Ann Coulter’s making noise lately with her new book Adios, America, which has as its theme our country is doomed from being overrun by Hispanic freeloaders and drug dealers. Well, Mexico does have its problems and when dining in Acapulco, it’s best to keep one’s back to the wall — sort of like Little Italy in the old days. And our immigration system is about as broken as my 1963 Corvair, if I could ever figure out where it is.
I suspect, however, Ann might be a little over the top again as is her wont. (She’s even channeling her inner New York Times, going after Marco Rubio. Doesn’t she know that can backfire?) And she’s a virtual one-woman show, offending the fastest growing voting bloc in America, not exactly a great strategy, but, hell, she’s not running for office. That’s for the little people. Ann’s got books to sell. Being moderate and reasonable doesn’t get that done (unless you’re, say, E. M. Forster — and Coulter’s not, um, precisely in that category).
Still, I think there are ways to handle this situation and one of them is an old recommendation of mine I remembered just after I interviewed Rick Perry over the weekend. I wish I had asked him about it. But let me say before I repeat my proposal that it struck me that Rick, if he doesn’t make it to the presidency but some other Republican does, would make an all-time great director of Homeland Security. You read it here first.
Okay, here’s my proposal. And it speaks directly to Coulter’s key point, that the Democrats don’t give a rat’s patootie about the welfare of Hispanics. What they really care about (passionately) is getting enough new voters through the door to have us all living forever under a one-party system — them.
So here’s the deal. First — as virtually every Republican within fifty yards of a television camera is saying — secure the border and prove it’s secured. Then, well, there are a million ways to proceed. What you do then specifically I don’t particularly care. (Yes, I’ve got ADD from so many years of writing for the Internet and am not interested in the details. Maybe I should run for Congress.)
But here’s the thing, no matter what happens, no matter whether you call it amnesty, shmamnesty or perpetual work permits on an automated app (iPhone or Android), if you didn’t come here under legal immigration, you never get to vote. Never. Ever. Not once.
You can do anything. You can work, play, pay taxes, get welfare, get Social Security, go to school, root for the Dodgers and ski at Vail, but you can never vote in any U.S. election. No exceptions. If you want to vote, go to the back of the line and come here legally.
If Republicans made that proposal, Democrats would scream bloody murder but there would be nothing they could do about it. The public would be on the side of the Republicans. Reason? As Barack Obama would say, fairness. We’re giving those illegals a lot (those who aren’t criminals or jihadists, of course), practically everything. We’re just not giving them our republic. They didn’t earn it.
Now I realize I did skip over a lot here, and I would remind readers of what Newt Gingrich pointed out eloquently during the last presidential cycle: we have about twelve million illegals living here. If you want to send them home, you better have a lot of buses. (Maybe the Chinese can sell them to us.) A practical solution is probably a smarter move and the Republican Party, if it uses its head, might want to impress the large legal Hispanic community with their humanity and win the election into the bargain. (Hey, identity politics may stink, but someone’s gotta do it.)
So there you have it. It doesn’t take a Gang of Eight or a Gang of Four Hundred and Eight. It just takes one simple rule. Can we relax now?
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