Priorities.

The US government has some messed-up priorities. We have anywhere from 11 million to 30 million illegal immigrants in this country; this is a massive problem and needs to be dealt with. But instead of doing what must be done to prosecute those who knowingly employ illegals and deporting the illegals themselves, what does the government do? It does this:

U.S. judge orders woman adopted as baby deported to Mexico

Short form: a 38-year old woman who was adopted by an American couple when she was an infant got in some legal trouble (she stole a purse) and is going to be deported to Mexico. One can argue whether this is a proper punishment; normally I’d be all in favor of a drug dealer, say, from Mexico getting booted out of the country. This is not exactly that case.

So why is she getting deported? The conspiratorial side of me comes up with a ready response: because the case easily sounds like a miscarriage of justice, and it’s easy to do. Thus, with minimal effort the government raises the ire of people *against* deportations of illegal immigrants, thus weakening any case other than “amnesty for all.”

The same tactics apply whenever a major city or county comes up against financial problems, and has to decide between tax hikes and budget cuts. Whenever someone tries budget cutting, what do they go after first? The cops, the fire fighters, the hospitals, the roads. The stuff that actually *needs* to get done, not the unnecessary stuff or the stuff that could be done by private enterprise. Thus by starting with the nonsense cases, the whole issue can be flushed away.