Here's the situation: An Illegal immigrant in the United States drinks, gets a DUI and stays in the country. Illegal immigrant drinks again and, this time, plows his vehicle into the back of another car, killing two teenage girls. If he had been deported after his first DUI, would he have ever killed them? The answer itself seems pretty simple, and taken to the letter, it is: No, he would not have. So how can we gum this seemingly straightforward tragedy up by politicizing the unholy hell out of it? Give it to a cable news network. Want to really butcher it? Hand it to Bill O'Reilly and invite Geraldo Rivera to sit in. But you want to know something? Amid all of the finger pointing, flying spittle, and the first use of the phrase "Cool your jets!" since the mid 1950s, Geraldo actually made a valid point. I know! Geraldo! Watch it on YouTube yourself if you don't believe me. He drove straight to the heart of the debate and rightfully called Bill out on abusing the tragedy to make a "cheap political point."
From watching the video, it's hard to argue with him. Bill keeps a trend throughout, constantly stressing that if the mayor of the Virginia town had deported the offender, Alfredo Ramos, the tragedy would have never occurred, and he comes close to outright blaming the mayor for the death of the two teens. Both Geraldo and I concede that, yeah, of course if Mr. Ramos had been deported, the accident would have not occurred. And yes, if he was here illegally, he should have been. The point we also share, however, is that Bill takes that fact as a weapon to instill fear and xenophobia.
By turning this into an issue of illegal immigration, Bill is implying that if illegal immigrants are in the country, one of them is going to kill your babies. If A (illegal immigration) precedes B (car crash), does A cause B? Apparently to Bill, it does. Do you want to know what caused the accident, Mr. O'Reilly? Drunken driving. That's it, and a member of any race can do it. Being an illegal immigrant doesn't mean you commit violent crimes; the two do not correlate, and you should stop telling your viewers they do.
By taking this story and injecting it with phrases such as "You want open-border anarchy; that's what you want," you are transparently using the girls' death as a springboard for immigration reform and take the focus away from drunken driving, even one of the victims' fathers asserts this. Yes, we have to secure our borders, and yes, illegal immigration is a problem, but trying to achieve these ends through implying that having a resident alien population makes the country a more dangerous place? That doesn't even make sense. If anything, they have more to lose, such as being deported. It's called keeping a low profile.
You can act outraged about the deaths all you like, Bill, but unless you tackle the core issue of drunken driving, it shows you really don't care. Address the cause, not the extraneous details, Bill. I lost two of my best friends to a recent car crash myself, but I still keep things in perspective, and what that perspective is now is I know you have reached a new low when Geraldo makes more sense than you do.
Charles Lim ([email protected]) is a sophomore with no declared major.
