It should be troubling to all Americans that our federal government plans to sue the state of Arizona to strike down its new law against illegal immigration.
Washington, D.C., is far from the Mexican border, and it has not suffered from the illegal invasion the way that Arizona and other border states have.
The problems in Arizona are legion. Illegals cross private property on the U.S. side of the border in high numbers, causing destruction and leaving large amounts of trash — to say nothing of endangering landowners who might get caught between the invaders and border agents.
Illegal aliens also use taxpayer-funded health, education and other social services. Some border hospitals have closed outright because they could not afford all the free care they had to provide to illegal aliens arriving in their emergency rooms for treatment.
And, of course, some illegal aliens commit serious additional crimes after they arrive in the United States.
These problems could be greatly reduced if the federal government upheld its constitutional duty to protect the border and enforce our nation’s immigration laws. But year after year, Washington refuses to take necessary action — often insisting on “amnesty” for illegals instead. As a result, we have anywhere from 11 million to 20 million illegal aliens in America today — though nobody knows the number with any precision. Many of those individuals hold jobs that might otherwise go to some of our nation’s millions of unemployed citizens.
Ironically, around the time that the U.S. Justice Department was saying it would sue to keep Arizona from protecting itself from the flood of illegal aliens, the department was also asking a federal judge to dismiss 20 states’ legal challenge to ObamaCare socialized medicine. ObamaCare, which is unconstitutional, will impose huge new costs on the states. They want to defend themselves from those costs, just as Arizona wants to defend itself from illegal aliens.
It is a shame that the federal government has failed to protect our borders. But it should not undermine states that are doing what they must to protect their residents from illegal aliens and to safeguard their tax dollars against costly ObamaCare.