OPINION: The link between immigration and defense spending

Of course, there are illegal immigrants who don’t simply seek a better life, who do, in fact, have bad intentions. But that’s true of any population. There is good and bad among all people groups.

So, in my eyes, broad judgments of those crossing the border are a distraction. When I look inward, I know that it can feel so good to have someone to hate. It can make things simple and right in my mind. And there can be plenty of examples I can find to back up most any animosity I harbor. But I ultimately have to put the final question back on myself: is this what I want in my heart? I think that a nation that collectively embraces “yes” to such questions ultimately gambles with the uglier side of history.

So, when it comes to this nation’s immigration problems, judging strangers — who include both good-and-bad-hearted people — is taking your eye off the real issue, which is this: it’s the duty of government to control borders — and ours has failed for many years in that regard, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

We can argue endlessly about all of this. It seems that’s our nature — much more so than action. But if we take the fundamentalist view that illegal immigration is a crime worth punishing at the individual level, then we need to view it broadly, addressing not just those who crossed a line in the desert, but those who made great profits avoiding payroll taxes for years with the help of cheap labor off the books. We also need to recognize that many of us enjoyed cheaper products due to the illegal system facilitated by many of our businesses and our government.

Ultimately, I’ll just say that I wish for political rhetoric and fist pounding to give way to practical action. People should be able to come to America for a better life. Otherwise, we need to take down the Statue of Liberty. But the manner with which people arrive needs to be limited and documented. And we need to set up a system that accomplishes this.

Likewise, we know our nation has been and will be a target. So the borders must be viewed within the umbrella of “national defense,” which means securing national boundaries must be funded and manned as such.

Amid all the heated debate about illegal immigration, I haven’t heard much talk about this fact: The Department of Defense budget for 2010 is $664 billion. Yet, despite all that money, we can’t control our own border. That’s really frustrating. There are 309 million Americans. That’s around $2,000 a person on defense that fails to defend the line.

Personally, I’d feel much better about our national defense if we brought our troops home and used more military service at borders and ports. Barring that, I’d like to see the National Guard beefed up and trained to take on duties at our most vulnerable spots. Why hasn’t this happened?

Well, we’ve looked to handle such duties on the cheap. Remember how we considered contracting with an Arab firm to handle our port defense several years ago? It wasn’t that the firm would necessarily do a bad job, but the notion of contracting such a vital job to a private company from a region largely hostile to us was a terribly unsettling moment for many Americans.

For me, it was sort of an epiphany. I couldn’t help but think about the strange dichotomy between the wars and the ports. We’ve spent trillions of dollars to try and dictate what happens in foreign lands with the aim of keeping ourselves safe from terrorists at home. These wars are in lands where the politics are terribly complicated. It’s easy to ignore the complexities, but think about how much Republicans and Democrats hate each other in the U.S. Now think about the Chinese coming in with troops and trying to mediate such animosities. Would they understand us? Would they know how to use force to make things right between us? When any nation, no matter how powerful or high minded, steps into foreign lands pushing for cooperation and consideration, they’ll face tremendous problems. For instance, how do you convince a foreigner to kill or not kill his fellow man?

War-time questions are so terribly difficult. If the objective is simply to go in and wipe out a foe, America has shown repeatedly that it prevails. But constructing functioning democracies in undemocratic, violent Arab lands seems a truly unfair task for young men and women who constantly risk death in the process.

Meanwhile, on one of our clearest objectives, which is actually protecting our nation from terrorists at our ports, we can contract with private firms from other countries to oversee our most immediate vulnerabilities? That struck me as absurd.

Our nation deems defense spending as a vital need. It certainly is. But how far do you take it? And where do you put all that money? Some people are fine with no limits on defense spending. They are much more comfortable with spending money to bomb others abroad than they are to feed the honestly needy among us. This will always be a political truth. There’s no arguing anyone away from such a mindset.

But if we’re going to fork out more than nine times as much as China spends on defense, let’s put more of it on our own front line. The more we protect the borders and ports, the less we have to intervene in faraway lands in the name of national security, the less we have to worry about who is crossing the line.

Zach Mitcham is editor of The Madison County Journal.