February 22, 2013
By Michael Bargo Jr.
The American Thinker

That 11 million illegal immigrants are present in the U.S. is taken as proof that the system doesn't work. The immigration system is broken, we are told, and in need of reform. But the truth is, those 11 million illegal immigrants did not enter through the system, they violated U.S. law when they bypassed standard immigration procedures. It's important to note that they were not encouraged by business to cross the border; they were aggressively supported by government officials.

While the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to establish a uniform set of rules for naturalization, in reality government entities at all levels have been directly involved in the enablement and promotion of illegal immigration. These administrative actions have been stealthily passed and to this day are not publicly discussed. Politicians only discuss issues of "immigration reform" or border security.

The first official act that bypassed Congress's power to control immigration was the Bracero program, a guest worker program started under FDR in 1942. This program was not voted into law by Congress, it was an agreement made between the U.S. Ambassador in Mexico City and the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Bracero program had much success and lasted until 1964 , when it was canceled by President Johnson just months before he announced the creation of the Great Society programs of Federal benefits.

In his Great Society speech delivered at the U. of Michigan in Ann Arbor, President Johnson revealed the policy direction that was to result in the emigration of Hispanic undocumented immigrants to the U.S. As he stated, "Our society will never be great until our cities are great... It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life." He added that the solutions to American's problems "...require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities."

In reality the "National Capital" to which LBJ referred was a group of benefits that would soon be made available to illegal immigrants, particularly "migrants." Before that happened, however, the "wink" had to be given for illegal immigrants to enter American cities. That started in 1979 when the Los Angeles Police Dept. issued Special Order 40, which mandated that, "officers not initiate contact solely for the purpose of establishing a person's immigration status."

Since the LAPD has no legal authority over immigration issues, the statements regarding Special Order 40 serve merely as a public relations stunt, and the current police chief has stated that the LAPD wants to maintain good relations with the Latino community. This public relations strategy is so important to Los Angeles that today the LAPD website features videos from the Consuls General of Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico reassuring illegal immigrants that they are immune from bothersome immigration inquiries in Los Angeles.

LBJ's "Great Society" programs created a number of benefits targeted toward the poor and underprivileged. The next step needed was to make those entitlements available to illegal immigrants. This link (the nod) was established in 1985, by Chicago's Mayor Harold Washington through his Executive Order 85-1. The very first sentence of the Executive Order states: "In order to assure that all residents of the City of Chicago, regardless of nationality or citizenship, shall have fair and equal access to municipal benefits, opportunities and services..." This was issued on March 7, 1985 and was followed in October, 1985 by a similar action taken in New York City by Mayor Ed Koch.i (New York Times, October 15, 1985) He issued a "memo" to city departments requiring them to provide city services to all, including aliens.

It is no coincidence that LBJ canceled the Bracero guest worker program the same year he greatly expanded entitlement programs, and specifically stated that he wished to support U.S. cities. This is because all these cities were losing population, and just as African-Americans began to move up north after WWI to the big cities, the government needed another group to move up to support the cities' populations.

While these executive orders and police policies appear to be benign, they are in fact examples of high-level administrative corruption. The police chief of Los Angeles takes an oath to uphold the laws of the state of California and the U.S. Constitution. The mayors of Chicago and New York are also violating their oaths of office, but no mayor has been impeached for these actions. And while the 1996 immigration act makes it illegal to be a sanctuary city or support illegal immigration, no one has been cited for violating those provisions of the 1996 law.

While the actions are not dramatic, their effects are. From 1990 to 2000 the U.S. gained more population than at any ten-year period of its history,ii and the majority of the persons moving to the U.S. are illegal immigrants.

Since FDR's New Deal, when Democrats seized political control of most of the large cities of the United States, they have been focused on maintaining their political support through patronage jobs and the distribution of Federal entitlement program dollars. Illegal immigration, as I have described here before, was enabled and promoted to maintain this political control.

The trend toward high-level administrative corruption is apparent in the improper actions taken by President Obama. He is violating the boundaries of his office. For example, he issues executive orders overreaching his authority, decides what laws he will enforce and which he will not, such as the work requirement of welfare, and refuses to respect the established rules of order and work with Congress on legislation. He feels that he can dictate what laws will be passed; and if he is not satisfied with what Congress has proposed, will write a law himself and send it to Congress.

When the history of this period of U.S. history is written, not only will the excessive budget deficits of President Obama be noted, but the administrative corruption that enabled and supported illegal immigration will be seen as the result of improper and unconstitutional actions by the president. And just as the president's fiscal adventures will affect the country for many decades, illegal immigration will have a long lasting effect on the culture and politics of the country.

Additionally, just as Barack Obama escaped media scrutiny during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, the news media in Chicago have never reported on the corrupt administrative actions its mayors have taken to make it a sanctuary city for illegal immigration. To this day the media refuse to discuss its sanctuary status or tell the story of how it came about, and how Hispanics are being directed, through government programs, into highly segregated communities.

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