Sometimes, it seems that the fabric of the American mind is unraveling.  The national furor over the new immigration law in Arizona is a good example.  All over the country, progressives are in a lather over the fact that someone might be arrested for breaking the law.  Their rational is that the law is racist, because only Hispanic appearing individuals will be targeted.

To me, this only further illustrates the decay in rational thought that is so epidemic in our nation.  Why?  It’s remarkably rare to find a person born in Mexico or Central America who is tall, blonde-haired and blue-eyed.  If the police are told to look for a suspect in a robbery that is Asian, is it racist to pull over a speeding Asian man?  Or should they pull over some red-headed Irishmen, just to be fair?

I have been thoroughly evaluated by airport security because I am an adult male with a beard.  Fine, since I look as if I might come from an Islamic country.  (Well, one without a lot of sunlight, you know, Antarcticastan).  This is not racist.  Nor is checking people for identification in a state filled with illegal aliens.

Perhaps this stems from the belief that ‘the government’ will always pay for everything.  ‘The Government’ will pay for the health-care, education and incarceration of all of those who cross the border illegally.  The folks in Arizona, unlike those in more progressive climes, have realized that ‘they government is us.’   And they’re out of money, out of patience, out of safety and fresh out of trust for federal authorities.

Profiling is used as such a nasty word, but we do it all the time in medicine.

I don’t usually investigate teenage girls for coronary disease.  I seldom x-ray non-deformed, non-swollen bones.  I never check for Malaria in white women who have live their entire lives in rural South Carolina.   And I never check white people for Sickle Cell disease.  I do, however, specifically encourage African-Americans with hypertension to pay attention to their disease and treat it aggressively since they seem to suffer from its ravages more severely than others.  Now, is that racist?

What we fail to realize is that everytime we allow this sort of thing, we only prop up, in Mexico, an ineffective, failed system of government that results in crushing poverty and corruption.  The drug wars there, and the massive misery that have resulted, are excellent examples.  So now, out of good, leftist guilt, we want to absorb it here?

The immigration laws in Mexico are draconian.  I would be terrified to go there illegally.  Does anyone find that reprehensible?  Does anyone find that inconsistent?  I doubt it.  We in America can’t make that sort of confusing association with reality.

I love my Hispanic patients.  I welcome them here.  They love their families and work hard, traits that America needs more of, not less.  I see them all the time.  I’m absolutely sure that some are illegal.  I have never hesitated to treat their injuries, to comfort their children.  It isn’t my job to enforce immigration law.  But it is entirely correct for someone to do it.

As a physician subject to untold numbers of rules and regulations, concerning my practice, my license, my billing, my taxes, my retirement and everything else, I am offended that anyone would hesitate to enforce a law so obviously rational, and so clearly in line with existing statutes.

Use your brains, America.

Edwin

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