What Border?

We are hearing (and seeing) a lot about illegal aliens these days, primarily because of these children (mostly from Central America) who have flooded across the border in the past few months.  So it's sort of "old news."  But I read something today which bothers me a bit.  Let me give you something from that article in the USA Today...

Vargas, 33, became an immigration sensation in 2011 when he revealed that he was an undocumented immigrant in an essay published in The New York Times Magazine.

Vargas was born in the Philippines and was raised in the U.S. from the age of 12. He was on a team of Washington Post journalists who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for their coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings.

Basically, this guy has been flouting our immigration laws for decades. And, since 2011, he has been known to authorities... yet, no one has detained him before? And no one has fined the Washington Post (though it is possible the Post did not know of his status). My question on that would be: Did anyone in authority even ask them about him?

From the story:
Vargas was in McAllen (Texas) to visit a shelter for undocumented children, to attend a vigil in their honor, and to raise awareness of the plight of the undocumented. Last week he wrote in Politico that he learned after he arrived in McAllen he might have a problem getting out.


So, instead of leaving in a way that might allow him egress without passing through a checkpoint, he strode through the airport intentionally...

It turns out he had been to the border before (in California) and had never had his status questioned. Well, DUH, it was California... and he was a reporter, why would anyone bother him with questions of his status?

Big mistake on his part... Apparently, though he had been in the country since he was 12 years old, he didn't grasp the idea that we have a lot of individual states and that what is okay in one may not be okay in another. That California (which has an illegal immigrant problem of some size) might ignore him, Texas might not. On the other hand, though he claimed that he didn't know they checked status at airports in Texas, he might have wanted to be "caught" in order to get some of what we used to call "newsprint" (but now mumble something about "15 minutes of fame").

I wonder what slant his raising of awareness of the illegal immigrant was taking? Was he concerned about their welfare? Did he want pictures of the conditions in which they are now living? Or was he merely exploiting them in a search for some personal attention?

Speaking of those kids, I heard someone (Bob Beckel) talk about how poorly the Central Americans were treated by some large American conglomerates. That was a long time ago. Which immediately made me wonder... If American represented such evil to them, why would they happily send their children off to that evil country? In fact, why would anyone in those countries think they would not be exploited there?


 Makes no sense to me...