What Will Jesus Do?

by Becky Akers
Feb. 10, 2012

Like all wars, the one the Feds wage on our freedom of movement groans with ruined lives, human agony, and casualties.

Many of those horrors are on display at the airports, as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) sexually assaults, irradiates, harasses, and steals from passengers. And though most of the witnesses to these atrocities used to claim that the agency only needed more money and power to transform its inept brutes and sociopaths into efficient Warriors on Terror, increasing numbers now admit such change is impossible. Thanks to the TSA’s depredations, they understand that the Warriors threaten us far more than any free-lance bad guys ever could.

Let’s hope such realization dawns in another theater of the War on Movement, the one at the borders. There the comrades-in-arms of the TSA’s brutes and sociopaths sexually assault, irradiate, harass, and steal from American citizens – and the occasional "illegal" immigrant. Somehow, their persecution of the latter justifies their abuse of the former for far too many taxpayers.

Among the persecuted is 35-year-old Jesus Navarro. He’s one of those bold folks all of freedom’s friends should admire, a guy who refused to obey an unconstitutional law prohibiting people from stepping over an imaginary line on the ground.

Alas, surprising numbers of Constitutionalists who cry "Foul!" at imperialism, the PATRIOT Act, the NDAA of 2012 and other violations actually urge the Feds to eviscerate the highest law of the land when it comes to immigration. Nothing in the Constitution empowers the central government to patrol the country’s borders – and let those who dispute that cite the article and clause supporting their position. If they can, they’re one up on the Supreme Court of the 1870’s and ‘80’s: when its clowns invented an "interest" for the Feds in immigration, they appealed to every authority but the Constitution.

Over the next decades, the Injustices frequently discovered refinements for this new "interest," further categories of "men, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" whose right to movement was alienable, after all. Just as today’s undesirables are "bad" for the country, they were then, too. Eugenics had begun poisoning America, and testimony from its enthusiasts helped persuade congresscriminals to pass the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924. These laws established the arbitrary and utterly cruel "quotas" that barred lesser peoples from polluting our sacred soil.

Indeed, no less a fan of racial purity than Adolph Hitler praised Americans’ sagacity; after a century of open borders, we had finally come to our senses: "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable," the future Führer fulminated in Mein Kampf. "Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the American Union, in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigration on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalization, it professes in slow beginnings a view which is peculiar to the [nationalistic] concept."

Such unutterable evil didn’t deter Mr. Navarro. After taking that one small step for a man and giant leap for mankind, he continued spitting in Leviathan’s eye: for the last 14 years, Mr. Navarro’s lived in Oakland, CA, without the papers Our Rulers require. Bravo, Mr. Navarro!

Contrary to the stereotype of "illegals," our hero worked at Pacific Steel. (There is no pleasing some people: the very curmudgeons who decry "illegals’" alleged exploitation of welfare condemn Mr. Navarro for "stealing" a job.) So when his kidneys failed, the company’s insurance paid for his dialysis. And now, when that no longer suffices, it will pay for a transplant. Otherwise, he’ll die.

Mr. Navarro even boasts a donor: his wife. So we might expect a happy ending to this story as a dying husband and father receives the life-saving surgery he needs at no cost whatever to "real" Americans.

Count on the Feds to smash this fairy-tale. Their unconstitutional, unconscionable laws against freedom of movement have convinced the hospital not to treat Mr. Navarro. "Administrators at UC San Francisco Medical Center are refusing to transplant a kidney from Navarro's wife, saying there is no guarantee he will receive adequate follow-up care, given his uncertain status." That’s because Mr. Navarro "was caught up in an immigration audit and lost his foundry job this month." Leviathan could deport him at any moment; ergo, the Center hides behind the excuse of "[in]adequate follow-up care."

Right. And the Center just happens to be affiliated with a public university. So the State, not the Hippocratic Oath or humanity, calls the shots here. Imagine how much more merciless American medicine will grow when the government manages all of it under Obamacare. Disputing your taxes with the IRS? Fighting a traffic-ticket in court? Critical of the president, Congress, the TSA, the Post Office, the EPA, etc, ad nauseam, in online fora? No treatment for you, amigo, sorry.

Like many native-born Americans, Mr. Navarro has a family that deeply loves him. "’I started crying and crying and crying [when the hospital declined to operate],’ said his wife, who asked that her name be withheld because she is also in the country illegally." Meanwhile, "her husband chase[d] their 3-year-old daughter" as "ethicists" lament the doctors’ dilemma.

"’It puts the doctors in a very awkward and torn position,’ [University of Pennsylvania bioethics professor Arthur Caplan] said. ‘You come into this trying to do good and find yourself stuck in the middle of a fight about immigration.’" Yep, this is what passes for critical and, worse, "moral" reasoning in the Amerikan Empire.

However pitiable, Mr. Navarro is merely one of the War on Movement’s millions of victims. These men, women, and children suffer just as needlessly and grotesquely, even if the local newspaper doesn’t report their heartrending cases. Perhaps that’s why the Founders never empowered heartless bureaucrats and politicians to control anyone’s travels into or out of the country. Yet most Americans cheer the State’s tormenting of immigrants – even when one with his own donor and private insurance will die.

Their animus baffles. From what I can discern, most of those who hate Mexicans – and let’s be honest: no one’s upset about the Canadians sneaking across the northern border – do so because they assume these penniless migrants are sucking down welfare. Food stamps, residence in the slums the government runs, kids indoctrinated for "free" in "our" schools, are a few of the very questionable benefits "illegals" supposedly hog.

But this is an argument against socialism and Leviathan’s welfare, not freedom of movement. I suspect it’s also a red herring. And here’s why: suppose we barred "illegals" from chaining themselves with Leviathan’s golden manacles. Does that eliminate the objection, or should the Feds still police the borders?

Actually, Congress passed exactly that law in 1996, with its "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act." This legislation tightened already existing restrictions on all immigrants, not just ones lacking a bureaucrat’s permission, that inhibit their sponging off their neighbors. Currently, just about the only welfare still available to "illegals" is treatment in hospitals’ emergency rooms (courtesy of federal law) and so-called public education for their kids (though states increasingly discourage that). Would that we could similarly wean natives from their dependence on government! Yet the hostility against people who come here to work – usually at jobs so difficult and poorly paid that natives won’t take them – only seems to rise.

We could cite numerous statistics proving that "illegals" boost the economy and even Social Security, that they are a net benefit instead of a drain on the country, or, for those in Mr. Navarro’s painful plight, that more of them donate organs than receive them.

But we who love liberty never echo the eugenicists and justify a man’s exercise of his freedom based on how valuable he is to society; gracious, were that our criteria, we’d immediately deport all politicians and bureaucrats! Liberty is the highest end, in and of itself; we need not earn it, regardless of where we were born, what language we speak, or what culture we embrace: the simple fact of our humanity entitles every one of us to it.

Even Jesus Navarro.
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Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com.