A Natural Born Disaster
May 25, 2006
When it comes to the illegal immigration issue you might as well keep singing “the more things change the more they stay the same” until the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is changed,. The President, the MSM and most of Congress are bamboozling the American public with byzantine solutions (that intentionally won’t work) to what should be a simple task...secure our borders; make illegal presence in the country a felony; make the hiring of illegal immigrants a felony for the employer; cease public assistance for illegal immigrants and amend the Fourteenth Amendment.
As long as Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment remains in force, no matter what else is proposed to “solve” the illegal immigration disaster, the law-breakers will still have the protections afforded to the parent(s) of legitimate US citizens. And don’t think those “Open Border” anarchists aren’t keenly aware of this.
According to the latest poll, 90% of Americans think that, “the United States has the right to control its borders and decide who can move to this country and when they can move here”. Yet Washington D.C. keeps taking its marching orders from Mexico City. To paraphrase a quote from the movie Scarface, “...who, where, why and how America grants citizenship is nobody else’s business”.
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment is crucial to the illegal immigration debate. It is the mother of all Anchor babies. By stating that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”, the Fourteenth opened the floodgate (and your wallets) to most of the illegal immigrants’ perceived rights.
The intent of the Fourteenth was never to reward invading trespassers with the gift of citizenship for their children.
When the Fourteenth was allegedly ratified in 1868, it is doubtful that that any national leaders could imagine millions of third trimester border invaders cashing in on the American taxpayer. Modern welfare wasn’t born until 1935 and the right to a free public education was (and still is) nowhere to be found in the Constitution...a little thing called States’ Rights.
The first section of the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to protect the rights of former slaves who had been involuntarily thrust upon the American continent. Findlaw explains that “The States were competent...to confer state citizenship upon anyone in their midst, but they could not make the recipient of such status a citizen of the United States. The 'Negro,’ or ‘African race,’ according to the Chief Justice, was ineligible to attain United States citizenship, either from a State or by virtue of birth in the United States”.
Not only was the Fourteenth never intended to confer citizenship on the newborns of wily water-busting mommies sneaking across the border, but the legitimacy of the Fourteenth’s ratification has never fully been accepted.
In 1959, David Lawrence published There is No "Fourteenth Amendment"! in U.S. News & World Report. With regard to the Fourteenth, Lawrence states that, “No such amendment was ever legally ratified by three fourths of the States of the Union as required by the Constitution itself. The so-called "Fourteenth Amendment" was dubiously proclaimed by the Secretary of State on July 20, 1868. The President shared that doubt.”
In the Truth About the 14th Amendment, Thomas J. DiLorenzo believes that “The Fourteenth Amendment has had precisely the effect that its nineteenth-century Republican party supporters intended it to have: it has greatly centralized power in Washington, D.C., and has subjected Americans to the kind of judicial tyranny that Thomas Jefferson warned about when he described federal judges as those who would be constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.” And who can argue with that!
On May 16th, the President threw a few bones to the American citizenry and then snuck in a stink bomb...”Create a temporary worker program that would match willing workers with employers and require those workers to return to their home countries after a limited period of time” Who does he think he is kidding.
What happens when that it’s time “to return to their home countries” for those “temporary” workers and babies are popping out all over the place. SNAFU...can’t separate American citizen baby from “temporary worker” parents and the American taxpayer gets screwed again. Did Bush really think he could sneak this one past the smell test?
Now, the New York Times is reporting that, “In the Senate, the emerging legislation was toughened up...Senators...disqualified criminals and those who ignored deportation orders from receiving citizenship. They approved 350 miles of border fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers between the United States and Mexico, designated English as the national language and voted to require those seeking citizenship to demonstrate some English proficiency.” No mention about the American born children of “criminals”, “those who ignored deportation orders” or those who do not “demonstrate some English proficiency”. Yet, that same Senate keeps voting to give these “criminals” Social Security benefits.
350 miles of border fencing will do for illegal immigration what being fondled by the TSA did for the War On Terrorism...hire more government bureaucrats and nothing else. Illegal immigrants are like locusts...cut off one crossing and they will just swarm to another. If anybody was really serious, the entire border would be fenced. But that would still be just a half-measure.
As long as the incentive to illegally enter the US remains, people will keep trying to illegally enter the US.
The simple acts of making it a felony to hire an illegal immigrant and removing the Anchor Baby indemnification from the Fourteenth Amendment would solve 95% of the problem in a year.
What is so hard about this quid pro quo...your baby is a citizen only if you are LEGALLY in the US on a PERMANENT basis?
Of course that would put some teeth into the solution which is exactly what the President and Senate are trying not to do.
But what do I know, as Peggy Noonan reminded me...this is just a base opinion from the Conservative base.
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