Immigration and Iraq: Mixed Messages?

In addition to being a Marine veteran, I'm a father of five. Two of our children were from my wife's prior marriage with a first generation Mexican American who also served in the Marines and currently is a senior officer working for the Border Patrol. It's with these perspectives I believe we, as a nation, are often conflicted.

On one hand, until recently immigration was not a forefront public policy issue. It still doesn't rank among the top 10 issues that most Americans want addressed. What is ironic is 60% of the illegal entries occurred after 2001, which says something about the current administration's efforts and commitment to provide border security. Domestic security clearly ought to be a nonpartisan issue.

On the other hand, we are fighting and dying for the purported reason of making three tribes stop killing each other over ethnic and border disputes that predated Iraq's formation as a country following World War I. We are insisting that these people assimilate into a single nation state and we continue investe huge amounts of our tax dollars to do so.

Perhaps if we prioritized our policies and expenditures on domestic economic growth and opportunity and brought an end to discrimination and inequality in the U.S. we'd be more convincing elsewhere in the world.