The Wide Open Golden Gate
The Wide Open Golden Gate
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 9/7/2007
Sanctuaries: A federal judge in San Francisco halts Homeland Security's plans to enforce federal immigration laws, and a city supervisor wants all illegals to have city IDs. Did we lose our hearts there, or our heads?
Related Topics: Immigration
San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano wants to protect illegal aliens from the potential harm and hardships they encounter after successfully evading the U.S. Border Patrol and the folks at Immigration and Customs. So he's drafting legislation to have San Francisco provide city ID cards. New Haven, Conn., like San Francisco a sanctuary city, has a similar program.
Ammiano says illegal aliens who witness or are victims of crime do not come forward because they do not have proper identification and fear deportation. Not having proper IDs, they often do not avail themselves of city services. He does not speak to the issue of illegal aliens who are the perpetrators of crime or who overburden our school systems and emergency rooms.
San Francisco was proclaimed a sanctuary city by its board of supervisors in 1989. In April, Mayor Gavin New-some reaffirmed that status and declared that no San Francisco employee would cooperate with federal efforts regarding immigration. This means that police are expressly forbidden from inquiring about immigration status when illegal aliens come in contact with the law.
Having local gendarmes not cooperate with the feds puts our safety at risk. We have documented and the public is aware of the growing problem of illegal aliens who are multiple offenders.Yet because no one bothers or is forbidden from checking their immigration status, they are returned to society to commit more crimes or prey on more victims.
A Government Accountability Office study found that 55,322 criminal aliens were arrested 459,614 times — averaging more than eight arrests per alien. A policy of providing sanctuary to illegal aliens often has the unintended consequence of attracting and incubating crime.
Also coming to this country are criminal gangs such as MS-13 and possible terrorists from countries known as state sponsors of terror or as havens for terrorist groups. Giving them IDs with which to open bank accounts and launder money probably is not a wise idea.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently announced that the feds, in an attempt to enforce U.S. law barring employers to knowingly hire illegal aliens, would send out "no match" letters when an employee's Social Security number did not match SSA records. Employers would have 90 days to resolve any discrepancy.
At the end of August, U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney in San Francisco issued a ruling barring DHS from sending out those letters. The American Civil Liberties Union and the AFL-CIO had complained that the program would harm citizens and other legal workers.
We don't see how proving you are who you say you are — something we all do on a routine basis — poses a hardship for citizens or legal residents. Nor do we see how giving IDs out like candy to illegal aliens makes us safer or benefits society.
Still, Chesney ruled that DHS was overstepping its authority to enforce immigration laws and was misusing a Social Security Administration database.
Those who stress the need to control our borders and immigration have been accused of being everything from "nativists" to outright racists. We are indeed a nation of immigrants and still are. Last year, the U.S. allowed 1.2 million people to settle in this country permanently on a legal basis. But we're also a nation of laws.
A nation that can't control its borders is not a nation. Judges, mayors and city supervisors who insist in a nation of laws that the laws protecting that nation should be ignored or unenforced place that nation and its citizens at risk.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/edit ... 5399218515
