Conservative Rumblings

Section: Opinion/Editorial
Published: Helium (http://www.helium.com/items/806002-giving-illegals-roadmap-citizenship)

Giving illegals a roadmap to citizenship that does not involve returning to their country of origin is basically handing out a reward for illegal behavior, and rewarding illegal behavior simply encourages more illegal behavior. If we reward illegals who are already here and are already breaking the laws, nothing will stem the tide of illegal migrants that come rushing over ALL our borders in response to such amnesty. And it is amnesty; calling it anything else is just a politically-friendly euphemism.

There is a roadmap to citizenship for illegals: they need to leave the country for at least a year, and then attempt to re-enter legally. They need to apply like everyone else, with no special treatment.

Think of the damage amnesty for illegals would do to legal immigration. On one hand, you have the immigrants who spent the proper time and effort to immigrate legally. They did things the way they were supposed to, many times at great expense and sacrifice. On the other hand, you have these criminals who have been leeching off our society for, in some cases, years upon years. Instead of doing something to support the legal immigrants, who went about the process the correct way, we give freebies to criminals who abused our system. Does this encourage legal immigration? Of course not; it encourages future generations of immigrants to come in illegally.

It is sheer insanity to reward criminals. What if we applied this theory to, say, car thieves? Should car thieves have this path to freedom that involves releasing them from prison for no reason and acting as if they never committed a crime? That’s not even an efficient analogy, to be honest, because illegals are getting more than their freedom; they are being given essentially a free ride for all the time they already spent here, breaking our laws and taking advantage of our system.

The simple truth is that illegal immigrants are criminals by their very label. I have a brain aneurysm every time I hear a politician say that they want to “deport all those illegal immigrants that have committed crimes.” What about the very crime of BEING illegal?

Rewarding criminal behavior is taking a step down a very treacherous road, a step that should not be taken for any reason, political or otherwise. Criminals belong being punished, not being given special treatment.

The whole allure and uniqueness of zombies is that they are unnatural. They are reanimated dead that shamble and shuffle along while trying to tear the flesh off of live people, and they are just not as fun when they are running while they do it.

The classic tried and true zombie is slow; they shamble, scuffle and groan while relentlessly pursuing their victims. Despite that fact that Hollywood has tried to reinvent the wheel by making several painful movies such as 28 Days Later, zombies are meant to be and have always been slow and methodical.

Normal people move fast, and since zombies are supposed to be unnatural, they should not be doing things that normal people are doing.

Fast zombies, quite frankly, are not as terrifying as slow zombies. Sure, they might be physically more frightening in the sense that you might not be able to outrun them, but physical fear is much easier to overcome than mental fatigue.

Fast zombies will probably catch you, and then you have to fight them off, but that’s not the point of zombies. The point of zombies is the inexorable pursuit of a foe that does not die and does not stop. Fast zombies that can fall on humans without warning take away from the suspense and the take away a fundamental part of what a zombie is: a weapon of psychological terror.

There are many psychological reasons for slow moving zombies. While fending off an attack by lightning quick zombies might be a quick adrenaline jolt, the slow and steady grind of being pursued or hiding from a pack of slow moving and groaning zombies cannot be ignored. The tension level is far higher with slow zombies. Parties of humans trying to elude slow zombies will, at times, be forced to travel within sight and within earshot of the enemy, subjecting them to terrible stresses as they move so close to the zombies eager to rip them to pieces.

With fast zombies, the tension is over far too quickly. There’s not enough time to build the fear, and certainly not enough time for the humans to really think about the situation they are in and really get that cold feeling in the pit of their stomachs.

Despite the fact that slow zombies have been around for years, I do not think they are worn out. On the contrary; zombies are meant to be slow. It’s part of what makes them zombies. When zombies start moving fast and running around like normal people, they lose what makes them “zombies,” and they become, instead, simply monsters, and who is scared of a couple of monsters?

Guantanamo Bay is vital for the survival of our country. Each captured terrorist imprisoned there is one less threat to our country, and one less extremist that is out there ready to strap a bomb to his body and blow up innocent people.

We are at war with a force of people whose sole mission is to destroy our country and our way of life. During wartime, it is acceptable (in fact, necessary) to take prisoners.

The lives of American citizens are the responsibility of the US Government. Putting terrorists in Guantanamo saves American lives, and thus, I have no problem with it existing. I’m not concerned about my tax dollars being spent to keep Guantanamo running. I’d rather that the money be spent there, protecting our country, than lining the pocket of yet another corrupt member of the House of Representatives.

If we close Guantanamo, what happens to the terrorists we capture? Are we supposed to just kill them outright? Well, then we would be no better then they are. We can’t just catch them and then let them go, because then they are back on the battlefield and back trying to kill Americans. Guantanamo is the solution, and it needs to remain open and running as long as there are extremists out there trying to annihilate our nation.

Honestly, we treat the prisoners down there much better than the terrorists treat the prisoners they take. They aren’t starved, they are allowed to pray, and they do not have to endure daily beatings. If Guantanamo was really the gulag it is portrayed to be, then the prisoners would be locked away in solitary rock-walled cells with no light, no water, no books, no food and a pig. The terrible atrocities you hear on the news about Guantanamo are not even close to accurate; the whole ‘Koran in the toilet’ debacle (that cost many people across the world their lives when Muslims rioted) was false information and completely fabricated. We are Americans; we are not butchers and we are not savages. We don’t abuse these people, even though many of them would not hesitate to kill as many of us as they could if given the chance.

Quite frankly, despite the fact that we obey the Geneva Conventions when dealing with this prisoners, we need to remember that the men imprisoned in the Bay do not deserve the rights enjoyed by citizens of this country, because they are not Americans; they are the enemy, soldiers in a war who are fighting to destroy everything we believe in, and they were caught while trying to kill or help kill American citizens. They are prisoners of war, and Guantanamo Bay is one of the most important fronts of the war on terror.