If a tree falls?

Calif. City to Enforce Immigration Law By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press Writer COSTA MESA, Calif. - A new city policy that would give police the authority to enforce federal immigration law is hurting local businesses even though it has yet to be implemented, merchants say.

The policy would ally Costa Mesa police with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau, making it the first city in the nation to train its officers in federal immigration enforcement. Border security has historically been the purview of federal agencies. [Yahoo News]

The United States is a study in irony at the moment. Immigration is just another recent example of this. While the motto on the Statue of Liberty may be give me your poor, your tired etc, she stand in New York harbor where the desirables come through, while along the Mexican border, where the people that do the bulk of the work that is below the level of anything a typical American would do, there is a fence, dogs, guns, and vigilantes saying go away.

Isolationism is nothing new in the United States. This is a country that stuck its head in the sand through the better part of two world wars, most of what has been happening in Africa and the Middle East (as long as it has nothing to do with oil at any rate), and ignored the ravages going on in Asia and the Indian subcontinent. So keeping migrant farmers, who pick, sort and provide the majority of foods for the table that the obese American sits down to should come as no surprise. Do not be mislead, however, to think this is an issue of security because it has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with the ever increasing burden being placed on local jurisdictions to provide services in the forms of medical care and education. Services that they cannot bill back to the Federal Government and that the local population is tired of paying ever increasing (to their minds at least) taxes to cover. This is about money, like so many issues are. The question, though, is this - is it cheaper to ignore illegal immigration (what ever that means) or to spend billions to regulate it and as a side affect, see the additional costs show up on the grocery shelf?