Lawless Immigration

The government has admitted that there are 8 to 12 million foreigners living here without permission from the American people. On December 9, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told an audience in Miami that he believes the United States should give illegal immigrants “some kind of legal status some way�.

Ridge said we must “also as a country decide what our immigration policy is and then enforce it�. The DHS Secretary refused to acknowledge that we already have an immigration policy adopted by Representatives of the voters and Senators from the various states. It’s called the law.

America has suffered incompetent enforcement of our immigration laws for over a decade under two administrations. In 1997, the Washington Post reported that an INS study showed the number illegal immigrants had risen to 5 million, up 28 percent from 1993. The Post quoted INS special agent Robert McGraw, who said the government’s systematic neglect of immigration investigations “continues, and this means little or nothing is likely to improve�. McGraw’s statement was prophetic.

Not only has “little or nothing� improved but the numbers have gotten far worse. The 1997 INS report declared that illegal immigrant levels were rising by 275,000 per year. Yet in the seven years since that report, the number of illegal aliens has risen by at least 3 million and up to 7 million, a rate of 428,000 to 1,000,000 per year. These numbers tell the story of our government’s increasing failure to do its job. They are based on the 8 to 12 million illegal aliens (over 1997’s five million) cited by Secretary Ridge as he made his pitch for amnesty. Every one of those immigrants has broken into the United States against the expressed will of the American people as adopted by Congress and signed into law by the President.

Americans have sound reason for wanting strict control over immigration. From stagnated wages, broken education systems, and increased costs for health care, to the hijackers on September 11, 2001 we have seen the effects of open-borders Democrats and open-borders Republicans. Crassness of political agendas manifest disruption in our society as the GOP serves its desire for cheap labor while Democrats yearn for desperate votes by impoverished victims of profiteering.

Is this compassionate conservatism? You hear arguments about the plight of people coming here from Mexico, who just want to work and feed their families. No one with any decency can fault these people for that, but we should place blame where it belongs. Mexican elites are no different from those in Washington, and both have symbiotic goals. What kind of compassion is it that establishes a system where people have to move 1000 miles north to another country where they don’t speak the same language just to find a job? It is the worst kind of exploitation for money and power on both sides of the border.

This writer cannot forget the report by a small town Virginia High School senior two years ago. The girl complained about immigrants and what they were doing to her education. Describing the situation in stark terms, she said that children of illegal immigrants were given an ‘A’ for book reports recited in Spanish during her English class. “The teacher didn’t understand a word of it, so she just gave them an A,� said the seventeen-year-old who laughed about “Spanish being an official language of English class�. This didn’t happen in California, or Arizona, or Texas, or New Mexico. This was Virginia, in a town surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains.

State governments have been tripping over themselves to give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. But Congress adopted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996 that prevents states from giving resident discounts to illegal aliens at Colleges and Universities that receive federal funds. Remember 1996, when Republican Congressmen would take a stand against the open-borders Democrat administration? With 41 co-sponsors from both parties, the DREAM act (S.1545) will repeal IIRIA.

One wonders why they bother. California already gives in-state status to illegals, as do other states, in violation of federal law. Recalled former Governor Gray Davis signed a bill in October 2001 that offers in-state discounts to illegal aliens. Phyllis Shlafley reported in her March 2003 column that universities in Texas, New York and California were already giving the discounts even without the DREAM act, showing that federal law gets the same treatment in education that it does from Homeland Security.

Whether or not the Homeland Security chief agrees with Federal Code should be his problem alone and not that of the American people. Congress makes the law in this country, and it is the responsibility of the Executive Branch to enforce legislation adopted by those elected to represent American voters. If Secretary Ridge, as head of the cabinet department over our Immigration and Naturalization Service is unwilling to ensure that immigrants to the United States abide by our laws, then he should resign.