Immigration: Past And Present

Every time that an objection to blanket amnesty is raised, we hear a retort of “we are a nation of immigrants”

The statement, “we are a nation of immigrants” is the truth.  However, it is a lie to use that statement as a justification for amnesty!

Current science tells us that the ancestors of both the North American and South American Indians emigrated from Asia some 56,000 years ago.  European settlers started immigrating to North America in the 1500’s and in the late 1700’s; those immigrants formed the new nation, the United States of America.   Very soon thereafter, that nation took control over who entered, who stayed, and who would become citizens.  We controlled our borders!

This nation of immigrants was built by people that desired to assimilate in to the culture that was America.  They had no desire to remake America in to a little Italy or new Germany or wherever it was that they came from.  They did not come for a handout; they came because they wanted to be Americans.

It was my privilege, to grow up in small towns were Italian, Polish, Hungarian, German, and Slavic immigrants were our neighbors.  They all came here legally.  They all wanted to earn their citizenship.  And they all learned English.

At the bottom of the hill on which we once lived, a very nice Italian man operated a small grocery store.  He attended classes twice a week as he studied for his citizenship test.  I once saw him throw his brother-in-law out of his store for speaking Italian rather than English.

That was typical of the immigrants that I knew.

Today, the administration wants to grant amnesty to between 10 million and 50 million people that are in this country illegally.  Note: they are illegal; they are criminals.  Many of them have also committed murder, rape, armed robbery, and various other crimes.  Several are members of very dangerous gangs.

These do not want to assimilate in to American culture.  They come looking for handouts.  They march in the town square making demands.

They most certainly aren't interested in learning English.  A Hispanic group (2 adult males, one adult woman and a couple of children) lives on the next street.  One male speaks English; his brother, after 12 years living in America speaks very little English, and the woman who has lived here for 15 years speaks no English at all.

There is no doubt that many illegals are also voting.  Several studies have indicated that as many as 10 million voted in 2012 and those votes were the determining factor in several elections.

Granting amnesty to this group will guarantee that the socialist policies of the Democrat party will be the permanent rule of the nation.

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A Revolution By Another Name

By Wes Pruden
A revised DREAM act, which could have dealt in an orderly way with the children of illegal aliens in our midst, is dead. Barack Obama couldn’t wait to get the corpse out of the parlor.

The president’s remarkable amnesty by fiat – an amnesty that dare not speak its name – has the immediate effect of giving a permanent temporary pass to 800,000 of these children of illegals. But there’s more to this mercy than the casual eye sees.

This amnesty defers until after the election, and probably for good, comprehensive immigration reform of the sort envisioned by Sen. Marco Rubio. He had offered a revision of the DREAM Act that would have enabled some children of aliens who enroll in college or join one of the military services.

Mr. Rubio has all but given up. “People are going to say to me, ‘why are we going to need to do anything on this now?’ It has been dealt with. We can wait until after the election. And it is going to be hard to argue with that.”

This is exactly the result that President Obama and the open-borders Democrats envisioned. The president prefers not to consult with Congress, which is messy, like democracy itself, and congressmen occasionally ask questions that interrupt the messianic oratory. Careful comprehensive reform would have meant sharing the credit and the gratitude; this way Mr. Obama gets all the credit and by making it seem “temporary” he can keep the kids and their parents uneasy about their future. Keeping the peasants uneasy about the future, extending suffering and rationing the aspirin, is the oldest trick in the politician’s playbook.

But there was even more method in the president’s madness. By springing this remarkable expansion of presidential prerogative now, he can test congressional concern for the Constitution and courage to do anything about it, however revolutionary the damage inflicted. An earlier president attempting to bypass Congress and enforce only the laws he likes would have provoked Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, to stand up on its hind legs and roar defiance and retribution. Alas, those hind legs of Congress have withered, replaced by little lady-like nubbins.

Mr. Obama knows better, and said so only two years ago in answer to Democratic pressure for a presidential decree of amnesty: “I just have to continue to say this notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce. And I think there’s been a great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetrating the notion that somehow, by myself, I can go and do these things. It’s just not true.”

Only now he has proved that he can in fact “go and do,” and he can continue to raid the law books in ways the men who wrote the Constitution never imagined a president could “go and do.” Two years ago the Department of Homeland Security – which seems to imagine itself the Department of das Fatherland Security – set out in several memoranda, entitled “Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” just how the president should go about stiffing Congress. This was the roadmap the president used to do what he said he couldn’t do.

There’s more coming, as Mitt Romney breathes closer down his neck and pressure from the left tightens. He can decree asylum, which is not temporary, to ever expanding categories of asylum seekers. Asylum is granted now to those persecuted, or in “fear” of persecution, “on account of race, religion, nationality [or] membership in a particular social group or political opinion.” This could include just everybody, as Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, observes in National Review Online. Asylum already includes women seeking refuge from brutal societies, homosexuals and the handicapped, and it requires little imagination to expand these categories to include residents of Mexico and Central America who fear gunmen of the drug cartels.

Only the heartless want to see the innocents, like the children brought here by their law-breaking parents, sent back to a primitive society and culture they never knew. But allowing a president to make policy based on what he needs to win an election, without consultation with anyone but his campaign handlers, is a heartless disregard of the rule of law we have always held high as the standard that makes America special.

Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.


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