That, of course, is Roy Beck, the founder and executive director of Numbers USA, which-as I’m sure my readers are well aware-is the single most effective grassroots organization lobbying on Capitol Hill for immigration enforcement. I had the pleasure of listening to a fascinating address he delivered at the Penn Club in Manhattan last month, the penultimate in a series of lectures sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies-events that attempt to cultivate journalists, writers, and intellects living and working in New York who share a common interest in the subject of immigration.

Mr. Beck’s speech focused largely upon the Sisyphean task he and his colleagues face in persuading resistant lawmakers to address our sieve-like system of federal immigration enforcement. Numbers USA was  created from the ashes of the Jordan Commission, whose recommendations-including that the number of immigrants return to its historical norm of 200 to 250,000 per year-were wholly ignored by both Congress and the president at the time, William Jefferson Clinton. The testimony of Congresswoman Jordan is worth revisiting, for it illustrates how far short the federal government has fallen of the goals laid out by  the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. Contrast how she frames her first point:

Our goal should be zero apprehensions-not because aliens get past the Border Patrol but because they are prevented entry in the first place.

With the wholesale abandonment of enforcement at the border by the current administration, which coincides with ICE’s administrative amnesty for over 300,000 illegal aliens. One of the primary objectives of the Jordan Commission is as elusive as it was when first enunciated  nearly two decades ago.

The second plank in the commission’s recommendations, i.e. removing the jobs magnet that attracts so many illegal aliens-and which allows them to remain in this country indefinitely-is still relevant, however. In fact, the movement to eliminate this spigot of illegal immigration through E-Verify formed the basis of Roy Beck’s talk, which focused mainly on his organization’s attempts to move HR 2885, the Legal Workforce Act, through Congress and onto the President’s desk.

Although a contentious issue even among allies-mainly because it preempts statewide immigration crackdowns-the move to implement mandatory E-Verify on a federal level is the only enforcement-specific bill that has a realistic shot at being passed before the end of this session of Congress. That’s why Roy Beck chose this subject as his platform for his speech before the Penn Club. As someone who works Capitol Hill on a daily basis trying to impart patriotic Americans’ point of view to member of Congress, he is in the ideal position to see how immigration law is made, or in the case of E-Verify, thwarted.

The takeaway from his speech, unfortunately, is that the change in House leadership from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner last year has been, if anything, a net negative as it concerns advancing legislation like E-Verify. The new Speaker has done everything in his capacity to see that enforcement measures die in committee, mirroring the open borders dogmatism of his predecessor. While his lieutenants, in this case Chairman Fred Upton of the Ways & Means Committee, obstruct the implementation of employer verification on parochial grounds, i.e. it infringes upon his committee’s jurisdiction over Social Security, Boehner’s opposition is rooted in ideology.

As hard as it is to believe that someone as politically calculating as Boehner could hold any deep philosophical convictions, his hostility to employer verification and enforcement is deeply ingrained. In fact, this longstanding opposition has been noted by many observers-not least by Numbers USA itself-and his superficial support for employer sanctions was merely a pretext to ingratiate himself with skeptical conservatives before attaining power. The remarkable aspect of his stance though is that he maintains it in spite of  Chamber of Commerce support  for E-Verify, a political breakthrough that Roy Beck  admitted would have been unthinkable in 2010.

Numbers USA has conducted polls that demonstrate a solid majority among all ethnic groups and political affiliations back E-Verify-most demographics supporting the measure in excess of seventy percent-but the political appeal of immigration enforcement among the general public has never been a strong selling point among GOP power-brokers. However, a creature of the Chamber of Commerce-which even  Boehner’s admirers would probably admit is a fair description of the current Speaker of the House-doggedly opposing a bill on which the Chamber has signed off demonstrates how committed he and his deputies are to preserving the status quo, i.e.  prolonged unemployment for millions of Americans and an endless stream of unskilled, cheap labor. Two problems that states which take this problem seriously don’t seem to be experiencing.

How, then, do Americans who care about this issue passionately change things? If the leader of a party that ostensibly cares about illegal immigration-or at least makes a pretense of caring during periodic election cycles-won’t do anything to advance a bill that has nearly universal support-even, rhetorically at least, from President Obama-what alternative remains? One of the bright spots of Beck’s talk was his insistence that grassroots citizen activism does have a tangible impact within the Republican Caucus, even at the leadership level.

Although it might not seem like it from public pronouncements, the faxes, e-mails, phone calls and letters sent to Republican congressmen-and to a lesser extent, responsive Democratic congressmen-exert pressure upon them to hold the line, which is why we were able to defeat the Dream Act when it came up for a vote during Harry Reid’s lame duck session of Congress in 2010. However, even Republican members with solid credentials on immigration enforcement are wavering on this issue-as are those GOPers with more opportunistic stances on immigration-so pressure must be constantly applied, even in those cases where you might not think it necessary.

I’m convinced that the fundamental lesson to be gleaned from the experience of Roy Beck and Numbers USA is that the mission of defending America is ongoing and requires extreme vigilance; an anecdote Beck recounted in which Frank Sharry lamented what seemed like the imminent passage of E-Verify during a forum in which they both participated is illustrative in this regard. The forces supporting unfettered immigration and defiance of the law never relent, even after repeated rebukes, because they realize that there is an extensive, well-funded lobby-furnished with copy by almost the entire news media-ready to push on a partially open door-in the form of Congress and this administration-in order to see their agenda enacted.

We have neither the seemingly endless coffers nor the pliant apparatchiks placed throughout media circles enjoyed by our opponents. On the other hand, we do have something that open borders advocates can not lay claim to. Namely, the enthusiastic support of the American public. We also have cadres of citizen activists in the truest sense of the phrase; these are people who are not rewarded with lavish endowments from the Ford Foundation, but rather seek only to protect the lives and careers of their fellow Americans.

This is why Numbers USA serves such a vital function to the immigration enforcement and reform movement. It amplifies our voice and pipes it into the ears of lawmakers who customarily refuse to hear anything that contradicts their shared assumptions about immigration. As Mark Krikorian said in his introductory remarks, while the Center for Immigration Studies has immeasurable work as the think tank of immigration realists, without Numbers USA we would be lost as a country. That’s why I urge all of you to enlist in the struggle and support the work of Roy Beck and his colleagues.

You can start by visiting the action center on their official website, where you’ll be able to reach out to lawmakers-including your own congressmen and senators-who are reluctant warriors-or in some cases, opponents-in this battle. Numbers USA does yeoman’s work, but it can’t do its job without the assistance of thousands of ordinary American citizens fed up with how Washington D.C. works.

That’s why I’m pleased to highlight an upcoming job fair for veterans who are seeking gainful employment now that their service has been completed. Hiring Our Heroes will be holding events in New York City, Chicago, and Fort Hood, Texas-the last specifically for military spouses-this coming week. In addition to a career workshop that will take place tomorrow at 30 Rockefeller Center, a large job fair will be held in the three cities above on March 28th. I urge anyone who is a veteran, on active duty but whose deployment is expiring, or who knows anyone in the Armed Forces looking to reenter the civilian workforce to spread the word about this terrific opportunity.

One of the most persistent divides between traditional conservatives and their libertarian/anarcho-capitalist counterparts involves a fundamental philosophical disagreement about immigration. While most conservatives view immigration primarily through the lens of preserving American culture by only accepting those immigrants who are assimilable and will tangibly benefit our society in the future, a view expressed repeatedly during debates over illegal immigration in this country, many libertarians view the subject in an altogether different light. For them, the question is not so much whether a particular cohort of immigrants will be an asset to the United States but whether we have any right to prevent them from settling in this country in the first place, which many answer in the negative.

Libertarians extol the primacy of individual rights, which in this case entails the right to emigrate from your country of birth whenever you so desire-something that I don’t think any conservative would take issue with-and to immigrate to whatever country you want to live and/or work in for an extended period of time, which is where the divide between the two camps emerges. Libertarians view the issue as one of freedom of association-and by extension, contract-wherein willing employers, such as large agribusinesses and meatpacking plants, seek out willing employees coming from nations with under-performing economies that can’t meet the personal and financial needs of their citizens. They believe that the nexus between trade and unfettered migration is inextricable, if not completely self-evident, and that the two can not be severed if a nation hopes to grow its economy. While this may well be true as a matter of law, there are numerous holes in this thesis intellectually, which opponents of open borders-even anarcho-capitalists such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe-have exposed through well-researched arguments of their own.

However, underlying the debate over whether immigration and settlement is a natural right is the assumption that all libertarians/anarcho-capitalists agree on the immigration issue, which is not as much of  a given as it would seem on the surface of things. One of the things that I’ve attempted to do with American Rattlesnake is debunk commonly held assumptions about immigration issues, and the assumption that libertarians all subscribe to Gary Johnson’s point of view is one that needs to be reexamined. There are many libertarians and  anarcho-capitalists who recognize both the practical difficulties and existential problems inherent in society based upon unfettered immigration, especially one with the vast social welfare apparatus of the United States. One of the chief exponents of the view that welfare programs need to be curtailed in order to solve the immigration problem is Gary Johnson’s opponent in the Republican presidential race, Congressman Ron Paul. Paul has repeatedly emphasized the need to do away with the generous, taxpayer subsidized social welfare programs that-while not serving as the initial magnet-provide incentives for illegal aliens to extend their stay in this country indefinitely. The population density of legal immigrants is also heavily correlated with the availability of welfare benefits. Even acclaimed economist Milton Friedman, who held a rather benign view of immigration in general, emphasized the incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered immigration.

The same opinion is held by many libertarians today, including self-professed constitutionalist Andrew Napolitano, who views Arizona’s landmark immigration law primarily through the prism of the Constitution’s supremacy clause and potential violations of the 4th Amendment via racial or ethnic profiling by law enforcement officers. I’m not sure that the Constitutional objection to statewide laws is dispositive, because-as Andrew McCarthy has pointed out repeatedly in National Review-there is no precedent for prohibiting states from enforcing laws that are consistent with federal statutes. Furthermore, if we look to the broader issue of legal immigration, there’s nothing to suggest that the men who drafted the United States Constitution supported the sort of unfettered immigration we have endured since passage of the Hart-Celler Act fundamentally altered this nation’s demographic destiny. This is a concept that is seldom grasped by arm-chair commentators on immigration these days, whose default option is to repeat the platitudinous-not to mention, factually incorrect-bromide that we are a “nation of immigrants.” What they neglect to mention is that most this nation’s founding fathers would have been implacably opposed to the present lassez-faire system of immigration, a fact that Thomas Woods-as anti-statist an individual as you’ll find among academics-expertly limns in this Human Events column published during the height of the amnesty debate in Washington D.C.

Yet, even if we were to concede that there’s no firm historical or Constitutional foundation for this nation’s current open borders policies, can it not be argued that there is a compelling moral case for the views espoused by those at the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Cato Institute, Reasonoids, and other trendy, beltway cosmotarians? You would definitely think so if you took their arguments at face value. The notion that we have no moral basis for barring certain immigrants from entry into the United States is certainly widespread in certain libertarian circles, but I don’t believe that makes the idea, ipso facto, libertarian. Julian Simon, in a 1998 essay published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, articulated the perspective felt by many that individual autonomy takes precedence over other “public” goods, including our national borders. In an anarcho-capitalist reality, nation-states would not exist, therefore deciding who should or should not be admitted to your nation would be a moot point.

But while it might seem logical that freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of contract-and at its most essential level, the individual him or herself-are all prioritized over the wishes and feelings of citizens who have a vested interested in preserving the character of their nation, there are those that don’t think these competing values are necessarily mutually exclusive. In a persuasive essay written for Lew Rockwell several years ago, N. Stephan Kinsella made a very compelling argument that while the disposition of property in our society is unjust-insofar as the state has no right to expropriate land that rightfully belongs to individuals-so long as that property is entrusted to the state it has a responsibility to act as caretaker for the rightful owners. In this case, it has the responsibility to prevent the ingress of people that citizens do not want to welcome into their country. While those who are opposed to communitarianism in even its most minimal form might reject Kinsella’s public pool analogy, I think he makes a convincing case that some prophylactic measures need to be enforced to prevent the exploitation of your property-even if it’s already been subjected to theft by the state.

There are many cogent arguments against the current trendy libertarian support for open borders, several of them outlined by the first presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, John Hospers, in paper published by the Journal of Libertarian Studies over a decade ago entitled A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders. The concluding paragraph of the essay is especially perceptive in its analysis of the problem:

Occasionally, we hear the phrase “limousine liberals” used to describe the members of the liberal establishment who send their children to expensive private schools while consigning all the others to the public school system, which educates these children so little that by the time they finish the eighth grade they can barely read and write or do simple arithmetic, or make correct change in a drug store. It would be equally appropriate, however, to describe some other people as ”limousine libertarians” —those who pontificate about open borders while remaining detached from the scenes that their “idealism” generates. They would do well to reflect, in their ivory towers, on whether the freedom they profess for those who are immigrants, if it occurs at all, is to be brought about at the expense of the freedom of those who are not.

This passage describes, in a nut shell, the quintessence of cosmotarianism, and why most Americans-and even some in the libertarian movement-continue to reject it. I could post the most meticulously researched George Borjas journal article, the most statistically devastating backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, or the most irrefutable essay by Mahattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald. And although all of these sources are invaluable in the fight to define the terms of this debate, they wouldn’t hold a candle to the self-evident fact that none of the greatest exponents and defenders of open borders, be it Tamar Jacoby, or Jason Riley, or Nick Gillespie, abide by their own exhortations. None of these individuals partake of the glorious mosaic which their unyielding ideology has done so much to create.

You won’t find many Reason Magazine editors or Cato Institute scholars living in Bergenfield, New Jersey, Maywood, California, or Eagle Pass, Texas. Why, you might ask? Because they would rather pass off the tremendous costs of their bankrupt philosophy onto ordinary Americans than to admit that they might just be wrong. These people are insulated from unfettered immigration’s worst effects, including chronic unemployment, violent crime, and environmentally devasting pollution from Arizona to California and throughout the country. They have the luxury of ignoring the impact of this country’s changing demographic profile while promoting the patently absurd notion that our open borders are a boon to all but the small percentage of high school dropouts.

What’s more, they make the equally ludicrous assertion-outlined in the Caplan speech above-that importing millions of unskilled, uneducated immigrants, who will be dependent upon costly government services, from quasi-socialist nations will expand this nation’s economic liberty. Forget the fact that we now enjoy less economic freedom than our northern neighbors, a development concurrent with the greatest expansion of immigration in this country’s history, the entire premise underlying this concept is flawed. You do not build a prosperous, 21st century, post-industrial society around foreigners from countries with low human capital. And the amount of time, energy and economic resources that need to be shifted in order to improve the educational prospects and earning potential of these immigrants, e.g. the billions funneled into ESL programs each year, is so cost prohibitive that it outweighs whatever benefits can be gleaned from such an arrangement.

Another seeming inconsistency in the archetypal libertarian solution to our immigration problem is the reluctance of most libertarians to support any sort of relief for American taxpayers who are tasked with paying for millions of illegal aliens and immigrants who are dependent upon costly social services. Particularly, public schooling and emergency health care. Invoking Friedman’s argument once again, we find that while many libertarians will concede that dependency upon welfare programs is a bad thing they will do nothing to limit access to these programs by illegal aliens or permanent residents. To the contrary, if any such bill-which is immigration neutral-is proffered, they will stalwartly oppose it. Just ask new Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who supports the DREAM Act, despite the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing the in-state tuition discounts of its recipients. Paleolibertarian writer Ilana Mercer deftly skewers  purported libertarians who routinely call for the abolition of the welfare state while adding a proviso that excludes immigrants and illegal aliens from the fiscal demands of their libertopia.

True believers in liberty, like Mercer and the late Murray N. Rothbard, recognize the inherent contradiction in persuading your fellow Americans to reject the embrace of the state while simultaneously welcoming millions of non-Americans into the country who prefer a larger and more intrusive government in almost every respect into our society. They realize that the banal platitudes used to support unfettered immigration are grossly inaccurate, if not transparent lies. They also realize that the interests of the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, and the hospitality industry do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the free market, and that to a large extent our current immigration policy is another form of corporate welfare, which putative libertarians would be quick to denounce in any other context. The time-saving, productivity-increasing technological innovations that would normally be welcomed by these same individuals are rejected by those who apparently think pre-industrial stoop labor is the best method of improving  our agricultural production. Finally, they recognize that the  utopian, globalist conception of freedom-where people living in Gabon or the Hadhramaut have just as much say in how we are governed as American citizens living in New York-contravenes the distinctively American, Constitutional, federalist, representative republic designed by this nation’s founding fathers.

In short, the issue before the house is not whether it is an abandonment of principle for libertarians to embrace sensible immigration restrictions, it’s why institutional libertarians representing organizations like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation have stifled an honest, open intellectual debate about this subject. Even as the negative repercussions of our government’s devotion to open borders become harder to ignore for all but the most oblivious, the gatekeepers of respectable opinion on this subject continue to narrow the parameters of discussion to their own narrow, ahistorical perspective. I don’t expect that to change any time in the near future, but those of us who want an intellectually honest debate about the most important issue of our time can at least begin to clarify its terms, if for no other reason than to educate those novices interested in how mass immigration has impacted our society who are asking themselves how they should view these changes from a liberty-oriented perspective.

Our last Rattle of 2011 runs the gamut, all the way from an immigration enforcement success in Pennsylvania to a disappointing judicial setback in South Carolina. However, we begin the final roundup of the year with a must-read essay in The American Conservative by W. James Antle III. It looks at the immigration scorecard in a sober, realistic analysis that takes into account the substantive victories of immigration reformers-such as continued nationwide support for SB 1070 and its clones-to the unquestionable failures, including a seismic change in the language of the immigration debate, which has turned the phrase “immigration reform” into a synonym for wholesale amnesty. It’s a piece that anyone who is concerned about this subject-as I know most of you are-should read in its entirety. 

We continue by highlighting a great post over at the American Thinker that poses several questions that Newt Gingrich has yet to satisfactorily answer about his dubious proposal to create a tiered system of permanent non-citizen workers out of the pool of 11-20 million illegal aliens currently living here. Be John Galt  expresses some other concerns that have yet to be addressed by Newt while emphasizing the points made by Mickey Kaus in his own analysis of Newt’s plan. Something that conservatives supporting Gingrich-but who are ostensibly opposed to amnesty-need to answer is why they’re backing a candidate whose immigration platform mirrors the one put forward by open borders, libertarian economist Bryan Caplan.

Staying in the field of presidential politicking, American Rattlesnake wholeheartedly endorses the statements of Mitt Romney, vis-a-vis President Obama’s illegal alien uncle, Onyango Obama. For those of you who might not recall, Omar Onyango Obama is not only residing in this country illegally-much like the President’s beloved Aunt Zeituni-but is the owner and operator of a liquor store in Boston, despite his recent DUI conviction.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney’s opponent Rick Perry continued his tough on the border pantomime in Iowa, decrying the inability of the federal government to control our southern border with Mexico, as well as declaring that he would withdraw the Justice Department’s lawsuits against states like Arizona and Alabama. The pull quote from this article is “the border has to be shut down for the future of the United States of America.” One wonders what he would do with the estimated forty percent of illegal aliens who overstay their visas. I suppose we’ll just have to wait ans see how serious Governor Perry is about his newfound posture of immigration hawk.

It does seem that the current crop of presidential candidates is being forced to address the concerns of Republican voters, however reluctantly and haltingly. That said, VDare has a fascinating piece exploring the damage that refugee resettlement has caused in Manchester, New Hampshire, and why the national GOP has been completely AWOL on this issue, despite its ritualistic paeans to the role of New Hampshire as the first state in the nation to hold its presidential primary. The politically courageous current mayor of Manchester is standing up for his constituents, even if the federal government and parasitical members of the refugee resettlement industry won’t. Perhaps the boldness of Ted Gatsas will serve as an example for his timorous counterparts in the national GOP to emulate. We can all hope.

The internal strife caused by the U.S. State Department in Maine is mirrored in Florence, Italy, where the tragic deaths of two Senegalese street merchants is being exploited by media organs to condemn the “racism” of ordinary Italians. Sadly, the exploitation of tragedies like this for political purposes is nothing new to the multicultural zealots spearheading the militant, Gramscian left. Nor is the equation of patriotic, reasonable opposition to mass immigration to racism an anomaly, unfortunately. It seems like these sorts of ad hominem attacks come with the territory, as Peter Brimelow pointed out in yesterday’s post.

Heading down to Washington D.C., we find that the usual rogue’s gallery of open borders demagogues is trying once again to foist amnesty upon an American public, and a Congress, that has consistently rejected it since it was first introduced over a decade ago.  The tireless efforts of Dick Durbin to give the bird to American taxpayers and hard-working students wouldn’t be newsworthy in itself, if not for the fact that a Philippine newspaper is now leading the charge to see the enactment of the DREAM Act. Media bias in reporting of immigration issues is nothing new, especially from foreign newspapers who hold no reverence for American law. However, the fact that a member of the United States Senate is cribbing notes from a newspaper overseas in order to undermine the country he’s ostensibly representing is a sad commentary on the state of politics in America in 2011.

Taking a short jaunt to Baltimore, we say farewell to WBAL institution Ron Smith. Before being struck down by cancer at the age of 70, Smith was a resonant voice of reason and integrity in a world where too may fall prey to the lure of the D.C. cocktail circuit. Gregory Kane has a fitting tribute to him in the Washington Examiner. Michelle Malkin testifies to the humanity of Ron on her website as well. Like the late, great Terry Anderson-another immigration patriot who died last year-Ron Smith will be missed by many people across the country, most of whom never knew him personally. Rest in Peace, Ron.

In slightly cheerier news, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives has approved a bill that would penalize employers who hire illegal workers. Fox News Latino has the entire story, which touches upon similar bills that were eventually enacted in states like Alabama and Arizona. On the other hand, the drive for immigration enforcement suffered a blow in South Carolina, where a federal judge has enjoined a law that cracked down on human smuggling and gave law enforcement officers the opportunity to detain those arrested for unrelated crimes if they were illegal aliens. As Governor Nikki Haley’s spokesman has said, the ultimate resolution of this case rests in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Our neighbor to the north is having its own immigration problems, which  have been amply documented by American Rattlesnake in previous updates. Canada’s capable Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is tackling them in stride, initiating the largest crackdown on citizenship fraud in recent memory. Of course, his proactive initiatives-including an innovative tip line ordinary Canadians can use to report cases of immigration fraud-have earned scorn from the usual suspects. Notwithstanding the carping from bottom-feeding immigration attorneys and radical, open borders socialists, Kenney has earned respect from the public and his adversaries across the aisle, as this National Post article demonstrates.

If only our president had cabinet members willing to stand up for their fellow countrymen. Instead, we have Hilda Solis, the U.S. Secretary of Labor, doing everything in her capacity to empower illegal aliens instead of the Americans who are struggling beneath a crushing unemployment rate and prolonged recession. Even as the unemployment rate plummets in the Yellowhammer State because of HB 56, Solis tries to find ways to double down on the failure of the Obama administration to provide economic opportunities for American citizens. Combined with the administration’s decision to remove the last remaining National Guard troops from our southern border, Barack Obama has demonstrated his disdain for the concerns of the American electorate.

In other administration news, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Alan Bersin, has resigned from his post. An unconfirmed recess appointment by President Obama, Bersin will be replaced by David V. Aguilar. But don’t worry open borders enthusiasts, Mr. Aguilar is four square in favor of amnesty, although he prefers to call it something else.

Finally, the ongoing congressional investigations into Operation Fast and Furious and this administration’s persistent coverup continue apace. We now have Senator Joseph Lieberman, previously known for his atrocious record on immigration issues, directing the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which he currently chairs, to investigate the interagency “miscommunication” that lies at the heart of the Fast and Furious debacle. Let’s hope that he and Senator Grassley can elicit a more responsive reaction by administration officials than we’ve seen in the past. What is certain is that the men and woman who were killed, including Agent Jaime Zapata, as a result of the Justice Department’s and ATF’s negligence will never return to the warm embrace of their loved ones. If nothing else, let’s push for some measure of justice and accountability for those still alive.

Hat Tips: The Tea Party Immigration Coalition NCFreedom and NAFBPO

Yesterday saw another setback to supporters of immigration enforcement, this time in the state of Georgia. A federal judge  has enjoined several key parts of a law we’ve discussed on American Rattlesnake previously. Modeled to a certain extent on Arizona’s landmark immigration law, SB 1070, the Georgia law would have allowed law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of suspects they detained during the course of criminal inquiries. It would have also penalized those, such as contractors who employ illegal day laborers, who knowingly employ or shelter illegal aliens.

Interestingly enough, the employer verification provision of the law was left intact by Judge Thomas Thrash. As I’ve pointed out numerous times, the implementation of an effective, nationwide E-Verify system is probably the most efficacious means of deterring future illegal immigration since it cuts off the supply of jobs that illegal aliens rely upon in order to remain in the United States. That’s why the Chamber of Commerce and its allies have been so persistent in lobbying on behalf of a law that would short-circuit any attempt to implement E-Verify in a serious, consistent manner.

One of the most insightful comments about this decision, which exposes the hypocrisy of the open  borders advocates that oppose local immigration enforcement, can be found in response to the Associated Press article describing the ruling:

I really don’t have any problem with a strict interpretation of the powers of the federal govt.; but if the states have no role in federal areas of responsibility then WHY is it that the fed is regulating housing, healthcare, energy and education when those clearly are STATE matters??? If the courts just want to abolish the states just do it and stop letting us pretend that this is a really a union of States and not a nationally governed America.

This, in essence, is the crux of the issue. The people and organizations opposing laws like SB 1070 and its equivalent in Georgia are not standing up for any Constitutional principle, which does not even exist, but are simply trying to obstruct and thwart any attempt to stem the tidal wave of illegal immigration that has consumed this country. Federalism does not come into play in any other discussion, yet when anyone even suggests the prospect of enforcing laws penalizing criminal aliens, the guardians of the mythical Constitution come out of the woodwork to defend the interests of their favorite cudgel against the American people. 

If immigration is exclusively a federal prerogative, then when is the federal government going to reimburse states like Georgia for the costs incurred as a result of hosting thousands of illegal aliens? I’m afraid we’ll be waiting a long time for an answer to that question.

One of the central points of focus for the illegal immigration debate recently has been the use by employers of the federal government’s E-Verify system for checking the immigration status of potential or existing employees. Now Lamar Smith, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced a bill, H.R. 2164, which purports to mandate E-Verify use for all American employers.

The merits of this legislation are pretty obvious, and have been cited by immigration enforcement and reform groups like FAIR in support of Smith’s bill. Getting  corporations and businesses that have resisted the implementation of E-Verify for years to embrace a bill that compels employers to adopt it is an historic accomplishment. Forcing businesses to verify the eligibility of potential employees in the future is the precondition for stopping the influx of people coming here illegally in order to work in the United States.

However, the fact that the Chamber of Commerce is supporting this bill should set off alarm bells among anyone who’s concerned about immigration enforcement. This is the same organization that fought Arizona’s E-Verify law all the way to the Supreme Court. And as it turns out, one of the reasons the COC has decided to support this bill is because it preempts laws like the one in Arizona from being enacted in the future, as the outline of H.R. 2164 describes on Rep. Lamar Smith’s website. It also gives a wink and a nod to those agribusinesses employing illegal aliens right now, allowing those returning workers whose status hasn’t been verified to be exempt from the new law. These are just some of the reasons Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has spoken out against it, most eloquently in a New York Post op-ed.

Even so, the benefits of this legislation might outweigh the demerits if I believed it would actually be implemented as envisioned by Rep. Lamar Smith and Rep. Elton Gallegly. As Mark Krikorian describes in an extremely detailed article for National Review, the Legal Workforce Act would represent in some ways the most important jobs bill to come before Congress this year. In an economy mired in recession, opening up potentially thousands of jobs for American citizens and legal residents would be a welcome development. Yet I don’t think this admittedly flawed bill will remain in its current state, or be improved if and/or when it makes its way through the United States Senate, let alone a House-Senate conference committee. By the time corporate interests and advocates for illegal aliens are done lobbying Congress I doubt that the chief rationale for enacting this bill will remain intact.

You can analogize this to the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform Act, which in addition to granting amnesty to over 3 million illegal aliens also had several ostensibly tough enforcement provisions, including clauses that:

• required employers to attest to their employees’ immigration status
• made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit unauthorized immigrants.

Remarkably, neither of these were ever enforced by the federal government, and even though I would like to think that times have changed in this regard, I’m not optimistic. The only difference between this quasi-amnesty and Simpson-Mazzoli is that now states would be prevented from taking auxiliary measures to deter illegal aliens. Yes, there are some great provisions in this bill, but I think its supporters are investing too much faith in the federal government’s ability to live up to its word, which on the issue of immigration-like many others-it has failed to do repeatedly in the past.

Good news comes to us by way of Numbers USA, which gives us a brief recap of what’s been happening in Alabama, which has just enacted a tough new immigration enforcement measure. It looks like the recent Chamber of Commerce vs. Whiting decision affirming Arizona’s E-Verify law has encouraged other states to take proactive measures to crack down on employers of illegal aliens. Even if it comes a little to late for our liking, the Alabama legislature and governor should be applauded for adopting this ethical and common sense measure.

Conversely, you could say that the Chamber of Commerce and ACLU have lost, and lost big-time. Overall, it was a very good day for the Supreme Court of the United States, or as law nerds like to call it, SCOTUS. However, it was an even better day for Arizonans, and for those of us who sympathize with their struggle to combat illegal immigration almost single-handedly. Not only did the Supreme Court majority reject the specious arguments advanced by those who want to retain a class of indentured servants from foreign countries in perpetuity, it affirmed the right of state legislatures to employ one of the most effective immigration enforcement tools in their arsenal.

As Dan Stein of the Federation for Immigration Reform points out in his organization’s press release, this Supreme Court decision deals a decisive blow to the flimsy attempts by open borders lobbyists to knock down statewide immigration enforcement statutes based upon the preemption doctrine. In an illuminating post over at The Volokh Conspiracy, the rationale for rejection based upon implied preemption is fully explained with a carefully excerpted portion of Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion.

The opponents of this law made a variety of claims, echoed in the dissents by Justice Breyer and Justice Sotomayor, but the case was ultimately won on the argument that the 2007 bill enacted by the Arizona legislature and signed into law by then-governor Janet Napolitano was a licensing law, and that licensing laws fall under the purview of the states. The notion that the law mandating the use of E-Verify ran afoul of implied preemption is ridiculous on its face, as the majority opinion pointed out.

This law simply required Arizona businesses to implement a method of screening out illegal workers that the federal government has encouraged them to adopt for years, and which is clearly outlined on the Department of Homeland Security’s own website! The corollary argument that the federal government did not intend individual states to enforce the laws it enacted is even more devious when you stop to consider the consequences of this chain of reasoning. So the federal government passed immigration enforcement provisions that it clearly did not intend to see enforced, yet is compelled to punish those states that take Congress at its word? This is the sort of Catch-22 that has caused border states like California and Arizona to be overrun by illegal aliens and beset with the subsidiary problems caused by their presence, e.g. crime, fraud, overpopulation, depleted resources, etc…

The idea that  implementation of this law would have led to discrimination against Hispanic workers is even more ridiculous than the tissue paper thin constitutional arguments used by opponents of immigration enforcement. When did it become unreasonable to ask prospective employees to provide a legitimate, legal Social Security number to a potential employer? Of course, the reasonableness of this decision, as well as the Arizona law it affirms, hasn’t prevented the journalistic mouthpieces for America’s #1 sanctuary city from critiquing the alleged flaws in e-Verify while simultaneously calling once again for Congress to enact amnesty. This, despite the fact that E-Verify’s reliability has already been demonstrated, it is becoming a standard business practice, and is being improved month by month, and has never been substantively criticized by someone who does not have a vested interest in keeping the spigot open, e.g. the ACLU, open borders rags like the L.A. Times, pandering politicians, among other opponents of real immigration enforcement.

Whether or not this decision augers well for SB 1070-which is expected to head to the Supreme Court for review regardless of how the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules-can’t be answered at this point. I tend to agree with the opinion of Marcia Coyle, a legal analyst for PBS News Hour, who believes that this decision will have little practical impact upon United States of America v. Arizona when it inevitably reaches the Supreme Court’s docket. That said, I think I speak for many when I state that had SCOTUS ruled in favor of the Chamber of Commerce and other open borders advocates in their decision, I would have been greatly discouraged.

This legal victory is a huge win for patriotic Americans everywhere. It is not only a gigantic setback for the Obama administration and its allies in the open borders lobby, it serves as a greenlight for other states-such as Colorado-that have been hesitant to implement E-Verify up to this point. Regardless of what this decision portends for SB 1070′s future, it should be celebrated by Americans today and serve as inspiration for the battles ahead.

This past tuesday I had the distinct pleasure of attending an Intelligence Squared debate whose subject is one that this website has addressed repeatedly in the past, although admittedly, not as often as I would have liked. The drive to thwart repeated amnesty proposals introduced throughout this past year has not given us the opportunity to address the innumerable problems presented by unfettered, mass (legal) immigration.

That’s why I relish the chance to explore the flaws of our current, post-1965 wave of immigration. Or, as the framers of the IQ2 debate phrased their resolution: Don’t Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses.

The title, although slightly cheeky, was appropriate, given the subject under discussion. I have to commend Congressman Tom Tancredo for using his opening statement to debunk many of the myths surrounding The New Colossus, the Emma Lazarus sonnet inscribed upon a plaque inside of the Statue Of Liberty. Contrary to popular opinion-at least, the opinion propounded by supporters of mass immigration-that poem has absolutely nothing to do with immigration, and was in fact penned in connection with the transatlantic fundraising campaign to erect the iconic statue in New York Harbor. The statue itself was designed with the intention of honoring American liberty by French liberals and republicans, not as a tribute to mass immigration; certainly not as a calling card for mass, unskilled, uneducated immigrants from the Old World.

After knocking down one of the chief rhetorical pillars of the pro-immigration mythos constructed by their opponents, Tamar Jacoby and Julian Castro, the current mayor of San Antonio, Tancredo and Secretary of State Kris Kobach proceeded to make the empirical case against our current, misguided federal immigration policies. While Jacoby attempted to justify low skilled immigration on the basis of economic expediency, i.e. it helps the large corporations, and their lobbyists, that are her organization’s chief benefactors, Mayor Castro attempted to limn the legal and political arguments in favor of unfettered immigration as he saw them.

The case by Jacoby is a familiar one, equally unconvincing today as it was when corporate lobbying outfits like the Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Association, and American Farm Bureau demanded the imposition of amnesty and guest worker programs opposed by the vast majority of Americans in years past. Secretary Kobach  made a convincing rebuttal to these tedious talking points that focused on the seven million jobs that illegal aliens occupy which could be filled by the over 14 million Americans who currently find themselves unemployed.  He also pounded home the ineluctable fact that low-skilled immigrants from poverty-stricken regions depress the wage scale of every industry in which they’re employed. The perfect illustration of this phenomenon is the meatpacking industry, which has been transformed from a relatively desirable, decently compensated, working class vocation into a way station for underpaid immigrant workers.

It was at this point that the philosophical gulf between the two sides came into stark relief, as Tamar Jacoby repeated the stale platitudes of the Chamber of Commerce and its allies, including the charges that immigrants do the jobs “Americans won’t do,” and that even those who were willing to allegedly demean themselves by embracing “menial” work would eventually quit those jobs once better opportunities for career advancement arose. In response to the affirmative’s citation of the Swift meat processing plant, which continued to thrive in spite of the immigration raids that stripped it of many “hard-working” illegal aliens, Jacoby asserted-with no supporting evidence-that the plant experienced a high turnover rate once it began to rely upon the labor of actual Americans.

Perhaps even more persuasive than the economic argument against our government’s current immigration policy, were the fiscal arguments which Mr. Kobach marshalled with aplomb. He rightly brought up the extremely high percentage of immigrant-headed households  that rely upon one or several different welfare programs, a percentage that outstrips even the large percentage of American citizens who now use those very same programs, according to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. This was the pivotal moment of the debate from my perspective, with Kobach repeating the famous Milton Friedman quote declaring the mutual incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered, unskilled immigration.

Even though the negative side attempted to refute the concrete data provided by Kris Kobach, prompting an hilarious exchange where Ms. Jacoby was asked if she thought that National Academy of Sciences was biased against immigrants, the negative fiscal impact of our current immigration pool is, as he said during the debate, indisputable. While conceding that using generous extrapolations of what immigrant families might contribute to the economy in the future-scenarios that are, as Tom Tancredo pointed out, so speculative as to be almost meaningless from an empirical perspective-might show some benefits from unskilled immigration, Mr. Kobach nevertheless provided a litany of devastating facts and figures-including referencing the astounding Robert Rector Heritage Foundation study on the potential costs of Comprehensive Immigration Reform-that, in my opinion, demolished the claims made by the opponents of the debate resolution.

Although Ms. Jacoby’s arguments were, as usual, entirely unconvincing, the other “con” debater, Mayor Julian Castro, made at least an appealing rhetorical case in favor of the post-1965 immigration status quo. While agreeing with Kobach and Tancredo that the vast majority of immigrants today are lower working class, Castro claimed that the dynamism of our economy-as well as the considerable skills these immigrants bring to this country-provided for extreme upward mobility among these same immigrant communities. Unfortunately, he did not address the main concern that the affirmative side expressed throughout the debate. Namely, that the uninterrupted flow of immigrants from the same unskilled, undereducated populace would inalterably change the culture and economy of this country.

It was on this point that I think Tom Tancredo truly hit his stride. While Mayor Castro invoked laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act as an illustration of the government straying from this country’s core tenets, the former Colorado congressman reminded him-as well the audience- that the current wave of  mass immigration from the third world is a relatively recent phenomenon that can be traced back to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the brain-child of the late Ted Kennedy, a doctrinaire liberal who used his time in the United States Senate to remake this country into a multicultural mosaic, not the melting pot it had traditionally been. He explained how each previous wave of immigrants-whether it was the Irish who came here in the wake of the great potato famine, or the Eastern Europeans who came at the end of the 19th century-was allowed time to assimilate into American society before being deluged with yet more immigrants from the same region and nation.

In the end, I think it was this argument that persuaded the vast majority of “undecided” voters to come over to the affirmative side. While superficially appealing, the arguments advanced by Jacoby and Castro were essentially contentless. They relied upon pulling the emotional strings of the audience, attempting to draw upon the nostalgia most people have for their ancestors-a common theme used by immigration enthusiasts and amnesty supporters is to draw an analogy between this aberrent wave of unrestricted immigration and previous periods of mass immigration. However, they ultimately did not succeed because the opponents of the evening’s resolution could not provide a compelling argument for keeping our doors open to millions of immigrants who do not possess 21st century skill sets, who are not able to support themselves independent of the American taxpayer, and who are entering a nation with a vast welfare state that did not exist in previous generations.

It was a masterful performance by both Kris Kobach and Tom Tancredo and a riveting discussion throughout. I highly recommend you watch the entire debate for yourselves though, and draw your own conclusions.