A Realistic View of the Immigration Issue
I like many other Americans am extremely concerned about the illegal immigration issue that we are facing (or should I say not willing to realistically face) as a nation. As I have attended meetings on the issue, listened to talk radio, read news and commentary articles on the subject, and discussed this issue with associates, it appears that we are trying to put a band-aid on a broken leg. All we will accomplish is to feel good that we are doing something about the problem rather than going to the source of the problem, examining the components of the problem’s cause, and creating a real solution to the problem.
In my opinion, for the most part (either through ignorance or lack of intellectual honesty), we are attempting to treat the symptoms rather than the real disease. The time has come for a frank and candid discussion of the issue without removing any of the facts from the discussion table for any reason. I realize that as we get down to the meat of the subject at hand someone’s sacred cow is going to be slaughtered. I expect that in this case nearly every reader will have an excuse to be offended. My only hope is that the statesmen, thinkers, and patriots of this nation will rise above any potential offense and consider the concepts and thoughts presented here. Hopefully rather than venom and hate, additional ideas and better implementations than those I suggest will be generated to provide a comprehensive and lasting solution to the problem we face.
Don’t get me wrong. When I say we are going about this issue in the wrong way, I do not mean that we should open up our borders and forget about trying to keep illegal immigrants out. Rather I am saying that we should increase our border protection, but in addition we need to address the other problems that we the American people and our government have created that make illegal immigration worth the risk. But even more important than that, we need to strengthen the understanding and resolve of patriotic Americans throughout the nation to stand upon correct principles and take responsibility for our lives and for the trust that we have delegated to our representatives in government.
With that said let us begin to barbeque those sacred cows!
When I hear people talk about the problems associated with immigration and more particularly illegal immigration, the first thing I hear is that the illegals are taking away our rights. First to be mentioned is usually jobs, followed by health care, then by education, then housing. When I hear these complaints I am convinced that we do indeed have a problem of gigantic proportions. The problem I refer to however is not jobs, health care, education, or housing. The real problem is that the average American hasn’t the slightest idea what a right is! That is the real difference between the people of our time and the founders of the great nation which affords us citizenship and opportunity. They knew what a right was, where it came from, and how to protect it. We are more interested in protecting a lifestyle from someone else who wants a part of it.
When writing the words of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson incorporated the concepts of other great thinkers of the times when he wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” In most of the explanations of God-given rights given by the philosophical predecessors and contemporaries of Jefferson the three basic rights were reduced to life, liberty, and property. Without these three nothing else matters. As stated in our Declaration of Independence all men were created by God and we should be able to live and act according to our free will and maintain our possessions as we desire. It further goes on to state that Governments, not just the United States government are instituted to secure these rights.
Obviously if I as an individual have certain rights, other individuals have those same rights too. There are times, however, when my particular desires might stand in the way of another person’s exercise of his rights. That can be a problem. But even more of a problem is where I as an individual or a particular group of individuals tries to exercise “rights” that are not really rights at all. This is where we really get into trouble. That is the case with the four false rights listed above. Let us examine them one by one.
Jobs:
By job we mean employment, or exerting our physical labor or mental capacity to earn money (and other benefits). In brief we provide some kind of work (service) to produce or market something in exchange for this world’s goods. If this were a God-given right then we would have to conclude that we are bound to live in one class or another and that we could not progress from class to class. That is to say that the worker class was created by God and the owner (employer) class was also created by God–that they are forever separate and that the worker cannot become anything but a worker. To the contrary. The revealed word of God tells us that “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground…” (Genesis 3:19). But God also gave the resources of the earth to Adam and Eve and to their posterity including each of us. We each have the opportunity to work and to struggle, to save and to spend, to secure our present status, and to build for ourselves a future.
The scripture also says that God sent Adam to till the ground. Does that mean that we must all be farmers? I do not interpret it that way. That is however the way things started out. Adam was able to use his mind and his toil, time, and effort to build a life for himself and his family. You might say he was self-employed. I am not saying that we all need to be self-employed either. I am saying that unless you are self-employed, the job is not the property of the employee but rather the employer. How then can you have a right to something you don’t own? One of the basic concepts of the right of property is that you can use, manage, acquire, or dispose of your property at your will. Shouldn’t the employer have the right to hire the employee of his choice to fill the position that he creates?
Health Care:
The expression “Health Care” used to mean the availability of Doctors, Nurses, Dentists and other practitioners. It has now come to mean paying for these services. With the rising cost of staying alive and healthy, paying for health care has become more and more unaffordable. As more and more of this burden is being taken care of by insurance, premiums have skyrocketed. We already have pushed this responsibility on to employers which increases the cost of doing business and therefore the price of American goods and services. Now we take the next logical (?) step–make health care a right. Now before you say that I am anti-insurance, I spent my career as an employee of a health insurance company (in the computer department, however). I believe that insurance, especially health insurance, is one of the best ideas that has come to mankind. No rational being, however, can call it a God-given right. It is just a great idea for spreading risk.
Education:
The word education seems like it ought to mean learning something. I don’t know why but the irrational thought just keeps coming back to me. If we were to apply my loose definition of learning as a God-given right I would probably cede the point. God did send us here to the Earth to learn and to grow intellectually as well as physically. He also provided us with parents as the original teachers responsible to teach us values and direction. However, if we look at the “services” of a system which has demonstrated its opposition to references to God or His values, stands as an opposition to parental involvement or control of what their children are being taught (or should I say indoctrinated), gets involved in so many things where it has no business or authority, and fails to teach our children how to think, it cannot possibly be a God-given right. It appears more like the devil’s workshop.
It appears that all that is important is that our children spend so many days per year in school. After a certain number of years of appearing on the scene and allowing themselves to be indoctrinated, a degree is issued and the “graduate” either goes to college for more of the same or goes out to get that other “right” we talked about – a job (and the associated benefits).
Before you totally dismiss me as crazy or at least irrelevant, let me share with you a few words that I received today in a letter from my daughter who is attending her first semester in college. I hasten to add that this letter was neither solicited nor expected. I don’t think she knows that I am writing this article or any article about anything. That part is total coincidence. I fairness I must confess that I have told her to challenge her professors if she hears something that she feels is being taught wrong. The letter was referring to a situation in her Political Science class.
Portions of the letter follow:
“… last class he talked about how in Thomas Jefferson’s view having ‘In God We Trust’ on the dollar bill would be unconstitutional, how he wanted a strict wall of separation between church and state.”
“So today I asked if he thought Thomas Jefferson would rule his declaration of independence unconstitutional. He just said Thomas Jefferson’s original declaration said nothing of God, and that the declaration wasn’t a government statement (the government was formed later). I said there is a difference between acknowledging God and ‘establishing religion’. His reply was ‘my point is it doesn’t really matter what I think or what you think, or what Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, or George Washington thought, all that matters is the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution’. ”
“There is no goal of finding truth and right in his class, he just explains why things are the way they are. …”
As you can see, the concept of looking at the views of ancient philosophers, modern philosophers, contemporary thinkers, scholars, and leaders, and projecting our own views to see how they compare to the thinking of others in order to discover truth and correctness (sorry, I am using the word “right” in another context now), is apparently not part of our “higher” education nowadays.
Housing:
When we speak of housing as a right we usually mean affordable housing. Nearly everyone can afford some kind of housing. What was considered ample for our ancestors is now considered inadequate even for those who have no means to pay for it. If God had meant for us to have housing as an inherent right we would have been created as snails or turtles. Not only was Adam kicked out of the garden of Eden without a deed to a condo on the beech, he got his first set of clothes near the time that he was evicted!
There is no way that we can establish a right to housing which is a form of property, without trampling upon the right of the owner of the land and/or structure that compose that housing. Everybody understands that when you talk about it in generalities, but when you combine it with the specifics that we encounter from day to day it starts to seem less clear.
If you own a piece of land and desire to build a house upon that land, you should by the principle of the right of property be able to do so. If you can afford to buy the materials to construct the home as you go, that too should be your privilege. If you have not the money but can find a suitable creditor to lend you the money you are still exercising your property rights. If at some time you are not able or willing to pay the mortgage according to your contract, the house then belongs to your creditor. It now falls upon him as the new owner to exercise his property right.
If you choose to rent housing to someone else that is your privilege according to your right to property. Since you own the property and are taking the risk that your tenant will pay the rent and respect the condition of the housing, you should have no restriction as to who you will or will not rent to or what you will charge as rent. This is all a part of the right to property. If property rights as all other God-given rights are unalienable, that should be the end of the discussion, except for an appeal to the justice system for a determination of property ownership.
Free Market System:
Now that the perceived “rights” of jobs, health care, education, and housing have been dismissed as not really rights at all, we next ask why we allow these illegals to take away the good things that the free market system of the United States has been able to provide. At least we are getting closer now by calling them good things instead of rights. But let’s chase it down a little more. If we asked the question differently it would get us even closer to a significant answer. If the question is do we have a free market system in the United States, the correct answer is that we used to – but now we have a manipulated market system and have replaced much of our free market system with Marxist socialism. The free market system will always out produce a socialistic system but socialist style benefits easily out consume any system–free market or socialist. With illegal immigrants and our entitlement attitude we get the worst of both worlds. We can’t produce goods and services while providing reasonable wages and benefits to our employees and compete with those who don’t provide reasonable wages and benefits to their employees.
By our false sense of rights and our introduction of Marxist methods into our economic system we have made an ever growing non-producing segment of our population into a class of people that are totally dependent upon society. We are also creating and maintaining a class of people that are largely dependent upon society. That is to say that they are unprepared to produce at the level they consume. I am talking about the born in America, educated in America, fed, clothed and entertained in America group of American citizens that we call our unskilled laborers. This is only complicated by the hoards of illegals who are also taking advantage of our social give-a-ways.
The Problem:
This gets down to the point that I have been trying to make all along – that although immigration and particularly illegal immigration is definitely a problem, it is only a part of a bigger problem that plagues our nation. The bigger problem is that we have allowed a systematic series of government intervention and usurpation to take over our lives. Because of this we have allowed a false sense of rights as demonstrated above to supplant the sense of individual responsibility that was the basis for the foundation of the Nation. Unless this more encompassing problem is addressed no adequate solution to the specific issue of illegal immigration is possible.
The Solution:
Now that the problem is defined in a concise manner the solution is easily stated – teach our nation a correct sense of rights and responsibility. It is not that easy to do however. First of all you can’t teach a nation anything. You can only teach each individual. Secondly in order to teach an individual that is already functioning according to incorrect principles it requires an unlearning function. Assuming that we can convince a person of the error of former beliefs by teaching correct principles, we first have to figure out what a correct sense of rights and responsibility is. That seems overwhelming but it really doesn’t have to be. Our founding fathers already did the research; let’s take a look at their notes. The most important document is the Constitution as originally written. It is the product of their research. Also we should consider the thoughts and writings that led them to the conclusions that they made.
Government and Individual Responsibility:
When we think of government we think of an exterior force centered in Washington D.C. which makes and enforces decisions that we call laws. Federal laws and regulations affect almost every thing that we do. When the founders created the federal government by writing the constitution, they intended to give only limited and specified powers to that government. The majority of the governing was to be done by individuals, families and local governments. Self-government was the most important part of the designed system. We need to get back to that kind of governing.
The education of our children was never meant to be the prerogative or responsibility of the federal government. This is a family responsibility as aided by churches and local government. Education needs to return to local and parental control. All federal education programs, funding, bureaucracies, and control must be abolished. Children must be taught how to think. The goal of each individual should be to become indispensable in his profession. The idea of unskilled labor as a permanent place in society for large masses of adults should be eliminated. The American worker must think of an entry level job as just that. Just because one is unskilled today is no excuse for being unskilled tomorrow. The goal of each family and child needs to be this type of incentive. Self reliance will bring true self esteem and will lead to productive individuals.
The evils of the dole must be abolished. Charity is the prerogative of the churches not the government. By design, coercive power is given to the government. This allows the government to punish criminals, act for the general welfare of the nation such as raising an army, and to tax for the legitimate functions of government. Our founders did not want the churches to have that kind of power and did not want the government exercising power for one church or against another. Churches were to get their money by voluntary contributions. Money freely given to a church or other charitable organization may freely be distributed to needy individuals as the charity wishes.
Parental responsibility must be taught. I would even support measures to this extent–you make a baby you are responsible for that person for life. Either teach that person to be independent or he is dependent on you for life–not on the government.
Taxation is only to be done for the legitimate functions of government. The Marxist style income tax is unconstitutional according to the original constitution. The 16th amendment must be repealed. Income tax gives a financial advantage to those who break the law by entering the country illegally and those who hire them and do not report their wages. The government has no valid reason to even know how much money a person makes.
Someone might now say, “All of these principles are good but do not directly relate to the immigration issue.” To this I must agree. But I am sure that the reader can see that we would build a much more competitive American work force by doing these things. Doesn’t much if not most our argument against immigration really boil down to this: we are not willing to compete with people whose lifestyle demands less money than we are accustomed to, or even willing to accept.
The specifics:
I see no way that we can refuse legal immigrants and stand with a clear conscience before God. We should however make reasonable requirements for entry into this country, even though some requirements might be austere.
English is the language of the nation. All who wish to come here must have a working knowledge of English. We do not do immigrants a favor by not insisting that they learn English and become part of American culture. All government efforts to write things in foreign languages must be replaced by efforts to educate immigrants to speak English.
We must insist that immigrants not bring diseases that we have worked hard to eradicate into the country.
We must make sure that someone other than the government will be financially responsible for the immigrant. This is not a bad idea for our citizens either.
Children born in the United States to illegal immigrants should not be given legal status.
Perhaps a national ID would be appropriate. Not one containing financial or personal data. Not one that ties into the social security system. The national ID would only indicate citizenship status.
If we were to tax consumption instead of income, then those who are here illegally would pay taxes as they consume resources. I would propose that there be no exemptions for churches or even government handouts. The tax would be the same no matter who purchases it, or how or why the commodity is consumed. In addition I would put a tariff on imported goods and services. The import tax would help level the playing field for goods and services that are out-sourced to other nations. I would make employers that hire illegals subject to the same import taxes.
If we were to implement only one of the above suggestions, I believe the last one would do the most to solve the problems that we face by illegal immigration.