Stop Illegal Immigration NOW Or Immigrants Will Soon Out Vote You
By Warner Todd Huston Friday, February 1, 2008

I have a neighbor named George. He and his family have been great neighbors. We’ve exchanged gifts, attended parties together, helped each other out from time to time with one thing or another. Our kids have been friends. I like them all. They’re really great folks.

However, all but the father and one son out of a family of six are illegal immigrants by way of Mexico.

Last year, two of their sons got caught up by immigration and sent back to Mexico. George’s wife moved back to Mexico to be with her sons. George stays here with the eldest boy and their daughter. He works hard and misses his wife. Of course, she cannot come back because she was never a legal resident and has no papers.

It’s all a terribly rotten situation for George and his family and I know that I would be highly upset were I in his situation. But, his situation is not unlike that of millions of other families that have a mixture of legal and illegal members living in the U.S.

And therein lies a problem. Yes it is a problem for them, but it is also a problem for anyone interested in stricter border control and enforcing current immigration laws or creating new ones. And it is a problem that looms larger every single day. It is a problem that is born of our own democratic system: Voting.

You see, once a Mexican national (or other immigrant) becomes a legal, voting resident he comes to have his fair, democratic say in the process. Ordinarily, it is a fine thing that a new citizen exercises his newfound duty to become a voter as a new member of our society. But, in this case, if that new voter has illegal immigrant family members, he comes to the polls with a built in prejudice against U.S. sovereignty and border control.

In essence, when asking a newly legalized U.S. citizen to vote on tougher immigration laws, we would be asking him to vote to allow his mother, father, sister or brother to be deported. By asking for this new voter to vote on stricter border laws, we are making it tougher for his extended family, should they be illegals, to visit and work here.

A recent Pew Hispanic Center survey has some interesting results on these issues. The survey asked Hispanics living in the U.S. a battery of questions and their answers reveals a split between the foreign born and those born here in the U.S. But, on several areas the two segments agree.

• On the question of drivers’ licenses for illegals, the foreign born are 55% in favor of allowing undocumented aliens to get licenses. The native born are 60% against that idea.
• 89% of the foreign born say that immigrants “strengthen the United States,â€