You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life - Albert Camus

Monday, April 04, 2005

One of the primary functions of government is to secure the borders.  You’d think that after 9/11 that would have taken on a slight sence of urgency.  Well, as we all know it hasn’t, and our porous border lets in anyone who feels like walking through the hole in the fence.  And since the government won’t do its job, a few private citizens have taken on the job themselves.

Volunteers for an effort to patrol the Mexican border reported their first sighting of suspected illegal immigrants, resulting in 18 arrests, authorities said Sunday.

Participants in the Minuteman Project spotted the migrants Saturday near Naco as the volunteers were surveying the border to familiarize themselves with the area. When agents arrived, they apprehended 18 people, Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame said.

“You observe them, report them and get out of the way,” said Mike McGarry, a spokesman for the project, which begins Monday and is to continue for a month.

Now, contrast that story with this one.

Sir Mark Thatcher said Sunday that American authorities have rejected his application for a visa to live in the United States with his wife and children.

The son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher applied for the visa after pleading guilty to violating South Africa’s anti-mercenary laws by unwittingly helping bankroll a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. He received a four-year suspended sentence and was fined $506,000.

“It is quite true that my visa application has been rejected,” Mark Thatcher said in a statement released by his spokesman, Lord Bell. “It was always a calculated risk when I plea bargained in South Africa.”

Thatcher, who had lived in South Africa since 1995, has been staying in London with his 79-year-old mother since returning to Britain earlier this year. He had hoped to visit his Texan-born wife Diane and their two children in Dallas.

Let’s review.  Our border with Mexico is completely open.  Anyone who wants to get into this country can (and does) simply walk across the border.  Our government has done jack shit to solve this problem.  Conversely, the son of a former British prime minister, who has an American wife and children living in Dallas, has had his visa application denied.

Do you see a problem here? Because I do.  Will you sleep more soundly tonight knowing that Sir Mark Thatcher is safely outside our borders?  If he really wants in here all he has to do is fly to Mexico and walk in with everyone else, like the terrorists will the next time they decide to launch an operation here.

Perhaps if we can somehow figure out a way to associate border security with a feeding tube we’ll be able to get the Bush administration and Congress to do something about it.