Do you ever speed?

Me, too.

Speeding costs lives. Taken as a percentage of all the occasions of speeding, a speeding-related fatality is exceedingly rare. But it does happen, and it gets a lot of press compared to the thousand(s) of speeding instances where nobody was hurt.

Speeding also has a cost. It reduces fuel efficiency. Add up all the speeding in a single day and that’s a lot of gas money.

Yet, we speed. While there are costs and risks, overall we speed largely because we feel that it benefits us. It gets us there faster, which has a value to us. In addition, driving faster can be fun, whether within or beyond the speed limit. Another value to us.

However, speeding is illegal. Unambiguously illegal. There are no speed limits that are “55ish,” or “65ish.” There are no “unless you’re fewer than 5 mph over” speeding laws. Driving over the speed limit is speeding. It’s simple.

And we go on speeding.

WELL, HERE’S A THOUGHT

Our attitude about illegal immigration should be no stricter than our attitude about speeding.

As we all know, willfully breaking a plain-as-day law is bad. Law and order means law and order. We are defenders of civilized society. Deferring to the status quo, or to certain practicalities, or to “unwritten rules” you grew up with — time for all of that to get tightened up … right?

Illegal immigration, like speeding, happens every day. When a rare instance of harm to a citizen happens as a result, you tend to hear about it. Of course, one difference is that when an illegal immigrant is involved, people get outraged. But when speeding causes harm, people sadly shake their head and then proceed to change exactly nothing about their driving habits.

Illegal immigration, like speeding, definitely creates value for many people. Depressed wages for undocumented workers translate to lower consumer prices. And like speeding, paying less for stuff than you really should can be fun. We love (what seems like) a bargain.

Are you in the “no amount of illegal immigration is acceptable” camp? Great. Then just like you’re ready to pour billions into ICE goons and dumb walls, you’re ready to spend a ton on more automatic cameras that generate tickets, more state troopers on the roads with radars, and other technologies to enforce speed limit laws, right?

Everybody knows only a small portion of your driving time is actually subject to any speeding enforcement. We should be prepared to invest to enforce those laws on 100% of our roads, and 100% of the time, just like we need to reduce illegal immigration to zero.

Nothing says Back The Blue like avoiding criminal behavior.

To be honest, this analogy doesn’t totally stand up. Undocumented workers also pay huge sums of federal tax, state tax, sales tax, and even Social Security tax even though they will never see a dime of that. Speeding has no additional upside like that. It’s just expensive, it’s dangerous in a comfortably “it will never happen to me” way, and it is personally convenient.

But as of this post, that’s all behind us. At the end of the day, it’s all about keeping Americans safe, right? What’s more important than our citizens and preserving a lawful society? We can eliminate our speeding by 100%. We can leave earlier or accept being late more often. We can improve our gas mileage and respect the laws of our great land as we wish them to be respected by others.

Yes, we can! Can’t you feel the character of our nation and the safety of our children improving already? I know you’re with me on this.