Voter ID Prevents Immigration Anarchy

Monday, 16 Apr 2012 09:29 AM

By James Walsh

With the support of President Barack Obama and the Democrat Party, the liberal left argues that open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens, along with a little anarchy, are good for the country. The result, however, is immigration anarchy — political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control over the nation’s borders.

Open-borders advocates advance immigration anarchy first by seeking amnesty for illegal aliens and then by demanding that illegal aliens be allowed to vote in U.S. elections. They cite as their defense that the USA is a nation of immigrants, and so it is, but a nation built by legal immigrants who came and assimilated and waited their turn in the citizenship line.

Remember, back in 2009, Democrats held the White House and a majority in both chambers of Congress — the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats could have passed any immigration bill they wanted. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi following a closed-door workshop at the White House, did introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill (HR4321) to advance what can best be called Obamigration.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid then announced an immigration reform “framework” designed to take precedence over the House bill. Although the Senate version gave lip-service to “border security,” Senate Democrats had no intention of tightening border security.

President Obama, in turn, has not pushed for the comprehensive immigration legislation he promised during his 2008 campaign, perhaps to keep the Hispanic vote in line during his 2012 campaign.

Across the nation, non-citizens continue to vote in local, state, and federal elections. Congressional meddling with liberal left judicial activism and bureaucratic ineptitude have produced U.S. immigration policy that is perhaps the most mismanaged and under-enforced in the federal government.

As a result, many states are taking up the gauntlet to protect the sacred right of citizenship, the vote. The National Conference of State Legislatures has listed states with voter identification (ID) laws and those without, along with those state legislatures in the process of strengthening their voter ID laws with the following measures:

Strict Photo ID. Voters must present at the polls a photo ID from an appropriate agency, such as a state-issued driver’s license. Strict photo ID states are Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
Photo ID. Voters are asked to show a photo ID to vote, but some of these states also accept other documentation. Less strict Photo ID states are Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, and South Dakota.
Non-photo ID. This means voters must show some form of ID at the polls — such as a utility bill, passport, bank statement, driver’s license, credit card, public assistance ID, student ID card, etc. Non-photo ID states are Alaska, Alabama (which is working on photo ID legislation), Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina (considering stricter ID requirements), Texas (considering photo ID requirements), Utah, Virginia, and Washington.
No voter ID. The remaining states have no voter ID requirements at the polls, although Mississippi and Wisconsin are considering ID requirements.

When it comes to voter identification, not all states are equal. According to Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, some states that were members of the Confederacy in the Civil War years and some counties and cities throughout the United States have to receive “pre-clearance” from the U.S. Department of Justice before any voting requirements can be enacted.

Presently Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas are engaged in litigation with the Obama Justice Department concerning voter ID legislation. Even though the Texas Attorney General reports documented cases of voter fraud, the Obama administration is attacking proposed legislation. Texas has filed suit against the federal government to uphold its new stricter voter ID law.

Liberal news media and unions denounce voter ID requirements as anti-poor, anti-elderly, anti-student, and racist. The Brennan Center at New York University claims that 25 percent of blacks are prevented from voting.

On March 15 National Public Radio (NPR) reported that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wants the United Nations (UN) to investigate U.S. voter ID laws.

Hillary Shelton, NAACP Washington Bureau Director, was in Geneva, Switzerland, to lobby for such an investigation. U.S. news media are slow to report on this initiative in which U.N. members such as Cuba, China, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan would survey voter discrimination in the United States.

Meanwhile, ID cards are required to enter federal, state, and local government buildings, to board an airplane, to cash a check, to obtain a library card. In like manner, voter IDs are essential to protect the vote. Without them, immigration anarchy continues its relentless spread across the nation.

James H. Walsh was associate general counsel with the U.S. Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1983 to 1994.

One Old Vet

Voter ID Prevents Immigration Anarchy