PRO-ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MEME DESTROYED    
And GQ writer Luke Darby waves pompons for lawbreaking            

This photo of Ellis Island-bound immigrants is preserved at the Library of Congress. The photo has recently been exploited as a meme by some who cheer the illegal immigrant caravan dead set on criminal invasion. 

Conflating earlier generations of legal immigrants with contemporary illegal ones slurs the former and is illogical on numerous levels. 

The immigration system in place when the historic photo was taken ensured an orderly process, one in which appropriate vetting was conducted and democratically enacted citizenship laws maintained. 

The illegal caravan, on the other hand, is by definition a criminal enterprise and represents a renunciation of Americans' sovereignty rights.

Presumably, if illegal immigrants succeeded in violating our laws to enter the country, they would then turn around and expect that same legal system to protect them and their private property. The hypocrisy meter just spun off its pin.

Contemporary foreign invaders who smashed through the border fence separating Mexico and Guatemala, and who've proclaimed to news cameras their intent to similarly defy American laws, are not lawful immigrants' equals. Neither legally nor morally. 

The car jacker, after all, is not the equal of the title holder.

Not acknowledging practical distinctions between legal and illegal immigration is today popular among two basic groups: those not much given to critical thinking and others who enthusiastically put philosophical bias ahead of reason.

Immigrants of earlier eras played according to the rules. They respected the laws of their new land. Medical examinations were performed prior to non-citizens being allowed into the United States. In that sensible way, the possibility that communicable diseases might enter the general population was forestalled. 

Today, diseases long ago defeated in the United States and Europe have reemerged. Whether their reappearance is due to lack of vetting, less reliance on vaccinations, or a combination of the two demands determination.

Promoters of unchecked ingress never explain how importing countless unskilled workers would benefit our job economy, rather than burden to the breaking point social programs intended to help legal American citizens. 

(And no, it is not wrong for countries to insist immigrants bring value to the bargain. In 2018, the United States does not require unskilled laborers in the number it once did. Pretending otherwise, and insisting yesterday's obsolete standards be maintained despite today's very different employment climate, is nonsensical.)

Underneath the opposition to citizenship laws is hostility toward the very concept of rules, standards, and legalities. But order is imperative. It guarantees that shared values be upheld and that individuals' God-given rights be safeguarded.

It was faith in that fair system, and not an illicit and opportunistic disposition, that distinguished Ellis Island's pilgrims.



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An illustration of ill-considered hostility toward the rule of law was "Prank calling ICE is the kind of civil disobedience America needs," which recently ran in Gentleman's Quarterly. 

https://www.gq.com/story/prank-calling-ice

Writer Luke Darby encouraged the magazine's readers to interfere with that agency's enforcement of democratically enacted laws. Darby's is the same bratty, anti-order mindset that undergirds "Not my president" and is manifested in Antifa mobs physically attacking pedestrians, perpetrating arson, and otherwise destroying property and disrupting the general peace. 

The idiocy all but roars its obviousness: Once breaking laws is accepted as normal expressive practice, all future endeavors, including ones favored by Darby, would also be imperiled and subject to chaotic disruption. As would be his well-being and the integrity of any property he might own.

One feels certain Darby's GQ employers would not take kindly to his 'disobeying' established company policies.

Darby repeatedly sloughs off America as "undemocratic" without offering substantiation. A truly undemocratic nation does not hold free and open elections. This country does. A poll result's not being to Darby's preference does not constitute lack of democracy.

Nor do Darby and his ideological fellows have legitimate claim to "civil disobedience" justification for their calculated criminality. 

Unlike civil rights-era practitioners, they are in no way prohibited from productive participation in the electoral process through which citizens articulate values and shape the country's laws and general course.

Spoiled pretenders to principle, they merely surfboard atop the historic suffering of others. While sipping double lattes in the safety of Starbucks, perhaps.

They were not denied electoral voice, but were just unable to win the 2016 presidential election. That's not disenfranchisement. They're just lousy losers who offered an inferior candidate.