We were assailed again today with an article in the Washington Post bemoaning the plight of the illegal aliens who will not be able to freely visit their separated families abroad even though they may be gaining protection against deportation and work permits thanks to President Obama’s constitutional overreach of executive authority. This is a theme that is constantly sounded by the defenders of illegal aliens in one form or another.
- We must not deport illegal aliens if they have U.S.-born children because that would separate families.
- The supposedly unaccompanied minors coming illegally into the country must be placed with their parents already here to preserve family unity.
- Illegal aliens should have the freedom to travel back to the home country for the illegal aliens to visit family members left behind.
Seemingly beyond the grasp of the illegal alien defenders is the fact that the separation of the family is what the illegal alien has chosen voluntarily. Many are not just leaving family and friends, but also leaving children behind when they choose to come to the U.S.
The defenders of illegal aliens would like us to think that the illegal aliens are refugees, but the fact is that they generally have no claim to refugee status. They are economic migrants seeking greater opportunity – not fleeing persecution. The advocates for the aliens would like the United States to recognize economic migrants as refugees, but that would mean accepting unlimited immigration, which would be an economic and environmental disaster for the nation.
It is possible for some on the ideological left to exist in enough of a bubble-wrapped intellectual environment that the thought has never occurred to them that the family separation is the result of the action of the illegal alien. But it strains credulity that a journalist for the Washington Post would not be somewhat more worldly.