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Illegal Aliens Will Have Equal Ration Under Obama's Nationalized Health Care

Democrats have quietly included millions of illegal aliens under the Obama health coverage, and have prevented any Congressional hearings or floor debate on the issue. Stripped of the altruistic "outer garment," as Friedrich Engels would call it, this has to be seen as a win/win for President Obama and his party, which is buying the multi-generational political devotion of a decisive voting bloc with the taxes, credit and health care ration of Obama's probable future adversaries.

Millions of illegals covered under Obama healthcare
by Chad Groening - OneNewsNow

The ranking Republican on the House Subcommittee on Immigration says Democrats have refused to pass an amendment that would prevent illegal aliens from being covered in the Obama healthcare plan.

Democrats recently defeated a Republican-backed amendment offered by Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nevada) that would have prevented illegal immigrants from receiving government-subsidized healthcare under the proposed plan backed by House Democrats and President Obama.

Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the House Immigration Subcommittee, finds it outrageous that Democrats want to force hardworking Americans to foot the healthcare bill for those who are in the country illegally.

"The Democrats will not even allow an amendment to be debated on the subject matter. They have shut down the debate process here, and they have pushed any discussion -- however minimal it is -- up to the secret room up in the Rules Committee. They're not going to debate it," he points out. "They are determined to fund health insurance and healthcare for illegals -- and the number turns out to be 5.6 million that would be insured under this bill. [Those are] Congressional Budget Office numbers."

King suspects the actual number will be double that estimate or more.

Judicial Watch Public Interest Law Firm Tackles Sanctuary Cities, Day Labor Sites

Judicial Watch, better known for lawsuits against the last two presidents, has taken on the issue of immigration enforcement, suing sanctuary cities from Arizona to Maryland, and shutting down a tax-funded day labor rendezvous in northern Virginia.

Its website, partially reproduced below, outlines the public interest law firm's objections to the current system, and implies its strategy.

Judicial Watch Litigates Against Illegal Immigration

Today, between twelve and twenty million illegal aliens reside in the United States, draining our nation's economy, and presenting a security threat to the people of the United States. Public officials have not only repeatedly failed to protect our borders from this illegal alien invasion, but they have also been complicit in the effort to undermine our nation's immigration laws by implementing so-called "sanctuary policies" for illegal aliens.

These sanctuary policies take many forms, including taxpayer-funded day labor sites, police policies that prohibit police officers from communicating with federal immigration officials and other local or state government policies that are magnets for more illegal aliens to cross the border. Sanctuary policies not only violate our nation's federal immigration laws, but they also worsen an already out-of-control illegal immigration crisis.


Judicial Watch members and supporters have said repeatedly they want Judicial Watch to lead the battle against illegal immigration. For this reason, Judicial Watch has launched a nationwide campaign to enforce our nation's immigration laws.

Not so fast: Obama will spread wealth around, but not necessarily his.

This is the kind of lawlessness that makes it hard to negotiate with any confidence that the other side will keep its promises.

Obama’s illegal alien aunt (and campaign donor!) is a deportation fugitive
by Michelle Malkin

Well now.

Turns out Aunti Zeituni Onyango, one of Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama’s many relatives made famous in his memoir, is an illegal alien. And not just a run-of-the-mill illegal alien on welfare.

She’s one of the hundreds of thousands of deportation fugitives — absconders – whom I’ve been reporting on for the past six years. After 9/11, the government vowed to crack down on absconders. They’ve failed abysmally.

Aunti’s story:

Barack Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as “Aunti Zeituni” in Obama’s memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango’s case.

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcment official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

Just you watch: After sitting silent as Joe The Plumber’s records were rummaged by Ohio government employees, the fairweather privacy rights crowd will wake up and start making noise over this.

QUESTION: Will the Obama campaign return the many donations from this illegal alien?

ANSWER: Not bloody likely.

Federal Election Commission records show that Onyango donated at least five times to her nephew’s campaign in July and September. Three of the donations were for $5 each, and two of the donations were for $25. Records compiled by The Huffington Post show she gave a total of $260 to the campaign.

The law:

It shall be unlawful for a foreign national directly or through any other person to make any contribution of money or other thing of value, or to promise expressly or impliedly to make any such contribution, in connection with an election to any political office; or in connection with any primary election, convention, or caucus held to select candidates for any political office; or for any person to solicit, accept, or receive any such contribution from a foreign national.

2 U.S.C. § 441e.

COMMENTS

QUESTION II, from commenter tony4951: “So let me get this straight. Millionaire Obama doesn’t use his wealth to help his poor illegal alien Aunt get out of public housing, but if I complain about Obama wanting to raise my taxes to ’spread the wealth around’ I’m the selfish one?”

Exactly.

Meanwhile, the AP tries to downplay Aunti’s deportation evasion and defiance of a judicial ruling:

Onyango’s refusal to leave the country would represent an administrative, non-criminal violation of U.S. immigration law, meaning such cases are handled outside the criminal court system.

As I’ve pointed out countless times since 9/11, systemic immigration loopholes and deportation failures that have benefited peaceful illegal aliens have also benefited illegal aliens with nefarious intent.

[...]

Lucky for Aunti, the open-borders Bush administration has just issued a special pre-election directive to slow down any deportation efforts that might get her kicked out of the country:

Onyango’s case — coming to light just days before the presidential election — led to an unusual nationwide directive within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement requiring any deportations prior to Tuesday’s election to be approved at least at the level of ICE regional directors, the U.S. law enforcement official told the AP.

The unusual directive suggests that the Bush administration is sensitive to the political implications of Onyango’s case coming to light so close to the election.

Lucky for Aunti, both presidential candidates support shamnesty in one form or another.

Lucky for Aunti, the deportation abyss has not been repaired.

Lucky for Aunti, the congressional practice of creating “special relief” bills to help individual deportation fugitives escape punishment and get rewarded with citizenship is alive and well.

And lucky for Aunti, anyone who thinks she should face the music and get the boot is considered a “hater” and a “xenophobe” and a RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST.

Lucky for Aunti, she can always take up shelter in a sanctuary-offering, rule-of-law defying church.

And guess where a left-wing church has openly broken the law and taken in illegal aliens?

Yeah. That’s right: Chicago.

***

Via cjburch, this commenter sums it all up: “Obama’s aunt is here ILLEGALLY living in poverty, and is a deportation FUGITIVE. She’s collecting WELFARE and has DONATED to Obama’s campaign, ILLEGALLY! Obama. Family in poverty as he makes millions. Complete lawlessness. Give away your hard earned tax payer money to illegal fugitives. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.”

Good questions:

Did someone from the campaign tell her to keep quiet?

Why was BHO letting her illegally redistribute her wealth to him, when he could have been helping her by getting her an immigration lawyer? If BHO had gotten her a lawyer, could they have appealed? Why then didn’t BHO help her out? When is he going to introduce an emergency private relief bill to give her a green card?

Minutemen Say "We're Not Gonna Stop"!

The government has abdicated its responsibility to enforce U.S. sovereignty at its borders for some decades now. This is a violation of Article IV, Section 4 of our Constitution, and in any case, nature abhors a vacuum. Illegal immigrants have rushed into the physical vacuum and then continued into settled North American communities where further, incremental abdication has created civic vacuums.

In this civic vacuum, the Mexican diplomatic corps has moved to occupy the field. Mexican consuls negotiate directly with municipal governments and local law enforcement, in defiance of Article I, Section 10, and in some cases these Mexican government officials assert direct physical authority over U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

It was just a matter of time, under these circumstances, until patriotic U.S. individuals would take matters into their own hands. I do not use the term vigilante to describe the Minutemen because their activities, so far as I know, have been entirely lawful, and they have not interfered with any judicial or law enforcement processes. The Supreme Court of the U.S. has so found.

There is an intriguing alliance between environmentalists and open-borders advocates. Environmentalists were, a generation ago, some of the strongest anti-immigration constituents, simply due to their concerns about overpopulation. Now, the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife have emerged as important allies of the Open Borders Lobby.

This suggests there is truth in the analysis of conservative talk show hosts Neil Boortz and Rush Limbaugh that North American leftists have migrated en masse into the environmental movement since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and that these recent converts are not honestly concerned with the environment, but find it convenient to employ environmental issues to impose totalitarian collectivist policies on Western democracies.

Below, a somewhat self-serving Minuteman press release celebrates a recent Supreme Court ruling that U.S. environmental laws do not preclude the construction of a security fence at the border.

We Will Keep the Heat on the Feds and Keep Building Fence!

The Supreme Court spoke loud and clear confirming two years of Minuteman efforts and donations by clearing the way for Border Fencing on the U.S. Mexico. Justices declined without comment to hear a petition from 14 Democrats with the open border lobby in Congress and a group of law professors hiding behind environmental issues submitted by Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club. The ruling allows the Department of Homeland Security to continue border fence construction.

The fences built by the Minutemen have been a driving force compelling the federal government to act, and the ranchers along the border in Arizona say it well: "The government wasn't doing anything until the Minutemen showed up."

Minutemen must continue to keep the pressure on and make the federal government actually BUILD IT — talk is cheap, and a complete fence along the entire border is needed.

Al Garza, MCDC Executive Director says it all: "We're Not Gonna Stop" … "Anywhere We Can Drive a Post In, Is Where We're Gonna Stop Them."

The Minutemen are pleased with the Supreme Court's action confirming our efforts to make border security and border fencing a national priority. Now we must push the Congress to continue to the government's plan to build the first 670-miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico. The court's action clears the way to press ahead with the project with little worry that judges will be able to stop it.

Minutemen will continue working to stop activist federal judges that reject that claim as the open border lobby will continue to push for the justices to reconsider the issue at hand.

The Federal project still faces legal challenges from landowners and tribal groups.

But the government is not doing anywhere near all that it can do — it is long on talk and short on performance, selling the American people short as it has for decades.

The Feds are stalling, wasting time at vast expense on delayed timelines—all in the hopes that the people of this country will be won over by their political grandstanding and public relations. But if one thing is true about Americans, it is that we know how to work, we stay until the work is done, and we give it 110%.

Minutemen have revitalized fence building efforts. Against endless waves of open-border lobbying, and a constant barrage of nay-saying, criticism and media distortions, the Minutemen simply continue on their mission — to secure the border of these United States. We will not be distracted, and we will not be dissuaded.

While the alliance of critics devote all their time and resources seeking to destroy U.S. security and erase our border, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers stand strong in the gap to fortify, build, increase and improve border security for our country.

Much has been done and much more is left to do.

Minutemen have been hard at work grading, excavating, digging holes — sometimes in rock — and putting 9,504 linear feet of fence posts into the ground. There are (528) eighteen foot long posts cemented four feet deep into the ground, secured with 35,367 yards of concrete all of which is designed to support a cost effective and lasting fence that is a testament to the strength and resolve of the American Minutemen who say BUILD IT.

254 galvanized steel mesh panels are already installed according to our fence engineering and manufacture specifications, with anchor bolts that are shot into the steel and work the same as a weld. These panels form an anti-climb wall of security fence that is a substantial barrier forcing illegal aliens to go around the entire fence structure. Using anything short of a tank will not suffice to tear down these posts.

There is still much work to do. The fight has been long and hard, but the Minutemen are still gaining ground. Quietly and confidently our volunteers have trudged forward, through heat and monsoon season—and the mud that their opposition is throwing at them. What lies ahead is hope. Already the efforts of the Minutemen have paved the way, forcing our feckless federal government to begin giving the American people what they want and need, a border fence.


Stand up against the left, and against Quisling sell-out political agendas, and help the Minutemen get the job done. Help them Build the Fence. Show the world that the America that we love does not care for empty words, we care for action!

Finish the Hodges Minuteman Border Fence Now!

There is hope on the horizon to demonstrate to the nation and the Feds WHAT WORKS, but it will take the same stalwart dedication you have already shown. With your support we will be able to construct a barrier that will set the Fence standard for the Feds of ACTUAL, affordable impenetrability—thwarting the attempts of illegal aliens to invade this country.


It will cost about $400,000 to finish the Hodges Ranch span and install full security FOMGuard technology in the ground at $250 per foot of fence.


I know it's a lot of money. But we cannot secure America on the cheap. And this is vastly less expensive and vastly more effective than the federal government costs for what little physical fencing they are actually getting into the ground.

We are asking everyone who has already generously sacrificed to immediately send a $50 Donation Today. Doing so will complete our current project in Bisbee, AZ, and greatly empower our allies in Congress who want to show Washington a working model of actual, affordable fence!

Your country needs you now! The Minutemen and women need you now! If you are one of the thousands who have already contributed to building the Minuteman Fence, we thank you for your sacrifice—but we need you if possible to redouble your efforts and donate again. If you have never donated we ask you to join us by making a generous financial contribution and by becoming a Minuteman Volunteer.

Go www.MinutemanHQ.com/hq and join with us TODAY.

For the love of our country,

Carmen Mercer
Vice President and Director of Government Relations
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps

Historical Overview of U.S. Immigration

This is a November 2006 blog post by Rubina, a.k.a. nevadaspirit1, entitled The U.S. Immigration System from the Beginning to the Present Day. Rubina says the US has always been a difficult country to get into, and that our immigration system is largely geared toward family reunification (for relatives already here) rather than overseas skills acquisition, because we are relatively self-sufficient in producing our own skilled workers and college graduates.

Americans encouraged relatively free and open immigration during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and did not question that policy until the late 1800's. After certain states passed immigration laws following the Civil War, the Supreme Court in 1875 declared that regulation of immigration is a Federal responsibility. Thus, as the number of immigrants rose in the 1880's and economic conditions in some areas worsened, Congress began to issue immigration legislation. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Alien Contract Labour laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain labourers from immigrating to the United States. The more general Immigration Act of 1882 levied a head tax of fifty cents on each immigrant and blocked (or excluded) the entry of idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public charge. These national immigration laws created the need for a Federal enforcement agency.

In the 1880's, state boards or commissions enforced immigration law with direction from U.S. Treasury Department officials. At the Federal level, U.S. Customs Collectors at each port of entry collected the head tax from immigrants while "Chinese Inspectors" enforced the Chinese Exclusion Act. Congress soon expanded the list of excludable classes, and in doing so made regulation of immigration more complex. As a result, when the Immigration Act of 1891 barred polygamists, persons convicted of crimes of moral turpitude, and those suffering loathsome or contagious diseases from immigrating, it also created the Office of the Superintendent of Immigration. Located within the Treasury Department, the Superintendent oversaw a new corps of U.S. Immigrant Inspectors stationed at the United States' principal ports of entry.

Under the 1891 law, the Federal Government assumed the task of inspecting, admitting, rejecting, and processing all immigrants seeking admission to the United States. The Immigration Service's first task was to collect arrival manifests (passenger lists) from each incoming ship, a responsibility of the Customs Service since 1820. Enforcing immigration law was a new Federal function, and the 1890's witnessed the Immigration Service's first attempts to implement national immigration policy.

Operations began in New York Harbour at a new Federal immigration station on Ellis Island, which opened January 2, 1892. The largest and busiest station for decades, Ellis Island housed inspection facilities, hearing and detention rooms, hospitals, cafeterias, administrative offices, railroad ticket offices, and representatives of many immigrant aidsocieties. Ellis Island station also employed 119 of the Immigration Service's entire staff of 180 in 1893. The Service continued building additional immigrant stations at other principal ports of entry through the early twentieth century. At New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other traditional ports of entry, the Immigration Service hired many Immigrant Inspectors who previously worked for state agencies. At other ports, both old and new, the Service built an Inspector corps by hiring former Customs Inspectors and Chinese Inspectors, and training recruits. An "immigrant fund" created from collection of immigrants' head tax financed the Immigration Service until 1909, when Congress replaced the fund with an annual appropriation.

During its first decade at Ellis Island and other ports, the Immigration Service formalized basic immigration procedures. Inspectors questioned arrivals about their admissibility and noted their admission or rejection on manifest records. Detention Guards and Matrons cared for those people detained pending decisions in their cases or, if the decision was negative, awaiting deportation. Inspectors also served on Boards of Special Inquiry that closely reviewed each exclusion case. Often, aliens were excluded because they lacked funds or had no friends or relatives nearby. In these cases the Board of Special Inquiry usually admitted the person if someone could post bond or one of the immigrant aid societies would take responsibility for the alien. Those denied admission by the Board were deported at the expense of the transportation company that brought the alien to the port.

Congress continued to exert Federal control over immigration with the Act of March 2, 1895, which upgraded the Office of Immigration to the Bureau of Immigration and changed the agency head's title from Superintendent to Commissioner-General of Immigration. The Act of June 6, 1900, further consolidated immigration enforcement by assigning both Alien Contract Labour law and Chinese Exclusion responsibilities to the Commissioner-General. Because most immigration laws of the time sought to protect American workers and wages, an Act of February 14, 1903, transferred the Bureau of Immigration from the Treasury Department to the newly created Department of Commerce and Labour.

Attention then turned to naturalization, a duty assigned to Congress by the Constitution but carried out by "any court of record" since 1802. A commission charged with investigating naturalization practice and procedure reported in 1905 that there was little or no uniformity among the nation's more than 5,000 naturalization courts. Congress responded with the Basic Naturalization Act of 1906, which framed the rules for naturalization in effect today. The 1906 law also proscribed standard naturalization forms, encouraged state and local courts to relinquish their naturalization jurisdiction to Federal courts, and expanded the Bureau of Immigration into the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization.

To standardize naturalization procedures nationwide, the new Naturalization Service collected copies of every naturalization record issued by every naturalization court. To prevent fraud, Bureau officials checked immigration records to verify that each applicant for citizenship had been legally admitted into the United States. When the Department of Commerce and Labour divided into separate cabinet departments in 1913, the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization divided into the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization. The two bureaus existed separately within the Department of Labour until 1933.

The Immigration Service took form during an unprecedented rise in immigration to the United States. While Congress continued to strengthen national immigration law with acts such as the Immigration Act of 1907, a Presidential Commission investigated the causes of massive emigration out of Southern and Eastern Europe and a Congressional Commission studied conditions among immigrants in the United States. These commission reports influenced the writing and passage of the Immigration Act of 1917, which, among other provisions, required that immigrants be able to read and write in their native language. The Immigration Service then began administering literacy tests.

The outbreak of World War I reduced immigration from Europe, but also imposed new responsibilities on the agency. Internment of enemy aliens (primarily seamen who worked on captured enemy ships) became a Service function. Passport requirements imposed by a 1918 Presidential Proclamation increased agency paperwork during immigrant inspection and deportation activities. The passport requirement also disrupted routine traffic across United States land borders with Canada and Mexico, and the Immigration Service consequently began to issue Border Crossing Cards.

Mass immigration resumed after the war, and Congress responded with a new immigration policy, the national origins quota system. Established by Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, the system limited immigration by assigning each nationality a quota based on its representation in past United States census figures. The State Department distributed a limited number of visas each year through United States Embassies abroad, and the Immigration Service only admitted immigrants who arrived with a valid visa.

The corollary to severely restricted immigration is increased illegal immigration. In response to rising illegal entries and alien smuggling, especially along land borders, Congress in 1924 created the U.S. Border Patrol within the Immigration Service. The strict new immigration policy coupled with Border Patrol successes shifted more agency staff and resources to deportation activity. Rigorous enforcement of immigration law at the ports of entry also swelled appeals under the law and led to creation of the Immigration Board of Review within the Immigration Bureau in the mid-1920's. (The Board of Review became the Board of Immigration Appeals after moving to the Justice Department in the 1940's, and since 1983 has been known as the Executive Office of Immigration Review.)

A grassroots Americanisation movement popular before World War I influenced developments in the Naturalization Bureau during the 1920's. The Bureau published the first Federal Textbook on Citizenship in 1918 to prepare naturalization applicants, and its Education for Citizenship program distributed textbooks to public schools offering citizenship education classes and notified eligible aliens of available education opportunities. Legislation of 1926 introduced the designated examiner system that assigned a Naturalization Examiner to each naturalization court to monitor proceedings, interview applicants, and promote uniform implementation of Federal naturalization policy.

Executive Order 6166 of June 10, 1933, reunited the two bureaus into one agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Consolidation resulted in significant reduction of the agency's workforce achieved through merit testing and application of Civil Service examination procedures. During the 1930's, immigration volume dropped significantly. Deportation constituted a larger share of INS operations, as did certain repatriation programs later in the decade.

The threat of war in Europe, and a growing perception of immigration as a national security rather than an economic issue, affected the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1940. The President's Reorganization Plan Number V of that year moved the INS from the Department of Labour to the Department of Justice. United States entry into World War II brought additional change when many Service personnel enlisted in the Armed Forces and left INS short of experienced staff. At the same time, INS Headquarters moved to Philadelphia to sit out the war.

New responsibilities led to the agency's rapid growth during World War II. The INS' war-related duties included: Recording and fingerprinting every alien in the United States through the Alien Registration Program; organization and operation of internment camps and detention facilities for enemy aliens; constant guard of national borders by the Border Patrol; record checks related to security clearances for immigrant defence workers; and administration of a program to import agricultural labourers to harvest the crops left behind by Americans who went to war. The only agency responsibility to end during the war was enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which Congress repealed in 1943. Other war-time changes were conversion to a new record-keeping system, implementation of the Nationality Act of 1940, and doubling of the agency workforce from approximately 4,000 to 8,000 employees.

Immigration remained relatively low following World War II, because the 1920's national origins system remained in place after Congress re-codified and combined all previous immigration and naturalisation law into the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. American agriculture continued to import seasonal labour from Mexico, as they had during the war, under a 1951 formal agreement between the United States and Mexico that made the Bra cero Programme permanent. Other INS programmes of the late 1940's and 1950's addressed conditions in post-war Europe. The War Brides Act of 1945 facilitated admission of the spouses and families of returning American soldiers. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and Refugee Relief Act of 1953 allowed for admission of many refugees displaced by the war and unable to come to the United States under regular immigration procedures. With the onset of the Cold War, the Hungarian Refugee Act of 1956, Refugee-Escapee Act of 1957, and Cuban Adjustment Program of the 1960's served the same purpose.

By the mid-1950's, INS enforcement activities focused on two areas of national concern. Public alarm over illegal aliens resident and working in the United States caused the Service to strengthen border controls and launch targeted deportation programs, most notably "Operation Wetback." Additional worry over criminal aliens within the country prompted INS investigation and deportation of communists, subversives, and organized crime figures.

In 1965 amendments to the 1952 immigration law, Congress replaced the national origins system with a preference system designed to reunited immigrant families and attract skilled immigrants to the United States. This change to national policy responded to changes in the sources of immigration since 1924. The majority of applicants for immigration visas now came from Asia and Central and South America rather than Europe. The preference system continued to limit the number of immigration visas available each year, however, and Congress still responded to refugees with special legislation, as it did for Indochinese refugees in the 1970's. Not until the Refugee Act of 1980 did the United States have a general policy governing the admission of refugees.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service's functional responsibilities expanded again under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The Act charged the INS with enforcing sanctions against United States employers who hired undocumented aliens. Carrying out employer sanction duties involved investigating, prosecuting, and levying fines against corporate and individual employers, as well as deportation of those found to be working illegally. The 1986 law also allowed certain aliens illegally in the U.S. to legalize their residence here, and INS administered that legalization program.

Changes in world migration patterns, the modern ease of international travel for business or pleasure, and a growing emphasis on controlling illegal immigration all fostered growth of the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the late twentieth century. The INS workforce, which numbered approximately 8,000 from World War II through the late 1970's, today includes more than 30,000 employees in thirty-six INS districts at home and abroad. The original force of Immigrant Inspectors is now a corps of officers specializing in inspection, examination, adjudication, legalization, investigation, patrol, and refugee and asylum issues. As it enters a second century, the Immigration and Naturalization Service continues to enforce laws providing for selective immigration and controlled entry of tourists, business travellers, and other temporary visitors. It does so by inspecting and admitting arrivals at land, sea, and air ports of entry, administering benefits such as naturalization and permanent resident status, and apprehending and removing aliens who enter illegally or violate the requirements of their stay.

John Birch Society's Surprisingly Moderate Immigration Views

The New American, which is the John Birch Society's official publication, has published some surprisingly moderate positions on immigration, including illegal immigration.

Immigration Report: Is catering to those in favor of illegal immigration coming to an end?

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. That was in 1982. After decades, are we any closer to a solution to the problem?

John F. McManus, publisher of The New American, reports in his cover story, The Battle Against Illegal Immigration, on the progress of immigration control over the last 20+ years, highlighting what has and has not been accomplished.

Larry Greenley, contributor to The New American, offers real solutions including a model state resolution in his article, How to Fix Illegal Immigration. Both articles are published at TheNewAmerican.com.

The print magazine discusses avoiding extreme solutions in the illegal immigration situation, and three influential black leaders give a candid look at what life is like for America’s black population living at "ground zero" of the illegal immigration crisis. Warren Mass offers a historical perspective with his Immigration as a Win-win Affair, and once again our publisher has the last word in his Unasked Questions Deserve Answers article covering the presidential election.

There is also a link to a .pdf file of the magazine's Merger in the Making issue, which can be downloaded and shared with others at no cost, about the North American Union.

Politicians Renege on Promise to Secure the U.S.-Mexico Border

President Bush's proposed budget will reduce border security funding by 33 percent, according to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

The Minutemen have organized a letter-writing campaign to tell Congress to fund the completion of a fence along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, "using $3 billion (Bush) promised in October."

Open Borders advocates are dismissive of the idea of a fence at the border.

"Show me a 50-foot fence," Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is said to have quipped, "and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder."

Even the Minutemen advocate stationing 20,000 National Guardsmen along the fenceline to enforce the border.

My Inaugural Post

This is probably a blog that's going to get me into some trouble, and maybe lose some friends. Immigration is a touchy subject, and I don't intend to steer clear of the controversies, or even the polemics. Yet few subjects cry out with more urgency for clear-sighted policy analysis and stubborn integrity. So we're probably going to rip loose a scab or two.

In my inaugural post, I want to refer you to The Hightower Lowdown, a populist newsletter edited by Phillip Frazier and the ever-quotable Jim Hightower, that attempts in its January 2008 issue (vol.10, no.1) to synthesize a middle-of-the-road position on illegal immigration.

Hightower is of course a ferocious partisan, so he prefaces his serious propositions with the standard accusations of xenophobia, racism and demagoguery that are de rigueur among Open Borders activists. But Lowdown goes on to cite polls that show "deep and genuine alarm about (illegal immigration) among the nonxenophobic, nonracist American majority."

"In particular, workaday families are fearful about what an endless flow of low-wage workers portends for their economic future - and they're not getting good answers from Republicans, Democrats, corporate leaders or the media."

Hightower broadens the discussion beyond mere enforcement of immigration laws. The title of his article, "Immigrants Come Here Because Globalization Took Their Jobs Back There," bears the subtitle "Stop Blaming Workers - the Bosses Made This Mess."

Even if there were no illegal workers in our country, Hightower writes, our economy would remain fragile. It was powerful, well-connected corporate interests, not powerless immigrants, who downsized and offshored our middle-class jobs, rewrote bankruptcy laws to let corporations break their union contracts, turned the National Labor Relations Board into a partisan of employers against workers, reclassified millions of employees as independent contractors to deprive them of labor rights and fringe benefits, and turned a blind eye to the re-emergence of sweatshops and child labor.

"Immigration reform cannot be separated from labor and trade reform," Hightower writes. He coins a new term, "NAFTAfication," to describe what he thinks is causing the rush of illegal immigration, mostly from Mexico.

"We must stop the exploitative NAFTAfication of such aspiring economies as Mexico and instead devolop genuine grassroots investment policies that give people there an ability to remain in their homeland. Then we must enforce our own labor laws - from wage and hour rules to the NLRB."

The Lowdown says if we would "go right at the corporate kleptocracy that now owns Washington and controls the debate," we could eliminate the need to migrate from Mexico and revive the American middle class. This, Hightower writes, is "an immigration policy that will work."

I use the Hightower letter as the starting point for this blog, not because I believe it sets out a realistic program, but because I think it assembles all the elements of the illegal immigration debate. The idea that we can eliminate unskilled Mexican and Central American workers' economic motive to escape their homelands is sheer pie in the sky. Mexico is a sovereign country, and its ruling elites will never consent to the sort of intervencion that that would require.

On the contrary, they seem to feel entitled to intervene in our country, negotiating immigration policy with municipal governments and police organizations, contrary to Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution, objecting - despite Article IV, Section 4 - to our construction of fences on our sovereign territory, issuing identification documents from their consulates in U.S. cities, and supervising the labor laws and enforcement of criminal laws against their citizens residing here. We are confronted with an extraterritorialism that no self-respecting republic can accept.

And so we must learn to respect one another again, beginning with one another's sovereignty. In the words of the poet's stolid Vermonter neighbor, "good fences make good neighbors."

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again
We keep the wall between us as we go
To each the boulders that have fallen to each
Mending Wall, Robert Frost

Yet Hightower's class consciousness should not be dismissed. It's true, as he writes, that powerless Mexican immigrants did not engineer our government's disloyalty to the middle class or its indifference to upward mobility.

It is urgent that we fix the illegal immigration problem, but Hightower is right that even if we fix it, it's still going to be a tough, often unfair labor system. U.S. workers shouldn't delude themselves that their future is secure once they put the illegal aliens to flight. If they don't follow up by holding North American elites' feet to the fire on labor reform and trade reform, making the illegals go home will just be an exercise in cruelty.