents or National Guard troops to effect arrest by hand – chasing and apprehending them without deadly force – while following the stipulations of decisions intended for U.S. citizens. The flow of immigrants across the border must be treated as an invasion, and until it is, there will be no effect on the problem.
We can equivocate until there is no more border, we can legislate until the lawyers cannot decipher it. There are even those who do not care. But among those who do, there is nothing – NOTHING – these 1200 National Guardsmen can do. Their presence is mere window dressing as pointed out by Michelle Malkin. It is for appearance, and the hemorrhaging at the border will continue unabated.
On May 26, 2010 at 12:29 pm, Warbucks said:
1200 National Guard troops is a start. However, if the Governor of Arizona (Jan Brewer, Republican) were to elect to call for the formation of an all volunteer, “State Defense Force” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Defense_Forces , the federal government recognizes State Defense Forces under 32 U.S.C. § 109 which provides that State Defense Forces as a whole may not be called, ordered, or drafted into the Armed Forces of the United States, thus preserving their separation from the National Guard.
The people of the State of Arizona do not have to be disenfranchised from protecting themselves if both the Governor of the State and their state-level representatives stand tall. I think we would discover that an all-volunteer State Defense Force would be over subscribed by extraordinarily responsible citizens within 24 hours of implementing the orders and call for volunteers, as someone with moral and legal authority would be bringing clear order from the prevailing chaos.
The Governor would need to be on the front line of this undertaking for their to be the needed level of leadership. She could not sit in her air conditioned office down town or be home in bed by 10 pm each night. She would need to literally set up a combat operating post to impart the seriousness of her commitment with embedded reporters. Anything short of lawful activity would fail. Real weapons would have to be carried by people trained to use them responsibly and accept and follow orders.
While this may sound insensitive and naive to some and to the ever-present moral concerns raised by the Catholic Church, the inevitable law suits from the Civil Liberties Union, and the disruptive counter intelligence forces put into play politically by the drug cartels, the people of the State of Arizona have a constitutional right to secure their homes, ranch lands, and highways and by-ways and I think the Captain is correct, in his unstated premises that in the long run, it is more compassionate to control immigration lawfully. Mustering a national consensus may not be necessary to get the ball rolling. One brave Governor of the state is all it really takes.