Hack Kelly Strikes Again

My old nemesis, Jack "the Hack" Kelly has an interesting article up in which he discusses why we need to secure our borders. And then at the end, he offers an amnesty to illegal aliens, saying, in essence, "we didn't really mean it," or "we mean it, but if you get in we'll grandfather it for you." (Steve Sailer recently commented on the "this is not an amnesty" LIE, and Ol Lyin' Eyes Ziel pointed out why the penalties and provisions that would be required of illegal aliens before their status would be recognized are essentially toothless). This shows a fundamentally unserious approach to curbing illegal immigration.

Most disturbing, though, was this quote from a woman styling herself as "the Anchoress:"

We have to think long and hard about what it means - and what it will FEEL like - to gather people together at gunpoint and put them on trains to send them to a place they do not want to go. Our intentions could be the purest and most noble in the world…that scenario still still smacks of history we don’t want associated with us. It sets a precedent we dare not embrace. I don’t want to see such pictures in our history books. That is not America. That cannot be America, if she is to survive.

Notice that we have no right to determine whom we let into our country. No, we must worry about where "they want to go." I would respond with the good old bar saying:

"You don't have to go home, but youy can't stay here."

In any case, though, the concept that we are sending them "to a place they do not want to go," as if they had any right to be here, is really quite back-to-front. It's as if you shamed a woman for resisting a rape because she was trying to force the rapist not to have sex with her. The fact of the matter is, if we don't have the legitimate authority to send them back to their home countries (or if they would rather, to a different country that is willing have them), because we are "sending them someplace they don't want to go," then under what authority can we keep them out in the first place? If they "don't want to go" back, then likely a large number of people who are in their home countries right now don't want to stay there. If we cannot send illegal aliens "where they do not want to go," how can we force those who have not yet come to the U.S. to "stay where they do not want to stay?" Logically, her argument either involves making arbitrary distinctions between those who got here and those who didn't, or else inexorably leads one to conclude that we not only have no right to deport illegals, we have no right to restrict anyone who wants to come here from coming here in the first place. So there goes our nationhood.

I would ask the Anchoress this. If a woman is being raped, and is resisting, should she be considered as guilty as the rapist? After all, he is forcing her to have sex with him, but she is attempting to force him not to have sex with her. Of course she isn't guilty; because the two are not equivalent. Similarly, deporting someone who came here without permission is hardly an act of aggression.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Lawrence Auster.

That is all.