NO TRESPASSING

What’s with the bill recently passed by the Senate and eagerly awaited at the White House? Pundits have speculated; some feel that business-oriented Republicans look the other way in deference to businesses that depend heavily on cheap, illegal labor, while others feel that the U.S. is incapable of sending them all packing, and that our longstanding failure to secure borders and enforce existing immigration law somehow necessitates lenience or amnesty. The “guest worker program” has morphed into a looming rubber stamp for millions of illegal immigrants.

I’m certain some economists have advised the president, but I suspect even more political scientists have. Is it possible that Senate Republicans, along with many of their Democrat counterparts, see this, at bottom, as a vote grab? Once naturalized, immigrants who came here illegally will likely secure the privilege of voting. If Republicans go along with this plan, perhaps they’ll enjoy some gains within this new voting bloc. In this light, having enough newcomers’ votes, even if not a majority among the demographic, would beat a zero.

However, who really stands to gain from such an arrangement? Liberals have long favored extending “entitlements” to “undocumented workers” and other aliens who have entered the country unlawfully, just as they favor restoring voting rights to convicted felons. Their largest target audiences comprise those self-identified “victims” who favor getting from any and all taxpayers more than they themselves have earned—and sundry other supposedly progressive steps toward a socialist or communist system—and then the mega-wealthy paternalistic and patronizing celebrities and captains of industry who favor a nanny state that largely won’t inconvenience them personally. It’s virtually certain who scores politically here.

On this issue, conservatives are faced with impending abandonment by their own leaders on the purported right and pursuits of ruinous consequence from the transparently Marxist left. It’s time to let our unannounced “guests” know that they’ve really abused our hospitality and now they really have to leave. Expel them. Our credibility, integrity, security, and sovereignty depend on it.

What happened

We recently learned the official manner and cause of Evan’s death: the St. Clair County coroner, in conjunction with the medical examiner and the responding officer, found that the death was accidental, not natural, and that he suffocated after being placed on two blankets in a playpen and rolling over onto his face. Prior to the day he died, he had slept in his car seat, his swing, or our arms. The medical examiner found everything from the autopsy unremarkable and ruled out SIDS.

Yet, for some, the matter is still open. To them, denial and interminable searching are preferable to a reasonable, if not thoroughly proven, conclusion. It could have been Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome or Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome. It could have been Long Q-T. I suppose. I suppose, also, that someone could have surreptitiously entered through a window and smothered our son.

Or worse, perhaps. The hand of God Himself could have turned Evan over to underscore a lesson already learned when we lost Emily Jane: that we cannot count on Him and that trying to do so is a waste.

I see no reason to contest the medical examiner’s findings. What killed Evan was an incomprehensible choice and an inexcusable failure to check on him. Wandering into the Land of If brings no peace. At best, it is merely an unhealthy obsession; at worst, a foolish desire to exonerate the guilty.

Perhaps no other comment—of the dozens of oblivious comments we hear—exemplifies this vacuity better than my own mother’s. When I informed her that Evan’s death was accidental, she responded, “Oh, that’s good.” Incredulous, I asked what she meant. With no hint of recognition in her voice, she replied, “Well, that means it was nobody’s fault.”