Common sense best with border security
As is well known by all here, I am not one for truncated columns. What follows then is a meditation on the question of the border, both our southern cousin’s and our own. Our Mr. T and America’s Mr. T could not be further apart in their attitudes towards border security. While U.S. President Donald Trump has shut down the most powerful government on Earth in order to pressure his opponents into funding his wall, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has personally encouraged illegal or undocumented migrants to come into Canada, stated there are jobs for them and still not hired more case workers to process their files and determine their status in a timely fashion.
The opposition members in both cases are just as vehement. In Congress, the small majority won by Democrats in November 2018 has given them the purse strings to say no to Trump’s wall, just as leaders in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and the federal Tories are stating unequivocally that the money spent on migrants means less for citizens and the possibility of new security threats, is very real, inferring negligence on the part of the federal government.
The last aspect to mention here is one of jumping from actions to motive. With respect to Mr. Trump, many argue that his rhetoric denotes a disturbed mind and racist soul, which they use to justify a “no one is illegal” mentality, complete with sanctuary cities or open borders; in Canada, the media has focused on the prime minister saying much the same of his critics.
The first point to be made is border security is one of those few debates where everyone’s on the same side whether they realize it or not – nobody let’s strange people into their homes or yards without some kind of clear justification.
Given that the nation is just all of our communities, towns, and cities combined into a single geographic area, is it not fair to ask for proper documentation from entrants, or in lieu of that, a plausible story about a dire escape?
The slightly darker version of this same argument is once people come into this country, they have an innumerable amount of rights (and methods of recourse) to be keep from leaving it – and despite popular opinion, much the same is true of the United States. I encourage any doubters to look up even one case of failed deportation on just grounds, then understand that these are thousands of dollars that could go to services for citizens or lawful new arrivals.
The other question at hand is when did those in favour of irregular or illegal immigration lose their collective doubts on this issue? History is not so flexible that it has not forgotten that as recently as the mid-1990s, all left-leaning parties were of a single mind on the issue of illegal immigrants: a zero-tolerance policy for any and all breaking the cornerstone of liberalism - rules.
Yet somehow left-leaning parties and personalities have made open borders their cause du jour since 9/11, even in the face of enormous backlash from their traditional base made up of what is “the indigenous working class.” Some of this has been ugly, as in many parts of Europe today; but in the English speaking world, it’s been truly democratic, with public sentiment coming to light in the Brexit referendum as well as the 2016 presidential election.
And if I may reason from policies to motives, the iconoclasm progressives constantly pursue does not find much standing amongst the “old stock” that made up their former voters, instead, pork-barrelling and redrawing laws for new arrivals, along with a make-work system of policies and language from pseudo-academic advocates, is what they hope produces power. For any further reference, one need only read G.K. Chesterton’s The Flying Inn, published 1914.
In the spirit of the moderation I vowed this new year, I will concede that many people who support more open borders and increased immigration do it from a place of charity and not cynicism. And I will be the first to honour Wilfred Laurier and many more who made a viable thing out of Canada by bringing in peoples of every background from teeming shores far away.
But the people here still have rights, first and foremost to the practical sense of home all have created by their labour and loyalty to this Queen’s Dominion. And whether it be the cousins or our own masters in Ottawa, that must be the priority when adjudicating our border security.