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If a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is aterrible, horrible, awful, horrendous, despicable, loathsome, un-American idea, as some aresaying, then isnt it time to quit talking and take action?

Isnt it time to start dismantling the more than 650 miles of border barrier thats already there?

Thats right, more than 650 miles. Wall, fence, barrier. Already there.

Isnt a stretch of border barrier that actuallyexists at least as much an affront to humandecency as the mere idea of constructing morebarrier?

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Six hundred fifty-plus miles, thats a pretty good stretch, wouldnt you say? Roughly equals the distance from Trenton to Indianapolis. Think ofthat. All the way across Pennsylvania. All the way across Ohio. Half way across Indiana.

The existing stretch includes over 600 milesof vehicular and pedestrian barriers, plus about 40 miles of double fencing.

Question: If the very idea of a border barrier is intolerable, shouldnt those who had a hand in approving the existing structures be held toaccount? Maybe, say, be tarred and feathered?

Or put in a public stock?

Careful. Trick question. If you answered yes, then you favor taking degrading punitivemeasures against such titans of enlightened policy as former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They voted in favor of a U.S.-Mexico border barrierwhen they were U.S. senators.

That was, of course, before a political strategy of all-out pandering to a Spanish-surnameconstituency became the Democratic Partys Plank Numero Uno.

While were busy dismantling the physicalbarriers erected by the Anglo occupation ofCalifornia, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico,shouldnt gringo Yanquis get to workdismantling the legal barriers theyve erected aswell?

Why have any borders at all? The idea hasappeal to both ends of the political spectrum.

Recall if you will the Wall Street Journals no-borders editorial crusade in the 1980s. Keep inmind that the Journal serves as the theologianof economics doctrine for the transnationalcorporate wing of the Republican Party. Thats the wing that salutes no national flag OldGlory included. In any event, the Journal championed a constitutional amendmentdeclaring simply: There shall be open borders.

In other words, there shall be cheap laborgalore, making it easier for capitals CEOs and CFOs to meet their net earnings projections.

Libertarians, too, find open-borders to be ahot-diggity notion. And over on the opposite end of the spectrum, meanwhile, rabble-rousingleftist pressure groups like La Raza likewisefavor a policy of laxly guarded, or unguarded,borders on the American side, almost asenthusiastically as the pro-business Chamberof Commerce does.

The idea of ignoring if not activelyencouraging illegal immigration would seem at a superficial glance to conflict with theDemocratic Partys labor union component and its ostensible advocacy for the toiling masses.

But take a closer look. The unions these daysare increasingly concerned with the public-employee sector of the toiling masses. And thissectors interests are dependent on legislative appropriations on political clout more than on the mysterious workings of free-enterprisemarket forces.

The long and the short of it is that for theDemocratic Party theres an over-riding benefit in leveraging a growing Latino-voting bloc intopolitical power.

To hear the media describe it, any measure toenforce immigration law, however feeble, isxenophobia run amok. To collar a criminal alien and deal with him as the law provides isregarded as spray-painting graffiti all over the Statue of Liberty.

In light of such views, what are we to make ofMexicos own harsh laws for dealing with anillegal gringo element on its side of the border?

As anyone can tell you who has ever ventured down into the Baja or across the borderelsewhere, the Policia Federal arent reluctant to pull you over and check your papers. (Andmaybe, on occasion, to coax you to cough up la coima.)

Point is, if youre visiting Mexico, youd betterhave papers showing you crossed the border legally.

Crossing the border illegally, south to north,into the United States is a mere civil infraction.

But crossing the border illegally going the otherway, into Mexico, is a full-blown criminal offense.

A criminal offense that can land you in one ofMexicos hell-hole prisons for two years. Up to10 years for a repeat offense. And given thenightmarish nature of Mexicos gang-run, corruption-lubricated detention facilities, eventwo months could be the equivalent of a deathsentence.

Oh, and there are no sanctuary cities south ofthe border. Sanctuary cities are strictly a Yanquiconcept. From San Francisco to Chicago toTrenton, Democrat-run municipal Waziristanshave proudly proclaimed themselvesaccommodating safe zones for illegals, er,undocumenteds. And the preening self-righteous of liberalism have taken to postingyard signs proclaiming, Hate has no home here.

Try telling that to Fidel Ruiz Serrano,Alejandro Castillo, Ruben Perez Rivera,Santiago Mario Garcia and other such names conspicuously adorning the top of the FBIs listof most wanted violent fugitives.

Try out your dewy-eyed no hate heremessage on the army-size criminal gangs the machete-wielding M-13 (estimated 70,000strong), the Latin Kings (estimated 100,000strong) todays huddled masses yearning to establish a few million dollars of producto coke, crank, weed in your neighborhood.

Those who favor loosely policed or even un-policed borders must steel themselves againstcertain other inconvenient realities.

Theres a blurry line distinguishing Mexicanpolice from the Sinaloa, the Juarez, the Tijuana and other crime cartels. Meanwhile, you need a roster to keep straight the Zetas, the Colima,the Sonara, the Guadalajara and other teamsof the Mexican bandito league. All havetentacles reaching into El Norte. Their standingproposition is: Whatll it be, amigo, plata oplomo? (Silver or lead? I.e., Which would youprefer to take? Bribes or bullets?)

There are 351,000 criminal aliens in U.S.

state and federal prisons. A GovernmentAccountability Office study found 2.9 millioncriminal alien offenses committed over a three-year survey period including 500,000 drug,213,000 assault, 94,000 weapons, 70,000 sex,42,000 robbery and 25,000 murder charges.

It does not logically follow that just becausePresident Trump is a blustery, narcissisticblabbermouth, therefore unguarded borders andunenforced immigration laws add up to a great idea. Thats a dingbats syllogism.

Trump elicited horrified gasps from the liberal bien pensants when he said the Latino border-jumpers include some bad hombres. But what term would better describe the 351,000 criminal aliens packing American jail cells already overflowing with home-grown bad-hombre Yanquis?

Yes, Latino criminal gangs no more defineLatinos than the Forty Thieves, the BoweryBoys, the Dead Rabbits or the Westies defined Irish Americans. Or than the Bonannos, the Gambinos or the Luccheses defined ItalianAmericans. But they were real menaces, too.

They might have been dealt with much soonerthan they belatedly were had there not been theobstacle of ethnic politics.

Those who prefer to wink at illegal immigrationalso must gloss over additional inconvenienttruths besides crime.

For example:

Illegal aliens tap into social-services andschool resources. Those resources arestretched thin especially in financially strapped cities. Nearly nine out of 10 border-jumper immigrants with children receive some form oftax-funded benefit, such as schooling and school lunches. The costs of emergency medicaltreatment must be squeezed out out of tapped-dry public funds. And even nearly a quarter ofillegal immigrants without children still manage to wangle some form of public benefit, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which derives its percentages from U.S. Census data.

African Americans, especially black teenagers,

are likely paying most of the cost for illegalimmigration, paying it in the currency of lost jobs.

And African-Americans are also paying in thecurrency of eroded wages for unskilled jobs inthe under-$25,000 pay range. This according tothe research of Harvard economist GeorgeBorjas.

Other research economists report that fullythree-quarters (actually, 76 percent) of Mexican illegals coming north over the border have lessthan a high-school education. They compete forscarce jobs with Americas high-school dropoutsand undermine the already low pay on thebottom rungs of the workplace ladder.

Including 40 percent visa overstays, thereare now by official estimate 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Thats a number roughly equal to the population of Ohio. There are other credible estimates that put the numbermuch higher. In any event, accepting the lower figure of 11 million, thats nearly as manyimmigrants as entered the country legally through Ellis Island over the six decades of 1892-1954.

Mexican immigrants in this country send $25billion a year back home to Mexico, according to the U.S. Treasury Dept. Think of that as moneysiphoned out of the U.S. economy. Suchremittances now constitute a revenue sourcefor Mexico greater than its oil.

Perhaps not entirely unrelated to the topic ofremittances, a Mexican oligarch billionaire andtelecom monopolist Carlos Slim Helu is now the biggest stockholder of the New York Times,after rescuing the paper with a $250-million loan.

His telecom empire surely has reaped a tidy sum in fees extracted from the transmission of thoseremittances.

Meanwhile, the Gray Lady frets and fusses constantly over the social injustice, the hard-hearted cruelty, the Know-Nothing bigotry ofenforcing immigration laws which have been onthe books for decades. But this, of course, couldbe mere coincidence.

Sure it could.

davidneese@verizon.net

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DAVE NEESE'S PROVOCATIONS: Illegal immigration's inconvenient truths - The Trentonian