For several years, I’ve watched the Boston Globe push harder and harder for illegal aliens, calling for more privileges and rewards and acceptance of those who can’t be bothered to abide by the rules (the most lax and liberal rules for immigration of any nation on earth) and cut ahead of the line to get into the United States. In pretty much every case, the Globe has come down in favor of the illegal aliens: amnesty programs, drivers’ licenses, free health care, free education, no deportation, lenient sentences, attacks on enforcement, and so on. In fact, I’ve often wondered if there was anything that they wouldn’t do, any concession they wouldn’t call for.
Well, it’s finally happened. They’ve found one principle, and they’re clinging to it like a drowning man clinging to a life raft.
This page supports immigrants, including even the ability of undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses and to be eligible for in-state tuition at Massachusetts colleges and universities. But voting ought to be reserved for those newcomers committed enough to the United States to meet the requirements of citizenship.
Driver’s licenses are the de facto national ID card. In-state tuition at state-owned colleges are subsidized by the taxpayers of that state. They have no problems with giving those to illegal aliens, but they draw the line at voting.
And note once again their tactic of blurring the distinction between legal aliens and illegal aliens. They tout their support for all immigrants, but only spell out particulars for the “undocumented” ones and the only mention of the “documented” ones is a negative — “they don’t get to vote.”
I get outraged at this practice, but I repress it with sarcasm. Willie Horton (correction — Willie SUTTON. I can’t believe no one called me on this one!) was no different than any other bank customer, he was just forced by economic necessity to make “undocumented” withdrawals.
A few years ago, Cambridge, Massachusetts wanted to grant the right to vote in local elections to aliens. The leader of the movement, as I recall, was a woman who moved to the United States from Iran after the fall of the Shah. She had lived in the United States for over 20 years at that point, was married and had children. She wanted to vote in the elections for Cambridge’s government and school board, but she also refused to give up her Iranian citizenship — she said that she wanted to some day return to Iran, after the mullahs fell.
That, in a nutshell, summed up precisely why I disagreed with her. Voting is part and parcel of citizenship, and the United States has one of the least cumbersome processes for becoming a naturalized citizen. (This is not to say that it’s easy, but it’s a lot worse in other places.) But it’s still a huge step, and a proclamation that one wishes to fully and completely tie one’s self — and one’s descendants — irrevocably to that nation. It’s an investment, and by restricting the vote to citizens, you force people to keep in mind (in theory, at least) that they — and their children — will have to live with the consequences of their decisions at the polls.
Anyway, I welcome the Globe’s venture into sanity on the illegal immigration issue. Unfortunately, I fear that this will be as far as they go.
