Save Our State - Citizenship status checks? Just ask Publix.

Citizenship status checks? Just ask Publix.
AUGUSTA, GA – A few weeks back at my neighborhood grocery store, the kind and lovely checkout lady inquired about the handsome baby boy I had on my shoulder the last time I was in her lane.
“He was such a happy little man... and he was loving on you so tight,” she said.
“You know he does favor you somewhat... but he has his Mama’s blue eyes.”
Yep, I have heard that one before.
“We see more and more granddaddies in here with babies... it is so nice you live so close to your daughter and grandson.”
I hate to admit this, but it ain’t the first time such a mistake has been made. Oh well, the trials and tribulations of being married to a young, beautiful woman continue.
“Oops,” the clerk’s praise was interrupted by her duties. “I do need to see your ID for the beer.”
Really?
I don’t buy much alcohol at the grocery store. My full-service package shop right next door has a far better selection, but they weren’t set to open for another hour and I was in a hurry.
“Um... dear... you just bragged on my handsome grandson, who is actually my 1-year-old son... but now you have to make sure that I am old enough to buy Coors Light?” I queried.
“Oh yes. The register will not let me complete the transaction without a date of birth from a legal ID,” she explained.
Of course. The gray, thinning hair and increasingly wrinkled facial features earn me praise as a granddaddy, but are not enough to convince the Publix cash register that I have been legal since the early days of Duran Duran.
So I dug my driver’s license out and satisfied the machine.
Try as I might, I cannot bring myself to be offended about either the clerk’s well-meaning compliment for both my wife and son or the fact that I had to prove I was old enough to buy beer, even though I am clearly north of 40.
Let me take a detour from this fun little anecdote from the never-ending adventures of “graydaddy” (as opposed to Granddaddy), to present the Publix solution to our fine friends in Arizona, who have a helluva illegal alien crisis unfolding.
In the last several years, the state has lost billions of dollars on the education, health care and incarceration of millions of illegal aliens.
This does not even begin to take into account the fact that hideously cheap labor provided by the border crashers has made it virtually impossible for legal citizens to make a decent living in most entry-level, blue-collar jobs.
The state’s residents are 70 percent strong in favor of a recent measure signed into law by their governor which allows state and local lawmen to check the status of any person they suspect may be on American soil illegally.
Of course, the same cast of left-wing alarmists, featuring no less than Rev. Al Sharpton himself, is vowing to fight the measure, saying its enforcement invites racial profiling and makes everyone darker in color than pink lemonade a suspect.
I am not even going to argue with them.
I have caught myself jumping to such conclusions. When I am on the West Coast and I see a poor Hispanic who cannot speak English I immediately think, “Aha… someone is at the party without an invitation.”
Shame on me, but at least I admit it.
So... Publix... save us from ourselves.
New American policy: In wake of the severe economic strain put on taxpayers by illegal immigrants, not to mention the increasing risk of terrorist infiltration through weak border control, we will now check all human beings for legal ID when they have any interaction involving a public facility, or any encounter with a public officer.
Schools, banks, hospitals. Everything.
I say start the program in Utah and Kansas. Work your way east to Vermont, then west to Montana. After we have chased off the 24 illegal aliens that are in those states, we start concentrating on the South, the Midwest and eventually the Northeast and the West.
Problem solved.
Aside from a run on new driver’s license pictures by the terminally vain, I see no downside for legal citizens who are interested in following established and time-tested federal law.
The immigration laws in question have not changed or will they be changed. The only issue is how we enforce those laws.
Last month at Publix, I got hot dogs, mustard, cat food, Coors Light and the solution: Check IDs on everyone, all the time.
Thank you... come again!