Advice to Politicians: No Guts No Glory

My dad used to tell me that we cannot fool young children and dogs. I would suggest that over the long haul, politicians cannot fool voters.

I am blessed with four wonderful children. When they were young I told them that there are three speed limits in nature that they must be cognizant of. There is the speed of light which, according to Einstein, established the absolute speed limit for the universe. There is the speed of sound that, until Chuck Yeager proved otherwise, was thought to be an insurmountable barrier for airplanes. Finally, I told them, there is the speed of their own BS which I assured them they could never outrun – sooner or later it inevitably catches up with you!

People respect true leaders. They want men and women to come forward and lead them. You cannot lead from behind. You cannot lead by chasing after people and then pandering to them, hoping they will like you and vote for you. True leaders articulate their goals and methods and persuade their fellow citizens that they are taking the best path.

True leaders don’t lead because of their fears, but rather lead because of their beliefs, vision and ideals.

It is unseemly and worse that there are politicians who make decisions based on fear of losing votes and elections. The issue of immigration could provide the ideal case study of politicians making horrible decisions that are fear based. Politicians who promise lawful status for aliens who violate our borders and laws that are our first and last line of defense against transnational criminals and international terrorists are not demonstrating leadership, but immoral cowardice.

Our immigration laws were enacted primarily to protect America’s national security, public safety and the jobs of American workers.

Politicians all promise to create jobs. In reality, it can take years to create a job. Someone has to come up with a concept and then get capital to breathe life into that concept. This is time consuming. Most often a facility has to be acquired or built – this takes still more time. Finally, only after these steps are completed can people be hired.

Today there are millions of foreign workers holding jobs in the United States that Americans would gladly do. Record numbers of homes have been lost to foreclosure. Too many American children are living below the poverty level inside the U.S. Record numbers of Americans have gone on long-term disability. These are not people who have spent a lifetime dodging work but conscientious workers who have given up looking for jobs after they were fired – displaced by foreign workers – not just at bottom-rung jobs, but middle-class jobs as well.

Every month the U.S. admits more foreign workers who are legally entitled to work here than the number of new jobs created. This is without taking into account the millions of illegal aliens who are living and working illegally in the U.S.

In 2011, “Dan Rather Reports” aired a disconcerting report on how solidly middle-class, highly educated, experienced and qualified American computer programmers were being replaced by programmers from India.

America could put millions of unemployed Americans to work, without creating a single new job, if only our government would simply liberate jobs. The way to liberate jobs is to enforce the immigration laws to make certain that illegal aliens don’t work in the U.S. and that we don’t permit foreign workers in high-tech industries to game the visa process and replace American workers, as was illustrated in the Dan Rather report.

This is not rocket science – just commonsense.

The administration’s deceptive use of arrest statistics to create the illusion that our borders are secure isn’t worth discussing. The true metric to determine if our borders are truly secure is the availability of heroin and cocaine in the country. Every gram of narcotics is smuggled into the U.S. The current heroin epidemic that has caused local governments to provide antidotes for heroin overdoses provides incontrovertible evidence that our borders are little more than speed bumps to smugglers.

Discussions about violent crime almost never take note that most crime, especially violent crime, involves transnational gangs and narcotics. Both are side effects of porous borders. Prevent the entry of transnational criminals and narcotics, and violent crimes would decrease; lives would no longer be lost to gang violence or to lengthy prison sentences.

The time for real political leaders from both parties to step forward and push for true border security and effective immigration law enforcement is now. This would be the best way to show true leadership to help struggling American families and their children of every race, religion and ethnicity.

It would also help improve national security and public safety.

This might take some guts, but it is the leadership all Americans crave and would vote for.