Bruce Barton10

BRUCE BARTON

When does Evolution Become Revolution?

April 10, 2006

“I support legal and orderly immigration. Enforced borders and orderly entry are prime factors that define a nation; that is my position,” declared the candidate. His opposition however opined at length to the contributions of immigrants, carefully omitting the word “illegal” and whined about the impossibility of stemming the hemorrhage from south of the border. This is the short form of today’s critical national immigration debate.

It’s all about growth. Today, three-fourths of the U.S. population growth is directly due to immigration – both legal and illegal – including the birth rate of immigrant children. At this rate, our present population of about 288 million will nearly double to over 500 million in less than 45 years.

But where is that growth? Notice it is among new immigrants -- both legal and otherwise. The net population of Western European Americans is aging and declining. By the year 2050 the United States will be a very different place.

Two historical events directly impacted this current immigration explosion: the Immigration Act of 1965, which radically altered traditional U.S. immigration policy, and the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The 1986 Act, under then Vice President George Bush, granted amnesty to an estimated three million illegal aliens in exchange for strict sanctions against employers hiring workers without documentation. The 1986 Act has been enforced very sparingly if at all in the years since.

In 1925, during the last wave of major immigration, it was noted that, “… they who control a country’s immigration policy controls the future of that country.” What does that mean for our present future as a people?

Just how many sides are there to the immigration issue? You might as well try to figure out how many sides to a sphere, just try to find something that current illegal immigration doesn’t impact.

Immigration impacts (in no particular order):

· Urban sprawl

· Education quality

· Infrastructure development (roads, transportation and energy needs)

· Wages, jobs, and the legal system

· Crime, police, the courts, and the prison system

· The environment and open spaces

· Housing costs

· Political power as individuals with little or no background in our Constitutional Republic begin to organize politically and demand a voice in the process

· The religious institutions of our society

· Our welfare and social services

· Our taxes

· Our social security

· Our health care systems (and our health)

· Our language

· National Park System, which just announced spending federal funds to explore ways to increase park attractiveness to new migrants!

All of these facets to immigration require resources; they cost money. With the present outsourcing of American employment through trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA, and the growth of Chinese industrial might, where are those resources going to come from?

With much of this immigrant human resource working at the low end of the economic scale and having to provide for larger than average families, where will the tax revenues come from to provide for their impacts on the American stage? Presently the net expense to cover the social costs of illegal immigration is over $10 billion dollars annually.

Couple this $10 billion expense with over $20 billion dollars in hard U.S. currency presently being sent as remittances to Mexico and ask yourself; does the benefit of immigration outweigh the annual $30 billion dollar price tag?

During the last wave of massive immigration into this country, newly arrived peoples were required to be screened for health issues, at Ellis Island, N.Y. (see photo). Additionally they were required to learn our language, history, laws and customs. This isn’t the case today; today we’re being forced more and more to learn their languages, history, laws and customs.

The Administration in Washington is insisting on a Guest Worker Program which will reward those here illegally with six years of amnesty. Six years in which to establish their roots and blend into the system before the federal government asks them to return to their home country. Each child born during this guest worker amnesty period will become automatically a citizen of the United States, further compounding the issue of whether or not the parents return to their original homeland.

Consider orderly immigration as a carefully balanced freight train, a productive and useful tool. Contrast that with an overloaded runaway freight train careening down the tracks carrying who knows what directly into the heart of your community. Hard breaking now is a tough job and the issue is squarely in the center of the U.S. Senate.

If unchecked now, the process will simply accelerate; what will our society look like five years from today? This week, Mexican high school students took down the American flag from their school and replaced it with the Mexican flag; what will they be doing five years from today when the U.S. economy slows down? Will we experience the violence France has seen? When will proponents of a Hispanic homeland, Aztlan, reach a nexus with terrorists from the Middle East?

In parting, consider this picture: An aging European American baby boom population in its senior years being cared for by those you see in the nightly news protesting in favor of unrestrained, open immigration.

Sleep well.