Illegal Immigration & The DREAM Act

I admittedly have failed to comment properly on my feelings and position on the so-called DREAM Act and the reason why I am opposed to it. This has not been due to a lack of position, but, in fact, due to my inability to craft a piece that did my position justice.

In short, I feel that EVERY FOREIGN-BORN person should go through the SAME path to U.S. citizenship. Seems fair, doesn't it? If everyone follows the law, then everyone is on equal footing at the time they start the process. Should you get special consideration and get an easier path to citizenship because you have already been living here for many years, using our public education system and social services? The only scenario by which that could happen would be if you were violating U.S. Immigration law, so the answer to that question should be a resounding, "No!"

My position on this piece of legislation also stems from my view on illegal immigration, and my belief that you should receive punishment for breaking the law, not a reward, especially a reward of preferential treatment. Rather than rehash my own personal view on illegal immigration, I would like to provide for you the following excerpt from "Two Californias" by Victor Hanson.

This excerpt below is from Hanson's larger piece on his experiences while traveling through California's once-rich Central Valley, Hanson's home soil, commenting on the desolate wasteland of poverty and welfare-state conditions that the valley has now become due to overregulation and illegal immigration.

This piece holds a special personal significance to me because of my own family's tie in the first half of the 1900s to agriculture, not in the Central Valley, but right here, in Orange County, where four generations ago, my forbearers took the LEGAL path to citizenship:

Fresno’s California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president’s announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act. I won’t comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly. I taught at CSUF for 21 years. I think it fair to say that the predominant theme of the Chicano and Latin American Studies program’s sizable curriculum was a fuzzy American culpability. By that I mean that students in those classes heard of the sins of America more often than its attractions. In my home town, Mexican flag decals on car windows are far more common than their American counterparts.

I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.

So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, “Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate.” I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What is it about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth?

I think I know the answer to this paradox. Missing entirely in the above description is the attitude of the host, which by any historical standard can only be termed “indifferent.” California does not care whether one broke the law to arrive here or continues to break it by staying. It asks nothing of the illegal immigrant — no proficiency in English, no acquaintance with American history and values, no proof of income, no record of education or skills.

It does provide all the public assistance that it can afford (and more that it borrows for), and apparently waives enforcement of most of California’s burdensome regulations and civic statutes that increasingly have plagued productive citizens to the point of driving them out.

How odd that we over-regulate those who are citizens and have capital to the point of banishing them from the state, but do not regulate those who are aliens and without capital to the point of encouraging millions more to follow in their footsteps. How odd — to paraphrase what Critias once said of ancient Sparta — that California is at once both the nation’s most unfree and most free state, the most repressed and the wildest.

I think Hanson makes some fantastically valid points here. While I understand that illegal immigration and the DREAM Act can be very emotional subjects for quite a large number of people living here in the United States, both citizen and non-citizen alike, I think that a good deal of the people who fall on my side of the fence on this issue are troubled mostly by two factors. This group of people's widespread inability to first admit, then hold themselves accountable for violating the law of the land in which they so desire to live, and secondly, what seems to be more of an allegiance to the place in which they do not want to live than to the place in which they do want to live.

When American citizens break the law, we pay fines or get to live in one of our many taxpayer-funded state or federal correctional institutions. Should it not be the case for the non-citizen who knowingly violated U.S. immigration law?

While it is not my intention to ruffle feathers, but my intention to get people on both sides of the argument to think rationally about this issue, I must ask the question. "If Mexico is so fantastic, why are you here in the United States? If you love Mexico so so very much, why did you not stay and try to fix it - try to fight to make your beloved homeland a better place, even if it is just in your neighborhood, or home town? Why do you fly the Mexican flag above the U.S. flag, yet make the choice to live in the country whose flag you fly below the flag of that nation that you chose to not live in anymore?"

These are not rhetorical questions, mind you. These are questions that many of the people that are being flagged as "racists" for opposing illegal immigration and the DREAM Act genuinely would like to have answered by the people on the opposite side of the argument.

Before you get on your soap box and start yelling out charges of elitism and racism, think on one thing - something that Hanson touches on in his article. If you are playing any game, any sport, in the world in which you are on a team, would you not want the person sitting or standing next to you to have an allegiance to your team above all other teams? Would you not want them playing their heart out just as much as you for your team and not have an underlying allegiance to the other team?

Now, consider, that you are not just playing a game, but you are ensuring the future of the greatest democracy to ever exist in the history of mankind - securing its future for your children, your loved ones, securing it for all the good that nation does in the world. Wouldn't you want the person standing next to you to have an allegiance above all others to your nation, and not some other nation? This is what America wants of her citizens, and I do not think it to be an unreasonable request.

If you watch a documentary on people taking the legal path to citizenship, you will see that there is a point in the immigration process where they are asked to pledge their allegiance to the United States of America above all other nations in the world, including the nation which they have left to come to America. You will see that the people making this pledge take that part of the process very seriously - that they labor on it and give it much thought - they struggle with it, but in most cases, they make that pledge. Most notably, you will see by their emotions, that their pledge is genuine.

The illegal immigrant has never had to make that pledge. They have never actually had to contemplate that choice between allegiance to their home country and ours. They get to straddle the fence. They get to live here while their true loyalty remains elsewhere. We are letting them skip a very important and noteworthy step in joining our team. I do not think it is wrong for Americans to want the people living in this country to not be allowed to skip that step.

We have a legal immigration process in place that has served this nation for quite some time. A legal immigration process that does not reward violation of that process, but in fact, deters violation. Many of us believe that our nation is best served by keeping things that way. That's not elitism, and that's not racism. That, my friends, is American Patriotism, and that, my friends, is what we want from those of you who make the choice to join our team...AMERICAN patriotism.

Not only are you incorrect in thinking that most of those who oppose illegal immigration and the DREAM Act do not want you to be able to join the team, but I believe you would find that most of us actually want you on the team. All we are asking is that you join the team according to the rule book - the same rule book that we are going to expect you to follow once you are a member of the team. You are asking us to believe that you are going to follow that rule book when you and yours have already broken its rules. Do you see how that might be of concern to us? Sadly, I don't think that you do.

Dennis Miller said it best when he commented, "We don't mind you joining the party, we just want you to sign the guest book so we know who's here." Again, it's not that Americans don't want you to join the team, we just want you to do it the right way, and we want you to be dedicated 100% to our team. I don't think that is too much to ask.