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The Immigration Mess

September 2002

By Alan Caruba

A year after the attack on this nation, nothing has really been done to address the menace of our immigration policies and, indeed, two leading Democrats continue to advocate extending citizenship to thousands of currently illegal aliens. Here’s a quick look at the abysmal situation that exists:

The Immigration and Naturalization Service remains the same dysfunctional agency it long has been, blithely ignoring the threats to this nation by issuing visas to thousands of people from the very nations that stand opposed to our taking any action against Iraq or even chasing the al Qaeda around and killing them. Since 9-11, more than a million legal immigrants have entered the US with virtually no background checks.

Buried within the current version of the Homeland Security bill is a provision by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), which would increase both legal and illegal immigration. House minority leader, Richard A. Gephardt (D-MO) is proposing amnesty for four million more illegal aliens as a reward for not obeying the laws regarding immigration and sending a message to millions more to violate those laws. Even the White House supports this. This isn’t just bad politics, it undermines our national security and impacts our economy.

Our borders are literally indefensible at this point. We have two few personnel to adequately guard the Canadian and Mexican borders. In her excellent book, "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores" ($27.95, Regnery), syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin points out that "There are currently fewer than four hundred Border Patrol agents along the four-thousand-mile border between Canada and the United States—less than one agent for every ten miles. Although there are an estimated nine to eleven million illegal aliens living in the United States, the INS has only twenty thousand detention beds for illegal aliens awaiting deportation, and fewer than two thousand agents assigned to interior enforcement."

The INS routinely releases those scheduled for deportation "on their own recognizance" rather than hold them in detention. And they disappear back into the population. Or, until it expired, they paid a token fine under the provisions of 245(i). Between 1994 and 1997, that’s what more than a half million foreigners did to avoid deportation. Moreover, buried in the fine print of the 245(i) legislation, it specifically included "Any alien who has engaged, is engaged, or any time after admission engages in any terrorist activity." The White House continues to get this legislation reinstated. Can you imagine any other nation letting someone simply buy their way in, after they had demonstrated their willingness to break the laws of that nation?

This nation still has no way to securely check the nationality of those who apply for a driver’s license. Indeed, in many States you do not have to prove you’re an American to secure a driver’s license or even to vote! The Mexican government now issues an ID card to its citizens that is routinely accepted as valid proof of identity by banks and state government agencies.

As the folks at www.stopimmigrationnow.org point out, throughout America, unemployment is rising while hundreds of thousands of high tech workers continue to be replaced by Third World programmers, many of whom are paid in their home country and thus completely circumvent paying US taxes.

The United States admits three times as many immigrants every year than the next highest receiving nation. Our immigration rates now are so high that we will double our population within the lifetimes of today’s college students if we do nothing to stop the immigrant flood. If we do nothing, the very look of America will change dramatically as it becomes more an extension of Mexico than the nation founded first by colonists from England and the waves of Irish and Europeans who followed.

We are paying a price for too many myths about immigration. There was a reason why Emma Lazarus’s poem spoke of "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore" because, indeed, that’s what showed up. Generally unknown is the fact that, between the Revolution and 1965, one third of all those who did arrive ultimately returned to their home countries when they found that the streets of America were not paved with gold and there was no huge welfare system in place to bail them out if they choose to be idle. There were only cities crammed to the hilt with other refugees and the option to work very hard in order to stay here.

After the Revolution, fully two generations passed before the next major wave of immigrants arrived and they were mostly the Irish fleeing the great famine in their homeland. After the Irish, the 1800s recorded waves of immigrants that included Germans and other Europeans with peaks in 1851-4, 1866-73, 1881-83, and 1905-07. Immigration was never a constant flow, but rather was in response to unrest throughout Europe and leading up to the Russian revolution in 1917. In 1924, accurately noting that too many new arrivals were often deeply committed to communism and that the nation could no longer absorb great waves of new immigrants, the doors were closed by quotas that allowed the new immigrants time to be integrated into American society.

In a brilliant analysis of the history of American immigration, Robert Locke noted that the 1921-4 cuts in immigration led to a reduction of the poverty rate because it cut off the supply of cheap labor, leading to a rise in average wages. American cities, relieved of the problems involved in absorbing millions of immigrants, were free to create a middle class residential society and, in time, the immigrants began to transform themselves into Americans, absorbing the values of the nation and shuffling off those of the Old World.

There is much to be said for an immediate reversal of our out-of-control immigration policies that threaten our national security, our economy, our educational and health systems, and the safety of our streets.

Purchase your copy of America: A Nation Without Borders ($7.95) and download it direct to your computer. Or purchase a copy ($8.95) by check payable to The Caruba Organization, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, NJ 07040.