Reasoned

I admit to being late on the Kate Steinle verdict, but thought this was a reasoned approach to the issue of illegal immigration.
Conservatives, Let's Hold Our Horses on the Kate Steinle Verdict.

To be clear, I favor immigration. I respect that my ancestors, at some point, came from Norway to America for the chance of a better life. I get it. I'm on board that train. That said, America should get its collective act together and have a legal process that does not take an unreasonable amount of time between 'submitting the application to become a US Citizen' and 'becoming a US Citizen.' I understand that all this talk about illegal immigration can get too lofty and that the illegal immigrants are PEOPLE with FAMILIES just like my ancestors.

To be clear, just because the current legal path to citizenship is too long, I do NOT favor circumventing the process. Cities should never be able to pick and choose which laws to obey - that leads to anarchy and chaos. If it's "okay" to pick and choose whether to detain an illegal immigrant, is it then going to be okay to pick and choose whether to obey other laws. I'm not trying to be Tucker Carlson, but it's a point he does make when he discusses this issue. If you can ignore Law A, what's stopping you from ignoring Law B? A law is a law. It's not okay to ignore any of them.

There should be consequences if you do ignore the law. That's why the whole 'cameras on I-380 are bad' controversey in Cedar Rapids, IA, made NO sense to me. The camera was there to take a picture of any license plate if the vehicle is going faster than the posted speed limit. If I'm going 70 in a 55, yes, I should get a ticket. There was always a way to 'fight' the ticket, the same as there is if a police officer pulls you over for speeding. You can appeal. Sometimes it works; sometimes not. Those cameras were never about 'penalizing' out-of-state vehicles; they were never about 'Big Brother' watching over us, as one of my former co-workers suggested at lunch during the height of the controversy. It was about freeing up a police officer to perform other duties that need to be done. And I'm saying all this after I received a speeding ticket on Christmas Eve as we drove through Cedar Rapids on our way to Balltown. I didn't fight it - I WAS speeding so I SHOULD get a ticket.