It’s Wrong to Blame Arizona

by  Rep. Ted Poe

06/02/2010

America is a nation founded on the rule of law, not the rule of men. That's why we have a Constitution and not a king. Law must apply to everybody and it must apply equally, regardless of race, color, or creed. People don't get to pick and choose which laws are enforced. They don't get to decide which laws they like and which ones they don't.
In particular, foreign leaders don’t get to pick and choose what laws we establish and enforce in our country either. Mexican President Felipe Calderon was an invited guest in the People’s House recently, yet it seems to me he forgot whose house he was in. Like most Americans, I was taken aback by his scolding and hypocritical attack on the laws in our country. 

A good friend of mine in Texas explained it perfectly. He said, "Calderon lives in a lawless country and doesn't want the United States to enforce our laws either. It was like we invited a guest over for supper, he brought along all of his friends and his family, complained about the food, griped about our neighborhood, then drove off in our pickup truck.''

President Calderon blamed America for the violence in Mexico. He blamed America for illegal guns going South and illegal immigration and drugs going North. Well, I have a solution for him: Americans should just seal the border. The 2nd Amendment is not up for negotiation with foreign leaders; securing our border and enforcing our laws shouldn’t be either.

Whether President Calderon likes it or not, United States’ federal law requires people to sign the guest book when they enter our country, otherwise they are here illegally. Which, by the way, is also the law in Mexico. There is a lot of fear mongering, political hype, and misinformation about the State of Arizona trying to legally protect itself from illegal entry into its state.

President Calderon and our own administration officials are criticizing Arizona's new illegal immigration enforcement law, yet they haven't read the bill. In my questioning of Atty. Gen. Holder, he admitted he had not read it, yet claimed it was unconstitutional and threatened legal action. As a result of this questioning, news reports indicated other top officials hadn’t read it either. As a former judge and prosecutor, it became clear to me that the people criticizing this bill had not read it because if they had they would have seen that it is unquestionably constitutional.

I have read the bill. After all, it’s a short read, unlike the 2,000-page healthcare debacle.

The bill mirrors the existing federal law, but goes a step further, explicitly prohibiting racial profiling four separate times and including punishment for the misuse of the law. Again, unlike the ambiguous healthcare bill, it doesn’t take a team of lawyers to decipher. It is spelled out in plain language so everyone can easily understand it, including our highest ranking officials and President Calderon. 

Arizona acts because Washington doesn’t. The White House gave more lip service to the issue last week when they announced they were sending 1,200 National Guard troops to the border. As it turns out, these troops will not actually be securing the border, rather offering tech support in an office.

We protect the borders of other nations every single day. We do not send our military to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to do data entry. We send them with guns and the explicit mission to secure the border. It seems to me we continue to do a political dance when it comes to our own border and side step real efforts to get the job done.

I welcome the National Guard, the additional funding and more technology to the border region. It is very much needed. But, there is no replacement for actual boots on the border. Our current policy is to catch them after they illegally cross. Then we have to deal with the consequences like deportations, prosecutions, drug gangs in our jails, etc. We should stop them before they cross and the only effective way to do that is to put armed troops on the border, not 20 miles away guarding computers.

All the technology in the world will prove useless if we don’t have the manpower to make it effective. We cannot continue to say one thing and do another. The Border Patrol wants the Guard on the border, but they shouldn’t have to be guarding the Guard. Give them guns and let them do their job.

Enough of the lip service and kowtowing to foreign leaders—secure the border. Where I come from, you “dance with the one that brung ya.” It’s time the United States government dance with the American people.And that's just the way it is.

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Mr. Poe represents the 2nd District of Texas. He previously served as a judge in Harris County, Tex.

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