Posted 3/16/2009

WARNING FROM AN INDIAN CAB DRIVER

It was a hot, steamy day in New York in August 1991.

Late for a client meeting, I jumped into a cab, grateful for the interior cleanliness of the vehicle and its fully functioning air conditioning.

As we struggled across town, the turban-wearing driver struck up a conversation. It seemed he was in the U.S. on a student visa, studying for his doctorate in law at New York University.

When I asked him how he liked the U.S., he replied, "I love America, but your constitution is going to destroy the country!"

Taken aback – way aback – I asked him what he meant.

"I have read your Constitution three times now and all I find in it are ‘rights, rights and more rights.' And I never found the word ‘duty' ever mentioned. This total demand for rights and the absence of a sense of duty will bring your country down."

Unable to answer, I finished the ride in silence.

But I never forgot what he said. I never forgot the warning he sounded over 17 years ago.

I still can't forget it, because it is surely coming true.

Radical Muslims preach hatred of America to impressionable youngsters in a mosque just a stone's throw from our capital. Wrapped in Constitutional rights, they see no duty to behave like good citizens.

The Russian Mafia jumped at the chance to come to America and flourish, protected by all the rights even criminal enterprises enjoy. They see no duty to be good citizens.

Guatemalan gangs engage in beheadings and other unspeakable violence. They spread across a country made helpless by Constitutional rights. The gangs see no duty to act like good citizens. They only feed on their desire to kill and spread drugs.

Now Mexican drug cartels are waging war and murder against the police and the army in Juarez. Now the violence has jumped the border and reached Phoenix, Arizona, where kidnaping and killing are on the rise.

Protecting Arizona's Maricopa County and Phoenix from the criminal onslaught is a strong sheriff named Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies enforce immigration laws aggressively. A lot of people don't like it, but they haven't been able to stop the sheriff since 1993. It seems he operates within the strict guidelines provided by the Maricopa County Attorney, which were designed to prevent officers from violating the civil rights of potentially illegal immigrants detained in the Sheriff's "crime saturation patrols." The guidelines were based on the federal immigration law known as "287g."

Since 2006, 22,616 illegal immigrants have been turned over to Immigration for deportation. Sheriff Arpaio has come down hard on criminals who ship poor women off to sweatshops in the U.S., disrupting their criminal activity. He's also captured about 1,500 illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio does his duty.

But the "rights special interest organizations" like Acorn, La Raza and the National Immigration Forum detest what he does. So they have pressured their friends in the U.S. Justice Department and Congress to launch investigations into Arpaio's activities. The radicals and their friends in Washington don't like the Sheriff and his deputies using traffic violations as probable cause to stop vehicles and question their occupants about immigration status.

Ms. De Castro of La Raza bleats, "We hope the Department of Justice will send a signal to local law-enforcement agencies throughout America and restore the rule of law to Maricopa County."

She knows that the Sheriff is obeying the law. Cops all over America catch criminals who were stopped for traffic violations. American terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, was captured because he was driving a truck with a broken tail light.

What the radical rights advocates really want is for the Justice Department and Congress to stop Sheriff Arpaio from enforcing the immigration laws passed by Congress. They want to stop him from catching so many immigrant criminals – the criminals who are murdering civilians and policemen in Mexico. The same criminal cartels which send meth and cocaine into the U.S.

Are the "rights radicals" so naive that they do not realize that stopping Sheriff Arpaio would play into the hands of the drug cartels?

Or are the Mexican drug cartels, who have already bribed high officials in the Mexican government and army, now spreading their money into the hands of the special interest groups that influence Washington on immigration enforcement?

Perhaps the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Congress are too full of lawyers who see "rights" everywhere and "duty" nowhere.

This is why I cannot forget that hot August cab ride in New York City so long ago.

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