Open Letter to the White House - Border Patrol

Dear Mr. President:

Honestly, I try to understand the statements you make and the principles that lie behind them, whatever they may be. I've been trying my best for the past five years, really I have. Your record remains perfect, though; I can't make head or tail of what you want when it comes to America's border with Mexico.

Let's see - you want more fencing, cameras and patrolmen on the border itself. You want more jail cells. You want a "hard" border, through which no illegal immigrant can come.


You want amnesty for illegal immigrants to stop, but you want some sort of limited legal status for certain workers, who will arrive here for a limited period of time to "fill jobs that Americans will not do."

And you want more green cards issued for legal immigrants interested in pursuing citizenship.

You call this a "comprehensive" overhaul of the immigration law, but your press secretary denies that it signals any change in focus for you.

Got it. Here are a few thoughts:

More jail cells, more cops, more technology, more green cards, more programs, more bureaucracy - in short, more money. Did you notice that there's a pretty expensive war going on? Did you know that the United States is borrowing billions every month to keep it going? I know you grew up rich, and your family has bailed you out of every financial squeeze you've ever experienced, but are you sure this is the best use of your money? Didn't you used to be a conservative once?

That goes for the border, too. Back in February 2004 you said you were a "war president" and that you made policy decisions with war on your mind; has that changed? If the border with Mexico is so porous, shouldn't you have that big expensive Department of Homeland Security patrolling it rather than a bunch of brand-new immigration officers with service revolvers? And if the border isn't really all that dangerous, why are you making speeches in El Paso about immigration when there's a war on?

Speaking of war, some of your allies cry "class war" whenever someone suggests that people in your income bracket should pay their fair share of taxes; I hope you won't take it amiss if I turn that strategy around and point it at you, sir. You want illegal immigrants smacked down as hard and as quickly as possible, you want control over the flood of Mexicans coming here to clean our houses and pick our crops - those peons fit only for those "jobs Americans will not do" - and you want to dangle citizenship like a carrot, presumably in front of those who will fit whatever immigration profile you care to come up with. Some of these notions contain a surprising amount of common sense, Mr. President, but taken together, what are you really doing if not dividing the whole population of a sovereign country into "good Mexicans" and "bad Mexicans"? What is that if not a "class war"? I guess you really are a war president, after all - just not the sort you claimed to be.


And then, with all this guff grabbing front-page headlines at a time when your approval rating approaches terminal velocity, your press secretary claims that this is not a change of focus.

Now, really, Mr. President - not a change of focus when we haven't heard a peep out of you on immigration in years? Not a change of focus when your Social Security "reform" program, that you claimed would be the major thrust of your second term, floats like a dead fish in the political waters? Not a change of focus when Americans continue to die every day in the Middle East, your advisers face grand jury investigations and indictments, and your Congressional allies embarrass themselves by accusing decorated and hawkish war veterans of cowardice? Not a change of focus when the only thing you've done correctly in years is pardon a couple of Thanksgiving turkeys? Not a change of focus - is that some kind of joke? Just how stupid do you think we are, sir?

That's a lot of questions, of course, and I don't suppose you have time to answer me, busy patrolling the Mexican border as you are at present. I understand; playing cowboy like that has got to be more fun than confronting your endless failures. Tell you what, sir - since you seem to enjoy it so much, why don't you just join the border patrol full-time and let someone run the country who knows how?