Our Government is an Unfaithful Spouse

January 18, 2024

By Brian Lonergan

For reasons either poorly explained or not explained at all, our government has decided importing the world’s poverty problem into the United States is a matter of vital national importance. While Americans do our best to follow the laws and contribute to the national budget, our government puts us in danger and prioritizes the well-being of people from other countries over us. Like an unfaithful husband, out carousing and spending his family’s limited resources on other women, our government has broken the social contract. Instead of protecting the people who have consented to be governed under our Constitution, our politicians and bureaucrats seek the approval of peoples who arrive on our soil uninvited and very often without the means to contribute to their own or the nation’s upkeep.

Americans are expected to accept the overcrowding, high levels of crime, and increased competition for jobs and housing as a sort of national penance—presumably for the unacceptably high standard of living that we have enjoyed over the last several decades.

In light of these ongoing disappointments, it is time for a national discussion to reassess our whole relationship with this government.

Last week the Immigration Reform Law Institute sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the release of internal agency emails that belong to the public. It seems ICE, under the direction of the Biden administration, has frozen a program meant to foster cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement, facilitating the removal of criminal aliens from communities and their possible deportation.      

Why does our government fight to keep foreign nationals who have either been charged or convicted of crimes like murder, rape and selling illegal drugs in the country? Our government does not believe we deserve an answer, and instead of providing one it tries to guilt us into silence with accusations of racism for even asking the question.

While our government frames the border crisis as a humanitarian issue and recites our obligation to accept untold numbers of foreigners, it has little to say about the toxic illicit drugs also crossing that border, killing our children. One of the most trafficked drugs at the border is fentanyl, most of which is manufactured in Mexico from materials shipped there from China. It is now the leading cause of death among U.S. adults between the ages of 18-45. A government that is responsive to the needs of its people would do something about it. Instead, the border is more porous than ever.

One of the most popular talking points recited by our politicians is that everything we do must be done “for the children.” It was practically a trademarked turn of phrase for former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who used it at regular intervals to hawk whatever legislation Democrats decided to prioritize.

How ironic, then, that in the government’s zeal to receive ever more non-citizens, officials in New York have now relegated the children back to the horrors of remote learning to accommodate illegal aliens in the city’s school facilities. This is done by city government, mind you, not leaders in some faraway capital. But it is representative of this same mindset. For all the happy talk about doing things “for the children,” it is difficult to see how this action truly prioritizes the welfare America’s children?

It seems our government, particularly at the federal level, has become so bloated, so drunk on power, and so detached from the people who granted it authority, that it sees Americans not as its primary responsibility, but as an obstacle to achieving its real objectives.

This is a problem not confined to the hubris of a few selected officials who will eventually rotate out of public service. It is a matter of institutional rot and will require more than just a galvanizing cry of “throw the bums out” every four years.

We need a nation of citizen-activists who demand more from their government. The first demand should be simple: prioritize the needs of the citizens already here over those whom the government is recklessly pressing to get into the country. Only with relentless vigilance from the people will this wayward spouse be forced to change its ways.  

Brian Lonergan is director of communications at the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) in Washington, D.C, and co-host of IRLI’s “No Border, No Country” podcast.

Also published at Chronicles, January 18, 2023.