"Rule of law is not for sale in America

By:Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
April 29, 2010

Source WashingtonExaminer.com 

"Legislators in the sovereign state of Arizona apparently missed the documentary "Un Sueno Americano." And well they should have.

Earlier this month, Arizona passed a law giving police the power to question people about their immigration status. But not just any people. Those questioned must have been stopped by police for a perfectly legal reason first.

Terry stops -- what police call "stop, question and frisk" stops -- have been legal since 1968, so the Arizona law is perfectly constitutional. (Memo to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder: Now might be a good time for the two of you to actually read the Constitution you've sworn to uphold. You might want to add the Supreme Court's 1968 opinion in Terry v. Ohio to your list.)

Arizona's law passing constitutional muster didn't stop the predicted outcry from America's repeal-all-immigration-laws-now crowd. No sooner was the law passed than charges of racism sprang up. I'm betting critics haven't even read Arizona's law, but they've probably watched repeated showings of "Un Sueno Americano."

I caught the film on the Documentary Channel, which I stumbled across by cruising through my DirecTV program guide. I love documentaries, so finding a channel that airs them nearly 24 hours a day made me feel as if I'd died and gone to Chicago. (Yeah, I love Chicago too.)

When done right, documentaries can entertain and inform. "Un Sueno Americano" didn't entertain very much, but it sure as heck informed. And here's what I learned.

Did you know the rule of law is up for sale in America?

"Un Sueno Americano" -- Spanish for "An American Dream" -- is blatantly pro-illegal immigration. That is, pro-illegal immigration from one direction. That would be from south of the United States into the United States. I suspect the producers of "Un Sueno Americano" feel Mexico's immigration laws are perfectly fine.

The gist of the film is that those who enter the United States illegally are coming here to be part of the American dream, in hopes of getting a better life. At one point the film's scriptwriters mention that the poverty rate in Mexico is 40 percent. The implication is that those Mexican poor are somehow the responsibility of the United States, not Mexico.

But here is where that logic -- if indeed it can be called that -- breaks down. If America is obligated to take in Mexico's poor and educate them, and provide them with health care and jobs, then it has that obligation to the poor of every nation in the world.

How many people would that be, exactly? The numbers are staggering; we simply can't afford to do it.

The more practical solution is the one everybody ignores: Implore or compel the Mexican government to address the needs of its own poor so they don't have to sneak into the United States illegally. But suggest that and the charges of racism will fly anew.

At another point in "Un Sueno Americano" some guy is going on and on about is the billions of dollars illegal immigrants add to the American economy in pursuit of their dream. But the American dream is worthless without the rule of law. Or, to quote our president on the matter of immigration: "We must remain a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws."

So the film's producers are saying, in essence, that because illegal immigrants bring us a ton of money, then somehow the rule of law is canceled in this country. Either that, or the rule of law is for sale in America.

That might be true in Mexico, but it sure as heck ain't the case here."

Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.