The state of Massachusetts has a problem. In the raid last week at the Michael Bianco Inc. factory in New Bedford, a couple hundred suspected illegal aliens were detained. It turns out that a lot of the detainees had children, and as of Saturday state officials were still trying to find temporarly homes for about 100 of these kids.
And yesterday, Ted Kennedy had a column in the Boston Herald, announcing that “the system” had failed these families.
It’s very painful for me to admit, but Ted Kennedy is right. The system did fail these families.
It failed them when it allowed them to freely cross our border.
It failed them when it allowed them to cross state borders and travel to Massachusetts.
It failed them when it allowed them to apply for jobs at the Michael Bianco Inc. factory with fake documents — or, perhaps, no documents at all.
It failed them when it granted millions in federal contracts to the Michael Bianco Inc. factory without inspecting the plant and making sure it was compliant with the laws.
The first time the system did not fail them was when it finally caught up with them and arrested them, finally bringing them justice.
Let’s be honest. Literally from the instant these people entered the United States, they have done everything they can to avoid any sort of government contact. The fact that, now that the government has caught up with them, that very same governmetn cannot instantly address every concern and need that they may have is, largely, the fault of those people, and not the government.
This is not to say that the government doesn’t have the duty to find these children, and do all it can to make sure they are provided for. But it is equally incumbent on the parents of these children to cooperate with federal officials in locating these children, and — where possible — helping them find relatives or friends who can care for these children while the parents are detained. The situation these children find themselves is not the making of the children, or the government, but solely that of these parents.
Ted Kennedy — who has been in the United States Senate since before I was born — has made immigration a key focus of his career, and has been wrong since the beginning. He was a key backer of the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act, which he promised “will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.” At the time, there were about a million illegal aliens in the United States. By the time we needed the 1986 Immigration Reform Act, there were about 10 million illegals. Now best estimates peg it around 20 million.
In the same period where the illegal immigration population increased 2000%, the total population of the United States rose 50%. In other words, since Ted Kennedy helped pass that “immigration reform act,” the ratio of illegal aliens to citizens has increased from 1/200 to 1/15.
And now Ted Kennedy is in charge of the Senate committee responsible for immigration issues.
God help the United States.
