Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Good fences make good neighbors....well almost.

Sitting at my son's sports practice tonight, I watched while illegal aliens installed a chain link fence around the field my son was playing soccer on. Alone in the car with my magazine, I suddenly wanted to laugh like an insane person but I was afraid I would never stop laughing and someone would have to call 911 to cart me off to the funny farm. A police officer cruised by and I forcibly stifled myself from physically stopping to tell him what I had found so hilarious.

ILLEGAL ALIENS WERE INSTALLING A FENCE AROUND THE SOCCER FIELD TO KEEP OUT ILLEGAL ALIENS!

Maybe I've been in the immigration reform movement too long but I suddenly found it twistedly, sickeningly and gut-wrenchingly funny.

For some time now, illegals (a.k.a. hispanics/latinos/undocumented migrants/entrants) have been working on the soccer field improvements and modifications. And the work is long overdue. As the largest soccer organization in Georgia, some of our venues are in embarrassingly poor shape. However, the Southeast IS football country after all so it takes time to bring attention to our sport. But watch out gridiron buffs because soccer, an eminently healthier sport with far fewer injuries for young bodies, is taking the South by storm.

I guess overall the construction has been so ongoing and methodical that I just didn't pay too much attention to it. Every day, I drove in the park and then out again noting what was new or how far things had progressed. Cement was poured and parking lots were created and lined. New areas were being forged and older areas improved and updated. As months go by, it's really taking shape. But until tonight, the absurdity of it all was almost lost on me.

Which is really odd too because this EXACT soccer park is where the entire illegal alien situation began to manifest itself. Ten years ago, there were no illegal aliens at this soccer field pushing the local kids aside, taking up valuable play space with their after-work pick-up games. They slowly began filtering in to our practice areas little by little, like an annoying, leaky faucet beginning to trickle. Oh I complained to anyone who would listen but no one seemed to care back then. Not only was their presence an affront because we members pay a great deal in soccer club fees to maintain these fields, but illegals added salt to the wounds by their actions. They wore cleats when no cleats were allowed on fields which was posted in both English and Spanish. They kicked balls for fun at such velocity and momentum that any of our children could easily be knocked unconscious and received head injuries. Maybe that's how they do things in Mexico; I could just not be culturally sensitive enough.

As years went by, illegals invaded all our soccer fields in greater numbers. They had to be shooed away by coaches, occasional squad cars or angry parents. Most of the time, they refused to leave but only squeezed themselves aside to a smaller patch of earth until soccer practices were over all the while glaring hatefully at the rest of us who paid for such privileges. Now illegals have become full-fledged soccer-field parasites, jumping fences, moving goals, disrupting practices, hovering like vultures for any little piece of land to hold their menial pick-up games DESPITE posted instructions and warnings in both English and Spanish.

So here I sit 10 years later in upstate Georgia, and now our soccer fields along with our cities AND schools AND hospitals AND roads are all overrun by illegal aliens; it's no longer just an annoying trickle but a loud "in-your-face" backlash. Our "vibrant neighbors south of the border" have also brought along their crackhead meth-making labs, gang banging offspring and cock fights to "enrich our communities."

Ten years of my complaining and talking to people, writing letters to editors, sending emails, contacting public officials, working in local groups, passing along information, doing research and working for countless hours on my own time attempting to put the brakes on the invasion and I end up right back where I started from -- at the precise soccer field we started at 10 years ago only now the problem is bigger and nastier. Besides the irony of the immediate picture -- illegals erecting fences to keep out illegals -- a larger picture began to form.

Another thought occurred to me - it's not just soccer fields. Everything is chained up or bolted down, fenced in or fenced out, barred, locked, secured, wired or whatever one can do to keep things from being stolen or abused by foreign invaders. They hit public depositories where kind-hearted taxpayers deposit used clothing, furniture, etc... and steal bicycles or whatever else they can grab. They steal from garage sales in your own yard. They break into parked automobiles while you're right there in the park. Even commercial trash dumpsters at schools are secured behind locked fences and gates, not because anyone will carry them off but because illegal aliens will dump trash and fill the bins with personal or commercial waste. The increasing response from American residents and institutions is to fence everything off and secure it more firmly than before. We are becoming a nation of fences whether anyone likes it or not. And the stupidest thing of all is that we should have and could have fenced the border in a secure manner with stopgaps, checkpoints and backups years ago to protect our own soil but obviously we would rather fence up the entire interior of our nation than clearly mark our nation's boundaries.

We can't fence out medicaid, the "leave-no-child-behind mandate," our emergency rooms, MALDEF, LULAC, LaRaza or the Mexican consulates. And we can't fence out their insulting flags, their big mouths or their gang members. And as much as I would like to, I can't fence Juan McCain, Teodoro Kennedy and Jorge Bush together inside a "diverse" internment camp with some southern amigos of my choosing. But as a nation, we sure as hell can fence our own border and protect what quality of life that's left.

So remember that as you watch soda pop machines, soccer fields, schools, public parks, homes, stores, ATM's, windows, doors and everything else increasingly become virtual prisons, we also will be forced to live like prisoners inside our own country. Taxpayers and law-abiding citizens will be safely sheltered inside homes and other dwellings while lawless invaders and their gang-infested offspring are free to prowl OUR nation.

If illegals never gained entrance to begin with, we would not have to live like prisoners inside our own nation. We would not be subject to jumping through bureaucratic hoops for translators and benefits and accomodating criminals in our own country. We would not have to endure demands for imaginary "rights" from trespassers who don't belong here and are not citizens. Presently, illegal aliens are no longer "neighbors," they are invaders. The difference is residence. They have a home and if they won't stay put in their own yard, our nation should see to it that they do. Our border is NOT a welcome mat.

©2006

Gale Norby