The ridiculous things Wisconsin politicians say about immigration would be funny if they weren't so serious.
Bordering on hilarious
By
Joel McNally
Q: How can you tell if local politicians are simply trying to fan the flames of bigotry and hatred when they talk about cracking down on illegal immigrants?
A: Their lips are moving.
There is one universal truth about local officials at the bottom of the political food chain. They spend most of their waking hours looking for ways to avoid taking responsibility for everything they possibly can.
That's why local politicians love to talk about what the state and the federal government should do. The less they actually have to do themselves, the less likely they are to upset voters and lose their phony, baloney jobs.
So any time local officials start talking about taking on more work, you know they are up to something.
Especially when they talk about taking on an enormous, expensive, literally impossible job such as rounding up 12 million to 14 million undocumented immigrants living in this country.
That's a job that has consumed countless billions of dollars and massive federal resources including immigration agents, the FBI, homeland security, the border patrol, the U.S. military, the CIA and lots of other shadowy, clandestine government agencies doing despicable things we're never told about, and it still fails miserably.
Another dead giveaway that local officials in the northern state of Wisconsin have some other agenda is when their entire focus is on immigrants crossing the Mexican border more than 1,300 miles away.
In Wisconsin, we're in far more imminent danger from rampaging hordes of Canadians coming across their border to snatch our daughters and carry them back to the North Woods.
Yet communities like Waukesha and Green Bay insist their small-time law enforcement agencies don't have enough to do enforcing their own ordinances and operating their local speed traps. They want to be deputized to enforce federal immigration laws.
Barney Fife, who was permitted to carry only one bullet and was required to keep it in his shirt pocket on The Andy Griffith Show, now wants to be an international agent.
It was no secret why former Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher applied to the federal government for authority to track down illegal immigrants and deport them.
Bucher was running for Wisconsin attorney general at the time. Bucher, like many other conservative Republicans in the last election, believed inflaming racism and hatred against illegal Mexican immigrants would be a dandy way to win election.
The good news is they were wrong. Not only was Bucher defeated, but so were other right-wing Republicans running on anti-immigrant platforms all across the country, helping to flip control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to the Democrats.
Bucher made a big media show of applying to the feds for his Junior G-Man badge, but he never bothered to tell anybody the federal government rejected his application as "unacceptable" back last August, even before the attorney general election.
Recently, a reporter asked new Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel whether he planned to reapply for authority to battle illegal immigration.
What would you expect Schimel to say in the most conservative Republican county in the state? That it was ridiculous to expect local law enforcement to take on a job that the vast resources of the federal government had failed to accomplish?
Instead, Schimel replied he would submit another application. But if the reporter hadn't asked the question, the issue probably would have been allowed to die quietly.
Up in Green Bay, a whole new cadre of opportunistic, local politicians have decided stirring the pot against illegal immigration will win them votes. City Council President Chad Fradette said council members were concerned about Green Bay becoming "a sanctuary city for illegal aliens."
That seems rather unlikely since Green Bay has long had a reputation as unfriendly toward people of color.
Until defensive superstar Reggie White accepted a free agent contract to play with the Green Bay Packers and helped lead them to a Super Bowl championship, most of the top African-American players in the National Football League avoided the celebrated, small-town atmosphere of Green Bay for good reason.
An earlier black player on the Packers told a sportswriter that when he walked into a Green Bay drugstore looking for hair care products, he was directed to the Vasoline aisle.
A proposed Green Bay ordinance would prevent illegal immigrants from working or holding any city licenses. The ordinance has been condemned by human rights groups, the bishop of the Green Bay Catholic Diocese and business leaders.
Someday the Republican Party will have to face reality and help create a process for millions of hard-working Mexicans living in this country to earn their citizenship.
Until then, Barney Fife will dream of ethnically cleansing this country of Latino immigrants by nailing them for traffic violations.
May 20, 2007
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Joel McNally lives in Milwaukee, is a FightingBob.com contributing editor, and is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Capital Times, the Shepherd Express and other newspapers.
