Illegal Immigration
The most important responsibility of the Federal Government; A principle aspect of that defense is the protection and security of our national borders and points of entry. Unfortunately, our elected officials have chosen not only to leave our borders relatively unsecured, but have also chosen not to enforce current immigration laws. The consequence of these actions have lead our nation to become less secure and in financial distress.
To correct these problems our elected officials must be willing to make some very tough decisions. The first is the creation of real border security. We must look at border security as the real threat to homeland security. Until we secure our borders we will always have illegal immigration problems. Creating another law or regulation will be essentially ineffective. Why do we think that illegal immigrant’s who do not obey the law and enforcement agencies’ who will not or can not enforce the current laws is the solution? It’s not about new or different laws. It’s about stopping the influx of illegal immigrants. Current estimates believe that the illegal immigrant population of the United States in 2008 (estimate by the Center for Immigration Studies) to be about 11 million people. Illegal immigrants continue to outpace the number of legal immigrants.
The first challenge to overcome is to first make the protection of our national borders a federal matter. The Posse Comitatus Act, generally prohibits direct participation of Department of Defense personnel in civilian law enforcement activities, such as search, seizure, and arrests. However, because we have forced civilian law enforcement to protect their individual states from illegal immigration, we have a conflict that needs to be resolved rather than ignored.
The second challenge is to take away the “Golden Ticket”. The Golden ticket is also known as “anchor babies”. We must stop the incentives illegal’s use to come to our country with the intent to birth children here and therefore permanently grant legal status to the child. You cannot make something legal that is illegal. What would happen if you or I robbed a bank and then with the proceeds bought a house? The answer is it would be confiscated because the purchase was made with stolen money. This same principle is applied to all of our laws except illegal immigration. It is no less wrong to “steal” benefits from the US taxpayer due to illegal immigration. The fourteenth amendment must be amended to deny automatic citizenship to children born of illegal immigrants.
The third is to ensure no illegal immigrants can work in the US. We must hold companies responsible if they willingly hired illegal immigrants. If we were to remove the incentives for coming here illegally, then our illegal immigration population would turn to legal immigration, and the benefits to all who come here legally would be the ability to find their American Dream.
As a final note, US citizenship should be a goal of those who desire to be a part of the American culture. The most important skill needed to fulfill that dream is the ability to communicate. A relevant standard to be met is having the ability to speak English before citizenship could be gained.
