“Daddy, I don’t want a Volkswagen. I want a BMW. And I want it NOW!”
This attitude is grating enough among spoiled teenagers. Even worse, this sense of entitlement permeates the pedestrian invasion forces — euphemized as “migrant caravans” — now marching up from Central America, through Mexico.
Undetermined thousands of illegal aliens, largely from Honduras and El Salvador, have broken into Guatemala and then broken into Mexico. They intend to break into America. Last month, news cameras caught them swamping the gate that separates Guatemala’s Ciudad Tecun Uman and Mexico’s Ciudad Hidalgo. They banged on the barrier, and down it came. A wave of humanity rushed forth, like floodwaters pouring through a ruptured levee on the mighty Mississippi.
Hondurans are poor, and their nation is no hotbed of hope. Most of these people seek to brighten their life prospects. But the path to greener pastures must be legal. These people all should stand down, retreat, and apply for visas at the embassies of the countries to which they wish to emigrate. No land — not least the USA — is obligated to accept these people. They have no right to live anywhere else without their destination nation’s permission.
A complex set of international customs and legal precedents holds that those in distress should seek relief in the “first country of asylum” safe enough for them to take refuge. International law does not recognize a right for those fleeing chaos or squalor to shop from one nation to the next, as if they were homebuyers who skin up their noses at houses A and B and demand house C.
Beyond Cancun, Mexico is not quite paradise. However, with a per-capita income of $19,900, according to the CIA World Fact Book, it is more than twice as prosperous as El Salvador ($8,900) and Guatemala ($8,100) and nearly four times wealthier than Honduras ($5,600). The frightful, deadly MS-13 gang is far less influential in Mexico than it is in those three Central American countries. So, maybe the people snaking our way should stop in Mexico and enjoy that country’s relative prosperity and comparative tranquility.
In fact, as NBC News reported, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto unveiled his “You are at home” plan. Last week, he offered housing, healthcare, education, and employment to itinerant Central Americans who had reached Chiapas and Oaxaca states. He asked them to apply for this first step toward permanent refugee designation.
Between 1,700 and 2,000 migrants reportedly have accepted Mexico’s generosity. The majority, however, have rebuffed Peña Nieto and continue trudging toward America.
“Thank you!” a group of invaders shouted in a town called Arriaga. They just had voted down Peña Nieto’s plan with a show of hands. According to CBS News, they added: “No.We’re heading north!”
“Our goal is not to remain in Mexico,” said Honduran Oscar Sosa, 58. “Our goal is to make it to [the USA.] We want passage. That’s all.”
Even before reaching San Diego or El Paso, some of these marauders are behaving like…entitled, litigious Americans.
A dozen Hondurans launched a lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump and the Department of Homeland Security. The plaintiff’s action, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., claims that the Trump Administration’s deployment of the U.S. military to block these Hondurans violates their Fifth Amendment due-process right to asylum proceedings.
As the late, great Yogi Berra must be saying in Heaven: “Only in Central America.”
So, who are these ingrates who spurn Mexico’s hand of friendship and insist on a right to enter America? The Left/media portray these invaders as a sort of floating PTA meeting.CNN anchor Chris Cuomo purrs: “They’re more mothers than monsters.”
In fact, only “about 20 to 30 percent” of these illegals are parents and unaccompanied minors, Roy Villareal, deputy chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector, told the Washington Examiner. The remaining 70 to 80 percent of those on the move, Villareal says, are “single, adult males.” Even more worrisome, these unattached grown men have been rough. “We have been trying to avoid, at all costs, violence on the border,” Mexico’s ambassador to Washington, Gerónimo Gutiérrez, told National Public Radio on Monday. “Unfortunately, some of the people in the caravan have been very violent against authority.”
To sample such aggression, watch this video of what appear to be masked male migrantshurling rocks at a Mexican helicopter as it flies overhead. The chopper twice takes evasive action, lest it get struck and crash.
This violence is not isolated, and the mayhem could get much, much worse.
Mexico’s Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete told Radio Enfoque (Focus Radio) 100.1 FM last Tuesday: “I have videos from Guatemala that show men dressed in identical clothing, sporting the same haircuts, handing out money to women to persuade them to move to the front of the caravan,” to serve as the soft, vulnerable, tear-inducing tip of this human spear.
Navarette added: “We know, for a fact, that some members of the caravan threatened [Mexican] Migration Institute personnel, and we have images showing many of them preparing Molotov cocktails.” He explained that, thanks to the pedestrian invaders, “the wounded we have on the Mexican side are policemen, more than ten, two of them are serious, with traumatic brain injury.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday released this disturbing statement:
“We continue to be concerned about individuals along the caravan route. In fact, over 270 individuals along the caravan route have criminal histories, including known gang membership. Those include a number of violent criminals — examples include aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, sexual assault on a child, and assault on a female. Mexican officials have also publicly stated that criminal groups have infiltrated the caravan. We also continue to see individuals from over 20 countries in this flow from countries such as Somalia, India, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. There is a large segment of this population that we know nothing about and we must be prepared to defend our border and enforce our laws to protect the citizens of our country.”
This is what America faces: Wave after wave after wave of thousands of uninvited, unidentified, jobless, predominantly male, somewhat sue-happy, increasingly violent, illegal aliens determined to penetrate our southern border and make themselves at home in our country.
Too bad they don’t follow my mother and father’s example.
When they wanted to pursue better lives by moving from Costa Rica to America in 1962, my parents did something likely considered racist today: They visited the U.S. Embassy in San José, filled out visa applications, got their passports stamped, and then came to America. The Land of the Free greeted them with tremendous warmth, love, and opportunity — and then did the same for our other relatives who arrived, mainly after my birth in Los Angles in 1963.
Lucky us.
Remember: these people all walked in after they knocked on America’s front door and were invited in.
Those who now fill our TV screens around the clock, however, have no claim on our sympathy. Unlike lawful immigrants, those who are determined to barge into America illegally deserve nothing but water cannons and tear gas if they reach the southern frontier. These pedestrian invaders could have rung our collective bell and waited for us to answer. Instead, they have organized themselves into a human battering ram and are poised to smash our door into splinters, run inside, and help themselves to America’s bounty. They should think long and hard before triggering the righteous rage of this home’s overburdened owners.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor and an emeritus media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.