Shoveling a Load

Another one of those viral emails -

5,000 years ago Moses said, “Pick up your shovel, pack your ass, mount your camel and I shall lead you to the Promised Land.”

200-plus years ago, George Washington said, “Get off your ass, use your shovel, clear the land, grow plants for camels and it will be the promised land.”

Recently the Congress of the United States said “Si, Amigos, throw away your shovel, sit on your ass, light your Camels. We’re giving you the promised land.”

In Did the Senate Just Blink? Morning Coffee quoted Senator Specter:

“It may be down the line that we will come to some terms on a timetable, with border security first and employment verification first,” he said.

Why do people find these jokes amusing? Because there is a kernel of truth to it. We know the Senate bill was a massive giveaway to illegals and American businesses willing to break the law in order to have cheap labor and higher profits. This email is an example of the entrenched anger that many people feel about the Senate’s “comprehensive” reform, and that anger is not really going away. Now that illegal immigration is no longer the top news story, the anger is simmering, not boiling. Apply just a little heat and the pot will boil over again.

The House, who must fight to keep their jobs three times as often as the Senate, is quite a bit more tuned in to public sentiment on this issue. Immersed in all the legalese was the simple fact that illegal aliens who are permitted to stay under any conditions are, in fact, “cutting the line” in front of tens of thousands of applicants who have followed the rules and properly applied to enter the United States from their home countries. As a matter of simple fairness, this angers Americans. The “22 Problems With The Senate’s Illegal Immigration Bill” listed by John Hawkins at Right Wing News were just icing on that cake.

Emails like this one are signals of the anger many Americans feel about this, and our elected officials would do well to note them. Even people as anti-illegal immigration as I am will concede the difficulty of dealing with people who have been here for a long time. But if we stop the bleeding by closing the border, stitch the wound by forcing businesses to pay the price for their law breaking, and administer antibiotics by stopping government benefits to non-citizens, we will have effectively healed this problem. Consider the illegals who don’t self-deport under these conditions scar tissue, an unpleasant reality after an injury. After the injury is treated (all the other conditions are met) we can deal with it by allowing the illegals who remain a permanent resident status that entitles them to stay and work if they want to, but not receive any government handouts at all.

I hope that Morning Coffee was right and that the Senate blinked. Maybe they’re finally catching on to the reason these kinds of emails make the rounds. This problem is not going to go away.

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.