True North

I've been rather hard on Norm Coleman on the immigration front. His performance to date has been rather lackluster and he's been less than dependable. And while he does opine to all that would listen his opposition to sanctuary cities, as demonstrated in a recent Human Events article, in essence this is really only a small part of the overall problem. Essentially it's treating a symptom, rather than the disease.

If there were not large populations of illegal aliens within the country, sanctuary cities would cease to become a major issue, and in fact would largely be pointless even for amnesty supporters. Essentially sanctuary cities provide the cover of local law allowing the illegal alien to exploit much larger flaws in the system with impunity.

Just consider the number of flaws an illegal alien has to use in order to even factor in the use of a sanctuary city.

First they must cross the border. And thanks to the federal governments complete and utter failure on this issue it's a pretty big flaw....in fact it's 2000 miles wide on our southern border. And it's a problem that's not improving very quickly. They have dragged their feet on building a fence, although it's hardly the fault of the Border Patrol. They just don't have the man-power to do it, and have instead started asking for volunteers. Can you believe that? Our national security is at stake and the best we can do is ask for unpaid volunteers.

Once they get across the border, it's no major feat to find employment. Rampant apathy and a virtual cottage industry of document forgeries make this a petty task at most. Despite the fact that the federal government is very aware of employers who have employees with mismatching social security numbers, they have done nothing to address the issue except send the written equivalent of a frown to the employer.

While Coleman is correct to be outraged by sanctuary cities, who feel it permissible to flaunt federal laws and declare their fiefdom sovereign sanctuary to lawbreakers, he misses the larger picture. Many of these sanctuary cities would either cease to exist, or else be severely minimized in their impact if he would more aggressively pursue the bigger picture. And it is this hesitancy to address the larger issues that causes many immigration activists to mistrust him.

Certainly his role of reluctant support of tough immigration reform is preferable to the actions of his Democratic colleague, Amy Klobuchar. While Coleman is at least willing to entertain the idea of immigration reforms, Klobuchar would prefer to just blindly cast votes for chain migration, amnesty, allowing illegal alien felons to stay in the US, and other such ridiculous notions.

However, if Coleman wishes to regain the trust of his base, and immigration activists in particular, he needs to do more than just talk tough on the minor immigration issues. He needs to demonstrate his complete support of the aggressive solutions to the larger problem. He needs to make it clear that not only can American cities not flaunt federal laws, but that the federal government itself cannot flaunt it's own laws. After all, can you really blame city leaders for not taking federal immigration laws seriously, if even the feds don't take them seriously?

[Cross-posted at EckerNet.Com]