Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House — The Sequel [Worse than the Original]
In the movies sequels are usually worse than the original. Since Washington has often been referred to as “Hollywood for ugly people,” it is perhaps appropriate to consider another sequel in the making, not in film but in politics. Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House and soon-to-be Speaker of the House of Representatives, once again was the subject of a video posted on December 7, 2018 by Fox News, in which she rejected the notion of constructing a wall along the highly porous U.S./Mexican border to prevent the entry of illegal aliens, narcotics and other contraband.
Her outrageous statements and positions on immigration law enforcement and border security seemed to strike a new low during her first stint as Speaker. She has yet to resume that position and is already providing a disturbing peek into what America and Americans are in for with her in the position that provides her with a “leadership” role in the Congress and puts her in the chain of succession to the U.S. Presidency.
As my dad used to say, “Nothing is so good it could not be better or be so bad it could not get worse.” As hard as it might be to imagine, bad as Pelosi was the last time she held the position of Speaker, she may actually prove my dad was right.
This is the Fox News video:
It is unfathomable how Pelosi could declare that protecting the United States from threats posed by international terrorists, transnational gangs and the flow of narcotics into the United States is “immoral.”
It is similarly impossible to understand how Pelosi could determine that it is immoral to prevent the illegal entry of foreign workers who all too frequently displace American and lawful immigrant workers and drive down wages and working conditions of American and lawful immigrant workers who are similarly employed.
A wall would not prevent the lawful entry of a single person into the United States. The wall would not block America’s ports of entry but would funnel all traffic destined to the United States through ports of entry where they are subject to inspection by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Inspectors and where a record of their entry into the United States is created. These issues have significant national security implications.
This is comparable to the way that guests who visit us are expected to knock on our front doors to ask permission to enter our homes. It would certainly be unacceptable for a stranger to enter our homes by climbing through a back window. Similarly an effective border wall would prevent aliens entering the United States surreptitiously.
In a very real sense, entering without inspection is, at a minimum, comparable to trespassing and, as I noted in my recent article, “Democrats Stand With Foreign Rioters,” Chuck Schumer’s hypocritical and contradictory position on trespassing on critical infrastructure and national landmarks versus aliens who trespass on America is astonishing.
Here is the relevant excerpt from my commentary:
Aliens who evade the vital inspections process conducted at ports of entry are, at a minimum, trespassing on the United States. This is a violation of law and poses a threat to national security and public safety.
On October 13, 2014 Schumer posted a press release on his official website which announced that because of dangers created by trespassers, particularly in this era of terrorism, that he had proposed legislation that would make trespassing on critical infrastructure and/or landmarks a federal crime with a maximum prison sentence of five years.
However, Schumer, who actually cited the antics of a 16-year-old boy in his press release, had declared that anyone who trespasses, including “adrenaline junkies,” should face a five-year prison sentence.
However, when aliens trespass on the United States, even where violence is concerned, Schumer and his Democratic colleagues are determined to provide those illegal aliens with U.S. citizenship!
The open-borders immigration anarchists refer to aliens who run our borders as being “undocumented immigrants.” In point of fact, aliens who evade the inspections process conducted at ports of enter the United States without inspection.
Such an entry is in violation of U.S. Code § 1325, a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Some “journalists” have actually seized upon this linguistic sleight of tongue and have come to refer to illegal aliens as “immigrants who lack documents,” conjuring up the image of a student who went to the bathroom without taking the hall pass. The issue is not a lack of paperwork but legal authorization to enter the United States and remain here. Some of these aliens have no shortage of documents. In my 30-year career I encountered quite a few aliens who had been deported numerous times, some having been arrested and convicted of so many crimes during each of their illegal forays into the United States that their arrest record or “rap sheet” and their immigration files could have provided wallpaper to decorate a moderately-sized house, if you like hanging garbage on walls!
Aliens who seek to evade the inspections process do so because they know that they belong to one or more categories of aliens who are legally ineligible to enter the United States. Race, religion and/or ethnicity do not have any bearing whatsoever on the admissibility of aliens who seek to enter the United States.
In fact, 8 U.S. Code § 1182 enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded from the United States. It is clear that the purpose for this section of law is protect national security, public safety and public health and protect the jobs and wages of American workers.
Among these classes of aliens who are to be prevented from entering the United States are aliens who had been previously deported from the United States, aliens who suffer from dangerous communicable diseases or extreme mental illness, are convicted felons, human rights violators, war criminals, terrorists and spies are to be excluded as well as aliens who would seek unlawful employment, thus displacing American workers or driving down the wages of American workers who are similarly employed and aliens who would likely become public charges, thereby burdening the economies of the towns and cities where they would live.
Pelosi claims that the wall would be “ineffective.” In fact, had a wall been erected the “Caravan of Migrants” (aspiring illegal aliens) would likely have been deterred from streaming to the U.S./Mexican border.
However, more must be done to address the immigration crisis than simply constructing a wall along the southern border. As I have frequently noted, a wall along the border is comparable to a wing on an airplane. Without a wing the airplane will not fly, but a wing by itself goes nowhere. A border wall must be erected and additional enhancements must also be made to the enforcement program of the Department of Homeland Security. Currently ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has about 6,000 agents for the entire United States and they do not only enforce immigration laws but customs laws and other laws that have nothing to do with immigration. (The “C” in ICE is, after all, Customs.) ICE is more focused on those who produce counterfeit Gucci loafers than counterfeit passports. To put things in perspective, the NYPD has about 38,000 police officers, the Border Patrol has about 20,000 agents, and our armed forces have more than one million enlisted men and women.
Obviously many more ICE agents, immigration judges and support staff should be hired, not to deport all of the illegal aliens who are present in the United States (likely more than 30,000), but to imbue the immigration system with meaningful integrity and convince aspiring illegal aliens around the world that the United States takes its laws and its borders seriously.
Finally, as to the issue of the cost of constructing the wall, the wall would pay for itself just as the cost of insulating a house is payed back to the homeowner many times over through savings in the costs of heating and cooling the house. I drew upon that analogy in my article “America Needs A Border Wall Like Houses Need Insulation,” in which I noted that each year tens of billions of ill-gotten dollars flow out of the United States in the form of remittances and other means of moving the money out of the U.S. that is earned by illegal aliens and as the result of the drug trade. Finally securing that border would help to stanch the flow of money and save many, many lives as an added bonus.
Of course, as I have noted in my article “Sanctuary Country – Immigration failures by design,” the multiple failures of the immigration system are not the result of inability to enforce our laws but an abject lack of desire by political leaders of both parties to enforce the immigration laws.
To put it bluntly, while our borders and our immigration laws are America’s first and last lines of defense against transnational criminals and fugitives and international terrorists, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a laundry list of other organizations and special interest groups including immigration lawyers, they are viewed as an impediment to their wealth.
While Nancy is a highly-visible proponent for open borders, there are precious few members of Congress in either party who actually disagree with her.
That is the real horror show!
EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. It is republished with permission. Photo by DonkeyHotey