Card is a focus of immigration issue

Freehold Borough officials were caught by surprise two weeks ago when they were informed that representatives of the Mexican Consulate in New York City were coming to town to issue an identification card to Mexican nationals who presently reside in the community.

The card is known as the matricula consular, and it is presented to natives of Mexico who possess official documentation that proves their identity. The representatives of the Mexican government do not ask those who are applying for the card if they are in the United States legally.

A church in the borough served as the host site for the Mexican government on the morning that the identification cards were issued.

The matricula consular has been one piece of the immigration debate that has gone on throughout the United States and in places like Freehold Borough that are feeling and dealing with the impact that hundreds, if not thousands, of new residents are having on the community’s social services, schools and housing stock.

Within the region, Lakewood and Red Bank are two other communities that are facing some of the same issues that Freehold Borough officials are dealing with in regard to an influx of immigrants.

Some people see the issuance of the matricula consular as one step toward giving illegal aliens a legitimacy they might not otherwise have as strangers in a strange land, while others see the issuance of the identification card as evidence of a government helping its own citizens.

Whatever view one takes on that particular item, the matricula consular will not solve the primary issue associated with immigration — the continuing flow across the southern border of the United States by Mexi-cans fleeing a country which they do not believe can provide a future for themselves or their children.

It is unfortunate that neither President George W. Bush nor Sen. John Kerry made illegal immigration a key focus in their campaign for the presidency.

While illegal immigration may not rank with the threat of terrorism on our shores as a priority for federal officials, it has a measurable and costly impact on communities that have be-come home to people who were never expected to be here.