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Our position on Illegal Immigration

by John F. Tamburo, Editor in Chief, Publisher
Originally Posted: 1/25/2006 3:56:00 PM
Last Updated: 1/25/2006 3:57:02 PM

Illegal immigration is a sensitive issue.  Why?  Because the Left courts the vote of illegals (in and of itself an oxymoron) and the citizen families of illegals by casting a tough stance on illegal immigration as an issue of racism.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Illegal immigration is defined as (i) entering the country in a manner contrary to United States Law; or (ii) a legal entrant staying in the country longer than permitted by the permission that made the entry legal.  The vast majority of illegal immigrants enter unlawfully across the Mexican border.  Our position is that the law that prohibits illegal immigration is good law, the law must be fully enforced, neither the law nor its enforcement are racist and our country will be far better off by carefully and fully enforcing the laws.

The Need for Immigration Controls

Simply put, we need immigration controls to preserve our national security.  Right now, it is a simple matter for a terrorist to strap a tactical nuclear warhead to his or her back, stroll across the border into California, and trek undetected to Los Angeles or San Francisco and set off the bomb.  We need to control our borders in order to know who is in the country among non-citizens, and regulate their movements.  Not all civil rights extend to all persons.  Citizens possess the right to vote and to move about with zero governmental intrusion.  Aliens have the civil rights that protect them from unjust prosecution, but they also have a responsibility to account for their whereabouts in order to ensure that they comply with the permission by which they are here.

Our single most dangerous vulnerability is our borders.  We have laws that are ignored wholesale by illegal immigrants, those who hire them, and recently, the governments who help them figure out how to sneak into the United States of America.  It is those governments, even more than the Left, that scream "racism" when we suggest that we fortify the borders.  The racism charge is a complete crock.  People are breaking our laws.  When they get here, the leftists in the courts assign them more and more rights, such as welfare payments, public education, and now, they’re trying to issue them driver’s licenses.  This last thing is ominous.  Consider the "motor voter" laws.  Many illegals will end up registered to vote if this ludicrous and peccant proposal becomes law.

Conservativity supports the vigorous enforcement of our immigration laws, the ejection of every illegal immigrant from the United States of America, and the fortification of our borders.  Conservativity further supports and urges the adoption of substantial economic sanctions and tariffs against any country that attempts to assist anyone in gaining illegal entry into the United States of America.  Conservativity further supports fortifying the borders of the United States of America, specifically, we need to install a 100-foot tall concrete wall complete with guard towers, video cameras, digging sensors, and anti-scaling measures along the entire Southern border of the United States of America.  If the same problem manifests itself elsewhere, we support the same wall at the Northern border.

Immigration Laws and Racism

The notion that the immigration laws are racist is preposterous.  Does anyone really think that we want to restrict immigration to those who do so legally in order to discriminate against Hispanic people?  The use of illegal immigrants to do work in America is racist.  Illegals are abused, ripped off and underpaid.  Before one can even consider the adverse economic impact of schooling, treating and supporting illegals, one must consider that those illegals are mistreated because of their illegal status.  By compelling these people to leave the country, we are saving them from those who prey upon them.

The fact that these illegal immigrants are victimized on a daily basis inevitably leads to crime.  Much of the victimization is in and of itself criminal:  Extortion, payment of illegal subminimum wages, and other offenses pop to mind.  The victimization inevitably leads some of these illegals to resort to violent crime themselves.  This is a burden on our law enforcement community.  Additionally, the subminimum wages leads to illegals seeking, and thanks to the leftist courts, receiving, welfare payments.  The illegal children of illegals are required by court order to be schooled in our public schools.  Who pays for that?  Most illegals pay no income tax at all, again a crime.  The laws that require that employers verify the legality of all their workers seem to be useless.  The end result is a horrendous strain on the budgets of border states, especially California.  This budgetary strain dwarfs any economic beneift realized by the higher marginal profits of those who use illegals to work for them, and certainly outweighs any tax revenues they may realize from those higher marginal profits.

Conservativity believes that the immigration laws are Constitutional, and have the anti-racist intent of protecting people from being exploited as illegal aliens.  We further believe that, if these laws were fully enforced, the end result would be anti-racist.

Guest Worker Programs

One of the after-effects of tough immigration law enforcement will be a lack of labor in some menial jobs.  President Bush proposes a guest worker program, where former illegals are given the legal right to work for a limited time, and the opportunity to become citizens.  This has gut appeal.  However, I personally don’t want to do anything that would let and illegal think that his or her lawbreaking generated a reward.  So I would say that any illegal who wants to be in the program has to exit the United States for at least six months and then apply to be a guest worker.  Guest workers must also be paid at least a minimum wage (I see no reason why it has to be the federal minimum wage), and would by law be ineligible for welfare, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, unless he or she later becomes a citizen.  The lack of a Social Security / Medicare employer contribution tax will help the margins of those who employed illegals before.

Some will argue that guest workers will displace Americans who have Social Security benefits and the incumbent employer obligations.  This may be easily alleviated by limiting the guest worker program Social Security exemption to jobs that pay no more than $2 per hour above the federal minimum wage.  That way, you won’t have "guest workers" at $500,000 jobs.

And finally, any guest worker program must involve a background check that prohibits any criminals or terrorist threats from entering the country in this manner.

Conservativity has no objection to any guest worker program, as long as all of the border protection measures are in place, the guest workers are required not to be illegal for six months prior to entering the program and the guests are screened and determined to be nonthreatening to our security.