Redefining the Meaning of TRUE Immigration Reform
In recent weeks, some congressional Republicans have been promoting the idea of a GOP alternative to the DREAM Act in the hopes of capturing Latino voters in the fall.
In an op-ed published on the Fox News Latino website, I explain why such a Republican DREAM Act bill shares all of the flaws of the Democrats’ proposal and would likely not produce the political pay-off its sponsors hope for.
There was a time when Hispanic political leaders and the Hispanic labor leadership reflected the true sentiment of the Hispanic community in supporting border controls and employer sanctions. Long-time FAIR board member Otis Graham details this history in this fine blog posting. That was before the Hispanic grassroots were displaced by a form of Hispanic Astro Turf. What now passes for Hispanic leadership was actually constructed beginning in the late 1960s by New York City foundation grants creating the best professional political organizers “charity” money can buy.
Today, authentic Hispanic voices are drowned out by this professional class of party operators (you know who they are) who audaciously ignore the devastating impacts of unmanaged immigration on the Hispanic community while insisting all efforts to slow immigration is rooted in anti-Latino bias. Dr. Graham, an expert in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, suggests that newly-emerging figures like Senator Marco Rubio and Governor Susana Martinez may be the harbingers of a new, authentic leadership reflecting the true voice of the Hispanic voting community. Let’s hope so, but if they are to succeed, they’ll first have to overcome the cynical harassment and manipulations of the embedded “ethnics for hire” that seek to divide Hispanic voters on crucial questions of immigration, labor and national unity. (See FAIR Board member Bill Chip’s comments after the article in which he points out that today’s orchestrated refrain that immigration control is somehow “anti-Latino” is a cynical effort to stoke resentment for partisan political gain.)
President Obama recently claimed that “we can be a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.” Apparently his buddies in the globalist Silicon Valley billionaires circle missed the memo – the part where the law is addressed. They just want their foreign workers, the hell with the law. Their plan is to encourage illegal immigration with special scholarships just – and only — for law breakers.
This sounds like a felony to me.
Axiom: Anything that encourages illegal immigration tends to produce more illegal immigration. That’s why Congress criminalized such behavior under the term “harboring.” People go to jail for harboring illegal aliens.
The United States Code provides that any person who “encourages or induces an alien to … reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such … residence is or will be in violation of the law” OR “aids or abets the commission” of such acts, is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years. (8. U.S.C. 1324; INA Sec. 274) . There it is. Plain as can be. The only exception to harboring is “mere employment”; anything else, like providing transportation, housing, shelter or doing anything that helps the illegal alien remain is harboring.
This sounds like the world’s most elite alien harboring conspiracy.
In what most would consider an appalling lack of judgment, billionaires from Silicon Valley are – in the name of philanthropy – funding scholarships at colleges and universities for illegal aliens – knowing they are illegal aliens. According to the Wall Street Journal, the list of donors (either individually or through family foundations) includes Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot; Andrew Grove, co-founder of Intel Corp.; Mark Leslie, founder of the former Veritas Software Corp.; and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs.
Beyond the obvious criminal implications, this push to help illegal alien students is misguided on so many levels. On an individual level, while these donors may feel they are generously helping an illegal alien, they are also hurting countless other legal residents and U.S. citizens who desperately want to go to college and are finding it harder and harder to get one of those coveted admissions slots.
On a policy level, one may argue that giving scholarships to illegal aliens students gives them a leg up and does not reward criminal behavior because the student was brought to the U.S. when very young. Many of these students are in their twenties, so who knows when they came. But even if it were, the parents here illegally are absolutely rewarded for coming here illegally – their kids got an education at everyone’s expense – first via a public K-12 education, and then through these scholarships and other similar programs.
If U.S. born students had all the educational support, financing and opportunity they needed, and if this weren’t a patent violation of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, perhaps – just perhaps – the policy argument makes sense. But where you stand depends on where you sit. I can tell you where a lot of U.S. citizens students won’t be sitting: in college classrooms.
The world has changed — and not for the better. Ten years ago, news that an illegal alien planned to bomb the U.S. Capitol would have triggered a searching public inquiry into the policies that allowed this person to remain here “out of status” for so many years. Why, reporters would have asked, was this person allowed to remain in the U.S. so many years after a visa expired?
Not any more, it seems. In their quest to protect this administration’s attack on virtually all interior immigration law enforcement, news outlets have failed completely to protect the public and ask why an illegal alien from Morocco named Amine El Khalifi — who was arrested Friday and charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction — was never identified and removed from the United States. The cable networks should be asking what must change to prevent a recurrence. After the 9/11 attacks, there were calls for an entry-exit system, robust interior enforcement, state-local cooperation and stepped-up document security. A commission laboriously studied the loopholes that allowed the hijackers to enter and remain — recommendations were issued and ignored.
On 9/11, the pain was acute for me — FAIR had pushed for years to close the loopholes that the hijackers used. FAIR had tried over and over again to alert the public to the fact that our poorly policed immigration system was a threat to homeland security. After 9/11, I said to myself, “finally, those interests and organizations that have pushed the loopholes — especially those who opposed interior enforcement and state-local cooperation during the Clinton Administration — would be put in their place.” Not so, it seems. In 2012, they are right back at it; the only difference is we now have an administration made up of opposition groups and individuals — people whose sole desire is to block nearly all meaningful immigration enforcement. And a pliant media willing to look the other way so one party can push amnesty and polarize the electorate over the supposed “Latino vote.”
The media are very obliging. There has been no discussion about why Amine El Khalifi was allowed to overstay a visa. It’s now accepted as a matter of course. This was not the case even ten years ago: no longer can journalists be expected to help the public understand the dangerous weak spots in America’s immigration control system.
This should not be happening, but FAIR is again working to alert the American people: The American people need to know that someone without a known criminal record can enter the U.S. on a visitor visa and remain forever — regardless of when the visa expires. The Executive Branch has failed the people. Need to build a terror cell? Just deploy foreign visitors without criminal records. No doubt it’s happening right now. The administration’s strategy is to let anyone come in and hope they can identify those with a pre-disposition to attack America after the fact via a string operation. This is a slim reed on which to pin America’s security. Better to enforce effective immigration controls at the outset. How many will have to die before this madness stops?
An article in last week’s LA Times noted that Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. sent an estimated 8 percent more money back to relatives last year compared with 2010, thanks to the improving U.S. job market. A truly mind boggling statement given the state of the U.S. economy and job market over the past three years.
About halfway down the article, the writer also notes the following:
“More stringent border enforcement, workplace raids and deportations by federal authorities have also affected remittances. Nearly 800,000 illegal immigrants were deported in the last two fiscal years, many of them from Mexico, according to data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Migration from Mexico to the U.S. is at a virtual standstill partly because of these tough measures and continued high unemployment in the U.S., Mexican census figures suggest.”
How can this paragraph be justified? If “migration” has ceased, why are remittances on the upswing? If people are going back home and huge numbers being “deported,” how can remittances have increased from the previous year? These questions deserve answers.
Finally, the writer notes right from the start that remittances are up because of the improving U.S. Job market, but later in the article writes that illegal crossings are down because of the continued high unemployment rate in the U.S. Well, which is it? I am not really sure what planet Ricardo Lopez is living on. The U.S. unemployment rate has been getting worse since 2007, not improving, when you factor in people who have just given up and dropped out of the labor market entirely.
It is no understatement to say that the de facto amnesty approach now taken among leading Democrats is a modern form of “nullification” theory — that states have the right to refuse or undermine federal laws they do not like — a theory that the South urged as a basis for pre-Civil War arguments in defense of slavery and in opposition to restrictive tariffs.
The order just signed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg pertaining to aliens held at Rikers Island states that the city will not respect any ICE detainer requests unless the alien fits the priorities of the city — and by extension, Obama’s ICE says it will no longer deport anyone who isn’t within its own narrow band of priorities. The net effect is that Congress is no longer deciding who may come to the U.S. and who may not. A politicized federal executive and a rogue mayor have made that decision. Meantime, New York City citizens are left to fund the services and education for an illegal alien population that has become a huge burden to the community.
In response to the pressure FAIR has mounted at the state level, the Administration’s allies, including the ACLU, MALDEF and the SPLC, have sued to counter this populist movement by working in league with the Department of Justice and DHS. Given the social friction soon to be sustained by impending severe budget and service cuts, this is an explosive and risky path. Troublingly, the nation is destined for a sluggish mediocrity unless we eliminate the labor market effects of illegal immigration and low skill immigration. The skills composition of the immigrant stream must also be improved while the aggregate numbers should be capped at responsible levels. The political stability generated by a secure middle class can only be restored with dramatic increases in labor productivity and curtailing immigration would be one place to start. Reversing the disastrous dismantling of the nation’s immigration controls must be the first order of business.
ImmigrationReform.com is a blog created by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Our bloggers provide a candid perspective on current immigration issues in the United States. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up-to-date on all the latest immigration reform news and opinion.