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Citizenship Giveaway
James H. Walsh
Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2007

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

— Preamble, U.S. Constitution, 1789

The new Democrat-controlled Congress surely will ponder the Constitution before passing immigration legislation that would violate the very wording of the Preamble. Today, 218 years since the founding fathers put into effect the framework of our Republic, the nation faces a crisis created by unfettered illegal entry into this country.

The problem is not immigration.

In the history of the world, the USA is the only republic established and populated by immigrants committed to assimilation. Existing U.S. laws provide for orderly immigration; and in 2006, nearly a million foreign nationals entered the United States legally on tourist visas, student visas, business visas, and as refugees.

Of these, nearly half, in time, become legal permanent residents (LPRs). Immigration is working; the system is not broken. It may get bogged down in bureaucracy; it may need streamlining in this computer age; but it is working.

Immigration is not the problem; illegal entry and visa overstays.
At this hour, a storm surge of foreign nationals are crossing U.S. borders illegally or overstaying their visas to disappear into the population. Visa overstays make up as much as 20 percent of foreign nationals residing illegally in the United States today; the rest are crossing U.S. borders surreptiously. Worse yet is the number of these illegal aliens committed to non-assimilation, a mindset that threatens the survival of the United States as a nation-state.

Any legislation that grants amnesty in any form for illegal aliens devalues U.S. citizenship and advances the balkanization of these once united states. Such enabling measures sow the seeds of discord that may reap the demise of this country as we know it. Yet this is the legerdemain of the 2007 Democrat-controlled Congress — amnesty to lawbreakers (including violent criminals, among them child predators and terrorists) in exchange for future votes.

The Declaration of Independence called for a government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed, and the United States thus gains legitimacy from its citizens and functions best when acting in their interests. Non-citizens are visitors to this great nation. Until now, those who would be citizens followed the established pathway of first becoming permanent legal residents.

Defining Citizenship

The "We the People" opening phrase in the Constitution distinguishes the United States from other nations.

The U.S. Congress retains sole power over naturalization (Sec. 8, Art. I of the Constitution), and that power is an exclusive one. Sec.1 of the 14th Amendment considers two sources of citizenship: birth, those persons born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction; and naturalization, those persons who apply for U.S. citizenship (see Sec. 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952).

The dictionary definition of citizen is a member of a civic culture, consisting of a geographic area with a structured form of government. Citizenship is a relationship between an individual and a nation-state, in which the individual owes allegiance to that nation-state.

The nation-state protects the individual and grants certain rights in exchange for certain duties and responsibilities. Just as national character is the foundation of a nation-state, so loyalty to the nation is the foundation of citizenship.

"Comprehensive" immigration legislation, via amnesty, will sharply limit the requirements for citizenship. By paying a token fee, a money penalty, and by providing data on length of stay in the United States (in most cases, unverifiable), illegal aliens will secure for themselves a place on a fractured fast track to citizenship, a track that de facto condones and encourages lawbreaking.

At stake is the one Constitution of the United States, embodying, as it does, one ethos, one flag, one language, one form of government, and one legal pathway to citizenship. Begun as a value-driven political experiment, the United States has become the world's longest lasting Republic. Today that form of government is threatened by a crisis of illegal aliens made possible by a loss of values that were founding principles of the Republic.

The immigration bills that the Democrats are attempting to rush through Congress promise to be a rehash of the 2006 McCain-Kennedy bill, Martinez-Hagel bill, and other proposed legislation. They will be a sop to the post-modern neo-progressives who seek new and dangerous fast tracks to citizenship. In a rush of misguided enthusiasm, the new Democrat majority in both Houses of Congress is intent on dismantling the requirements for citizenship.

These requirements are five years of legal U.S. residency; knowledge of the U.S. Constitution; ability to read, write, and speak English; a favorable disposition toward the United States (that is, renunciation of all allegiances and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty); passing the United States Citizenship test; and an Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America. These are requirements that have passed the test of time.

In contrast, "comprehensive" immigration legislation will contravene the nation's founding principles. The shear volume of illegal aliens presently in the United States and those coming each day, make processing the surge of amnesty applications an untenable task, one that will require expansion of the federal bureaucracy at taxpayer expense.

Do the Democrats really expect that, upon passage of "comprehensive" immigration legislation, the 30 million illegal aliens in the United States (my estimate on compiling available numbers) will suddenly pledge allegiance to the United States and honor the flag?

Will they stop demonstrating with flags of their homelands and banners that read, "Gringos Go Home?" Those illegal aliens who challenge the freedom of religion, a freedom upon which the United States was founded, likely will continue to wave their banners calling for "Death to the Infidels."

Illegal aliens are dividing the once United States into segments, within which national cohesiveness disintegrates.

Despite the misleadingly low numbers used by U.S. immigration advocates, news media, and even the government, a hard look at the number of apprehensions at U.S. borders, including seaports and airports, places the number of illegal aliens currently residing amongst us at upwards of 30 million, as enclaves of non-assimilation increase with each day.

A symbol of this non-assimilation is Elvira Arellaño, who has sought "sanctuary" in a Chicago church. Having resided illegally in Chicago for nine years, she speaks negligible English and requires a translator. Distinguished by being among the select few illegal aliens actually deported by the federal government, she re-crossed the border in defiance of U.S. law and thus is subject to prosecution as a felon.

Immigration advocates, Democrat politicians, and the news media accept without question the validity of church "sanctuary" for felons.

Where are the government officials with the courage to point out that the sanctuary concept has no legal standing in the United States?

Where are the liberal defenders of separation of church and state?

Demographic data collected by a Princeton University professor document a pattern of Hispanic settlement in urban enclaves and increasingly in suburban enclaves with little assimilation, and, in places, actual segregation by foreign culture and language.

In the Chicago area, this urban flight is explained by government and church authorities as a reaction to Hispanic gang violence.

Estimates are that more than half of the metro Chicago Hispanic population is undocumented. Illegal aliens, like Elvira Arellaño, are being aided and abetted by liberal-to-radical academia types, immigration special interest groups, and the Democratic Party.

Activists among these cluster enclaves go as far as to deny the United States as their native land despite being born here — so much for birthright citizenship.

Lack of assimilation is also found in religious and ethnic communities of the Islamic faith. Shiite and Sunni Muslims have brought their historic religious differences to the United States, where sectarian acts of violence and killings are reported in communities with significant Muslim populations.

These include Dearborn and Detroit in Michigan and several towns in New Jersey. Many college campuses are witnessing Muslim interfaith threats and violence. University students complain that once identified as Shiites, they are marginalized and feel constant pressure from Sunni students whose numbers are larger on campuses, such as the University of Michigan and Rutgers University. Differences between Shiites and Sunnis, which date back 1,400 years, are neither going to be resolved by amnesty nor by the liberal politics and philosophies of academia.

Political Philosophers and the New Citizenships

Many in academia support the "comprehensive" immigration legerdemain of the new Congress. Their strategy is to cloud the concept of citizenship, obfuscating it with non-sequitur theories and puerile suppositions. These professors, in their competition to coin new terms, define numerous new types of citizenship, among them the following:


Republican citizenship (based on civic self-rule) vs. liberal citizenship (based on shared community)

Universalist citizenship (based on legal status with rights accorded all members) vs. differentialist citizenship (based on cultural, gender, class, race, and religious differences as well as special minority rights with no legitimate dominant group)

Nationalist Citizenship (based on shared history, language, and culture — assimilation after a fashion) vs. post-nationalist citizenship (based on downplaying shared history, culture, and religion, such as the European Union commonality)

Political philosophers, as they would be called, opine that "transnational, multicultural citizenship" is an obligation of Western (developed, Christian) nations to permit unlimited migration and citizenship to those from impoverished nations regardless of cost or consequence.

Western countries have a moral obligation, they contend, to permit free global migration from impoverished lands. Developed, Christian countries have no right to control their own borders or to regulate transnational/multicultural citizenship.

On this subject, academics are quick to spout "moral" obligations, while denying the existence of "moral" rights or obligations in other instances.

Academics, particularly in Canada (where some claim U.S. citizenship) and the United Kingdom, began in the late 1990s an all-out push for a theory of multicultural citizenship. Acting like the Svengali of the political radical left, they began the indoctrination of their students.

These professors postulate that transnational movements (migrations) are part of globalization, which results in cultural, ethnic, racial, language, social, and religious diversity in Western nations.

Host nations in the West, therefore, have no choice but to accommodate any and all variances with their cultural, ethnic, legal, racial, social, or religious mores or values. Again, Western nations are said to have no moral rights of their own.

If for instance, the culture/religious belief of an immigrant group calls for female circumcision (mutilation), no governmental interference is permitted, no sovereignty nor national right is superior to the immigrant diversity prerogative, whether cultural, tribal, or religious. This polyethnic rights theory is the basis of multicultural citizenship now permeating many U.S. campuses.

It is being taught in anthropology, history, American/African/gender studies, political science, and sociology courses.

Multicultural citizenship is meant to transform the national conscious, culture, ethos, and identity of the United States of America into an amorphous global convocation.

Many academics hold that we live in a post-national world and that being a citizen of a particular nation is irrelevant. The subliminal message is that national pride and love of country are bad, and only academia knows what is best for America and the world.

As for the United States, the multicultural citizenship theorists seek to thwart assimilation. Melting-pot assimilation is an obstacle to their goal of rendering U.S. citizenship irrelevant. Their various new forms of citizenship degrade the concept of patriotism, as citizenship becomes all about entitlement, employment, money.

These same academics, however, do not apply multicultural citizenship to totalitarian, theocratic, Third-World nations, only to Western civilization nations.

As myopic theorists, they fail to appreciate that many Third-World nations with rich natural resources, if properly governed, would be First-World nations. Their populace would need not flee to the West. These myopic theorists fail to acknowledge that cultural, ethnic, intellectual, tribal, and religious intolerance is often the cause of underdevelopment in many Third-World countries.

Political philosophers take a laissez-faire, see-no-evil stance toward nations such as sub-Saharan countries, China, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Strict immigration enforcement is the norm, and the West dare not be judgmental. These internationalist professors and jurists go so far as to say that foreign law trumps the U. S. Constitution. It then follows that, for instance, the law of Zimbabwe could become the basis for new U.S. laws. This see-no evil mentality has encouraged megalomaniac dictators to cannibalize their countries, murder their citizens, and spoil the earth. Yet the Multicultural Citizenship theory is never applied to them. Their military-patrolled borders are sacrosanct.

Congressional Restraint

The 2007 Democrat-controlled Congress, despite the influence of activist jurists and a cadre of radical professors, surely will take time, as elected representatives of the U.S. citizenry, to weigh the cost and consequences of "comprehensive" immigration legislation. Such a law foreshadows multicultural citizenship, the end of the pledge of allegiance, and thus the undermining of the U.S. Constitution.

James H. Walsh is a former federal prosecutor and associate general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Department of Justice.