Interlock PrayerNet

Welcome to “Estados Unidos del Oaxaca Norte” – the former “United States of America” by Larry Stout (the first of a four-part series on the immigration issue in America)
The last time I agreed with Senator Ted Kennedy on anything was in 1968 when he delivered a beautiful eulogy for his brother Robert. However, he was right on the mark when he commented on Thursday about the failure of the Kyl-Kennedy Immigration Bill in the US Senate by saying, “this issue will not go away.” He is exactly right about that one – this issue will not go away. It has been with us for a long, long time.
The USA is an unusual place in that it is country of immigrants, but it has never exactly welcomed newcomers with open arms. The 1790 Naturalization Act, which set forth the rules for citizenship, restricted naturalization to “free white persons.” This was obviously aimed at excluding indentured servants and slaves, but just to make sure there was no doubt, in 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed to restrict Chinese immigration.
The Immigration Act of 1924 set a limit of immigrants to two percent of those already in the United States in 1890. Ironically, no limits were placed on those from Latin America. However, this did not prevent the government from repatriating some one half to two million (the numbers are hard to verify) Mexicans and Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression in order to keep scarce jobs for ‘real Americans.’
This did not work out so well as the United States entered World War II, it suddenly found itself with a severe labor shortage. The Bracero (Spanish for ‘Unskilled Laborer’) Program was initiated in 1942 to bring Mexican laborers to work in agriculture and other industries. This ad-hoc system lasted until it was revamped in 1965 with the Hart-Celler Act or as it was better known, the INS Act of 1965.
Emanuel Celler was a freshman Brooklyn Representative in 1924 when the Immigration Act was passed that year over his very strong objections. He made the repeal of that act something of a personal crusade. His commitment touched a young senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, who championed the cause through the Senate. One reason why Senator Kennedy was so involved in the most recent debate on immigration dates back to this work of four decades before, and also why he holds in high esteem his role model Representative Celler who fought for five decades for the same cause.
The INS Act of 1965 was certainly an improvement and Senator Ted Kennedy promised with this bill’s enactment, “…our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually…” What he should have said was a million legal immigrants, because there were certainly that number coming in illegally. This was then addressed by the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which introduced the first sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrant workers.
But this, too, was a failure largely through ineffective enforcement, and in the past couple of decades, the pressure has been building to repair a program that is in dire need of fixing. According to ImmigrationCounters.com, there are now 20,291,000 illegal immigrants in the U.S. and according to the Pew Hispanic Center an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 enter the U.S. illegally every year – the vast bulk of these from south of the Rio Grande.
One of the most porous points is at Organ Pipe National Monument in southern Arizona. Some 200,000 illegal border-crossers were intercepted at Organ Pipe last year alone, but it is estimated that nearly the same number get through. An estimated 1,000 aliens a day trample across this border point.
The costs of assimilating this immigration influx are enormous. Author Victor Davis Hanson lives in “Mexifornia” and is not very happy about it. His research has shown that the average California household must contribute at least $1,200 each year to subsidize the deficit between what illegal immigrants cost in services and what they pay in taxes. Dozens of hospitals in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California have been forced to close or face bankruptcy because of federally-mandated programs requiring free emergency room services to illegal aliens.
The United States should be strong enough to deal with the economic issues of immigration. However, the criminal and terrorist element associated with illegal immigration is a much greater danger. The Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform reports that 80 percent of cocaine and 50 percent of heroin in the U.S. is smuggled across the border by Mexican nationals. Drug cartels spend a half-billion dollars per year bribing Mexico's corrupt generals and police officials, resulting in some 118 documented incursions by the Mexican military and U.S. Border Patrol agents in the past five years. Some 700,000 pounds of drugs were intercepted at Organ Pipe last year alone and Border Patrol agents report that foreign invaders are so brazen that they have actually cleared their own private roads through the park.
Christian groups mobilized against the Kyl-Kennedy Immigration Bill and were instrumental in its defeat. But there is nothing to celebrate. The problems associated with immigration, legal and otherwise, are still here – and desperately needs political leadership to solve. We all should pray for such leadership to emerge, and emerge quickly. The problem is not going away, and in fact, gets worse every day.