The Chapter Americans Just Won’t Write
U.S. Code Title 8, Section 1325
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at
any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers,
or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers . . .
shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under
title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a
subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18,
or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
APPROXIMATELY two thousand people willfully ignore that statute every day, making illegal immigration a national crisis that you’re apparently not supposed to notice. Official estimates of our illegal population range from 10 to 20 million, and, at least if we’re to believe the politicians and activists, not a single one of those people is anything other than a hardworking, down-on-their-luck foreigner trying to provide for their family.
Americans are begging Congress, mayors, governors—anyone who will listen—to simply enforce our laws. But they’re not listening. In fact, it seems like the only people who are being heard are the activists who viciously attack anyone who dares to suggest that illegal immigration might be, well, illegal. For example . . .
“They are hiding under the American flag claiming to be good patriots but they are actually promoting racial hatred.”
—LULAC Chapter President Paul Martinez, on Minuteman patrols.
“He is, without question, a racist.”
—Protestor at San Diego Campus of University of California speaking about Lou Dobbs.
“Nothing short of base racism.”
—Nativo V. Lopez, president of the Mexican-American Political Association,
after Governor Schwarzenegger called for closed borders.
“The message they are trying to send is that white people can take the law into their own hands and do whatever they want to people of color, and in 21st-century America, that’s just not going to fly.”
—Ray Ybarra, ACLU worker who organized against the Minutemen Project.
“This announcement blatantly promotes baseless persecution of Latinos. Is it KMBC’s new policy to turn Kansas City into a police state? Will Kansas citizens start turning anyone who has brown skin over to immigration officials? Most people find turning their fellow human beings over to persecution and destruction rather distasteful. It was distasteful when the Europeans turned in Jews to the Nazis; it was distasteful when the Japanese were interred . . . People should not be punished—or destroyed—for existing.”
—Clara Reyes, editor of Dos Mundos, after Kansas City TV station KBMC aired a
public service announcement asking citizens to report illegal aliens to authorities.
“Wrongheaded and bigoted . . . [Its intention] is to scare Latinos out of the state.”
—Bill Chandler, of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, speaking of the Mississippi Employment Protection
Act, designed to crack down on illegal hiring practices.
Hatemonger Quote of the Day
“In proportion to their number, [foreigners] will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”
—Thomas Jefferson, 1782
We are a nation of immigrants. Not only do I understand that, I also cherish it. But that has nothing to do with the issue we’re talking about—and spinning an argument about the rule of law into one about hatred for immigrants is unfair to what should otherwise be a legitimate debate.
“An American is an idea. No group owns being an American. Nobody owns this. We are not going to run people down. We are not going to scapegoat people. We are going to tell the bigots to shut up.”
—Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), after accepting a leadership award from the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.
But Glenn, we have to help the less fortunate! I agree—but it’s not that cut-and-dried. Illegal immigration activists know that if they can get people to rely on their own compassion instead of the law, they win . . . but that doesn’t make it a logical argument.
The truth is that over three billion people in the world live on less than $2.50 a day. The real question isn’t whether we should be compassionate—absolutely we should . . . but to whom? Who’s the most deserving of our charity—those who break our laws or those who have done everything by the book and still can’t make ends meet? It’s easy to look at a family of struggling illegal aliens and feel your heart break—but should they have priority over the family of Americans who’ve paid taxes for decades and are now facing job loss, homelessness, or massive health-care bills? If the latest economic crisis taught us anything, it’s that we can’t help everyone.
We are a charitable country, which is why we’ve allowed so many people to sneak in here for so long with virtually no repercussions. But there’s nothing charitable or compassionate about looking the other way while employers pay illegal wages and force workers to endure grueling hours in unsafe conditions. In fact, that’s the opposite of compassion—it’s economic slavery.
Senator Bill Frist once said, “A nation that can’t secure its borders can’t secure its destiny or administer its laws.” As long as our borders are as secure as a job at GM, I have to agree. So, how do we change our fate? By using some common sense against idiotic arguments, like . . .
A few years ago some research was done to figure out how the Bush administration successfully connected the war in Iraq to 9/11. They figured out that it all had to do with the words that were chosen, and their findings supported that theory: “Those who control the language control the argument, and those who control the argument are more likely to successfully translate belief into policy.”
The exact same thing is happening with the immigration debate. They’re not “illegal immigrants or illegal aliens,” they’re “migrant workers” or “economic refugees.” What’s next, “unlicensed entrepreneurs”? Stop falling for the language tricks!
A former U.S. attorney once told me the story of an illegal worker who was severely hurt on the job. The employee called his supervisor for help, but, instead of calling 911, the supervisor, who was obviously aware of the employee’s immigration status, called the government. I guess compassion ends where the threat of a federal investigation begins.
The meaning of words can change over time. Case in point: Having a “gay old time” means something totally different today than it did forty years ago. But, in some cases, words change for political expediency, because people want to make themselves feel better, or, in some cases, for reasons no one will ever understand . . . Does anyone know why “stewardess” was so bad?
In the immigration debate, an illegal immigrant or illegal alien suddenly became an “undocumented worker.” It doesn’t change the fact that he or she is here illegally, but it sure sounds better. With that in mind, here are a few ideas on how we can label other lawbreakers so that no one’s feelings are hurt.
Americans build bridges, work in coal mines, collect garbage, slaughter chickens, clean sewers, and much worse. (Have you ever seen Dirty Jobs?) I’m not exactly sure what job it is that Americans won’t do—I guess it would help if those who make this stupid argument were a little more specific.
A more accurate argument would be that illegal aliens take the jobs that Americans can’t do because employers won’t pay minimum wage or provide reasonable benefits or safe working conditions.
Black janitors in the hotel industry in Los Angeles once earned $12 an hour with benefits. Then illegal labor flooded the market. Wages dropped to $3.35 an hour, displacing almost all legal employees.
I realize I’m not as well versed in economics as Ben Bernanke, but I am a thinker. It seems to me that if you flood the market with lots of cheap labor, wages go down. Supply and demand, right? If you supply businesses with millions of workers willing to take $3 an hour, then demand for higher-priced minimum-wage workers goes down.
Data on illegal jobs is inconclusive (it turns out that employers aren’t real big on telling the government about all of the laws they’re breaking). However, studies have shown that minorities and the poor are hit the hardest by illegal labor entering the market. Again, I bring you back to the word “compassion”—people may think they’re helping one family by looking the other way as they cross the Rio Grande, but they’re hurting three other families in the process.
Relying on cheap labor also has another impact—one that often goes unseen: It makes businesses lazy. Those who have fallen into the dreamy bliss of illegal labor don’t have to upgrade equipment, streamline processes, or deal with human-resource issues because they’re virtually guaranteed high profits due to their unfairly low labor costs.
Bear Stearns reported that between four and six million jobs have moved to the underground economy since 1990. Those aren’t the “jobs Americans won’t do,” but rather the jobs they used to do before illegal labor became much more attractive to employers. If the president is really serious about “creating or saving 600,000 jobs” he could do it a lot faster by cracking down on the companies that hire illegal workers rather than by funneling billions into subsidizing solar panels and windmills.
The Roman empire based its economy on slave labor, which reduced exports and hindered technological innovation. We all know how that worked out.
If every illegal alien left the country tomorrow, we’d still build new homes and grow fruit and (reluctantly) vegetables. How? By leveling the playing field. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted raids on cheating employers who got ahead by hiring illegal workers and paying them illegal wages, some amazing things started to happen . . .
lllegal immigrants often live in such squalor that law enforcement officials conducting raids on their living quarters find “moving walls”—a term that describes the phenomenon of flipping a light switch and seeing thousands of bugs scurry all over the wall, creating the illusion that it is moving.
Swift & Company meat-processing plants lost about nine percent of their workforce when they were raided in six states. After the raids, Swift raised their pay by almost two dollars an hour and hundreds of residents lined up the next day to take the jobs illegal aliens used to have.
Howard Industries, an electronics maker in Laurel, Mississippi, was raided in the fall of 2008. Hundreds of citizens soon lined up to apply for the new job opportunities, including one woman who drove 40 miles.
Crider Inc., a chicken-processing company in Stillmore, Georgia, suddenly raised their pay to more than a dollar an hour over what they were paying illegal aliens. About 400 unemployed people showed up for interviews, half of whom were subsequently hired.
Those are only three examples out of hundreds of raids, but you can’t tell me that Americans are unwilling to work. When fair jobs become available, Americans line up to do them. And if a company goes under because of illegal labor violations, then they obviously weren’t meant to survive anyway. (Shh, don’t tell Tim Geithner.)
Don’t be fooled by those who say that illegal aliens contribute billions to our economy and take little from it. They’re wrong. Many work off the books, earn low wages, pay little to no taxes, send millions of dollars in remittances to their home country, and use social services at a higher rate than American citizens. The truth is that, yes, illegal aliens are important to our economy—but only if you’re talking about the destruction of it.
EMPLOYERS DON’T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO VERIFY CITIZENSHIP STATUS
In 1997, the federal government implemented a system to help companies assess the citizenship status of new hires. It’s called “E-Verify” and it’s free, web-based, 99.5 percent accurate, and takes less than five seconds to get results. Unfortunately, it’s also voluntary.
While I understand that, to our politicians, using the internet for something other than porn is confusing, that doesn’t excuse the fact that the Senate recently voted to extend the use of E-Verify for only six months instead of the requested five years. Given our shaky economy and constant lobbying by business groups that claim it’s too much of a “burden” to use, the future of this commonsense program is uncertain.
Illegal immigrants tend to be less skilled and less educated than those who got off the ships at Ellis Island. While new immigrants used to earn just 14 percent less than native-born Americans, that gap had widened to an average of 34 percent less by 1998.
Before the New Deal, if you came to America and couldn’t make it, you went home. Now, our growing welfare state is feeding off those who fall short of the education and skills necessary to achieve the American Dream. Illegal immigrants are 50 percent more likely to use welfare than citizens. They get free education, Medicaid, cash assistance for kids (WIC), and sometimes food stamps. While children of illegal immigrants make up only six percent of the population, they account for almost twelve percent of our nation’s poor.
The progressive magazine Mother Jones reported, “We can be virtually certain that illegal immigrants earned less than $24,000 per year, on average, probably much less. Workers who earn so little pay very little income tax. A majority of illegal immigrants fall below the income threshold at which income taxes become significantly positive.”
Yes, illegal aliens pay some taxes because they buy things. You can’t live in this country and avoid paying sales tax or, in some cases, even Social Security tax (if you were lucky enough to steal someone’s Social Security number . . . or buy one on a street corner in California for about $150).
The Statue of Liberty was originally meant to be a symbol of “liberty enlightening the world,” a gift from the French to celebrate America’s hard-fought independence. However, the vision of Liberty in the harbor as European immigrants arrived on boats caused the press to begin reporting on her significance.
A plaque was placed inside Liberty’s pedestal with a snippet of the poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus and voilà—a symbol was born for those seeking freedoms here in the United States that they could not find elsewhere.
We’re being taken advantage of worse than Lindsay Lohan at a frat party. Our nation spends more than $4.7 billion a year on health care for illegal aliens and California has been forced to close over 70 hospitals over the last ten years alone. About 17 percent of all those in federal prison are illegal aliens—an astonishing number when you consider that they represent only three percent of the population. Of course, free room and board in prison isn’t free—we’re paying for them to be there as well. We’re also spending about $30 billion each year to educate illegal aliens in our schools—money that we could probably use to figure out how to educate our own children since we’re doing such a miserable job at it right now.
CRACKING DOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION WILL MAKE THE COST OF LETTUCE SKYROCKET!
Labor makes up only about six percent of the cost of fresh produce. Eliminating all illegal labor would likely increase the cost of your produce by about $8 a year. Since the average household spends more on alcoholic beverages than on fresh fruits and vegetables, I doubt anyone would notice.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that there are more than 425,000 “anchor babies” (children born to illegal immigrants that are immediately granted U.S. citizenship) born in the U.S. each year. In 2006, 70 percent of women who gave birth at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas were illegal aliens. Those births cost Medicaid $34.5 million, the federal government $9.5 million, and Dallas taxpayers another $31.3 million. That’s over $75 million spent in one hospital, in one city, in one border state.
Despite what you may read in liberal blogs, nobody believes that all illegal aliens are terror-ists—but the problem is that those who come here to work and those who come here to kill are all using the same door.
Law enforcement will readily admit that they have no idea exactly how many people are slipping into the country undetected—they know only how many get caught. As one U.S. terrorism official reported to the House Committee on Homeland Security in 2006, “We don’t even know what we don’t know.”
The most obvious problem, and the one that will get you labeled an intolerant xenophobe the fastest, is the 2,000-mile border we share with Mexico. Almost 70 percent of illegal aliens are Mexican—and our border agents simply can’t keep up.
A typical day on the border means sorting through the latest crop of crossers to determine their nationality. If they’re Mexican, and it appears they aren’t wanted in the U.S. for a crime, we send them back to Mexico. If they’re Other Than Mexican (OTM)—even if they are from one of the “special-interest” countries that make us nervous—they are usually released right onto our streets. Why? Because we can’t send them to Mexico and, since our detention centers are usually full, we can’t lock them up. Therefore, we politely ask them if they wouldn’t mind hanging out in the United States while they wait for their immigration hearing. You can probably guess how that works out: 85 percent of “catch-and-release” aliens are never seen again.
Releasing lawbreakers into society is incredibly frustrating for border-patrol agents who thought they signed on to uphold the law and instead find out that they are professional babysitters. T. J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, says that “it’s more than a little demoralizing. [Agents] feel like social workers. They are not enforcing the law; they are simply enabling people to break it—and that goes against the grain of any law enforcement officer.”
On February 18, 2009, Catherine Herridge of Fox News reported that there are currently 554,000 illegal-alien fugitives on the loose in the U.S. If only .001 percent of them want to do any harm to the country, that means we’re looking for five or six needles in a haystack made of needles. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really feel like “playing the odds” when it comes to terrorism.
It’s ironic that if you bring up the idea that a few of the millions of people who’ve come here illegally might be terrorists you’re called a fearmonger or a racist—as if you’re trying to scare people into sealing our borders. I say it’s ironic because apparently the only time you’re allowed to make the case that something terrible might happen is after something terrible does happen. It’s as though people will only be convinced that our open borders are a security threat if we happen to catch Osama bin Laden himself trying to paddle across the Rio Grande.
SOMETIMES CRIME DOES PAY
Arizona ranchers Roger and Barbara Barnett were sued by a group of illegal aliens who were crossing their property on their way into the U.S. Mr. Barnett held them at gunpoint and waited on the authorities, which the aliens said traumatized them and violated their civil rights. Barnett lost in court and had to pay $78,000 in damages to the aliens. That might be considered a bargain, considering they’d sued him for $32 million.
Why, for once in our history, can’t we be proactive about something? Rapes, kidnappings, murders, and unspeakable violence are happening almost daily in our border cities: Phoenix, Arizona, now has the second-highest number of kidnappings in the world, and according to a report from the U.S. Joint Forces Command, Mexico is at risk of a “rapid and sudden collapse”—yet we still don’t think it’s time to take practical precautions?
Actual terrorists must look at our open borders with a mix of anticipation and bewilderment. Al Qaeda gets most of the public’s attention, but Hezbollah (which an FBI official says “makes al Qaeda look like Sunday-schoolers”) has already taken note of our messy southern border. The 9/11 Commission Report said that Lebanese nationals sympathetic to Hezbollah and Hamas entered the U.S. with the help of “corrupt Mexican officials” and, in March 2006, FBI Director Mueller reported that his agency busted a Hezbollah smuggling ring that was using the Mexican border to get operatives into the United States. A former DEA agent reported in March 2009 that Hezbollah relies on “the same criminal-weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels.”
The postal service can’t get your birthday card to Grandma on time, but the government is apparently capable of sending illegal gang members back home for Christmas. According to a Federal investigator, an MS-13 gang member who was in the U.S. illegally wanted to get a free trip home for Christmas so he turned himself in to the authorities. Did it work? Yep. They sent him home on the taxpayers’ dime, where he spent the holidays with his family and then returned to the U.S. by illegally crossing the southwest border. In fact, the ploy worked so well that he did it over and over again.
In March 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the House Appropriations Subcommittee, “There are individuals from countries with known al Qaeda connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish and pretending to be Hispanic immigrants.” Maybe they are all going to move to Mexico and live happily ever after, or maybe they are going to come here and blow up buildings—the point is that there are too many “maybes” involved for my liking.
Another incident involving terrorists and our borders happened in early 2009 when al Qaeda recruiter Abdullah al-Nafisi was seen on video talking about how they could exploit our southern border. “Four pounds of anthrax—in a suitcase this big—carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S. are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there,” al-Nafisi said. “What a horrifying idea; 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings and so on. One person, with the courage to carry four pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this ‘confetti’ all over them, and then we’ll do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real celebration.”
SOMETIMES CRIME DOES PAY
In April 2005, Texas Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez stopped a van at midnight in his small town. When he approached the vehicle he noticed a group of people lying on the floor. The driver took off and tried to run Hernandez over. Hernandez shot at the tires and everyone ran away, except for one woman whose teeth were damaged by shrapnel. The U.S. government, aided by Mexican officials, prosecuted Hernandez for violating the civil rights of the illegal aliens in the van and for using excessive force. Hernandez spent almost a year in jail and was fined $5,000. The illegal aliens also sued Hernandez for damages including medical expenses, pain and suffering, and mental anguish. They sought $1.5 million, but settled for a mere $100,000.
Is that just propaganda to convince new recruits that al Qaeda is still relevant? Perhaps . . . but considering that the tunnels he mentions actually exist, we would be smart to take him at his word.
While the crisis down south gets all of the headlines, the open Canadian border is just as dangerous. It’s twice the size of the Mexican border and we have only about one fifth of the border patrol agents stationed there. Up until late 2007, Canadian border agents had no access to firearms and had to call in the Canadian police to handle dangerous individuals. Canada expects to train and arm all of their guards by 2017 but, as of now, some have only pepper spray, a baton, and the ability to yell “Eh!” very loudly. You do the math.
While all of the stats and studies are nice, the winning response to the border argument really revolves around common sense. I defy you to name just one nation that has prospered without defending its borders. You won’t be able to, and the reason is simple: Open borders not only invite violence and national security concerns, they also inevitably result in a country importing poverty while exporting high-paying jobs and wealthy, educated citizens. Keep that up for as long as we have and soon you will have a country with massive deficits, growing rates of unemployment, and fewer and fewer wealthy people able to support them all.
Oh, wait a second . . . .
“First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.”
—Ted Kennedy, speaking in favor of the Hart-Seller immigration bill of 1965, which changed immigration into a civil-rights cause and resulted in an increase in illegal immigrants coming to this country. In retrospect, Kennedy was right, our cities weren’t flooded with a million immigrants a year . . . they were flooded with 800,000 illegal immigrants a year.
Okay, stop with the Canadian accent. I don’t want “a” fence, I want two of them. And I want them double-layered and really, really high.
Some people will point out that we’ve already tried to build a fence, but it’s proposed to be only 670 miles long and government incompetence has plagued it the whole way. Critics say that the cost is too expensive—but that argument doesn’t hold up when you start comparing the costs to what we’ve spent recently. Costs vary by mile, depending on the specifications and what kind of terrain the fence covers, but estimates range from $2 to $10 million per mile. A fence running the entire length of the U.S.-Mexican border—twice—at the highest estimate of $10 million/mile, would cost us roughly $40 billion.
That’s expensive, right? Sure is, but it’s also equal to the amount of money the stimulus bill set aside to increase and extend unemployment benefits. That’s an ironic comparison, given that we likely wouldn’t need those benefits extended if illegal laborers were prevented from taking American jobs.
The government, along with environmentalists, has other ideas. A real fence is so old-school, they say, we need to progress in our thinking and consider a “virtual fence” instead. I will spare you the question of why the White House, Fort Knox, and Rikers Island all use “real” fences and instead ask this: If a virtual fence is such a no-brainer, then why has it taken three years to even start construction on just 23 miles of cameras and sensors?
In typical government fashion, even when the $6.4 billion project is complete, it won’t be complete. According to The New York Times, “Within five years . . . the [virtual] fence is expected to extend along the entire 2,000-mile border except for some 200 miles in the area of Big Bend National Park in Texas, a stretch that is to be addressed later.” Isn’t that kind of like installing a home-security system but putting a note on the front door saying that the back door doesn’t have a sensor yet?
“I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law. Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law-review article written by a professor?”
Who said that . . . maybe some nut-job conspiracy theorist? I guess that depends on what you think of Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg—because the quote is from her.
I understand that the idea of a North American Union sounds insane, but is it really any crazier than a Supreme Court justice suggesting that we take legal guidance from foreign countries? The point is that the traditional way of thinking about borders is, unfortunately, “progressing”—and that means the traditional way of thinking about sovereignty will soon be progressing as well.
I might be crazy, but lots of stuff going on in our government doesn’t add up—or, it adds up, but not in a good way. Yes, I believe there is an effort under way by a few well-connected groups to establish something akin to a North American Union. But the difference between me and the black-helicopter crowd is that I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy—I think it’s happening right out in the open and it’s all being championed by profit-minded global corporations.
If you are interested in the names of the people and the companies behind this effort you can read the illegal-immigration chapter in An Inconvenient Book—I’ll spare you the details here—but one key point I made is that the idea of a more “cohesive hemisphere” is nonpartisan. Presidents and business leaders from both sides of the aisle are becoming convinced that the economic and security benefits of uniting, like the European Union, outweigh the risks. That doesn’t necessarily mean that “America” goes away—it just means that instead of answering only to our Constitution, we’d be answering to a whole set of additional international laws (as we do now after ratifying an international treaty).
Is President Obama a fan of this idea? Who knows—though his nomination of Harold Koh (an avowed transnationalist who believes that we must respect the “opinions of mankind”) to an important State Department position would lead me to believe that he’s more open to blurring borders than strengthening them. There is also the matter of Obama’s odd, misleading reply to a question about the NAU—which I know is circumstantial evidence (hmm, maybe it could be admissible in a foreign court?) but is suspicious nonetheless.
At a 2008 Town Hall meeting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Obama was asked about his relationship to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), one of the groups that allegedly supports increased globalization and a decreased focus on the sovereignty of individual countries. “I don’t know if
I’m an official member,” Obama responded. “I’ve spoken there before. It’s basically just a forum where a bunch of people talk about foreign policy. There’s no official membership. I don’t have a card or a special handshake or anything like that.” (Audience laughs.)
He went on to discount the idea that a European Union-style entity may be on its way here by saying, “I see no evidence of this actually taking place.”
THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY WILL COLLAPSE IF WE ABOLISH ILLEGAL LABOR!
Labor makes up about 30 percent of a restaurant’s operating costs. If illegal labor were eliminated and wages raised to accommodate legal workers, the cost of your meal would likely increase between three to six percent. That means a $100 steak dinner might cost you around $104 instead—hardly enough of an increase to put restaurants out of business.
I have two issues with what he said. First, his hilarious joke about secret handshakes notwithstanding, the CFR most definitely does have an “official membership” list. In fact, the CFR’s own website spends over 1,500 words describing the specific steps that one must take to become a member (“Complete application and submit curriculum vitae,” “Obtain a letter of nomination from an existing member,” “Submit three letters of recommendation,” etc.). In other words, President Obama knows very well whether he’s a member and people deserve an honest answer from him rather than a comedic dismissal.
Obama claims the CFR is just a little forum for chatting about foreign policy—but listen to the words of David Rockefeller, former CFR chairman of the board and now their honorary chairman:
“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Wow—that’s a pretty big vision for a little weekend discussion club, isn’t it?
Second, regardless of whether President Obama is a CFR member, many of his advisors and cabinet members, like George Mitchell (special envoy to the Middle East), Richard Holbrooke (special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan), and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner reportedly are. Even Obama’s wife, Michelle, was reportedly on the board of directors of the Chicago branch of the CFR.
Given those connections, you’d think that the president would be a little more familiar with what the CFR has been working on—most notably their 2005 task force report entitled “Building a North American Community.” (Sample of their findings: “To that end, the Task Force proposes the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity . . . Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter . . .”)
Of course, none of this means that President Obama supports further integration between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada—but, as I said in An Inconvenient Book, one sure way for him (or any leader) to prove he doesn’t support it is by strongly supporting a double-layered fence along both of our borders, along with crippling fines on businesses that hire illegal workers.
“It’s insulting that the law would call an immigrant a criminal . . . it’s horrible.”
—Actor John Leguizamo. I know what you’re thinking, because it’s the same thing I am: “Who?”
The media loves to trot out stories about immigrants living in fear of deportation. For example, an ABC News story from 2008 (innocently titled “Immigration Raids Cripple Small Towns”) contained a section labeled “Immigrant Mother Describes Terror” about a raid at a Mississippi plant. Only once you started to read the article did you find out that the “immigrant” mother was actually an “undocumented Mexican” and that her “terror” came from the fact that federal agents had the audacity to show up at the place where she was working illegally and ask her for proof of her status. Oh, the inhumanity!
We have a deportation program going known as “ICE Air” that sounds better than any commercial flight I’ve ever taken. At a cost to taxpayers of about $680 per one-way ticket, illegal aliens are flown home and provided with sandwiches, chips, fruit, bottled water, juice, civilian clothing, checked baggage, and a private nurse.
That apparently wasn’t enough for Ismael Martinez, a recent passenger being deported for domestic battery. “People tell you about all the opportunities in the United States, but they don’t reveal the bad things like this, where they treat us like animals,” he said. If Martinez thought that was bad, I wonder what he’d think about flying on Continental.
Latino groups also love to denounce the government’s (usually feeble) attempts at enforcement. After Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conducted deportation raids in early 2009, some groups complained that they “destroyed families” and “spread terror.” What is rarely mentioned—or quickly glossed over—is that these raids are usually triggered by suspicion of identity theft and it’s that crime that is usually prosecuted. But that angle doesn’t seem as sexy as “Big Bad U.S. Government Terrorizes Helpless Immigrants,” so it’s generally ignored.
I know this will come as a shock to some people, but I’m actually not in favor of destroying families or spreading terror. I think it’s terrible that we could potentially be taking a mother or father away from their children (although, to be fair, it’s not like anyone is requiring that they leave their children behind). That is why I am open to doing something that so many others aren’t: compromising.
I am more than willing to talk about a program for people who want to come out of the shadows, admit they are guilty of a crime, and pay an appropriate penalty. But, and this is where I lose most people, I’m willing to talk about that only after we have secured both borders to my satisfaction. After all, if we learned anything from Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program, it should be that amnesty without security only incentivizes more people to break the law.
In 2004, word began to get out about President Bush’s plan to offer something-akin-to-amnesty-but-definitely-not-amnesty to illegal aliens. Shortly afterward the border patrol began to ask those they captured why they were trying to get into the country. In some districts as many as 90 percent reported they were coming now in order to be grandfathered in for the amnesty program.
The truth is that “comprehensive” immigration reform should be “comprehensive” only in that it deals with how we will comprehensively shut down the border and turn off the job magnet first. Once that happens, it will be much easier to have a logical discussion about what to do with those who are left (many of whom, at that point, will likely be trying to figure out how to get over the fence and back into Mexico on their own because of the lack of illegal jobs available here).
If that doesn’t work, we can always pack up our stuff and leave this country to the politicians and activists who seem to be so intent on dismantling it.
Besides, I hear Mexico is nice—especially this time of year.
