Immigration Policy (Part 1 of 2): Border Security
Mark Alexander
From Patriot Post Vol. 07 No. 21; Published 25 May 2007

The reconquista movement in southern California "Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state." --George Mason

E pluribus unum? Out of many, one? That national motto, as proposed by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1776, is often cited as speaking to the "great melting pot" of American immigration. But our Founders were not referring to immigrants. Rather, they were referring to the 13 colonies uniting as one.

In truth, there was very little "diversity" among our Founders. The four major migrations preceding 1775 were from the British Isles, with the notable exception of forced migration -- better known as slavery. The uniformity of our heritage was, in fact, a major factor in the successful upstart of what is now the world's longest-surviving republican democracy.

The Federalist Papers, the most comprehensive explication and defense of our Constitution, written by our Constitution's author, James Madison, and Founders Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, affirms the accuracy of this claim in the second of its 85 essays, "Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence."

In that essay, John Jay writes: "Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs..."

From 1675 to 1950, the vast majority of U.S. immigrants were English speaking and enjoyed similar heritage and customs, with the exception of some seven million Germans, Italians and Scandinavians who immigrated to the U.S. prior to 1930.

This is not to say that there isn't room for ethnic and cultural diversity in America. It is to say that unless those who come here are fully integrated, rather than set apart as hyphenated-Americans, our United States will disunite.

After World War II, however, Latino immigrants began an illegal migration across our southern border. Between 1960 and 1990, that migration accelerated, and since 1990, the influx of illegal immigrants has reached critical mass.

All this brings us to the latest Senate attempt at so-called "immigration reform," a 1,000-page tome called the "Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007," which took off like a lead balloon. Democrats were pushing for passage of this monster only days after its release, but as Fred Thompson noted, "That's like trying to eat an eight-course meal on a 15-minute lunch break," so Senate debate will now extend into June.

The "compromise legislation," which is the most comprehensive immigration legislation in 40 years, provides amnesty for between 12 and 20 million illegal aliens, giving them, and their families, a permanently renewable "temporary" work permit called a "Z" visa. Put another way, it grants these illegals probationary status and allows them to move toward citizenship. Those who apply for the visas will have to pass a background check and pay a $5,000 fine for entering the U.S. illegally (which can be paid over eight years), but no back taxes. Would that the folks at the IRS were so charitable to the rest of us.

This bitter pill was given a very thin sugar coating of promises, such as hiring 6,000 additional border patrol agents, constructing an additional 370 miles of border barriers, and establishing a computer identification database which will, ostensibly, enable employers to verify the legal status of new employees. Once those benchmarks have been accomplished, additional foreign nationals would be allowed to enter the nation at an arbitrary rate of 200,000 per year, on guest-worker permits.

This asinine legislation will be no more effective than the last "comprehensive" reform attempts -- the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act and its predecessor, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act -- because like the previous legislation, the current version does not start by securing our borders.

Conservative estimates are that every day, about 3,200 illegal aliens (more than 96,000 of them each month) cross from Mexico into the U.S.

Any debate about immigration is useless unless it begins with a commitment to secure our southern border and coastlines. Moreover, as [Ronald Reagan |http://Reagan2020.US/] declared, "A nation without borders is not a nation."

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a longtime advocate of border security first, notes: "If we have border enforcement, we will be able at that point to start to regulate the internal problem. As long as you've got a revolving door -- a 2,000-mile porous border, there is no way to regulate immigration. We need to build the border fence. We need to have a Border Patrol which is big enough to get the job done, and we need to demand [that those who] want to come into America, knock on the front door, because the back door is going to be closed."

Of the 700 miles of border fencing Congress authorized last year, a grand total of two -- yes two -- miles have been completed.

But let's just say, hypothetically, that Democrats and Republicans actually get serious about illegal immigration and work to close the border. Next, they will have to determine what to do about the millions of illegal immigrants already here. "Just round 'em up and send 'em back," a page from Dwight Eisenhower's 1954 "Operation Wetback" deportation playbook, has a devoted following, but does not take into account how socio-economically integrated five or six million illegals are now. And few politicians at the federal, state or local level have the political will to undertake another mass roundup and deportation.

Of course, the economic benefit case for retaining a large pool of unskilled agricultural and service industry laborers is overturned by the economic burden case.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the nation's premier think tank, The Heritage Foundation, estimates, "This $2.5 trillion cost is going to come smashing into the Social Security and Medicare systems at exactly the point those systems are already going bankrupt. So the bottom line is that these individuals will make no net contribution in taxes while they are working. They will be a deficit. But when they hit retirement, they will be an astonishing cost on the taxpayer." Rector warns that the Congressional Budget Office is providing only a 10-year estimate of costs, "but on year 15, it starts to cost a fortune. On year 30, it will bankrupt the Social Security system. It is a disaster, it's a sham, and it's a deception."

Rector notes that of the estimated 4.5 million households of low-skill immigrants who pay taxes now, for every dollar paid in, those households receive an average of three dollars in taxpayer-funded services.

Responding to the firestorm over the Senate's proposal, co-sponsor Ted Kennedy rebuts, "We hope that the voices of hatred and bigotry will silence themselves for this debate." Here, we can only assume that Kennedy is talking about "haters and bigots" such as his Democrat colleagues Dick Durbin, Barbara Boxer, Byron Dorgan, Ben Nelson and Robert Byrd, all of whom have voiced objections to Kennedy's legislation. (In particular, the moniker fits Byrd, a former Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan now heralded by his colleagues as the "conscience of the Senate," who once proclaimed, "I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.")

If Kennedy and his ilk want to find out if Americans outside the Beltway want their "immigration compromise," they should set up a toll-free number asking callers to press one for "bury it" and two for "pass it." Of course, the Senate's switchboard would probably greet callers as follows: "For English, press one. Para espanol tocas dos."

Fred Thompson concludes, "There's an old saying in Washington that, in dealing with any tough issue, half the politicians hope that citizens don't understand it while the other half fear that people actually do. ... A nation without secure borders will not long be a sovereign nation. No matter how much lipstick Washington tries to slap onto this legislative pig, it's not going to win any beauty contests."

Newt Gingrich adds, "This is the most self-destructive bill for Republicans to be sponsoring that I have seen, maybe in my lifetime. You can't imagine how bad this bill is going to be by the time people understand all of its details and how foolish its sponsors are going to look, at least on the Republican side, where there is some semblance of a belief of the rule of law..."

Far be it from me, though, to offer up all this criticism without serving up a solution.

As I outlined last year in an essay entitled "Insanity on bordering," immigration legislation must first address national security issues, meaning border security and enforcement are paramount.

Only after the establishment of functional border security can a legitimate immigration debate take place.

At that point, immigration legislation must authorize and fund these priorities: enforcement of current immigration laws; immediate detention and deportation of those crossing our borders illegally; deportation of any foreign national convicted of a serious crime or seditious activity; a guest-worker program (with reliable documentation as a prerequisite) to meet the current demand for unskilled labor; penalties against employers who hire undocumented workers; no extension of blanket amnesty or fast-track citizenship (new citizenship applicants go to the back of the line); the preservation and provision of tax-subsidized medical, educational and social services for American citizens and immigrants here legally; and the Americanization of new legal immigrants, including an end to bilingual education and a national mandate for English as our nation's official language.

Additionally, the Supreme Court must affirm that there is no constitutional birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. The 14th Amendment's relevant clause reads "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Children born to those who have entered the U.S. illegally are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

If immigration policy does not start at the border, our national heritage will end there. Please support the national campaign to stop the compromise and secure our borders.

Immigration Policy (Part 2 of 2): "Subject to the jurisdiction therof"?
Mark Alexander
From Patriot Post Vol. 07 No. 23; Published 8 June 2007

Anchor Babies -- the fastest track to citizenship "Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense." --Thomas Jefferson

Would it surprise you to know that more than 20 percent of children born in the United States are born to illegal aliens? As recently as 2002, that figure was 23 percent. Currently, all those children enjoy birthright citizenship and all its favors, despite the fact that there are legitimate questions about the constitutionality of such a right.

More on that in a minute.

Demo Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has withdrawn the so-called "Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007," after two failed attempts to muster the 60 votes necessary for cloture in order to move the legislation for full a Senate vote.

In other words, the Senate is a long way from passing an immigration bill of its own, much less coming up with something that will work in conference with the House. Indeed, that's the good news.

As I outlined in Part One of this series, Immigration starts at the border, the immigration debate is nothing more than political pandering to 12 percent of the electorate -- Latino voters -- unless it begins with a commitment to secure our southern border and coastlines. As [Ronald Reagan |http://Reagan2020.US/] declared, "A nation without borders is not a nation."

Only after the establishment of functional border security can a legitimate immigration debate take place.

At that point, immigration legislation must authorize and fund these priorities: enforcement of current immigration laws; immediate detention and deportation of those crossing our borders illegally; deportation of any foreign national convicted of a serious crime or seditious activity; a guest-worker program (with reliable documentation as a prerequisite) to meet the current demand for both skilled and unskilled labor; penalties against employers who hire illegal aliens; no extension of blanket amnesty or fast-track citizenship (new citizenship applicants go to the back of the line); the preservation and provision of tax-subsidized medical, educational and social services for American citizens and immigrants here legally; and the Americanization of new legal immigrants, including an end to bilingual education and a national mandate for English as our nation's official language.

Currently, there are deportation orders for more than 600,000 illegal aliens, but virtually no funding or effort to enforce these orders. And while there are substantial penalties for hiring illegal immigrants, there is no funding or effort to enforce these laws, either.

Question: If there is no comprehensive effort to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration laws, what difference would any new legislation make, other than to shore up Latino voter constituencies?

While the swamp rats are sorting out that question, hundreds of thousands of immigrants are birthing children in the U.S. (more than three million at last count). It is assumed that they have a constitutional birthright to citizenship. As such, those children, and their attendant families, are served up a plethora of social services at taxpayer expense. They are also the anchors for a chain of migration because upon reaching age 21, the children of illegal immigrants can petition to have citizenship extended to the entire family.

But does the Constitution authorize birthright citizenship to illegal aliens?

The relevant constitutional clause concerning birthright is found in the 14th Amendment, one of three "reconstruction amendments" proposed after the War Between the States. The 13th Amendment banned slavery, the 14th ensured Due Process and Equal Protection under the law for former slaves and their children, and the 15th banned race-based qualification for voting rights.

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment (as proposed in 1866 and ratified in 186 reads, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." It explicitly referred to children born to U.S. citizens and those born to aliens lawfully in the U.S.

Why did the amendment's sponsors insist on adding, "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof"?

For insight, consider the words of Sen. Jacob Howard, co-author of the amendment's citizenship clause. In 1866, he wrote that the amendment "will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, or who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States..."

By extension, then, it is fair to conclude that, in addition to the children of those legally in the U.S. under the above exclusion, this would apply to the children of those illegally in the U.S. -- until the Supreme Court took up the question of the rights of illegal aliens to taxpayer services in 1982. In Plyler v. Doe, the judicial activists concluded that "no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment 'jurisdiction' can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful."

But Plyler v. Doe is historically and legally inaccurate. In the context of original intent, children born to those who have entered the U.S. illegally -- those who are not citizens -- are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." One would hope, in the course of the current debate about immigration, that Congress and the courts would actually pay homage to the plain language of our Constitution.

Not much chance of that, though, especially when it's not politically expedient.

Meanwhile, 12-20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. have hundreds of thousands of children, who are extended birthright citizenship -- at an annual cost to taxpayers of between six and ten billion dollars.

Moreover, the "economic benefit" argument for "guest workers" is suffering a significant trade deficit. On average, the households of illegal aliens are paying about $9,000 in various taxes, and receiving about $30,000 in benefits -- direct benefits, social services, public services and population based services like education.

While Congress fiddles, 3,200 of our Latino neighbors illegally cross our border with Mexico every day.
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