- The Washington Times - Thursday, November 20, 2014

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

I broke bread this morning with a friend who said a woman from Guatemala had found a job three days after she arrived in a Maryland suburb.

The woman, who appears to be in her 20s, does housekeeping. Her employer shuttles her to and from work, and provides transportation for meals. The woman cannot speak English.

The woman has employer-provided transportation that the average American worker would die for, and she’s being fed.

Or so it seems.

In the meantime, President Obama wants to exercise his questionable executive prerogatives by unilaterally giving more than 5 million undocumented and illegal immigrants the right to stay here without fact-checking.

Slaves and indentured servants were not so blessed.

I did not ask the name of the Guatemala woman, mostly because it does not matter.

We have long turned such a blind eye to who has been crossing our borders until the Guatemalan woman could call herself Chaka Khan or Teena Marie and she still could have wound up in Maryland without the bat of an eyelash.

Of course that doesn’t mean Americans are not skeptical.

In fact, an NBC News/Wall Street poll taken Nov. 14-17 found that only 38 percent of its respondents approved or lean toward approval of Mr. Obama’s executive action on immigrants. (The margin of error was 3.1 percent.)

Now, just as the average American has to think about certain things before — long before — they relocate, so must we consider the immigrants about to be granted amnesty, documented or not, and the potential immigration draw that could follow.

There will be lots of complaints you no longer can make.

About overcrowded classrooms.

About the rising costs of the uninsured and underinsured.

About the lack of affordable housing.

About minimum and “living” wages.

About low student achievement numbers.

About public health scares — from measles, whooping cough and other childhood preventable illnesses to malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS, SARS and Ebola. Expect health costs to rise exponentially, since the human pipelines will grow longer and wider.

About cultural conundrums. In some countries, a grown man having sex with a teenaged girl or boy is OK. And in some countries, men and boys can whip out their stick and urinate in public and it’s OK, and in some countries.

About sanitation. Some cultures are not used to plumbing, or what you should and should not wash down the kitchen drain, or why hand-washing is critical. Indeed, some are incapable of reading those signs posted in restaurants that demand: “Employees must wash hands before returning to work.” And hell, even non-immigrants ignore those signs.

The other day Mr. Obama said: “Everybody agrees that our immigration system is broken.”

Hello? Just who is “everybody”?

Not even after Americans were shellshocked by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did “everybody” agree to go to war in Afghanistan.

So, “everybody” clearly is a figment of Mr. Obama’s imagination.

The reality is Mr. Obama is moving too fast.

The reality is allowing people from other countries to come here is an honorable American building block. But allowing people who deliberately broke our laws to be treated as if they came on the Mayflower, or were offered a ride with Chris Columbus, or built their ship and sailed from the western coast of Africa to grab a Red Stripe in Jamaica, or leisurely sailed from Vietnam is wrong.

It is simply wrong.

If it is right, this amnesty plan, then where do Haitians fit in?

Like many of you, I empathize.

It is unfortunate that their hometown crime and corruption is overwhelming, but it’s no different here. It is unfortunate that you have “family” already here.

I recently spent a day in family court in Prince George’s County, where Spanish-speaking family after Spanish-speaking family said they wanted to claim a juvenile as a relative or be emancipated from one adult to live with another. I was shocked. None could speak English, none had proof/evidence they were related, yet off they went. New “families” now able to jump the line of families who came here legally.

I’m willing to bet the Guatemala woman will soon be in similar “familial” circumstances.

Or so it seems now.

Honestly, she could be working her tail off to pay off “coyotes” who helped her cross the border.

And when I say working her tail off, I mean literally working her tail off.

• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.

• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.

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