Op Ed: Amnesty Only Possible
Control and Direction
NOW For The TEN MILLION

Unavoidable realities demand skillful plans well implemented, available ONLY by constitutionally responsible action by Congress.

Immigrants being marched at the U.S. border

(BEND, Ore.) - There’s no doubt whatsoever of the damaging and dangerous situations and circumstances which now so obviously enrage so many solid citizens of this nation contemplating that rushing torrent of illegal entrants crossing our Mexican border.

That excruciating inflow HAS been happening and continues to do so, the result of our own neglect stemming directly from long-continued citizen and Congressional irresponsibilities.

When these same Americans see some of the sordid and very serious depredations and highly damaging preying-behavior exhibited by some of these “illegals”, they respond with only-natural extremely-strong personal feelings for “ending the invasion” - and then even reversing it, somehow, “To send them ALL home!”

Yet there is an enormous lack of clear understanding and full consideration for the horrendous and highly humiliating total task thus demanded of this nation, NOW.

We are already engulfed in TWO wars, with another threatened by irresponsible action of our “leaders”; Already caught up in continuing catastrophe for our returning participants from those armed conflicts, demanding extended special care and concern for themselves AND their families; Already facing still further recession-returning to our economy.

They are already coping with the relatively rapid depreciation of every aspect of U.S. life; Already under heavily-damaging democracy-challenging siege-situation from eight years of desperately destructive neo-con control.

That huge, complex, costly, highly problematic and extremely difficult "exporting"-task will be humiliating to us - that is, the United States of America! And can well lose us what leadership and credibility we still have left worldwide for democratic growth-and-development; surely now in question after extremely crucial neo-con descent into debacle, most definitely decreasing democracy in our own bailiwick.

NOW is not the time to rush headlong into probably the most complex and dangerously difficult similar situation ever faced anywhere in our world.

Nowhere in modern centuries - since the Renaissance, at the least has there been such devastating circumstantial danger allowed to occur within any nation, of any governance-pattern.

Anyone cogitating on this catastrophe MUST contemplate the concentrated and consummately-difficult circumstances we must control and conquer to bring about this “reverse-invasion”.

Given our very-public declared goals and objectives since 1776, that must be done while we still preserve what little semblance of democratic and human rights we will allow to all-involved; unless we are now willing to give up any continuing real determination we still have to strengthen, preserve and extend what we have declared to be the reigning principles for democratic governance unique in this world.

If we seek to concentrate-and-contain all ten million-or-more of these “illegal” immigrants and somehow force them from those complex collecting points into actual export-travel, we will have undertaken a task unlike any ever before completed in world history, and highly reminiscent of Hitler at his worst and lowest point.

Even if done Nazi-style, via huge and heavily-armed forces applied simultaneously across the nation, the only sure result will be the same kind of worldwide anger, disgust, and abysmal dismay that greeted Hitler’s black-helmeted Hessian-style heavy-attack application, now noted in history in terms this nation cannot ever afford.

The sheer physical demands of this extraordinarily-complex action --even if phased in regionally and over reasonable time-- would demand rapid and complete withdrawal of our current armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan; and surely ALSO the addition of even more reliance on “private contractors” to supplement all the armed forces thus available.

Do we really want to see that worldwide news-headline: “U.S. Blackwaters Hispanics”?

Any reasonable force-size/estimate will reach at least 250,000 able-bodied, heavily-armed, well-trained and completely motivated personnel, for this one.

Do advocates of “instant withdrawal” have any concept of what it will take to produce such a force, in realistic terms, given today’s “broken army”+ forced to outplace even ordinary activities demanded for an effective force ? (+ Recent description by Gen. Powell, resigned Secretary of State.)

How long will it take to prepare for this difficult action, and how long will it take once underway? Months at least, years, even decades, by most authoritative estimates.

Do we dare risk, while the eyes of the world are fully upon us, even a meticulous and precisely-planned, completely staffed-and-funded such operation without due and essential “basic training” for all?

Which is the last thing ever to be provided, given the proven record of incompetency and massive management mischief already perpetrated by our neo-con/controlled “Executive Branch”, required to act ONLY AFTER Congressional approval is reached, and often then delayed and denied by special-letter application.

Inevitably, the longer it takes the more costly, complex, demanding, and irrevocably damaging it is sure to get.

From whence, too, will come the additional billions of dollars demanded for this surely magnificently-sized manipulative effort, multiplying anything similar ever done in this nation or elsewhere?

What “welcome” will await the millions thus exported, no matter how the complex travel-demanded is supplied?

They can hardly travel on their own, even on their own side of the border. Most do not have such resources, many are desperately poor, which is why they “invaded” in the first place.

What do we do when their reception is refused by their reluctant homeland, glad to see them go when they did so?

Turn ‘em loose, on their own, here or there? With no further pretense of control or comprehensive plan for providing food, shelter, medical care, and security as demanded in any such overwhelming operation?

Does anyone advocating enforcement NOW of this simplistic “Go Home” demand really believe this can actually happen, any time soon?

Or is the release of pent-up, strongly-personal feelings the main driving motive for most of those making the demands?

These inevitable “operating questions” - sure to be asked by those delegated to actually DO THIS, present the impossibilities surely involved in identifying, locating, uprooting and then “shipping out” entire families; some of whose members will surely be legal and provably so; with many others of such dubious designation as to make the ID task itself not only extremely complex, time-and-energies consuming, and highly costly; but also dangerously damaging to the very concept of “human rights”.

That is, quite obviously, the major principle of our democracy surely highly at risk if such a monstrous attack is permitted.

Any rational contemplation of precisely how such a huge totally unprecedented operation might be set up shows that there MUST be some better, and surely also more-democratic way to manage the mutually advantageous task of careful absorption, with full control, of those millions involved; as achieved over generations before in this nation, for those who can and should be allowed to become full citizens somehow.

OR is our vaunted American inventive competitive spirit completely dead?

Perhaps an unforeseen further-damage from those eight years of neo-con constrictive control and deep democratic damages?

That “other way” is, very simply, "simple amnesty". Amnesty itself IS simple; it is how you manage it that is complex, difficult, and dangerous to human rights principles. Here's the dictionary definitions setting forth the several levels of amnesty:

amnesty (as in "exemption") n. : a period during which offenders are exempt from punishment

amnesty (as in "pardon") n. : a warrant granting release from punishment for an offense amnesty (as in "clemency") n. : the formal act of liberating someone amnesty (as in "pardon") v. : grant a pardon to (a group of people)

Any plan for application of the amnesty principle demands full understanding of precisely what amnesty is and how it can be managed to make possible a peaceful and highly effective approach to this otherwise insuperable problem; driven still further out of any rational consideration now by accumulated racial/ethnic feelings; clearly being promoted by those whose interests are better served by attention-here rather than on our continuing internal U.S. problems.

To do otherwise is to force back into family-circle, for immediate export, the large majority of those now well at work on building the kinds of lives and continuing circumstances we want them to achieve; then savagely snatching away the entire group for return to an empty land with small opportunities for any legal border crossing, now or later.

To do otherwise is to commit a catastrophic act of excruciating social, cultural, and economic terrorism for which the U.S. will be held forever responsible, worldwide, for generations to come; as “worse than Hitler” and hurting far more than he did.

Our democracy is Constitutionally-shaped and still so-directed, despite the desperate neo-con/distorted years.

In our system it is Congressional responsibility to first determine what the people really want, by built-in protocol and process; then and ONLY THEN, to take effective and strong action to make sure it is done in proper democratic fashion, with effective control and support.

Any real devotee of democracy must deplore and do everything possible to prevent mass hysteria and mundane manipulation for political purposes to prevent that Constitutional democratic process from its proper occurrence.

Our right-and-only role here is to demand, strongly support, and fight for rapid and reasonable concentrated exploration leading to that action by our Congress --thus supporting not only our Constitution but also our true faith in democracy properly attained for all involved.

Childish demand to “Go Home” --no matter the depth and direction of truly-personal feelings-- should never lead us into even more-desperate actions destroying our basic democratic principles.