Friday, November 02, 2007

Driver's License Plan for Illegal Immigrants Threatens American Society

Hillary Clinton is in trouble for a reason. Someone I know points out that, at a fundamental level, the problem with New York Governor Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants is not that it makes immigration easier--rather, it establishes a legal framework for a 2-tier society containing an underclass of 2nd-class residents. This, she argued, would be like the Missouri Compromise prior to the Civil War, or Jim Crow after Reconstruction--a politically expedient course designed to defer the problem. Such a failure of leadership leads to more fundamental problems, much more difficult to resolve, such as erosion of rule-of-law and constitutional guarantees of equal protection. Good leadership, as Ronald Reagan demonstrated (and I hope Rudy Giuliani will again, soon), requires making difficult decisions--not ducking them...