Immigration is a Process...

Can we, finally, establish that the phrase "illegal immigrant" is an oxymoron?

Immigration is a legal process in which the applicant fills out various forms, and submits to a series of interviews and investigations, the end product of which is to establish whether or not the applicant is fit for future citizenship. Because it is a legal process, it is not possible for someone to be both illegal and an immigrant.

A person can certainly be an illegal alien, and millions are.

Those who continue to prate about illegal immigrants and undocumented residents (that one should win a prize for euphemisms!) are doing their best to minimize the reality that the people we are discussing are criminals.

Criminals.

However sympathetic may be their stories, however difficult their lives, however needy their families, they are criminals.

Our immigration laws (in kind with comparable statutes in other countries) make plain that we do not welcome criminals to the immigration process. We know that our society, regrettably, produces criminals, but we have no desire to import them from other countries.

Quite rightly, we work to try and to imprison those among us who seem unable to stop themselves from violating the personal and property rights of others. Although there are those who empathize far too much with criminals, seeing in them something that very often is not there (conscience), and fantasizing that these people simply couldn't help themselves, most of us recognize that murderers, rapists, child molesters, and even burglars and muggers are not the sort of people we want on our streets.

One of the most dangerous practices that has developed in this country is that many state and local law enforcement agencies refuse to cooperate with the INS. There's a reason people violate our laws by crossing the border without our approval: generally, they would not qualify for that approval if they applied. Why? Because many may have criminal records in their own countries, having raped, murdered, or molested a child. Because many of them have no skills, and no capabilities in English, and are likely, therefore, to be incapable of earning a living. Now, uncivilized as this may seem to some, very few countries wish to import people for the purpose of putting them on welfare. Nor to make them resident in a prison. Nor in any other way, to make them wards of the state, drains on our economy.

It matters, people. The money supply is not endless, all liberal dreams notwithstanding.

Now let's get on with the immigration process, and stop foolishly referring to criminals as though they were worthies deserving of our support.