File under "stupid people"

This is only slightly library-related since it involves a library worker. I don't know how I feel about having one of those jobs that needs to be mentioned whenever an incident happens:

• librarian wounded in shoot-out over over-the-counter drugs, says ointment was for his mother
• librarian suspected of ostrich rustling, says ostriches "followed me home"
• librarian faints over meeting Lance Kerwin ("Oh, my God, it's James at 15!" Don't judge. You would have fainted, too.)

You never see the jobs of dry cleaners or dental hygienists or professional bowlers mentioned, but journalists are continually surprised that librarians seem to ever do anything besides check in books.

So here's the story.

Some TV and/or news person in North Carolina named "Tom Campbell" says, "Immigration witch hunt must end." Here's my first criticism, Tom: witch hunts are good WHEN THEY FIND WITCHES. In this case of illegal immigration, you can't seem to swing a crucifix in this country without causing some witch to burst into flames. (Boy, was that a weak metaphor, or what?)

But, to remind everyone, here is what happened:
a person in this country illegally was caught using the identity of a dead person to get health care. Now, many believe that health care records are sacred and no government agency should have the power to search health records to find illegal immigrants.

But let's make this easy for everyone to understand.

• The librarian in question was stealing another person's identity.
• And that person is already dead.
• And the illegal immigrant was using that stolen identity of a dead person to apply for health care.
• Dead person: health care.

You don't think someone should notice that? You think the government, which is notoriously blind to most illegal activity in this country, should also ignore this crime? Even when the criminal is this stupid? When you basically stand up and say, "Look at me! Look at how I am breaking the law!" and society ignores you, then we have a problem. But when you attract the same attention as any other dead person who applies for health care, then what the hell did you expect?

"There is also the story of an illegal immigrant stopped at 2 a.m. in the morning, driving without a driver's license in a car with illegal plates. Whisked away to jail, her three children, ranging in age from 14 to 6, were left alone beside the road for eight hours."

Yes, it's wrong for Immigration or the police to leave children unsupervised and unprotected on the side of the road, but law enforcement can't be expected to arrest people only when it's convenient for the suspect. Who do you think these people are, former NFL running back's suspected of murder?

"We afford thugs in drive-by shootings more rights than we are affording these here illegally." Again, "I am not a lawyer," nor have I read the Bill of Rights, except for the part that encourages me to purchase surplus Russian-made amphibious military personnel carriers off the Internet, but I'd like to think that citizens of a nation have more rights than non-citizens, that legal residents have more freedoms than illegal residents.

He adds, "This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Hitler's reign of terror.." I don't remember that the Jews were in Germany illegally. Tom Campbell seems to think that Jews, by their very existence, were breaking the law. "It is impossible to believe that we started a revolution on the premise that every person has rights,..." No, Tom, we started a revolution in the country on the premise that every "property owner" has rights.

And Tom, you might believe that since Hitler signed the "final solution" to exterminate Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals, that those groups were, technically, breaking the law by still continuing to breathe, but you should not, as a rational human being, ever compare the situation in Nazi Germany to any arrest of any person, unless that arrest leads to 8 million unrelated murders.

"Tom Campbell is creator/host of NC SPIN, a weekly statewide television discussion of N.C. issues airing Sundays at 6:30 a.m. on WILM-TV."

Whew! It seems Tom is on local North Carolina TV at 6:30 a.m. on Sundays, so it's not likely that anyone will hear his opinions, thanks for that.