Support, and Deport

One of the things I can count on with some regularity is lovely friend Anon E. Mouse's baiting me from the far right. I've dragged her onto the soapbox here more than once, and rudely (I admit) thrown more-reasoned tomatoes and cabbages at her and her husband, and fellow conservatives. She makes salads from that array of e-borne vegetables.

While I was away from the blogging world this past week, I cleared out some of the accumulation in one of my heftier email accounts. I found an email Anon had sent me back in April, one to which I'd never responded. I haven't found the original source of her quote, other than one blog's note received from The Daily News in Hays, Kansas, saying that it did not come from The News, and that that Yeager fellow is not one of their people.

Here's what Anon sent over, under her comment of "This says it all.":

From the HAYS DAILY NEWS by R. W. Yeager Norton, Ks.

We need to show more sympathy for these people. They travel miles in the heat, they risk their lives crossing a border, they don't get paid enough wages, they do jobs that others won't do or are afraid to do, they live in crowded conditions among a people who speak a different language, they rarely see their families, and they face adversity all day every day.

I'm not talking about illegal Mexicans, I'm talking about our troops. Doesn't it seem strange that the Democrats are willing to lavish all kinds of social benefits on illegals, but don't support our troops and are now threatening to defund them?

Please pass this on, this is worth the short time it takes to read it.

(I did find one interesting discussion-board's take on it here, and chuckled at some of the responses that the same couple paragraphs had kicked off… and ticked off, too. Enjoy!)

Someone back up the line from Mousy left his name, email address, and phone numbers on the bottom of the email. I'll stick my neck out here a little bit, privacy-wise, and acknowledge that his last name is Contreras, though the rest should not go up here. His signoff indicates a higher-level involvement in the Air National Guard out of a certain city in a particular Southwest (US) state; Google does confirm at least an address and number for a business someone with his full name is running in that city.

Anyway, this past week I wrote back to friend Mouse:

Subject: RE: Hays, KS - Daily News

Sorry about the late response, but… oh, please! This neverending partisanship sickens me! Most of my Democrat friends support the troops, all our fighting men and women [who are] so far from home and in danger every moment – however, this does not equate to blind support for and agreement with the administration that put them in harm's way in the first place. Blind support for any leader(ship) is carte blanche for a dictatorship. Excuse me, but I'd rather think than close my eyes, thank you.

Re the illegals: unless my memory's slipping, I recall that the current administration was all about granting the illegals amnesty, whereas most Democrats – and a wide swath of Republicans, too – voted down the president's amnesty bills.

Why did Bush want the illegals kept in-country? Hmm… since they use bogus ID, all their payroll deductions for Social Security (where they're not paid under the table – an even greater offense for the employers, I believe) amount to billions in income for the government, and essentially have been keeping Social Security afloat. Since – with fake SSN numbers – the illegals will never be able to collect their Social Security (and other deductions) once they're too old to work, this is totally free money for the Fed, and cheap labor for Bush's big-corporate friends. Deporting ~12 million people would switch off that money pipeline; can't have that, eh?

Re lavishing social benefits on illegals: go soak your head, Contreras! Being here illegally, they are not entitled to social benefits.

However: let's say you hit one [of them] with your big pickup truck on the way home from your weekly NRA meeting – will you leave him on the roadside, bleeding to death? Or call the ambulance? Who's paying for the EMT coverage? Look on your next paystub or tax return: you are. Some social-benefits programs are already in place and automatic, and must not be taken away, or used selectively (i.e., "Citizens Only"; anyone remember other signs that used to read "Whites Only"?). The alternative here is to let the injured fellow die.

Possibly Contreras has forgotten the story of the Good Samaritan: compassion must not be selective. Jesus did not follow such a policy, and we have been called for two thousand years to follow His example. Or does Contreras' Bible have different books in it?

Hmm… "[first name] Contreras": obviously a Spanish name. Is he even here legally? What about his parents – did they fallow all legal channels to come to the US, or just the Rio Grande? Or do we assume his ancestors came here on the Mayflower?

That last paragraph was just to bait right back at her… haven't gotten an answer yet, either.

The illegal-alien issue is one where I – frustratingly – concur more with the conservatives on. NB, though: I said "concur", not "agree". I want to take that issue up more seriously here at some point (adding it to my long list of followups). Basically, at one level is the undeniable fact that they came in here non-legally: via smuggler, or/and slipping across the border. This at least subjects them to the state's right to send them back home.

Unlike the conservatives, though, I don't subscribe to the notion that they see this country as a place where they can start raking in the benefits and being lazy. Most work (which – heh – is more than what I've been doing of late), and send quite a chunk of their money back home to support spouse, child(ren), parent(s). Here there is opportunity.

The issue gets quickly tangled, though, in the many situations where a child has been born, and is being raised, here in the US. This makes those children citizens… so we now start pitching out citizens? (Sieg heil!) Or do we break up families?

Brother!