Democratic lawmakers and candidates are increasingly seeking the elimination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of their suite of demands in D.C.’s heated border battle.
The calls reflect not only the deepening divide between the two partisan poles on immigration — with one side seeking a border wall, and the other looking to dismantle the lead enforcement agency — but the growing influence of the progressive wing.
More and more Democratic politicians have embraced such causes as ‘Medicare for all’ and a federal jobs guarantee. Now, they’re getting behind the call to abolish ICE, with gusto. [Source: Fox News]
You have to understand: The debate isn’t mainly about ICE, border walls or immigration. Those are important issues, but they’re not the root issue.
The root issue? The welfare state. Specifically, the idea that man is – or isn’t – his brother’s keeper.
Democrats and socialists, particularly the progressive wing now taking over that party, maintain that we are all each other’s keepers – and that it’s government’s job to enforce this edict.
It’s the same premise as Communism. It’s even the same premise as Nazism, which held that man is his brother’s keeper and therefore owes his life to the state, only for different reasons than Communism claims.
When progressives demand that the more able take care of the less able, they mean it. And they mean it for the entire world, not just within the United States. Theirs is a socialism without borders.
America has become a prosperous enough country that there are no longer enough people to care for here. So now, according to progressives, we have to extend the mandate to care for others to impoverished countries like Mexico.
Rationally, in a free country, immigration is a valuable thing. A free country welcomes anyone who’s not a criminal, not a member of a terrorist movement, or not someone coming to the country to harm or destroy others. Any persons willing to take care of themselves and advance their lives can only contribute to the wealth and greatness of that society. Plus, you never know when one will be an Einstein or an equivalent in any field.
But that’s not what immigration is about, to the Democrats. To the progressive Democrats, it’s merely a pretext for making even more people dependent on the government than we already have with our homegrown citizens.
The desire to shut down ICE and eliminate borders altogether goes hand in hand with “Medicare for all”, free education for all, free food stamps for all – quite literally, free everything for all.
When progressives see needy and impoverished people entering the country, they do not think, “Oh, we should let these people in. They can fend for themselves and develop their potential. They will benefit, and our society will benefit.” That vision of immigration is sadly gone, and it went away when our welfare and entitlement state became entrenched.
When Democrats see immigrants today, they see the political equivalent of dollar signs. “Votes. Power. More seats in Congress. A permanent hold on the White House. Unlimited rule. The end of capitalism and America as we once knew it. The transformation of America into a socialist republic where citizens operate only by permission.”
Immigrants, for them, are not an opportunity to extend liberty, individual rights and self-responsibility to fellow human beings. They’re an opportunity to hook them on free food stamps, free schools, free health care, free everything.
If you doubt me, then watch the hysterical reaction of any progressive if you suggest NOT extending these benefits to new immigrants, and only let them in on the condition they don’t get government handouts.
Immigration is the final thing needed for Democrats to complete the transformation of America from a Constitutional republic respectful of individual rights into a socialist republic where the productive work for the sake of the non-productive, all at the behest of the vast federal state.
The current immigration debate is about boundaries, but it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with the type of civilization and society we become. When Trump supporters demand a wall, they’re trying to salvage what’s left of the original yet fading America, the America based on individual rights, private property, free market capitalism, First and Second Amendment freedoms and all the rest. They yearn for the America where the Statue of Liberty invited immigrants to a land of liberty, not to a land of handouts managed and controlled by totalitarian and socialist-minded Democrats in an Imperial City.
To progressives, immigrants will mean turning the entire country into California. California is a state without boundaries that went all-out socialist. It’s on its way out as an authentically American state, unless it completely reverses course which at present seems unlikely. California’s on its way to the utopia of Soviet Russia, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. It’s a march of sucide.
Progressives think this is a good thing. The rest of the country? Not so much.
And that’s what the immigration debate is REALLY about.
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