Source:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sleeping Giant is awake by Bruce Elliot – Guest Columnist, Monday, May 8, 2006.
Last Monday afternoon in Mount Vernon, there was a small-town “immigration march” similar to those organized and staged in Seattle and elsewhere around the country. It was a peaceful, orderly procession of people carrying American and Mexican flags, signs, placards, bull horns, etc., making their presence known and briefly disrupting local traffic.
I had two very mixed feelings: first, a huge pride in this country -- that this great nation is a powerful magnet for people who truly want to be here at huge risk to themselves, and more so, that only in America is it possible for such a gathering to occur, for masses of people who have entered the country illegally to assemble and speak freely of their demands.
But second, I have an increasing anger and resentment at our government that, by its ineffectiveness and inaction, has allowed this to happen: a de facto invasion by about 12 million foreign nationals (like the number of marchers, no one really knows for sure) who have bypassed the legal immigration procedures, yet who now want -- and blatantly feel entitled to -- equal status, all because of spineless politicians (weak laws and enforcement) and greed for the Almighty Dollar (cheap labor and produce).
Awaken the Sleeping Giant? I hope so -- including me, and countless other complacent Americans who have become aware of the scope of the problem. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year screening arrivals at international airports and other ports of entry, on the Border Patrol, and on Customs and Immigration Services, etc., for what? These highly visible and expensive efforts do little good if there are huge holes that permit illegal entry that goes unenforced.
Where were federal immigration officers during these marches? And why aren’t local law enforcement agencies more involved? Don’t they declare an oath to support and defend the Constitution and to enforce the laws of the land, and if so, why aren’t they doing their duty?
I heard not one instance of an illegal immigrant being arrested or detained anywhere during these demonstrations. Why not? Yet a container load of Chinese nationals arrives by ship recently in Seattle, and Immigration is all over them; they are immediately detained, and processed for deportation. What’s the difference here, other than grossly selective law enforcement?
I am married to a legal immigrant (Germany). My wife spent years going through all the hoops and hurdles of the legal process to gain entry and become a U.S. citizen. I sympathize with those who have successfully penetrated our borders illegally for a better life, but in the face of avoiding the legal process -- and the serious objectives of Homeland Security and drug enforcement -- they cannot be simply gifted the privilege of amnesty and citizenship.
It isn’t right and it isn’t fair to all those who have done it the legal way. And as history has shown in the long run, it doesn’t work for us; it works against us.
We all have to understand and accept the fact there are millions and millions more disadvantaged individuals who would give up everything to gain a better life here, and that we simply cannot absorb them all, legally or illegally. Our borders have to be made secure and impenetrable; the legal immigration procedures have to be made workable and then followed and enforced; and the situations that have created the problems we have today have to be resolved quickly. If we do not do this, and fail to demand that it be done, the flood of illegal immigrants will continue ad infinitum, and we will all pay a much higher price downstream.
Bruce Elliot lives in La Conner, Wash.
Abt 1940 - (85 years)
Siblings
d. 24 Oct 1996, Billings, Yellowstone, Montana 
. Julie Marisa ELLIOT, b. Abt 1969 (Age 56 years)