Pirate's Cove

This is possibly the dumbest one you’ll read today, particularly from a major media outlet. Apparently, the talking points that made their way from the White House to the compliant lapdog legacy media is that what Obama intends to do with his “amnesty”, er, deferred deportation, is all about humanitarianism for these poor, poor folks who entered our country illegally/overstayed their visa. The Washington Post’s Harold Myerson decides to take it a step further and brings in the Berlin Wall. Yes, the Berlin Wall. No, seriously

Obama calculates the human cost of deportations

The commemorations of the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall have thrust into the public spotlight the border guard who ordered the gates opened. The subject of both a new German-language book and film, one-time Stasi Lt. Col. Harald Jäger has recounted why he defied his orders. And his story couldn’t be more relevant to the debate consuming our own nation.

On the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, prompted by an erroneous announcement from an East German Politburo spokesman that his compatriots would be free to cross the border, thousands of East Berliners flocked to the checkpoint Jäger supervised. His superiors told him to keep the gates closed, though he could let a few people through, provided he marked the passports of those he determined were activists and blocked their reentry when they came back.

When one such young couple returned from the West, going home to their small children, Jäger saw that while the wife could reenter, her husband’s passport had been stamped, forbidding his return. Jäger faced a choice. “My responsibility was clear — enforce the law and split the couple,” he recalled to the Financial Times. “But at that moment it became so clear to me . . . the stupidity, the lack of humanity. I finally said to myself, ‘Kiss my arse. Now I will do what I think is right.’ ” He let the couple in. Then he commanded the guards to throw open the gates. The rest is history — and a lesson to a nation now embroiled in a different, but not that different, contest between the imperatives of custom and law, as some construe it, and those of keeping families together.

Got that? The U.S. is like Stasi run East Germany, and Mr. Obama is Lt. Col. Jäger, the super awesome guy who refused the order to stop the husband from returning to the (restrictive police state of) East Germany, and further went on to open the gates allowing East and West German families to reunite. Hooray! Because that’s no much different from what’s going on here in the United States. Except that there is no wall holding our citizens in.

What the pundits have tended to overlook, as well, is the humanity behind Obama’s apparent willingness to act without congressional approval. Every year since Obama became president, the government has deported roughly 400,000 undocumented immigrants, with little regard to whether they’ve broken any law save crossing the border without papers or overstaying their visas — or whether their kids are wondering where their parents have gone. On Tuesday, the Pew Research Center reported that in 2012, some 13 percent of schoolchildren in both Texas and California had at least one undocumented parent. That’s a lot of parents, a lot of kids.

Humanity has its place. So does The Law. Those parents are welcome to take their children with them when they are deported. No one will “stop them at the gate”, keeping the children here. Where are the Liberals complaining about families being broken up when one parent is sent to jail, be they illegal aliens or proper citizens? Furthermore, the majority of major countries have similar laws. Many of them, such as Mexico, make being “undocumented” a criminal act, worthy of jail time.

None of this is to equate the legitimacy of our laws and policies to those of the late, unlamented East Germany. But even democracies can, and not infrequently do, violate the most elemental human rights. Stripping children of their parents is such a violation. It’s time — past time — to stop the stupidity, the lack of humanity.

Except that Meyerson did equate the U.S. to East Germany. What was the point of the first 3 paragraphs, otherwise? No one is stripping children of their parents (we could probably discuss hyperactive government organizations attempting to take children from their parents over things like a parent owning a gun, along with other measures), as the children are, again, welcome to go with the parents. Humanitarianism is worthless without Law. These parents voluntarily chose to come to the U.S. illegally or overstayed their visas. This is on them. It was their own actions. If you chose to break into a building and get arrested and sent to jail, separating you from your children, whose fault is it?

The parents could leave with their kids and apply to return, doing it the right way. They chose to instead agitate for the U.S. to blow off our laws and accommodate them. They demand this. The cost will be born by U.S. citizens, and what of the humanitarianism of those who emigrated to the U.S. legally? Amnesty is telling these people they’re chumps.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Dumbest Pro-Illegals Op-Ed You’ll Read Positions U.S. As Communist East Germany »