LET’S GET TOUGH ON ILLEGAL BORDER-CROSSERS!

That’s it! I’ve had enough. All this talk about immigration reform. All this talk about “Let’s just accept the fact that they’re here and let’s give them a path to citizenship.” Amnesty? I don’t think so. Enough already! The fact is they brazenly broke the law by coming here without papers. They sneaked across the border into the good ol’ U-S of A. They are criminals – plain and simple. Enough of these sob stories about how resourceful and determined they are to seek a better life in America. If they want a pathway to citizenship, I say they should go back across the border and come into the United States legally. I’m tired of all these illegal border-crossers. I say, “Go back to where you came from!”

Canada!

Yeah, I’m talking about all those illegal aliens from across the border who talk funny. They don’t even speak American! What’s that stuff about putting “Eh” (or is it “ay?”) after every sentence? And they’re taking our jobs, jobs that good Americans would take if they could get ‘em. And they’re diluting and polluting our American culture. All this allegiance to hockey! Why it’s un-American, I tell you. Pretty soon we won’t be celebrating Independence Day on the Fourth of July. Before you know it we’ll be celebrating some weird holiday like Dominion Day on the First of July.

And it’s all because of those illegal border-crossers who have nestled here in the United States, hoping no one will notice. They’re sneaky, this bunch of illegals. I say send them back where they came from. Them damn foreigners.

Them damn Canadians.

They just keep sneaking across the border, “blending in” to America, taking our jobs and slowly transforming our American culture. To show you how sneaky they are, I bet you didn’t know some of the familiar faces you see on TV and in the movies are those sneaky alien Canadians. Here are some of them, in no particular order, no más para que sepan: Pamela Anderson, Dan Aykroyd, Paul Anka, Bryan Adams, John Candy (okay he’s already dead, so never mind him), Raymond Burr (ditto), Jim Carrey, Kim Cattrall, Cirque du Soleil, Celine Dion, Michael J. Fox, Nelly Furtado, Monty Hall, William Shatner, Robert Goulet, Rich Little, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young (Okay, we’ll look the other way on Neil Young because of his great contribution to pop music.) Get the picture? They’ve infested our country, these aliens.

Okay, okay – some of these Canadians have been here a long time and it would be hard to deport ‘em. But what about the other millions of less-well-known Canadians who have insinuated themselves into the United States of America? I say we take immediate steps to develop a comprehensive immigration reform policy to deal with them. Sure, some of these alien Canadians may claim they were brought here by their parents as children and had no say in the matter. Okay, if they are now law-abiding adults and have either gone to college or served responsibly in our armed services, let’s consider a kind of Dream Act for them. They could stay here, if they pay a fine, admit their guilt and pledge to be good Americans, forswearing hockey for baseball and pledging to learn all the verses of “The Star Spangled Banner” and the names of The Three Stooges. (And pledging to never sing that “O Canada” thing ever again.) That kind of reform can lead to a path to citizenship for those kinds of alien Canadians.

And for the rest of those Canadian aliens, those who knowingly crossed the border illegally as adults, well they have to pay to stay. Immigration reform for them would mean that they go back to Canada voluntarily. They apply to come into the U-S of A legally.

Short of that, we could put them on a pathway to citizenship by making them admit their guilt (breaking the law to come here in the first place), submit to a public flogging to show their general contrition (and to add humiliation to their admission of guilt), then pay a huge fine to compensate for using public services, like public roads, public transportation and public schools. And watching PBS without paying for it; what do they think it is, the CBC? Then they could be allowed a pathway to citizenship, provided they promise never to utter the words “Celine Dion” in public. That’s the kind of immigration reform we need in this country, right now.

There are an estimated one-million “undocumented” alien Canadians in our country right now. And they keep sneaking across the border. I don’t see Arizona or any other state taking steps to round ‘em up. No racial profiling of Canadians by cops. They “look” American, unlike some other undocumented people. It’s a gross miscarriage of justice, I tell you. We need to face facts and get tough on alien Canadians.

Oh, and we would make some exceptions. For example, we could make an exception for everyone associated with productions of Cirque du Soleil. And maybe an exception for Joni Mitchell. But absolutely no exception for William Shatner.

Keep our borders secure, eh!
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Luis Torres, a journalist and writer from

Pasadena, California, is at work on a

book that examines the 1968 East  Los

Angeles high school student walkouts.