The Battle Against Illegal Immigration

By John F. McManus

Created 2008-03-03 06:00

According to national polls, at least 80 percent of the American people now favor cutbacks in immigration quotas.... More than 90 percent support an all-out effort to curb the massive illegal immigration.

What you have just read seems as though it were written yesterday. But it wasn’t. It appeared as part of a comprehensive study about our nation’s immigration crisis published in the May 1982 issue of American Opinion, a predecessor of THE NEW AMERICAN. Written by the late Robert W. Lee, the article carried the title “Immigration: A Problem That Must Be Solved Very Soon.” In his wide-ranging review of this already serious border problem, Lee quoted then-Attorney General William French Smith who told a congressional panel on July 31, 1981, “We have lost control of our borders.” Losing that control didn’t happen overnight.

Sensible immigration policies had been enacted in our nation throughout the 19th century and into the first half of the 20th. After discovering that many of the World War II refugees streaming into the United States from Europe were communists, Congress passed the almost universally supported 1952 McCarran-Walter “Immigration and Nationality Act.”

Over time, McCarran-Walter faced numerous challenges and was amended in 1965 and 1976 to adjust the national-origin quotas. In 1980, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) authored and saw enacted a major Refugee Act that undermined the McCarran-Walter approach by establishing an additional quota for refugees, with the term “refugee” broadly defined based on a 1967 United Nations protocol. The new law resulted in Fidel Castro releasing, and the United States accepting, hundreds of thousands of his undesirables who came to our country from the Cuban port of Mariel. The Kennedy measure even authorized supplying federal assistance, including various social services and financial aid, for the refugees who were being welcomed. Thus began the move away from the national-origin quotas as well as toward the policy of providing numerous “freebies” at taxpayer expense for legal and illegal immigrants.

Flood of Illegals Begins
Not surprisingly, the watering down of McCarran-Walter combined with the availability of free social services led to a huge surge of illegals crossing our southern border. What had been a trickle in the 1950s became a flood in the 1980s. But by 1978 the problem had already become great enough that Congress created a select commission to study it.
Led by leftist-internationalist Reverend Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame University, the commission studied the matter for several years before recommending amnesty for the millions already here, sanctions for those who knowingly employed illegal immigrants, and stepped-up border enforcement. In response, a 1982 measure known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act contained each of those recommendations.

The act’s amnesty provision generated strong opposition in Congress, and significant dislike for the bill arose from the American people. Congressman Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), its leading opponent in the House, said of Simpson-Mazzoli, “If we leave amnesty in this bill, we are going to take in millions and millions of immigrants in the next ten years beyond the capacity of our institutions to absorb and assimilate.” The McCollum-led fight against amnesty delayed the bill’s passage, but a later version of the bill won final congressional approval in 1986 and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.

The government largely overlooked punishing employers for hiring illegal immigrants, as called for by the bill, partly because employers found it difficult to comply and partly because it was relatively easy for employers to get around the requirements for authentication of prospective employees. Beefing up the protection of our southern border was likewise virtually ignored. But, as predicted by opponents, the amnesty provision encouraged many millions of additional Mexicans to cross the border. After all, since amnesty was being offered to millions of illegals already here, there was a reasonable expectation that those who successfully got across the border would not be deported but would eventually be provided amnesty as well.

The flood of illegal immigrants further strained our social-welfare system as well as provided employers with a large pool of cheap labor that hurt entry-level American workers. And many illegal aliens violated more than just our immigration or labor laws. By mid-1987, an Immigration and Naturalization Service official stated: “Illegal aliens are involved in one-third of the rapes and murders and one-fourth of the burglaries in San Diego County. In Orange County they account for over half the homicides.... Aliens are responsible for about 90 percent of the narcotics traffic.... Four hundred illegal aliens a month are added to the California prison system for various crimes.” That was 1987! The years that followed saw these problems worsen dramatically.

Californians Act, Judge Interferes
In 1994, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 187, terminating welfare, education, and non-emergency health benefits for illegal immigrants. The enormous costs for these taxpayer-supplied “freebies,” plus the sight of anti-187 demonstrators displaying Mexican flags and shouting “Viva la Raza” prior to the vote, awakened many and added to the outpouring of support for the measure. But Federal District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer speedily blocked the implementation of this eminently sensible measure.

Mexicans and others — designated OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) by the outmanned and understaffed Border Patrol — continue to stream across the border. Arabs, Chinese, Eastern Europeans, and Latin Americans — many involved in drug smuggling and intent on criminal activity including terrorism. Millions of them are not assimilating, are not becoming productive citizens, and in general are not following the pattern set by waves of immigrants who crossed the Atlantic and entered the United States legally.

These days, both illegal and legal immigrants are provided with taxpayer-supplied education, housing, welfare, and medical care. And instead of encouraging them to learn the nation’s language and fully assimilate, their youngsters receive schooling in their native language.

The non-assimilation problem is made worse by the divisive activities of radical Hispanic groups (La Raza, MEChA, LULAC, et al.) financed by the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, and other mega foundations. Such organizations view the growing legal and illegal Hispanic population as an oppressed victim group that must be organized to force radical change. One such change, supported by many illegals, includes the reclaiming of the American southwest for Mexico.

The illegal-immigration invasion, and the lack of assimilation, is no longer a problem in California alone. Americans from coast to coast have become aware of difficulties existing in their own backyards. Illegal aliens are causing a financial drain; hospitals are overloaded if not closed because of having to care for non-payers; schools are inundated with children given non-English instruction; prisons are filling up with criminal border crossers; drug smuggling has increased sharply; gangs terrorize entire communities; and some newly arrived illegals even cast ballots to favor their revolutionary friends.

Demonstrations Awaken America
Early spring of 2006 saw huge rallies conducted by Mexican immigrants in cities across the nation. Americans watched TV coverage showing thousands upon thousands trashing Old Glory, chanting anti-American slogans, demanding “rights,” and waving the flags of other nations. Outraged Americans demanded federal action to counter what they were now seeing with their own eyes. So President Bush went before television cameras on May 15, 2006 to deliver a speech that had to be one of the most disingenuous performances ever given by a chief executive.

President Bush pledged to fix the illegal-immigration problem, control the border, provide technological capabilities for the Border Patrol, add National Guard forces to aid the border guards, confront drug traffickers and other criminals, and oppose amnesty for the millions already here illegally. Other than a few cosmetic steps, those promises have not been kept. And instead, Bush had already signed the Social Security Totalization Pact with Mexico designed to permit illegal immigrants to receive Social Security benefits, approved the use of Matricula Consular identification cards issued by Mexican authorities that eased the process of obtaining driver’s licenses and opening bank accounts, and placed our nation in the Security and Prosperity Partnership with Mexico and Canada as a step toward merging the three nations in a North American Union.* He has even championed a “guest-worker” proposal — which fortunately never got out of Congress — that’s amnesty in everything but name.

In short, the border remains open and the federal government is doing nothing of substance to secure it because it is the Bush administration’s policy, recently confirmed by former Mexican President Vicente Fox who shares the goal, to merge the United States with Mexico and Canada and actually abolish both borders. In his book Revolution of Hope, Fox admitted proposing to President Bush and Canada’s leader “a NAFTA plus plan [that would] move us toward a single continental economic union.” Bush chided Fox for being so frank about the plans for “a North American Union.”

In keeping with the overall Bush agenda, the U.S. Senate began consideration of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act on May 12, 2005. Introduced in the Senate by the ever-reliable friends of illegal immigrants Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), and in the House by Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), the measure sought to ease the path to permanent residency and even citizenship for those who broke our laws to get here. With bipartisan support in the Congress and the backing of the administration, the Kennedy-McCain proposal seemed a sure bet for passage.

But public resistance was already evident. Because virtually no action had been taken at the federal level to stem the illegal-immigration tidal wave, communities across the nation began passing local ordinances. Employers who hired illegals were now facing fines and so were property owners who rented space to them. Actions taken in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, and Farmer’s Branch, Texas, attracted national attention and similar actions began to catch on across the nation.

The public is angry because the cost associated with illegal immigrants is immense. Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich reported in October 2007: “Illegal immigration continues to have a devastating impact.... In addition to $220 million for public safety and $400 million for healthcare, the $440 million in welfare allocations bring the total cost to County taxpayers that exceeds $1 billion a year — this does not include the skyrocketing cost of education.” That’s one county in the United States.

A 2007 study by the Heritage Foundation found that low-wage immigrant families in the United States caused a net fiscal deficit of $89.1 billion in 2004. Forty percent of these are reported to be illegal immigrants; the rest legal immigrants (likely beneficiaries of the multiple amnesties the United States has offered since 1986). And Harvard economist Dr. George Borjas calculated that legal and illegal immigrants suppress wages by $200 billion per year.

As a result, opposition to anything resembling amnesty led to a stinging rejection of the Bush-Kennedy-McCain measure in the summer of 2007. Resistance to its amnesty provision spurred angry Americans to deliver a flood of messages opposing the measure, and Senate leaders reluctantly pulled it from consideration. The American public had finally decided that the president, leading members of Congress, and liberal newscasters were wrong. Amnesty wasn’t going to be tolerated.

Then in New York, Democrat Governor Eliot Spitzer announced plans to award driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The outrage in his own state — even within the New York Democratic Party — forced him to withdraw his ill-conceived plan.

Summing up, the American people are becoming aware of treachery in high places, not only the refusal to stop illegal immigration but also the plan to immerse our nation into a North American Union. The “sleeping giant” is stirring. A full awakening is on the horizon.