Immigration Reform? No, Emigration Reform!

   Now that President Obama and the left wing of the Democrat party have secured their healthcare victory, they have begun to turn their attention to the rest of their leftist agenda. High on the list is immigration "reform." Immigration is high on the Democrats' list for November for two reasons, neither of which has a lot to do with securing borders or orderly entry into the U.S.

   The first reason the Democrats will push immigration reform is that it is a divisive issue that has the potential to split the Republican party in advance of November's critical elections. Never were Republicans so united on domestic policy as they were during the bruising healthcare debate. Forcing individual Republicans to go on record on immigration will to a great degree neutralize the GOP's strategy of forcing individual Dems to go on the record about where they stood when healthcare and student lending were nationalized.

   The second reason the Dems like immigration as a "wedge" issue is that it will further erode Republican standing with Hispanic voters-one of the fastest growing voter blocs in the nation. In fact, if Democrats are as unscrupulous on this issue as they were on healthcare, they could consign Republicans to permanent minority status.

   So into this debate comes this bit of news: Every year the U.S. deports almost 140,000 criminal aliens. We tend to think that the bad actors come here and set up shop forever, but the G-men do get their man quite often. These are 140,000 convicts that have come here and broken our laws.

   But here's the alarming part: 100,000 of these cons come from one country-Mexico. The first crime committed by most of these former prisoners was illegally entering our country. Granted, a lot of these crimes are things like driving without a license, shoplifting or public drunkenness. But a lot of them get sent up for narco-trafficking related offenses. From San Diego to Brownsville, distance of nearly 1,300 miles, our southern border has become a third world lawless region, like the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mexican drug lords have exported their violence and drugs to the streets of American cities like El Paso and Laredo.

   Of course, the Mexican government blames us-if the U.S. didn't have as many drug users, the entire Mexican peninsula would be a Garden of Eden. You've created the problem, they say, so solve it yourselves. And the "Blame America" crowd that is now in charge of the American government agrees.

   Well, I don't agree. And neither do the majority of Americans, according to the polls. Mexico is a corrupt oligarchy. The entire country is run by a handful of rich, connected families. It bears a stronger resemblance to The Sopranos than it does to a democratic government. This clan-government creates a society where criminality exists from top to bottom. And we pay the price.

   But here's how to stop it. Every year we ship a hundred thousand Mexican cons back home. While they're here, we billet them in our prisons, feed them, clothe them and take care of their families on the outside. The cost? About $6.5 billion each year, according to one estimate of the California prison system. That's money out of the pocket of U.S. taxpayers.

   It's time for us to make sure that that money comes out of the pocket of the Mexican government or the Five Families, or whoever runs the place. We send Mexico some $30 million a year, according to the latest estimates, in "Official Foreign Aid." This is essentially bribery. We're bribing the Mexicans to be nice to us, not to cuddle up to caudillos like Hugo Chavez or the Castro brothers. $30 million, no strings attached.

   Sorry, Pancho. Time to attach some strings. You keep your riff raff out of our country, or we send you a bill for their care and feeding by the California, Arizona and Texas departments of corrections. Better yet, we deduct their room and board at the Hotel California from your OFA. Let's see...at $30 million a year in OFA it's going to take you about two centuries to work off that debt.

   To help you pay down your debt faster, we could also steal a page from the Democrat playbook and readjust the NAFTA treaty to re-tariff goods coming in from Mexico. That would help our neighbors to the south work pay back the vig faster. If the Mexicans retaliate and tax our goods, fine. We can hold out longer without strawberries, tee shirts and plastic statues of the Pope than they can without American movies, CDs or Levis.

   The point is that we're never going to solve the immigration problem till we solve the "emigration" problem: until the Mexicans have some skin the game to stop exporting their social problems to the U.S. Uncle Junior and his crew can run their country any way they want. I don't care. But until they have a financial reason to control the border from their side, our immigration policy will be decided by the same crew of geniuses that brought you socialized medicine. And that's enough to make anybody sick.

   Just thought you might like to know.