Border Security and Illegal Immigration
Border Security: As of late, the amount of drug cartel violence, illegal immigrant crossings and kidnappings for ransom have stepped to the forefront of American lives within the border states. The Federal Government has been completely inept in dealing with this growing invasion from the south. Violence, drug and gang activity has been reported in Virginia; New York; Texas; California; Arizona; Vancouver, British Columbia,Canada; Toronto, Ontario, Canada and many many more places. What will it take to secure our borders from access to illegal aliens and terrorists? A wall, a fence? Why is it the government seems inept to prevent these persons from crossing over the border. Terrorists at this very moment are plotting against America on our own soil. Holding pro-Sharia law rallies without allowing film crews or news sources near, a clear violation of the 1st Amendment. Illegal aliens drain our health care systems and increase costs of health care. They get welfare and other benefits and do not pay taxes or provide proof of citizenship. They get free access to our schools and struggle because they do not know English. Something must be done. How is it that we could possibly allow this to happen?
There was a time when we required quotas. In 1917 the first appeared that had a threshold literacy requirement, however, no Asians were allowed to immigrate. In 1952 the McCarran-Walter Act established the basic structure of our current immigration laws. It was partially flawed, requiring quotas for Asians. However it created a Preference System as well, meaning that those with special skills that were needed in the workforce had preference in status. Real damage was done in 1962 when laws were passed granting nonquota immigrant visas for certain aliens eligible for fourth preference (i.e., brothers, sisters, and children of citizens) as well as creating a record of lawful entry and provided for suspension of deportation for aliens who have been physically present in the United States for at least seven years in some cases and ten years in others. This means that any brother, sister or children could be granted automatic immigration visas artificially ratcheting up the quotas. It also meant that illegal aliens already present were granted amnesty. In 1965, we thankfully abolished the racial quota system. However, we continued down the road to out of control immigration by allowing first come, first served visas for relatives of U.S. Citizens and resident aliens under the guise of family reunification. They also established two categories not subject to numerical restrictions; immediate relatives and special immigrants. The former being the worst apple. On December 18, 1967 we facilitated the expeditious naturalization of certain non-citizen employees of U.S. nonprofit organizations, meaning that we granted further amnesty. In 1977 we permitted adjustment to permanent resident status for Indochinese refugees who are natives or citizens of Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia, were physically present in the United States for at least two years, and were admitted or paroled into the United States during specified periods of time; more amnesty. Again in 1979, the Panama Canal Act allowed admission as permanent residents to certain aliens with employment on or before 1977 with the Panama Canal Company, the Canal Zone government, or the U.S. government in the Canal Zone, and their families. More amnesty. Finally in 1980 we did away with refugees as a special immigrant category.
The first real change was done in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) which prohibited employers from hiring undocumented immigrants as well as prohibiting discriminating against legal alien workers. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, authorized legalization (i.e., temporary and then permanent resident status) for aliens who had resided in the United States in an unlawful status since January 1, 1982; more amnesty. Authorized adjustment to permanent resident status for Cubans and Haitians who entered the United States without inspection and had continuously resided in country since January 1, 1982; more amnesty. Everyone should like this one, in the Immigration Act of 1990 it revised all grounds for exclusion and deportation, significantly rewriting the political and ideological grounds. For example, repealed the bar against the admission of communists as nonimmigrants and limited the exclusion of aliens on foreign policy grounds; communism roams free and it shows. It also amended the substantive requirements for naturalization: State residency requirements revised and reduced to 3 months; added another ground for waiving the English language requirement; now we don't even need to speak English in an English speaking country. With all this legislation there is no wonder why we can't secure the border. Instead of securing the borders we grant amnesty. How much common sense does that make? How hard can it be to apply for citizenship? Well it does cost some money, a whopping $675.00 total! Want a list of vocabulary words required by the test?
- Abraham Lincoln
- American flag
- America
- Presidents’ Day
- How
- can
- a
- colors
- George Washington
- Bill of Rights
- U.S.
- Memorial Day
- What
- come
- for
- dollar bill
- capital
- United States
- Flag Day
- When
- do/does
- here
- first
- citizen
- Independence Day
- Where
- elects
- in
- largest
- city
- Labor Day
- Who
- have/has
- of
- many
- Congress
- Columbus Day
- Why
- is/are/was/be
- on
- most
- country
- Thanksgiving
- lives/lived
- the
- north
- Father of Our Country
- meet
- to
- one
- government
- name
- we
- people
- President
- pay
- second
- right
- vote
- south
- Senators
- want
- state/states
- White House
A: Principles of American Democracy
1. What is the supreme law of the land?
the Constitution
2. What does the Constitution do?
sets up the government
defines the government
protects basic rights of Americans
3. The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words?
We the People
4. What is an amendment?
a change (to the Constitution)
an addition (to the Constitution)
5. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
the Bill of Rights
6. What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?
speech
religion
assembly
press
petition the government
7. How many amendments does the Constitution have?
twenty-seven (27)
8. What did the Declaration of Independence do?
announced our independence (from Great Britain)
declared our independence (from Great Britain)
said that the United States is free (from Great Britain)
9. What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?
life
liberty
pursuit of happiness
10. What is freedom of religion?
You can practice any religion, or not practice a religion.
11. What is the economic system in the United States?
capitalist economy
market economy
12. What is the “rule of law”?
Everyone must follow the law.
Leaders must obey the law.
Government must obey the law.
No one is above the law.
B: System of Government
13. Name one branch or part of the government.
Congress
legislative
President
executive
the courts
judicial
14. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
checks and balances
separation of powers
15. Who is in charge of the executive branch?
the President
16. Who makes federal laws?
Congress
Senate and House (of Representatives)
(U.S. or national) legislature
17. What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
the Senate and House (of Representatives)
18. How many U.S. Senators are there?
one hundred (100)
19. We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?
six (6)
20. Who is one of your state’s U.S. Senators now?
Answers will vary. [District of Columbia residents and residents of U.S. territories should answer that D.C. (or the territory where the applicant lives) has no U.S. Senators.]
AMERICAN HISTORY
A: Colonial Period and Independence
58. What is one reason colonists came to America?
freedom
political liberty
religious freedom
economic opportunity
practice their religion
escape persecution
59. Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?
American Indians
Native Americans
60. What group of people was taken to America and sold as slaves?
Africans
people from Africa
61. Why did the colonists fight the British?
because of high taxes (taxation without representation)
because the British army stayed in their houses (boarding, quartering)
because they didn’t have self-government
62. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
(Thomas) Jefferson
63. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
July 4, 1776
64. There were 13 original states. Name three.
New Hampshire
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New York
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Delaware
Maryland
Virginia
North Carolina
South Carolina
Georgia
65. What happened at the Constitutional Convention?
The Constitution was written.
The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution.
66. When was the Constitution written?
1787
67. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
(James) Madison
(Alexander) Hamilton
(John) Jay
Publius
In their defense the tests are about 100 questions long. They do explain the gist of what America is but they fail to convey the message of WHY America is. They do not go into detail at all, you are expected to have read all that history and to have taken it in, understood it all and it's meaning. The fix is to secure the border and better integrate immigrants into our society and not just how but why we function as we do. The reason why we are supposed to have a limited government and not a test on the cliff notes.
So what does Mexico think of all this? If anything the Mexican Government is not only allowing the incursions of illegals and terrorist onto sovereign U.S. soil, but encourages and aids them as part of what is called revanchism. This is from The Second Mexican War by Lawrence Auster. "The Mexican invasion of the United States began decades ago as a spontaneous migration of ordinary Mexicans into the U.S. seeking economic opportunities. It has morphed into a campaign to occupy and gain power over our country—a project encouraged, abetted, and organized by the Mexican state and supported by the leading elements of Mexican society." Like most assaults on America these days, it is incremental, one little piece at a time. There are a number of goals of the Mexican people and it's government and those are;
"(1) Political revanchism—to regain control of the territories Mexico lost to the U.S. in 1848, thus avenging themselves for the humiliations they feel they have suffered at our hands for the last century and a half;
(2) Cultural imperialism—to expand the Mexican culture and the Spanish language into North America ; and especially
(3) Economic parasitism—to maintain and increase the flow of billions of dollars that Mexicans in the U.S. send back to their relatives at home every year, a major factor keeping the chronically troubled Mexican economy afloat and the corrupt Mexican political system cocooned in its status quo.
These motives are shared by the Mexican masses and the elites. According to a Zogby poll in 2002, 58 percent of the Mexican people believed the U.S. Southwest belongs to Mexico, and 57 percent believed that Mexicans have the right to enter the United States without U.S. permission. Only small minorities disagreed with these propositions.
Meanwhile, for Mexico’s opinion shapers, it is simply a truism that the great northern migration is a reconquista of lands belonging to Mexico, the righting of a great historic wrong. “A peaceful mass of people … carries out slowly and patiently an unstoppable invasion, the most important in human history” [emphasis added], wrote columnist Carlos Loret de Mola for Mexico City’s Excelsior newspaper in 1982.
You cannot give me a similar example of such a large migratory wave by an ant-like multitude, stubborn, unarmed, and carried on in the face of the most powerful and best-armed nation on earth.... [The migrant invasion] seems to be slowly returning [the southwestern United States] to the jurisdiction of Mexico without the firing of a single shot, nor requiring the least diplomatic action, by means of a steady, spontaneous, and uninterrupted occupation.
Similarly, the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska told the Venezuelan journal El Imparcial on July 3rd, 2001:
The people of the poor, the lice-ridden and the cucarachas are advancing in the United States, a country that wants to speak Spanish because 33.4 million Hispanics impose their culture...Mexico is recovering the territories ceded to the United States with migratory tactics...[This phenomenon] fills me with jubilation, because the Hispanics can have a growing force between Patagonia and Alaska. "
There are also the statements of the Mexican Government such as...“You are Mexicans too, you just live in the United States.” - President Ernesto Zedillo told a 1994 convention of the radical-left Mexican-American lobbying group, the National Council of La Raza.“The Mexican population is 100 million in Mexico and 23 million who live in the United States.” - One of Fox’s cabinet officers, Juan Hernandez.
As Heather Mac Donald writes in her important article in the Fall 2005 City Journal:
Mexico’s five-year development plan in 1995 announced that the “Mexican nation extends beyond ... its border”—into the United States. Accordingly, the government would “strengthen solidarity programs with the Mexican communities abroad by emphasizing their Mexican roots, and supporting literacy programs in Spanish and the teaching of the history, values, and traditions of our country.”The head of the Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad said: “We are betting that the Mexican American population in the United States ... will think Mexico first.”
President Zedillo in 1997 denounced attempts by the United States to enforce its immigration laws, insisting that “we will not tolerate foreign forces dictating laws to Mexicans.” [Italics added.] The “Mexicans” to whom he was referring were, of course, residents and citizens of the U.S., living under U.S. law. By saying that U.S. law does not apply to them, Zedillo was denying America’s sovereign power over its own territory.
Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda’s non-negotiable demands—“It’s the whole enchilada or nothing”—that he issued in a speech in Phoenix, Arizona in 2001. America, said Castañeda (as recounted by Allan Wall), “had to legalize all Mexican illegal aliens, loosen its already lax border enforcement, establish a guest worker program (during an economic downturn) and exempt Mexican immigrants from U.S. visa quotas!” He also demanded that Mexicans living in the U.S. receive health care and in-state college tuition. As Castañeda summed it up in Tijuana a few days later, “We must obtain the greatest number of rights for the greatest number of Mexicans [i.e. in the U.S.] in the shortest time possible.” What this adds up to, comments Wall, is basically “the complete surrender of U.S. sovereignty over immigration policy.” And why not? As Castañeda had written in The Atlantic in 1995: “Some Americans ... dislike immigration, but there is very little they can do about it.”
As reported in the November 23, 2002 Houston Post:
Mexico’s foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, said his country would begin a “bottom-up campaign” to win U.S. public support for a proposal to legalize 3.5 million undocumented Mexican workers in the United States. Castañeda said Mexican officials will begin rallying unions, churches, universities and Mexican communities.... [Castañeda said:] “We are already giving instructions to our consulates that they begin propagating militant activities—if you will—in their communities.”
La Voz de Aztlan, the radical Mexican-American group that seeks to end U.S. “occupation” of the Southwest and form a new Mexican nation there, writes at its website:
One great hope that came out of the Zapatista March was that generated by the “alliance” that was forged by some of us in the Chicano/Mexicano Delegation and our brothers and sisters in Mexico. The delegation met with officials of the Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD) in Mexico City and discussed strategies that will increase our influence in the United States and further our collective efforts of “acercamiento.”
Here are some crimes listed by Auster:Mexico’s violations of our laws and sovereignty
Let us now consider some of the specific actions by which the Mexican government is carrying out the strategy outlined above:
- The Mexican government publishes a comic book-style booklet, Guía del Migrante Mexicano (Guide for the Mexican Migrant), on how to transgress the U.S. border safely (“Crossing the river can be very risky, especially if you cross alone and at night ... Heavy clothing grows heavier when wet and this makes it difficult to swim or float”) and avoid detection once in the U.S.
- As Heather Mac Donald puts it, Mexico backs up these written instructions with real-world resources for the collective assault on the border. An elite law enforcement team called Grupo Beta protects illegal migrants as they sneak into the U.S. from corrupt Mexican officials and criminals—essentially pitting two types of Mexican lawlessness against each other. Grupo Beta currently maintains aid stations for Mexicans crossing the desert. In April 2005, it worked with Mexican federal and Sonoran state police to help steer illegal aliens away from Arizona border spots patrolled by Minutemen border enforcement volunteers—demagogically denounced by President Vicente Fox as “migrant-hunting groups.”
- While the Mexican government sends police to protect illegal border crossers against criminals, rogue Mexican soldiers protecting drug smugglers have threatened U.S. Border Patrol agents, and even engaged in shootouts, as reported in the Washington Times in January 2006. Rep. Tom Tancredo says the activities of these renegade Mexican troops in support of drug traffickers amount to a “war” along the U.S.-Mexico border, and he has urged President Bush to deploy troops there.
- Meanwhile, sheriffs from Hudspeth County, Texas testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations this month at a hearing titled “Armed and Dangerous: Confronting the Problem of Border Incursions.” They spoke of a dramatic increase in alien and drug smuggling. “The U.S./Mexico border is the weakest link and our national security is only as good as our weakest link,” said one sheriff. “Our border is under siege.” We need to understand that whether the Mexican government is behind the border incursions or is merely unable (or unwilling) to stop them, it ultimately doesn’t matter. As I said at the beginning, the Mexican war on America is supported by all segments of the Mexican society, even, apparently, the criminals. The situation is thus analogous to Muslim razzias or raids—irregular attacks short of outright invasion—used to soften a target country in anticipation of full scale military conquest. The outlaws and smugglers and the renegade soldiers may not be official agents of the Mexican government, yet they are serving its purposes by sowing mayhem along our southern border and demoralizing our population.
- A major role in Mexico’s revanchist war against America is played by the Mexican consulates in the U.S., reports Mac Donald. Now numbering 47 and increasing rapidly, they serve as the focal point of Mexico’s fifth column. While Mexico’s foreign ministry distributes the Guía del Migrante Mexicano inside Mexico, Mexican consulates, unbelievably, distribute the guide to Mexican illegals inside the U.S.
- After the U.S. became more concerned about illegal immigration following the 9/11 attack, the Mexican consulates were ordered to promote the matricula consular—a card that simply identifies the holder as a Mexican—as a way for illegals to obtain privileges that the U.S. usually reserves for legal residents. The consulates started aggressively lobbying American governmental officials and banks to accept the matriculas as valid IDs for driver’s licenses, checking accounts, mortgage lending, and other benefits.
- The consulates freely hand out the matricula to anyone who asks, not demanding proof that the person is legally in the U.S. Here is Mac Donald’s summary of the wildly improper role played by the consulates:
Disseminating information about how to evade a host country’s laws is not typical consular activity. Consulates exist to promote the commercial interests of their nations abroad and to help nationals if they have lost passports, gotten robbed, or fallen ill. If a national gets arrested, consular officials may visit him in jail, to ensure that his treatment meets minimum human rights standards. Consuls aren’t supposed to connive in breaking a host country’s laws or intervene in its internal affairs.
- As an example of the latter, the Mexican consulates automatically denounce, as “biased,” virtually all law enforcement activities against Mexican illegals inside the U.S. The Mexican authorities tolerate deportations of illegals if U.S. officials arrest them at the border and promptly send them back to the other side—whence they can try again the next day. But once an illegal is inside the U.S. and away from the border, he gains untouchable status in the eyes of Mexican consuls, and any U.S. law enforcement activity against him is seen as an abuse of his rights.
- The Mexican consulates actively campaign in U.S. elections on matters affecting illegal aliens. In November 2004, Arizona voters passed Proposition 200, which reaffirmed existing state law that requires proof of citizenship in order to vote and to receive welfare benefits. The Mexican consul general in Phoenix sent out press releases urging Hispanics to vote against it. After the law passed, Mexico’s foreign minister threatened to bring suit in international tribunals for this supposedly egregious human rights violation, and the Phoenix consulate supported the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s federal lawsuit against the proposition.
- The consulates also help spread Mexican culture. We are not speaking here of the traditional activity of embassies and consulates in representing their country’s culture in a friendly and educational way to the host country; we are speaking of consulates acting as agents of the Mexican state’s imperialistic agenda. Each of Mexico’s consulates in the U.S. has a mandate to introduce Mexican textbooks (that’s Mexican textbooks) into U.S. schools with significant Hispanic populations. The Mexican consulate in Los Angeles bestowed nearly 100,000 textbooks on 1,500 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District this year alone.
- It has also been proposed that Mexicans in the U.S. vote in Mexican elections in designated electoral districts in the United States. Under this proposal, California, for example, might have seats in the Mexican Congress, specifically representing Mexicans residing in that state. The governing PAN party of President Fox has opposed this idea, not out of respect for U.S. sovereignty, but out of fear that most Mexicans in the U.S. would vote against the PAN. Meanwhile, another of Mexico’s three major parties, the leftist PRD, urges the designation of the entire United States as the sixth Mexican electoral district.
So why is it that our own Government denies all of this? Are they not Constitutionally mandated to protect us from invasion? Are they not supposed to protect us against further terrorist attacks? Yet they do nothing. Border security is just as bad now as it ever was, the Border Patrol is undermanned and underfunded. Still nothing. Border Patrol agents are constantly jailed for protecting U.S. citizens as drug runners are moving back and forth across our borders. What needs to be done and why are they not doing it!1. Independence Forever: Why America Celebrates the Fourth of July by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
2. The Declaration of Independence
3. The Constitution of the United States of America
4. Income Tax - History // Law Library - American Law and Legal Information
5. Read The Stimulus
6.H.R. 1105 Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009
7. Omnibus Spending Bill: Huge Spending and 9,000 Earmarks Represent Business as Usual by Brian M. Riedl
8. Omnibus Bill Earmarks
9. Ricci Vs. DeStefano
10. The International Judge by Daniel Terris, Cesare P.R. Romano, Leigh Swigart
11. Berkeley Law School symposium: "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation - A Latina Judge's Voice"
12. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
13. Gun Control - Take That! And That! The Gun Control Debate Continues, Further Readings by Rubin Carter
14. Georgia Carry.org
15. Dred Scott v. Sanford
16. United States v. Miller
17. The Brady Handgun Control Act, Public Law 103-159, H.R. 1025 - 103rd Congress
18. Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, H.R. 3355 in Title XI, Subtitle A
19. National Firearms Act of 1934
20. District of Columbia v. Heller
21. United States v. Cruikshank (1875)
22. Presser v. Illinois (1886)
23. ATF Abuse Web Site
24. Library of Congress: A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875
25. Association of Communities for Reform Now (ACORN)
26. Current Minimum Wage Rates
27. Minimum Wage Resources - Heritage Foundation Research
28. Raising the Minimum Wage: Another Empty Promise to the Working Poor - Richard V. Burkhauser, Cornell University; Joseph J. Sabia, University of Georgia
29. The White House.gov Web Site
30. Ice Age Timeline
31. The Real 'Inconvenient Truth'
32. Debunking Global Warming, Global Myth by Edmund Contoski
33. Waxman-Markey Bill; H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009
34. Wind Turbines: The Whole Truth
35. The Heartland Institute
36. H.R. 3200 America's Health Choices Act of 2009
37. The Real Cuba
38. Immigration Law - A Brief History
39. The Second Mexican War
40. Naturalization Guide
Important Links:
1. The Declaration of Independence
2. The Constitution of the United States of America
3. The Heritage Foundation
4. The Great Global Warming Swindle
5. The Heartland Institute
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