Lou Dobbs on the Tragedy of Illegal Immigration

This post continues my series on illegal immigration by linking to a commentary piece from Lou Dobbs at CNN. Dobbs published his article "U.S. Policy on Immigration is a Tragic Joke" in the Arizona Republic in August 2005. As noted previously, I admire Dobbs' principles, conviction, and consistency. Dobbs notes that President Vicente Fox has no "incentive to control the flow of drugs being shipped from Mexico into the United States and every incentive to continue the exportation of illegal aliens into this country." The article continues:

In the United States, an obscene alliance of corporate supremacists, desperate labor unions, certain ethnocentric Latino activist organizations and a majority of our elected officials in Washington works diligently to keep our borders open, wages suppressed and the American people all but helpless to resist the crushing financial and economic burden created by the millions of illegal aliens who crash our borders each year.

Dobbs' response to all of this is found in his longrunning "Broken Borders" series at CNN, which daily reminds the American people of the catastrophe of our open borders policy:

Failure to secure our borders means that we will continue to lose the war on drugs and lose a generation of Americans to those drugs. It also means the crushing burden of our failed immigration and homeland security policies will continue to fall exclusively on the shoulders of working men and women. Not only do illegal aliens and those who employ them cost the nation tens of billions of dollars in social services, principally in health care and education, they also depress wages for American citizens by an estimated $200 billion a year.

Read the whole thing. As usual, Dobbs is careful to note that the U.S., an immigrant society, welcomes more newcomers to its shores than any other nation -- which is something I noted in one of my earlier illegal immigration posts.