Andres Oppenheimer The Miami Herald

February 20, 2011

Andres Oppenheimer
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: The Missing Link – Some comments on your column this morning about why some law breaking is simpatico.

Snr. Oppenheimer,

“At the very least, they should have a serious discussion on
whether it makes sense to spend $4.5 billion in deporting
people who have not committed serious crimes and do jobs
that Americans don’t want to do, while slashing funds for
the FBI and other law enforcement agencies whose job
is to put serious criminals behind bars.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You

[As an aside before I get to main point don’t you think your choice of pronouns is a bit off? Wouldn’t they, as in they should have a serious discussion, be better replaced by we? If we have a serious discussion they won’t have to tell us what to do, right? One of the reasons why abortion is still a contentious issue is because we didn’t have a national discussion about it. We woke up one morning and learned that they had decided what was best for us.]

This could be a light bulb moment.

It certainly is a teachable moment.

One of the reasons why people walk from Punte del Este, why they swim from Cuba, why they risk all to get out of Mexico before it changes from one of the world’s worst countries to the worst country, one of the reasons why, to cite Lenin, that famous community organizer, they “vote with their feet”, is that they know instinctively that the Rule of Law prevails here. I will enclose as good a definition of the Rule of Law as I know.

It is not to be found south of the Rio Grande or south of Key West.

The last time I looked it was not too popular in Bolivia or Paraguay either.

What you are saying is that it is OK to break the law by entering this country illegally so long as you don’t break the law when you are here. Should illegal aliens be allowed 2 misdemeanors a year or one felony every other year before they are sent packing? If they go into bankruptcy should we hold them as indentured servants before deporting them, particularly if their bankruptcy disproportionately impacts other illegal aliens?

Let me conclude this morning’s tutorial with a brief primer on walls.

History tells us that they work.

The one in Berlin worked for 29 years keeping people in.

The other two, the one that the Chinese built and the one that Hadrian built, worked for centuries keeping people out.

The one that the French built worked also. Hitler wouldn’t have dreamed of going through it. He went around it.

One of the hallmarks of a sovereign nation is the ability to control its borders. Concomitant with that is the country decides who gets let in and who doesn’t.

Also, there is one language that is official. It is the language that is used when citizens enter into contracts. Yugoslovakia had 4 languages. Yugoslovenia is no longer a country. Yugo something or the other, right?

Absent that and we are like Venezuela.




Kevin Smith