Free In Idaho!

I mentioned sheepdogs the other day in this post, and said “remind me to tell you about them”.  I first heard the idea at a class given by the Ada County Sheriff’s department for folks desiring an Idaho Concealed Pistol License.  The officer who gave the class suggested that perhaps the people in the room might be sheepdogs.  Not professional sheepdogs, like our soldiers, or the LE officers in the room, but sheepdogs all the same.  It immediately struck a cord with me, and I knew it was a great way of describing things.  Simply stated, there are three kinds of people in the world.  Most are sheep.  Preying on the sheep are the wolves.  Wolves come in a variety of flavors.  And then there are sheepdogs.  They watch out for the sheep and protect them from the wolves.

Then I bumped into the idea again in a 2005 essay by Bill Whittle, fantastic essayist over at Eject!Eject!Eject!  This is his essay Tribes.  Go there and read it… if you aren’t familiar with Bill Whittle’s writing yet, you’re in for a treat.  And if you only follow one of my links from this blog, make it this one.

Then this morning I found another sheepdog article over at Townhall.   It’s good to be reminded once in awhile.

How about we listen to a real conservative for a minute, just so we can remember what it sounds like?  Here’s Mr Reagan at the Berlin wall, twenty years ago today

“In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: ‘We will bury you.’ But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind–too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

“And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

“Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’”

You can find the whole speech at the Reagan Foundation.

The Washington Times reports on Harry Reid, champion of “undocumented Americans”, giving it to Mr. Bush

The top Senate Democrat said yesterday that President Bush must prove he can deliver more Republican votes before Democrats will put the immigration bill, which collapsed last week, back on the Senate schedule.
    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Mr. Bush that the only hope for the bill is if he delivers the votes of more than 20 Republican senators to break a filibuster and pass the measure.

Mark Steyn asks us all to remember the results of the last time they tried to fix this

Remember the 1986 amnesty? Mahmoud abu Halima applied for it and went on to bomb the World Trade Center seven years later. His colleague, Mohammad Salameh, was rejected but carried on living here anyway. John Lee Malvo was detained and released by U.S. immigration in breach of its own procedures and re-emerged as the Washington sniper. The young Muslim men who availed themselves of the U.S. government’s “visa express” system for Saudi Arabia filled in joke applications – “Address in the United States: HOTEL, AMERICA” – that octogenarian snowbirds from Toronto who’ve been wintering at their Florida condos since 1953 wouldn’t try to get away with. The late Mohammed Atta received his flight-school student visa on March 11, 2002, six months to the day after famously flying his first and last commercial airliner.

All the above passed through the legal immigration system. Whether they were detained, rejected, approved or posthumously approved, in the end it made no difference. Because U.S. immigration had no real idea who these men were.

But, don’t worry, they’ll be able to handle another “12 million undocumented Americans” tossed in for express processing.

The real “immigration fraud” is not Mahmoud abu Halima’s or John Lee Malvo’s or Mohammed Atta’s, but that of the politicians who attempted to foist this sham bill on the nation.

And our two Idaho Senators?  Senator Craig is committed to finding a way to get the cheapest labor possible for Idaho agricultural interests.  (What was that movie again?… oh yeah, Amazing Grace).
Here’s a couple of quotes from the Idaho Statesman yesterday 

“Amnesty is in the eye of the beholder,” Craig said. “I think when you ask people to step up to a background check, pay a $1,000 or $5,000 fine, stay in their workplace and wait for 18 years for just the chance, if they want, of citizenship, I think that’s called paying a penalty. I don’t see that as amnesty.”

The key phrase here is “if they want”.  I’m not convinced that most of them want anything more than to be legal, and to take whatever jobs and services they can get.  Pass a law, make it all go away.  You don’t want to be a citizen?  No problemo, here’s a Zcard, have a nice day… and a million other folks who DO want to be Americans are left standing in line.  That doesn’t solve the problem.  I appreciate Senator Craig looking out for his ag supporters, but I don’t see where this amnesty bill is going to suddenly give Idaho farmers and builders all the cheap labor they think they’re going to get, unless they are counting on the 12 million already here to bring 40 million more under the warm and fuzzy guise of “family unification”.  The 1986 amnesty was supposed to solve this, but here we are again twenty years later with an even bigger problem than we had then.  And we’re supposed to trust that this time they’ve got it right?  Nah, not so much.

I don’t see them enforcing the laws we have now.  When a poor little rich girl gets a tougher penalty than illegals get for much greater infractions, we don’t need more laws.  When there are such things as “sanctuary cities” , we don’t need more laws.  Enforce what’s on the books, now.  Secure the border, now.  400, 600, 800 pages, it won’t make a difference.   This bill is more of the same old ’sweep it under the rug, kick it down the road another 2o years, and oh, by the way, vote for me’.

Crapo has avoided using the word “amnesty” in his criticism of the bill, though he argues that the new probationary visas it provides amount to much the same thing.

“I don’t believe that we should base immigration policy on any principle that gives people who illegally entered this country an advantage toward either citizenship or permanent legal residence,” he said.

Here they come again folks…