Grandma was an Illegal

--The Last of the Meheecans,
South Park (Season 15, Episode 9)

The crops are all in, the peaches are rotting
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps
They're flying us back to the Mexican border
To pay all our money just to wade back again
--Deportees, Woody Guthrie

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
--Sixteen Tons, Tennessee Ernie Ford

I am troubled by the demonization of immigrants,
legal or illegal, in our party.
We've got a country that was built on immigrants
and immigration, and we've kind of lost sight of that
--Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX)

Who's gonna build your wall, boys
Who's gonna mow your lawn
Who's gonna cook your Mexican food
When your Mexican maid is gone
--Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?,
Tom Russell
__________________

With politicos on the Left and Right pandering to immigrant frustration in the U.S., Ranger would like to take a personal trip down that road.

Cousin Martin, who lives somewhere in that vast thing called the Midwest, recently sent a historical book on coal mining called "Bug Dust and Black Damp; Life and Work in the Old Coal Patch" (Coode, Comart, 1986). My grandfather, father and uncles were all (and some still are) coal miners, and we lived in The Patch in another life.

Like so many others, my grandparents were immigrants who, it was assumed, arrived through Ellis Island late in the early 20th century. However, since Grandmother Kurek only had one eye (due to a childhood accident), she could not have passed the required medical entrance exam administered to all immigrants. So how did Ranger come to be the patriotic American that we all know him to be?

Cousin John Kurek recently solved the mystery. Wily Grandma gamed the system by first doglegging through Canada, a country we all know has more lax immigration restrictions, and she then illegally entered the U.S. through a porous border. Ranger has a proud pedigree of people who naturally fit into the enterprising American spirit quite well. Good for her.

However, the key is that Grandma was an illegal. She married a coal miner and they sired four offspring: Two men followed into coal mining, later transitioning to auto factories. One of them, Uncle John, produced a son who served in the United States Marine Corps and is now a retired auto worker. Aunt Helen had a child who became engineer, one who became an accountant and one who served in the Army and who now works in the Texas oil industry; his son is in the Air Force. Ranger's mother Margaret Kurek Hruska produced a soldier.

Well, so much for the story of one illegal's life, ca. 1917. Though Ranger's forebears were poor, they relied on each other and others who lived in The Patch to make it through. People got by on much less, and government assistance was not readily available to those of sound constitution. Ranger reckons America didn't lose much on the deal.

Fast forward almost 100 years and the new wave of immigrants is coming across our southern border. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, former illegal farm worker-cum-brain surgeon, was recently on National Public Radio recently to discuss the plight of immigrants and America as he sees it. He ended the segment by saying in 2034, 25% of the U.S. will be Hispanic, whether you like it or not, and preparing them for the workforce is the only sensible thing for the nation to do.

What do you think of Quiñones-Hinojosa's statement? The border patrol has been fantastically expensive and ineffective by all accounts. Are there other solutions to border patrol? Should there be?

Border Collies

Borderline …
feels like I'm goin' to lose my mind
You just keep on pushin' my love
over the borderline
--Borderline, Madonna

500 miles, 500 miles
500 miles, 500 miles
Lord I'm 500 miles
From my home
--500 Miles, Peter, Paul & Mary
________________

Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have ridden the Reserve Forces (including the National Guard) hard, treating these part-time soldiers like they are part of the active force structure.

Not only do the reserve forces fight wars that the active military can't handle, but now they are being sent down to the Mexican-American border. This is not exactly the situation which faced Black Jack Pershing in 1916-17. Back then, the Army was sent to conduct actual combat operations against Mexican border-raiding bandits and revolutionaries. Sending in today's N.G. is not equivalent.

What happened to the Federal legal concept of Posse Comitatus? The U.S. military is not allowed to enforce civilian law unless authorized by the President or Congress. The exception is obviously being authorized, but why wasn't it publicly discussed prior to sending in the troops?

The active military and the reserve forces are not designed, equipped or trained to be border police. Our military personnel are not authorized to arrest or detain anyone outside the force structure. The military is not a police, and waving a magic wand over these forces will not alter the fact.

It is a dangerous precedent to use the military as an enforcement agency. When will this militarization of our society end? When a supposed liberal president leans toward domestic military control of our borders, it is time to wonder where this is going and where it will end.

If the U.S. lacks the resources to control its borders, it is a fault of leadership; sticking the N.G.'s finger into the dike will not resolve the problem. We are creeping towards a future that is diametrically in opposition to the values that were historically viewed as liberal and democratic.

There are operational questions, too. Do the military commo systems interface with the Border Patrol systems? Does the Border Patrol have command and control capabilities to even coordinate the N.G. activities?

Whatever happened to the laws that mandate the use of the N.G./Reserve forces for use in National or State emergencies?

There is no state of emergency authorizing this call to activate the N.G. The Reserve force structure is not a plaything to be used at the political whimsy of the president.