Home Opinion Greg Blass Greg Blass Securing our borders is right for America

Greg Blass
Securing our borders is right for America

A portion of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Just what does the phrase “open borders” mean? How does it impact our North Fork? Is rational discussion possible? Let’s explore where we have come with open borders, and the “globalist” ideal.

Blass_Greg_head_badgeIn a commencement address last spring, Secretary of State John Kerry warned America to prepare for a “borderless world.” With mocking reference to strong border advocates as “carnival barkers,” he described a world where “non-state actors play a central role.” Doesn’t a borderless world also mean a world without the rights that citizens have? After all, don’t rights, privileges, even liberties exist as we know them only in separate nations?

Consider the situation in Europe, where a globalist policy is the hallmark of the European Union. The EU is not a constitutional state, but more an administrative state, increasingly ruled by unelected bureaucrats.

The EU was explained in a sobering lecture in October by Professor Emeritus Edward J. Erler of California State University, San Bernadino, a visiting distinguished professor of politics at Hillsdale College. His lecture can be found in Hillsdale College’s “Imprimis” newsletter of last October (e-mail for free subscription: imprimis@hillsdale.edu). He is co-author of the excellent book, “The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration.” He tells us that the EU strives to do away with with both borders and citizenship, replacing “rights and liberties with welfare and regulation,” as the “objects of its administrative rule.”

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is a committed patron of the EU system. She has led the EU in its borderless aspirations in many respects, including their ever-expanding refugee intake from Syria.

In the process, Germans alone receive tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. The German people have been cautioned against imposing their German ways upon them, avoiding any cultural demands.  Erler said German women in particular have been told to cover their heads and be accompanied outside the home by a male. This reflects a globalist view of the world, or in other words, a “borderless world.”

The outgoing U.S. administration in Washington shares this borderless world view. It is adamant, for example, that the number of Syrian refugees, and Muslim refugees in general, must be increased significantly. Both Republican and Democratic leaders here tell us that this affirms “who we are as Americans.” They preach that our American character is defined by unlimited openness to diversity, that it makes us stronger as a nation.

Opposition to liberal immigration and refugee policies is quickly labeled racist, xenophobic and most especially Islamophobic. We are told that rational concern for our liberty and safety must not impede our commitment to diversity.

U.S. security experts repeatedly warn Congress that we lack sufficient homeland security agents to track suspected terrorists already in the U.S. The question then arises: what happens to our liberties when security agencies enlarge and combine to monitor our private lives in order to increase refugees from terrorist-supporting nations? And how do we distinguish between refugees dedicated to Islam and Islamism, its totalitarian form?

Last month, German police, in a growing EU trend to fight terrorism, seized all manner of documents, computers and the like in their latest nation-wide raids of private property.

It is a network of porous borders and sanctuary cities, including Suffolk County, that enable the borderless world in America today. Consider the continuing influx of limited English proficiency children, now more than one-fifth of Riverhead students according to the Riverhead BOE, who cannot be accommodated adequately, which has in great measure resulted in the state designation of several schools as crisis level “focus schools.” State Family Court in Suffolk County is overwhelmed with guardianship petitions for undocumented “unaccompanied minors.” New York’s globalist governor ignores the school district’s pleas for help.

Could it be that this globalist zeal for a borderless world is at the root of clearly failed policies? Is it time for strong borders among nations, for enhancing not only our border patrols, but also our vetting system? Maybe it’s time to strengthen legal immigration to replace illegal immigration. End forever the safe haven here enjoyed by those illegal immigrants and refugees who commit crimes, and as well curtail the heroin trade and trafficking of people.

Staff our embassies and consulates with agents who will do this vetting efficiently. Give them both the authority and the connections to channel applications for entry from only vetted, legal immigrants. Then immigrants to our nation state can be trained, educated and even skilled in English. That’s an immigration policy that helps them, our schools and working Americans.

We can end the growing, economic underclass that has become the fate of this unsustainable, borderless world if we have the will to do so, and work together in doing it. 

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Greg Blass has spent his life in public service since he enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a teenager. He has worked in the private sector as an attorney and served six terms representing the East End in the Suffolk County Legislature, where he was also presiding officer. Greg has worked as an adjunct professor at Suffolk County Community College, as Greenport village attorney, as N.Y. State family court judge and as Suffolk County social services commissioner. Now retired, Greg is active in volunteer work and is a member of the board of directors of several charities. A resident of Jamesport, he and his wife Barbara have two grown children.

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Greg Blass
Greg has spent his life in public service since he enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a teenager. He is a former Suffolk County Family Court judge, six-term Suffolk County legislator and commissioner of Social Services. Now retired, Greg is active in volunteer work and is a board member of several charities. He lives in Jamesport. Email Greg