Resolving the Immigration Issue
Answer may lie in guest worker program

Illegal immigrants already have privileges, in many cases, of a driver’s license, in-state college tuition (six- to 10-times cheaper than those for out-of-state American citizens), welfare payments, healthcare and home ownership with FHA-HUD-backed loans. Driver’s licenses seem to be the “breeder documents,” giving access to these privileges and others. What’s next?

A willingness to enforce the nation’s immigration laws and provide constitutionally mandated secure borders is “AWOL” for both political parties in Washington and, in many instances, at the state level.

A state-issued driver’s license is the closest thing to a national identification document and is often the key for boarding a plane. Getting a job, renting an apartment, entering a federal building, applying for social services, traveling back and forth from the U.S. to Canada and Mexico, getting a hazardous-materials license, buying a gun and – thanks to the “Motor-Voter Law” – registering to vote.

It is a sad truth that many illegal aliens are doing all those things. All the 9/11 hijackers had one or more state driver’s license, allowing them to board the fatal planes and, before that, to travel undetected in the U.S. while they planned their crimes.

The jumbled mess masquerading as national immigration policy is more than dangerous. Officials say that more than eight million illegal immigrants reside in the U.S. How they can know this is a great mystery, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service has had no way of tracking immigrants who overstay their visas. Further, they don’t have a clue about how many illegal immigrants sneak into the country and buy fraudulent documents to become “legal.” This population constitutes problems far beyond the ability or resolve of the INS to detect.

Those waiting their turn to enter the U.S. legally will soon learn the folly of their ways if those who busted across the borders illegally are allowed to become “documented” (legal). The open borders advocates call illegal immigrants “undocumented” – a word less harsh but very misleading. Lately, they erased any distinction between legal and illegal immigrants by referring to them both as simply “immigrants.”

An answer to any labor shortage is a guest worker program, not a helter-skelter “swarm the border” policy. Multiculturalism, political correctness and vote pandering have clearly been trumping national security.

On the multiculturalism front, the new Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services tried to pull a fast stunt to celebrate Constitution Day last September 17, by arbitrarily changing the oath of citizenship that new citizens must take when naturalized. The Bureau planned to make it effective immediately, using it at an immigration swearing-in ceremony and publishing it in the Federal Register the same day. This mischief was discovered by the American Legion, Tennessee’s U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, who vigorously denounced it. The bureaucrats have backed down for now. Hopefully, this will give them a little time now to do their job of keeping terrorists and hatemongers from other cultures out of our country.

The current oath renounces and abjures “all allegiance to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty.” The proposed outrageous revision substituted merely “any foreign state.” Osama bin Laden is not a “foreign state” but certainly is covered by “foreign prince, potentate, or sovereignty.” The current oath also states: “I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law.” The freewheeling bureaucrats omitted “bear arms” and gave options of defending the U.S. “either by military, noncombatant or civilian service.” Is it any surprise the American Legion objected?

Most Americans, young and old, lame and fit, accept being hassled while boarding airplanes in the interest of national security. But we would all feel better about security if we knew our government was on the job, protecting our borders and dealing with lawbreakers who brazenly bust their way into our country. Are we really competent to be a nation if we lack the will to protect our borders?

Pat Freibert is a former Kentucky state representative from Lexington
editorial@lanereport.com

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