Oh good Lord:
Authorities in Ghana have busted a fake U.S. embassy in the capital Accra run by a criminal network that for a decade issued illegally obtained authentic visas, the U.S. State Department said.
Until it was shut down this summer, the sham embassy was housed in a run-down, pink two-storey building with a corrugated iron roof and flew a U.S. flag outside. Inside hung a portrait of President Barack Obama.
"It was not operated by the United States government, but by figures from both Ghanaian and Turkish organized crime rings and a Ghanaian attorney practicing immigration and criminal law," the State Department said in a statement released late on Friday.
I'm generally pro-immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. And I support it as long as it is done on terms that benefit America. And that calculation changes over time. Policies on immigration should change with that. So I think we absolutely need to control our borders to increase or decrease the flow as we decide.
Deporting non-criminal illegal aliens really drops down to nearly a non-issue if we can do that. Those people will either assimilate or go back to their country of origin. And their children and grandchildren will assimilate as past generations of the descendants of immigrants have done. America is a land of ideas and not of blood and soil. We can make Americans out of anybody. Which is pretty cool. As long as we decide to make immigrants Americans and not just the local chapter of whatever home of origin they come from.
Which makes me a racist nativist from the point of view of the "open border" crowd that celebrates every culture but our culture. Go figure.
But as this long-running scam operation (pre-dating the Obama administration, it seems) shows, even an airtight southern border leaves us vulnerable to entering on a visa--good or bad--and just staying when it expires.
So don't get too worked up over "the wall" whether you favor cutting off all immigration or whether you support unlimited immigration and deny that it is even possible to be "illegal."
