Tenn. Driving Papers A Hot Item Nationally

If You Build It They Will Come.

In the argument over how to deal with illegal Immigration the two sides are basically :

1. Close the border and stop the incentives first, then provide some way for people to come and work.

2. Make a way for people to work here and the border problem will be easier to deal with.

I fall squarely with the first option. Following is just one example of why the second will not work

Tennessee's driving certificate for illegal immigrants isn't valid as a form of ID, but people are paying hundreds of dollars on the black market and traveling hundreds of miles to get one.

Tennessee has issued more than 51,000 certificates since it became the first state to offer them in July 2004, but not every certificate has gone to someone living there.

Two major federal arrests in recent months exposed shuttles bringing South and Central American immigrants from as far away as New Jersey to state licensing centers in Knoxville, where the immigrants got certificates using fake residency papers.

Last week, a third sweep revealed an alleged conspiracy in which prosecutors say state license examiners in Murfreesboro, outside Nashville, accepted bribes to provide illegal immigrants with driver's licenses and certificates without testing.

By providing any hope of legitimacy before securing our border we will only increase the incentive for more people to cross illegally. More of our citizens will be tempted to take bribes and more counterfeit documents will be manufactured.

We must stop the employment of illegal aliens and secure our border. The economic arguments claiming illegal workers are a benefit are insufficient to justify lawlessness. To make some provision to accommodate past lawless behavior will undermine efforts to secure the border.

People seeking employment are not the only ones crossing over. There is a real effort on the part of our enemies to infiltrate for the purpose of doing us harm. Whether it is Islamofacists or narcoterrorist the reality is we are engaged in a cold war with Mexico.

The politicians fear a collapse of Mexico's economy if we stop illegal immigration. They also see the legitimized illegals as a future voting block they can stick in their pocket. We as citizens must make our interests more critical to their reelection than the anticipated benefit of the accommodated illegal population. The one of the first steps is to stop this driving certificate nonsense.