Tipping Point For Outrage
In Hampton Roads Area, ’07 Deaths of Teens Fuel Policies on Immigrants
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 5, 2008; B01
In March 2007, the Tranchants’ daughter Tessa, 16, and her best friend, Alison Kunhardt, 17, were killed in a car crash caused by a drunk driver who had a police record and was in the country illegally.
- Not Hispanic drunks
- Not illegal alien drunks
- Just drunks
Ray and Colette, in their anger and grief, are suing the government for not enforcing immigration laws, as if that was the cause of their daughters death. Instead of working to close roadside taverns, where kids and adults drink and drive and kill 13,000 of their fellow citizens, Ray and Colette have decided instead to wave the flag of intolerance, joining the Welchs of the world who find it easy to rant about citizens who woke up Saturday morning and realized not only do illegal immigrants work in your town, live in your town, but they also kill people in your town.
That’s outrageous. That’s the kind of inflammatory nonsense that once got any black accused of any crime lynched in Virginia.
The illegal immigrants who work in your town mow your lawns, take care of your kids, wash dishes, do every unsavory job that your good old American local drunks won’t do and smile at you while they’re doing it.
The town drunk is no longer the subject of slightly amused forbearance. By the most conservative estimates, twenty million Americans are alcoholics. Tessa and Alison will not be brought back by demagoguing illegal immigrants–
–but it might make us churchgoing, god-fearing, family-loving supporters of popular passions and prejudices feel just a bit more smug as we tuck one away ‘for the road.’ And then go out to run for election as a good ol’ law an’ order bubba.