Speakout: Illegal immigrants show little respect

By Charles King, Rocky Mountain News

January 20, 2006

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/speak_out/article/0,2777,DRMN_23970_4401051,00.html

In her column of Jan. 12, "Assimilation may come at cost of biculturalism," the News' Tina Griego recognizes that Americans must fix "a broken immigration system." But she wants to eat her cake and have it, too. Legal and illegal are antonyms, not synonyms. She can't have it both ways.

For example, Griego quotes a Hispanic woman named Joyce, apparently an American citizen: "I don't care how they [her illegal immigrant neighbors] came across." Joyce then adds: "You have those vigilantes on the border waving their guns, and I think that's ridiculous. Everyone has a right to try to make a living. What I do care about is that they respect the people here. That's all I'm asking for: respect."

Joyce, an American, cares not that our borders are being unlawfully crossed by literally hordes of people from other nations to our south. If she appreciated the fact that this nation is prosperous and free largely because it is a nation of laws - not of men, as many other countries are - she would care about the illegal crossing of our borders in open defiance of our national sovereignty.

She then mistakenly calls the minutemen "vigilantes," and says they wave their guns. They are not vigilantes (as President Bush himself has stupidly called them) and, yes, some do carry guns but they do not wave them.

What is "ridiculous," even outrageous, is that we citizens who love our country have to help our national government do what is its solemn responsiblity to do: secure our borders - period.

Joyce fails to understand that American citizens have rights, just as citizens of other nations have rights which we as Americans do not have. Human rights are not to be confused with national rights. French citizens enjoy rights as French citizens, but not as American citizens. Each nation, including Mexico, has an obligation to provide for its citizens the right to make a living.

The United States of America owes no citizen of another country who is here illegally a right to make a living here. This, of course, does not mean that all human beings are not equal in God's sight, but only that there are national rights (which in no way contradict human rights). In America, principally because of the influence of Christianity in our nation's founding and history since colonial times, we treat people humanely. Illegal immigrants here are given emergency room medical services costing many millions of dollars. Every dollar spent on illegal immigrants is a dollar less for our citizens and legal immigrants.

But Joyce does want illegal aliens who come here to respect us who are here legally. They didn't respect our laws when they crossed illegally into our nation, or paid a smuggler to bring them here. In Mexico, let's face it, there is far less respect for the law than there is in this country. It's hard, if not impossible, to respect our culture and our social views if your knowledge of English is all but nonexistent. To become an American citizen, at least until recently, one had to have a minimal level of knowledge of English, and swear allegiance to this nation, and renounce allegiance to one's former country.

Charles L. King holds a doctorate in Spanish and Spanish literature from the University of Southern California. He is a former member of the U.S. Information Agency, and spent nine years of a 23-year teaching career as a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Colorado. He is a resident of

Boulder.

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