The Biggest Fool I Have Ever Encountered
I have been writing publicly ever since 1958.
Over the years, I have received my fair share of letters from crackpots, really stupid people, and people so far beyond the fringe that I wonder how they function.
Nevertheless, I have received an email from a man who puts them all to shame.
I wrote an article on a system of informing that would get illegal immigrants into a federal data base. I called it Trump's Squeal-a-Thon. With a title like that, you might conclude that I was not altogether serious.
I am not saying that my plan would not work. I think it would work. The problem is this: it would be useless. How could the U.S. government round up between 10 million and 20 million people? How could they all be arrested, housed, fed, tried, and deported?
It's not that the government could not locate them if it adopted my program. It's that it could not possibly arrest, try, and convict all of them. The logistics are impossible.
Second, where would the government send them? Not to Mexico. Mexico would not accept them. Besides, half of them are not from Mexico.
THE REAL ID ACT
My real concern is the existing federal database called the Real ID program. Information on you is in it or will be going into it if you have a driver's license. Deadline: January 22, 2018. I would like to see this law repealed. The courts have not overturned it.
So, I wrote that if we could deport all the illegals, this would undermine the public's willingness to accept the ID program for all the rest of us.
There would no longer be a politically popular justification for a national ID card.There would be no need to police all businesses with respect to hiring only workers with a national ID card.
Also, if the voters would simply recognize that the government cannot possibly deport all of them, this might undermine the public's willingness to accept the ID program for all the rest of us.
My point was that the whole idea of mass deportations is operational nonsense. Mexico will not take them. It would take hundreds of billions of dollars to attempt to deport all of them. The cost would rise as the government deported the "low-hanging fruit."
Identifying who they are and where they are is fairly easy. My squeal-a-thon approach would work. So what? The problem is not getting the illegals into a national data base. It's finding a way to deport them.
If the government adopted my program, it could not tell us that we must submit to the Real ID Act. The Congress could then repeal it.
The illegals would still be here. It would cost too much to deport them, one by one.
My goal in writing my essay was to show that the government is involved in a gigantic bait-and-switch operation. "To get the illegals into a national data base, we must get everyone into this data base." But it's all a sham. The government has no intention of deporting 10 million to 20 million illegals. Congress will never allocate $285 billion as a down payment on deporting the easy ones to identify. Its goal is to get the public to submit to the Real ID Act. Why will the public do this? Because of what should be an obvious lie: "If you submit, we will catch all those illegal immigrants."
If they really want to get the illegal aliens into its data base, they can implement my squeal-a-thon strategy. We therefore don't need the Real ID program for legals, meaning you and me. That's because the government cannot possibly deport all of the illegals, and the bureaucrats know this.
The illegals are not the federal government's primary targets. We are.
I thought my logic was impeccable: "Mexico is the roadblock. Forget about it." I was wrong.
I HAD NOT THOUGHT OF THIS
I will admit it. I had not thought of the following. My correspondent clarified the options for me.
How about this instead?Any American citizen can get $10,000 for information leading to deporting an illegal alien.
You write, "Today, Mexico will not allow this". Mexico interferes with our elections. Mexico attacks US sovereignty. We should return the favor. Have the buses escorted with tanks. If Mexico fires at our tanks, declare war on Mexico. Why should we support Mexican nationals here and act like we are paying war reparations to Mexico?
George W.
Houston, TX
This man has won my lifetime achievement award: the biggest fool I have ever encountered.
Is he a neo-con? I don't think they will claim him.
I don't know who would claim him.
Let's see: 20 million people divided by 50 people per bus. That is 400,000 bus loads. Can you imagine any President mobilizing the tanks to drive 400,000 bus loads of Hispanics deep into Mexico? "Well, they sounded like Mexicans. They looked like Mexicans. If it quacks like a duck . . ."
My correspondent can easily imagine this. He recommends it.
The court system? No problem. Even the Supreme Court? No problem. The ACLU? No problem.
Where would the Army house them? No problem.
Where would the Army get the buses? School districts? No problem.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for the Real ID Act to get to the next phase. Most of the illegal aliens will never be in this database. But you and I will. They know how to hide. You and I don't.
CONCLUSION
In the conservative movement, as in every movement, there are crackpots. There are people out there who delight in the thought of authorizing the U.S. government to push around the wrong sorts of people. They really do trust the Feds to defend the interests of all Americans. They are ready to submit to anything, as long as the Feds say: "We're here to protect you from them. But first, you must fill out these forms."
Sadly, these people like to send me emails.