Above: Panmunjon, Korea, 1962—Dave Gorak is the one on the—you should pardon the expression—far right, wearing a garrison cap.

See also: VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow in American Legion Magazine, July 1997

As this “Nation of Laws” continues to hemorrhage the rule of law and sovereignty along our southern border, I am bewildered by the silence of the country’s major veterans’ organizations—the American Legion [Tweet them], the Veterans of Foreign Wars [Tweet them] et al.—that claim to be looking out for the interests of those,  including me, who wore the uniform.

I am not a combat veteran. My military service included a year with the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron, 9th Cavalry, an armored unit stationed along Korea's Demilitarized Zone, nearly 10 years after a ceasefire ended fighting there.

What we did wasn't particularly notable: monitoring the activities of North Korean troops on their side of the Military Demarcation Line, listening to radio chatter, learning to identify the other side's aircraft and vehicles by their silhouettes, recognizing uniform insignia, participating in field exercises, and, of course, looking forward to Pay Day so we could drink beer until we were stupid and silly.

My question is this: If I, whose Army experience was relatively tame, am upset by people entering this country illegally, wiping their feet on our immigration laws and sovereignty, waving foreign flags in our streets while demanding that we afford them respect and dignity, where are the voices of those veterans who experienced things I thankfully was spared?

Why are they ignoring the Marxist (née Democratic) Party’s wholesale betrayal of what millions throughout our history have risked their lives to defend? 

Nearly 2 million illegal aliens have crashed our border since Beijing Biden moved into the White House [US on track to encounter record 2 million migrants on the southern border, government estimates show, CNN, March 31, 2021]. And not a word from the American Legion that for decades has claimed to be “For God and Country.” 

This organization and others like it are not only looking the other way, but they also refuse to publish any criticisms of this crisis.

This is not the Legion’s historical position—as Peter Brimelow wrote in Time To Rethink Immigration in 1992

[s]taunch defenders of the national-origins quota system, like the American Legion, allowed themselves to be persuaded that the new legislation really enacted a sort of worldwide quota, no longer skewed toward Northern Europe—a policy easily caricatured as "racist" in the era of the civil-rights movement—but still restricting overall immigration to the then-current level of around 300,000.

One veteran, who says he has life memberships in several veterans’ groups, said recently on Facebook:

I have commented on the websites of the VFW, American Legion, et al. admonishing them for their unwillingness to call out this flagrant censorship to no avail. I would love to get my money back.

(I, too, have submitted a letter to the editor of the Legion Magazine [Contact them], the same one which published a Peter Brimelow immigration essay in 1997,  re: this problem and have also been rebuffed.)

Making the Legion’s refusal to address this crisis even more puzzling: its 40-page resolution, “Policy on Illegal Immigration” created in 2007, that among other things resolved:

That The American Legion seize every opportunity to request an accountability of our elected officials in implementing and enforcing federal and international laws and treaties to eliminate the large numbers of individuals…entering the United States illegally and that all candidates for public office…express publicly to the American people their positions and solutions to this grave danger to our country’s stability.

See any evidence that the Legion has put its money where its mouth is during the past 14 years?

Between chocolate ice cream cones and Delaware hiatuses, Joe Biden, as well as his equally laughable “Border Czar” Kamala Harris, are smiling approvingly while ingrate Alejandro Mayorkas continues to masquerade as Secretary of Homeland Security.  The Cuban-born Mayorkas’ gutting of our immigration enforcement machinery is one hell of a way to thank the country that welcomed his family to this country shortly after Fidel Castro seized power.

Memo to my fellow veterans:  When you next see a member of our military on bended knee presenting a folded American flag to a deceased veteran’s relative, ask yourself if Biden’s deliberate opening of our border is how a “grateful nation” thanks its veterans for their service.

In the meantime, I hope that the Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, et al. would, as the long-standing adage goes, sound off like they got a pair.

Dave Gorak, [Email him] a retired Chicago journalist, is the executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration. He and his wife abandoned the ant hill called Chicago in 2005 for the quieter environs of rural southwestern Wisconsin.