The Immigration Solution best for our Economy, our Security, and our Faith

This statement attempts a solution that is best for both citizens and immigrants, upon which all should be able to agree after studying the facts together. You can add your corrections, additions, clarifications where this is posted as a wiki at www.SaveTheWorld.Saltshaker.US.

By adding the votes/comments both of those who agree with and disagree with this article, this can turn into a combination petition and survey,

By Dave Leach, www.Saltshaker.US/HispanicHope

We surely all want a solution that: (there are sections below for each of these points)

restores border security.
virtually eliminates the undocumented population.
reduces immigrant reliance on “government services”.
preserves, if not creates, good jobs for citizens.
strengthens the Rule of Law.
keeps out terrorists.
encourages “assimilation”.
maintains the dominance of English.
reduces the USCIS workload.
doesn’t generate unsustainable population growth.
doesn’t increase national tracking of any kind: neither a national ID card like the “Real ID”, nor a combining of national databases, nor addition of biometric information to national databases, nor any other building blocks of future national tracking.
Is fair, not laying burdens upon others which neither we nor our ancestors would touch with one of our fingers. Moral, so that we can with clear conscience call for enforcement of our laws which will have become the envy of the world, without feeling ashamed or defensive when we are reminded of the impact of our laws on real people. Biblical, so that Christians do not have to choose between the principles of their God and cooperation with America’s immigration laws. (Where practical it should also avoid offense to other religions that respect America’s Freedoms of Speech and Religion.) Based on facts, clear reasoning, and clear understanding of opposing views, not obscured by rhetoric, confused by uninformed passion, and justified by junk science. Comprehensive, based on reading source documents and laws to understand hundreds of details of immigration law, along with meeting people experiencing the bureaucracy and the experts managing it; not based on simplistic rhetoric from 300 word news articles and fundraising letters which spin facts, use personal attacks, and dehumanize opponents in order to move normally apathetic readers to at least do something – to at least care.Tested by honestly and prayerfully listening to, responding to, and reasoning with ideological opponents, offering them every opportunity in a fair, respectful forum to refute any detail of your solution, following the example of Jesus who sought out the world’s experts on his area of concern, reasoned with them, and as part of setting an example for us (1 Peter 2:21, Hebrews 4:15) tested His own understanding by their inability to refute Him, and then pondered that experience for 21 years before changing the world. Except that I pray we don’t need 21 more years to fix this problem.

One more goal for Conservatives

The two most fundamental criteria of what a policy must have to be called “conservative” are: it must resonate with (1) the policy of America’ Founders, (see quotes on Page 3), and (2) the Bible.

America’s Founders never restricted how many could come from any nation before 1882. The only thing a Citizen could do which an immigrant jumping down off the boat could not do was vote, and the wait times before he could do that varied between 2 and 5 years.

THE SOLUTION IN ONE PAGE. (This summary posted March 17, 2012)

(Later sections explain how this one-page solution will meet all the preceding goals.)

Allow unlimited work visas, with the condition that no welfare is available. From a work visa there is a “stairstep” to legal permanent residence, and from there a “stairstep” to citizenship.

Repeal Numerical Limitations on all immigration categories of those desiring to move here indefinitely. Replace numerical limits with objective, simple, easily monitored criteria.

Criteria: The criteria should be qualities which citizens tend to naturally possess and which are the benchmarks of “assimilation”: things like mastery of English, familiarity with our political system, general self reliance, understanding and abiding by our laws. LPR (Legal Permanent Residency) should be given for good scores on machine gradable tests combined with a good work history, or graduation from an American university, or an honorable military discharge.

Bureaucracy: Simplify forms and laws until no lawyer is ever necessary to fill one out, and process all applications within 30 days. Let employers hire immigrants without limit, when they want them, and where they want them; don’t force employers to move factories overseas to hire them.

All current categories of immigrants desiring to move here indefinitely should be combined into a single category, with no numerical limit, subject to security provisions laid out here. (This article does not propose changing student or tourist visas, except for the possible addition of an oath, and monitoring.) Business will boom when employers aren’t subjected to hiring rules so arbitrary, unpredictable, and complicated that attorneys must be hired to follow them, and employers are never sure when or if they will be allowed to hire.

Fees for the initial application should be low enough that applicants from abroad can afford them. Testing and monitoring should be, as much as practical, objective and simple enough that computers can do most of it, freeing up the USCIS workload for more serious tasks.

Monitoring: Until they receive LPR, immigrants could be actively monitored. Upon entering the U.S. each would submit his credentials to assist with a background check, and either report his sponsor and future contact information or arrange for them.

The sponsor would be responsible for emergency support, and to report change of address, work history, a balanced family budget, and any substance abuse. With no government safety net, and no crushing fees or lawyer bills, immigrant communities will take the responsibility, helping each other with emergencies, more efficiently than government can. This will set a good example for citizens.

The credentials should include character witnesses, work history, and a record of an oath before witnesses and evaluated by some lie detection technology. The oath should pledge to honor our people, laws, and freedoms of speech and religion, and renounce any violent intent towards them.

Enforcement: The only enforcement necessary would be that if the worker can’t find work, and isn’t being sustained by friends, family, sponsors, or other visible support, and doesn’t leave of his own free will, he should be monitored more closely for potential criminal activity.

Courts: A felony should remain a deportable offense. Conviction of a lesser crime (for what would be crimes if citizens did them) should delay or block the “stairstep” to legal permanent residence. But poor defendants, not provided a court-appointed attorney if they are accused of not being a citizen, should have the right to authorize any non-lawyer, any friend, relative, community leader, clergy, etc., to help them present their defense to the court. (This is a right denied citizens although our 6^th Amendment “right to counsel” supposedly “guarantees” it. For a century after the 6^th Amendment was enacted, “counsel” meant whoever a defendant wanted to speak for him in court.) ICE should also be prohibited from jailing defendants far from where they have lived, an unethical strategy for keeping their community from helping them.

Even if Romney can create 12 million jobs in 4 years, is that enough to save our economy, considering our current 100 million taxpayers are just enough to cover entitlements, and we need 50 million new workers right now to cover the rest of our budget? How can our nation possibly survive, without millions more immigrants legalized and paying taxes?

America’s Founders on Immigration

Thomas Paine This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still. (1776 — Common Sense. Reference: Paine Writings, Foner, 23.)

James Madison The Alien bill proposed in the Senate is a monster that must forever disgrace its parents. (1798 — letter to Thomas Jefferson. Reference: James Madison, Letters and Other Writings, Fendall, ed., vol. 2 (142) (The Alien Act of 1798 provided for arresting immigrants from any nation at war with the U.S., who had not been naturalized. Penalties were whatever the President and courts chose.)

Thomas Jefferson Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular. (1801 — letter to Hugh White. Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., vol. 10 (258)

Benjamin Franklin Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old Inhabitants are not jealous of them; the Laws protect them sufficiently so that they have no need of the Patronage of great Men; and every one will enjoy securely the Profits of his Industry. But if he does not bring a Fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live. (1784 — Those Who Would Remove to America. Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 977.

Benjamin Franklin [E]very Man who comes among us, and takes up a piece of Land, becomes a Citizen, and by our Constitution has a Voice in Elections, and a share in the Government of the Country. (1784 — letter to William Straham. Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 1102.)

George Washington The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment. Reference: George Washington, Address to the Members of the Volunteer Association of Ireland, December 2, 1783.

[L]et the poor the needy and oppressed of the Earth, and those who want Land, resort to the fertile plains of our western country, the second land of Promise, and there dwell in peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment. (Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (301). 1785, letter to David Humphreys.

[T]he policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people. (1794 — letter to John Adams. Reference: The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, Fitzpatrick, Ed., vol. 34 (American Memory Co)

Why a better immigration solution than this generation has ever had requires more public discussion than this generation has ever had

I know I am asking for what no one wants. Or at least no one seems to know they want it.

I am asking, not for Romney to surround himself with people so smart they will speak for me, and for millions of others who care. I am asking for the millions who care, to listen to each other, and to discuss with each other, and to agree with each other on a plan so wonderful, and so irrefutably documented by facts, that it would be politically foolish to disagree.

Here’s the problem with just hoping Romney will surround himself with people smart enough to speak for us.

It wouldn’t matter if Romney and his advisors were as smart as Jesus. They would have to develop an immigration policy, not that would be best for both citizens and immigrants, but which they can pass.

In order to have a plan that will pass, you have to compromise what is best for everybody with what the others at the negotiating table will accept.

The problem with that is that one of the folks at the negotiating table is Mr. Ignorance.

Mr. Ignorance says that every additional immigrant we allow to come legally will take a job from a citizen. He says illegals receive welfare, destroy our Rule of Law, will cause our population to explode, just want “amnesty” and “anchor babies”, drive down our wages, and won’t assimilate.

Mr. Romney can’t just ignore Mr. Ignorance, because he has fooled millions of people. Even if Mr. Romney could educate a few ignorant people in a back room, that wouldn’t educate the millions of people who believe Mr. Ignorance. As long as Romney stays in a back room with a few very smart people, his immigration plan is going to have to be a compromise between brilliance and ignorance; between what works and what cannot work. Because a brilliant immigration plan that will work, cannot pass.

There is only one way for a brilliant immigration plan that works to pass, and that is for the millions who care about it to educate themselves and each other about the details that will make an immigration plan work.

It just doesn’t solve anything for a candidate to say “I pledge to pass a law that is good”, and for voters to say “Well that is exactly what we want, is laws that is good! And if Senator Billybob will give that to us, he is the man for our vote!”

Voters need to care about a little more detail than that. Voters need to know if the details Senator Billybob is planning are the same details voters want. They need to notice whether the details Senator Billybob promises are the same details he voted for before.

Voters need to be a little more curious about rallying cries like “Amnesty”, upon whose application to any specific immigration plan no two politicians can agree! (More about this undefined, emotionally charged word in section 5, “Rule of Law”.)

Where has such grassroots public discussion begun? Immigration reform websites have a page of general goals without footnotes to in-depth articles, or opportunity to interact with the authors to question or criticize. If you agree, they permit you to contribute, or sign a petition. (Please notify me if I have overlooked more discussion than that somewhere, or if it springs up somewhere.)

Published ideas, without opportunity for readers to interact with authors, is not “discussion” except in the most desperate sense. Grassroots consensus requires discussion.

Newt Gingrich promised a website with such a process, but I haven’t found it, if he ever created it. Perhaps “Go To Meeting” can help. What is really needed is such readiness to heal immigration law that someone can call a series of meetings in any city with an immigrant population, and the main difficulty will be finding an auditorium big enough.

The Government’s Legitimate Interest in Restricting Immigration

SECURITY. The primary, many say the only, legitimate government interest in restricting immigration, is to prevent the immigration of the violent and lawless: terrorists, criminals, and drug runners. These are discovered through background checks and interviews. More can be done: see “Keeping Out Terrorists”, #6.

But does this Legitimate Government Interest justify arbitrary Numerical Limitations on how many can come who are proven to be peaceful and willing to obey all the laws which citizens obey?

POPULATION. Many others say another legitimate government interest is in limiting population growth to what is “sustainable”.

But how many is that? Has any actual scientific research established such a figure? Doesn’t most of the discussion about it avoid definite figures? Don’t fears of such a limit appeal, not to clear research, but to the limits of how crowded most of us can imagine being without sacrificing “quality of life”?

Today’s population density was unsustainable by 17^th century standards, but that was before Freedom. Our experience as the first free nation in 3,000 years has taught us that the larger a brain pool of free men and women living in peace and safety, the greater the technology. That explains why population growth is so attractive to this day that people leave rural areas for the most densely populated cities to enjoy greater cultural and employment opportunities. By contrast, very few leave population centers for rural areas, beyond their ability to commute to population centers, or to interact by other means.

A big problem with counting population levels as a legitimate government interest in restricting immigration, is that it entrusts government bureaucrats with deciding what national discussion and scientific inquiry appear incapable of establishing.

Before we entrust bureaucrats with such power to deprive millions of the liberties we take for granted, on a premise that no man can prove, shouldn’t we be consider whether such population limits might actually hurt ourselves as much as they hurt immigrants? For more details, see #10, “Doesn’t generate unsustainable population growth.”

JOB COMPETITION. Many say another legitimate government interest in limiting immigration by numerical limits is to “limit immigration to what American employers need”, or to keep immigrants from “taking jobs away from citizens”, or from “driving down wages” by working for less than citizens demand to be paid.

The biggest problem with making any theory of job competition our justification for bureaucrats to limit immigration is that even if too much immigration would in fact hurt opportunities for citizens, no one pretends to be able to measure how much immigration is beneficial to our economy, over which immigration is harmful.

No one dares question the value of legal immigration within the limits currently set, yet many passionately protest that increasing those limits even a little bit would be disastrous. This is odd, since there is no science which even pretends to prove that current legal immigration, right up to the current level, is good economically, or that increasing the limits another 10% or so would be disastrous. Since science can’t account for this dramatic distinction in popular discussion, the other thing left to account for it is that it would be politically unthinkable to question current levels of legal immigration since it has strong support; while attacking any raise is politically safe because (1) the results would be beyond our experience, and (2) the question involves numbers. As we have learned from our national debt debates, citizen’s eyes glaze over at the glimpse of numbers.

But where are the voices of economists in the national discussion of how much immigration to allow legally? They are either not to be found, or buried beneath the clatter of simplistic assumptions repeated over and over again without support.

For example, it is repeated over and over that immigrants who come here illegally take jobs away from citizens. If that is true, why don’t immigrants who come here legally also take jobs away from citizens? And why don’t our own children take our jobs away from us? Are there indeed a fixed number of jobs, so that if the population grows from 350 million to 400 million, an additional 50 million workers will lose their jobs? How does such absurdity escape scrutiny?

What if our economy actually grows in proportion to the growth of our population, as it has from 1620 to today, to the extent we keep government out of our speech, our religion, our pockets, and our business procedures? (Historical note: these freedoms were unknown in Jamestown in 1607, where the Church of England ruled, or in Boston from 1630, where the Puritans ruled. But they were pioneered by the Separatists (Pilgrims) in 1620, in Plimoth, Massachusetts.)

What if our limits on immigration are depressing our national economy to the extent, say, that we see today?

If there is any possibility that our arbitrary Numerical Limitations are actually destroying, rather than blessing our economy, doesn’t the subject deserve a fresh unprejudiced look at the evidence?

The Government’s Legitimate Interest in EXPANDING Immigration

Our national debt is scary because America’s young healthy tax-paying workforce has been too depleted by abortion to support the entitlement-sucking old sick seniors like me who oversaw the slaughter.

At least that is what prolifers have been saying ever since about 20 years ago when leaders like Newt Gingrich and President George Bush first tried to partially privatize Social Security to save it from inevitable imminent collapse because retirees are fast outpacing workers.

Meanwhile millions of strong healthy young workers wait at our borders to replace those we have slain, to take care of us and our debts, but our Numerical Limitations won’t let them.

If we are serious about saving America from financial collapse, Isn’t it time to revisit those Numerical Limitations, along with stopping the slaughter?

Who can question that 85% of our national budget is entitlements and only 15% discretionary, leaving us little room for cuts, but that if we accept 50 million young workers this imbalance will disappear? I know how easy this fact is to ignore. But once this fact stares you in the face, demanding acknowledgment, who can deny it?

If saving America from financial collapse isn’t important enough to you to allow all 50 million replacement workers, could you at least go for raising the limits 50%, to a million and a half, just to keep up with the number of innocent future workers we continue to slaughter every year?

In summary, America has a “compelling government interest” in repealing Numerical Limitations and allowing peaceful, work-loving immigrants to come without limit, at least up to the 50 million mark and probably far beyond, for the following reasons:

* It will quickly correct the lopsided imbalance between too few young healthy taxpayers to support the old sick entitlement-sucking seniors like me, saving America from otherwise imminent collapse.

* The larger the brain pool of free citizens living in peace and safety, the stronger the technology, and therefore the more competitive the economy.

* There is no testable evidence that any particular level of population density will diminish “quality of life” more than it enhances it through the greater technology it can support.

* There is no evidence of a finite number of jobs which, if taken by immigrants, will be taken from citizens; or of an optimum calculable level of immigration which will bless our economy but which, if exceeded, will destroy our economy. For more details, see #4, “Preserves, if not creates, good jobs for citizens.”

We can have immigration policy that:

RESTORES BORDER SECURITY. The millions coming here to work would come through legal checkpoints instead of between them, if we would just allow them, leaving only the thousands of violent criminals, drug lords, and terrorists to cross between them, exposing them, leaving them much easier to catch. With DHS resources freed up from monitoring the Southern border, they could pay more attention to the Northern border where terrorists cross virtually unquestioned. We could devote more resources to apprehending the thousands who come to our coasts by boat.

It is not even controversial to point out that replacing Numerical Limitations with criteria would restore our border security. I have pointed this out to hundreds of people and none have questioned it. What has been questioned is whether that would give the U.S. an unsustainable population, or whether that would deprive citizens of jobs.

Not only is our border security enhanced by more immigration, but the enhancement of our national security is great enough to make the difference in our survival as a nation. We have numerous, violent enemies who will eagerly strike if they think we are weak enough. We are only 350 million, There are easily 3 billion people in the world who would love to see us all dead. We need young healthy immigrant workers not only to right our lopsided economy so we can keep our military equipped, but to help us defend our freedoms.

REDUCES THE ILLEGAL POPULATION. Millions already here would come out of hiding, leaving criminals no “haystack” in which to hide like needles.

I know that some people think undocumented immigrants are undocumented, in hiding, by choice, because they would prefer to not pay taxes. I know that because that is what the central Iowa campaign manager for Tom Tancredo, when he ran for president in 2008, told me. He had understood from Tancredo that there is a “line” for all of them, if they would just get off their lazy butts and get in it.

Few citizens appear to understand that we allow no legal “line” for literally 99% of those applying to get in one, most of whom are forced to choose between obeying our immigration laws or ever seeing their families again.

But among those who know this, there is no disagreement that allowing such a line would empty out our disenfranchised shadow population, which in turn would restore our internal security by leaving terrorists and criminals much more exposed. The disagreement is over whether to allow anyone who is undocumented to ever become legal, as a matter of some kind of “principle”.

Tom Tancredo campaigned on the principle that ever allowing anyone who had even for one minute ever been “illegal” to become “legal” would be “amnesty”. The Immigration Compromise of 2007 would have allowed them to become legal, but only after heavy fines and jail time. In fact, the jail time was so lengthy, in proportion to the small number of additional prison cells which the legislation would have financed, that it would have taken literally 100 years for all our uninvited neighbors to wait in line long enough to serve their time. Even that was called “amnesty” by Tancredo and several others.

Reality is more complicated than most Americans realize. True, there exist millions who are thoroughly undocumented. But millions more who are called “undocumented” are already “in line”. They have hired lawyers, filed their forms and paid their fees, but are waiting, sometimes for decades, for a ruling. For example, there is a “fourth preference” category of siblings of citizens whose applications are finally, this year, being processed, which were filed 29 years ago.

There are also millions who have done everything legally, and sent in their forms and fees on time, but the USCIS delays processing them for several months, during which time the visas of the applicants expire. Who should we take to jail: the applicants, or the foot-dragging USCIS bureaucrats?

Federal Courts and the State Department routinely fight with the USCIS over who is “undocumented”. Courts have a name for people who are still waiting to find out from the USCIS whether they are here legally. The name is PRUCOL (Persons Residing Under Color of Law). Courts say if the USCIS can’t even decide, as the months and years of waiting fly by, how are police supposed to decide? Therefore immigrants whose status is in question can’t be deported until the USCIS finally decides they are not here legally.

The 2007 Immigration Compromise bill did not take any of this into account, as it doled out fines and jail terms, at least that I could tell.

There are two reasons it makes no sense to even want to punish 10+ million unwelcome neighbors with jail.

First, compared with life in Mexico, life in an American jail is a party. That perspective comes to me from a friend who is in a federal prison with several whose only crime is violation of immigration laws. It is little disincentive to put an unloved neighbor in one of our jails.

Second, there is no way we can afford it. As I said, the 2007 Immigration Compromise mandated jail for undocumented neighbors, and laid out lots of money to build new jail cells for them. Trouble was, it would have taken 100 times as much money for enough new jail cells to accommodate all of them in a year. With what the Senate thought it could afford, it would take literally 100 years for that many people to serve that much time in those few jail cells. We simply can’t afford what some say we should do to our uninvited neighbors.

It would make a lot more sense, after we reform our immigration policy so Christians don’t have to be ashamed of it, to contract with Mexico to house noncitizen criminals in Mexican jails, for a tenth of the money.

As for whether allowing our uninvited neighbors a path to legal residence would be “amnesty” or undermine our “rule of law”, see #5, “Strengthens the Rule of Law.”

REDUCES IMMIGRANT RELIANCE ON “GOVERNMENT SERVICES”

The difference between “government services” and welfare, and the extent undocumented immigrants receive it, is poorly understood. But whatever the figures, we can greatly reduce immigrant reliance on it while benefiting immigrants – but only if we repeal Numerical Limitations.

Hospitals: we can’t let patients die on emergency room doorsteps, but when immigrants repay their bills we can reward them with speedy processing of their immigration forms. (Using a simple, predictable point system.)

Public schools: Plyler v. Doe (1982) makes public schools accept undocumented children, but we can similarly reward parents who home school or use private schools.

“Anchor Babies” is the anti-immigrant pejorative (insulting label) for babies of undocumented parents who are born here, which makes them citizens eligible for welfare. Voters are going to have to think hard about denying benefits to citizens, but if that is what they want, it should be legal to require parents to waive benefits for any children born here while they are on a work visa, as a condition of the work visa. If that is what voters want, that will be more agreeable to immigrants and the NGO’s who help them, than the current legal and bureaucratic hurdles that keep families away! If the safety net were turned over to immigrant communities and their sponsoring charities, they would step up to the plate, which would set a great example for the rest of America’s citizens!

A 2004 study by the Center for Immigration Studies doesn’t even acknowledge that “anchor babies” are citizens. It counted food stamps for babies born here (making them citizens) as “welfare for illegals”, because their parents were undocumented. CIS doesn’t want those babies born here to be citizens, so CIS doesn’t count them as citizens.

It may be possible, legally, to deprive these particular citizens of welfare, by making nonuse of that assistance a condition for stepping up to LPR, if that is what citizens decide they must have. The present system, which grants or denies LPR without regard to applicant qualifications, doesn’t even make that legally possible.

The CIS acknowledged that undocumented adults don’t receive what we call “welfare”, but says they receive “government services” such as jail, emergency hospital rooms, and public education (for undocumented children not born here). Each of these three are roughly $300 of cost to the U.S. per undocumented family, CIS estimates.

I hope we can all support incentives to repay hospitals. Many of us will support incentives to home school or attend private schools. (A vicious opponent will be one of America’s largest contributors to political races, the National Education Association and its state affiliates.) Jail expenses for immigration offenses (that would not be crimes if citizens did them) will be reduced if we can ever get the USCIS to process forms promptly. (Many law-abiding applicants are made “illegal” only by USCIS tardiness in processing forms. The USCIS is just now processing applications by siblings of citizens filed 29 years ago.)

The CIS counted government waste and the war in Iraq as another expense caused by illegals! The CIS divided the national budget by the population, called that “infrastructure”, and calculated that the average undocumented population costs the government $3,000 for “infrastructure”! I hope we can all agree reasoning like this is “rhetoric” which has no place in a serious discussion of immigration solutions.

PRESERVES, IF NOT CREATES, GOOD JOBS FOR CITIZENS.

Factories leave our shores in search of cheap labor (regulations and taxes are another subject). Duh! We wouldn’t have to move our factories overseas to find cheap labor, if we would allow cheap labor to come to our factories! Millions of low cost workers are clamoring to come!

Immigrating workers don’t have to be as low cost as workers abroad, to bring our factories back, because labor abroad isn’t worth as much. Workers abroad lack a work ethic of honesty, integrity, and quality. Communication with workers is limited. Experienced workers are harder to keep because of terrorism and government tyranny. Foreign governments have fewer written regulations but more unwritten bribe shakedowns. Shipping contributes not only to costs, but to a lag of months between discovery of a problem and its correction; or between an innovation and its implementation.

When our factories return, the good jobs with them return. Rent and property taxes are paid to Americans instead of foreigners.

Immigrants don’t take jobs away from citizens! The reason we don’t have 250 million unemployed since U.S. population grew from 100 million to 350 million, is that there are not a fixed number of jobs. The number of jobs available is always proportional to the population, and to the degree of freedom from taxes, regulations, and corruption which allows citizens to serve one another. Every new worker taking a job, whether born here or abroad, also creates a job because he requires the services of citizens to live here – and he has to pay citizen wages!

We don’t thank our lawyers and doctors for driving UP our wages by charging so high. It makes no sense to accuse immigrants of driving down our wages by working cheap. When we pay them low, and charge them high, it is not them cheating us. Citizens should shut up and be grateful.

Technology requires for its invention, and then for its maintenance, a brain pool of free citizens living in peace. The larger the brain pool, without diminishing freedom, the greater the technology, and thus the greater our technological edge over our enemies and economic competitors. Legalizing our 11 million undocumented residents will free their “brains” to join us in our “pool”. The more mature our technology, the better quality jobs will become for everybody.

STRENGTHENS THE RULE OF LAW. (Bonus: “amnesty”.)

“[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.” –Benjamin Rush, letter to David Ramsay, 1788

I interviewed Judge Roy Moore (The “10 Commandments” judge) who, at least on May 5 when I interviewed him, was a presidential candidate. I asked him about rationing liberty. By that, I mean immigration laws that prosecute U.S. residents for not being here “legally”, that are not triggered by any actions or qualifications of the accused, but are triggered only by our arbitrary Numerical Limitations which pass out Constitutional Rights by a type of lottery.

(By the way, there is no science, economics, sociology, philosophy, psychology, or Scripture that can justify the numbers we set as providing a flow of immigration which is beneficial, but over which would be harmful.)

At www.TequilaPartyOnline.US you can watch Judge Moore laugh at the idea that rationing fundamental rights – such as allowing only 1% of a population to have liberty – could be constitutional. Plyler v. Doe was pretty clear that the 14^th Amendment guarantees fundamental rights even to “illegal aliens”. But how better can we characterize current immigration policy towards the millions living here to whom we deny a “line”, than as the rationing of liberty?

Millions of U.S. residents have become “undocumented immigrants” through no action of their own, and who are thus innocent of violating our laws.

Yet our beloved immigration laws prosecute them under a cloud through which the rays of Liberty can never shine, unrelated to anyone’s actions or qualifications, but only to satisfy our arbitrary Numerical Limitations which don’t even allow enough new taxpayers to come legally to replace those we slay by abortion every year, let alone enough to restore a healthy taxpayer-to-entitlement-recipient ratio to solve our national debt problem.

There are five categories of “illegals” who got that status for the “crime” of existing, unrelated to anyone’s actions or qualifications, which is the ONLY legitimate occasion to prosecute anyone or restrict anyone’s liberties, according to the Rule of Law.

One category is the 2.7 million who were brought here as babies and as children with no voice in their coming here. As Plyler v. Doe (1982) observed, our laws do not regard infants and small children as lawbreakers for actions over which they have no control. They have no “culpability” (legal responsibility), or “mens rea” (“criminal intent”). Furthermore, a considerable number of them are citizens of no other country either. It is impossible for them to bring themselves into compliance with our laws if they stay, and they cannot leave. There is nowhere they can go. Our laws make them “lawbreakers” for the crime of existing.

For the other four categories, and legal arguments for the unconstitutionality of Numerical Limitations, see www.Saltshaker.US/HispanicHope/Deportation-Brief.htm.

“Law” used to mean restrictions placed upon everyone equally, not restrictions imposed by one population group upon another from which the first is exempt.

When a majority population enacts laws that apply only to a minority, from which the majority is exempt, that was how America’s Founders defined “democracy”. America’s Founders hated that form of government.

“Rule of law” used to mean laws that bind all equally. No exceptions – not even for lawmakers or majorities. Our forefathers described it with the phrase “Lex Rex”, Latin for “the Law is King”. The preceding norm was “Rex Lex”, “the King is the law”.

Jesus explained the same principle:

Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Luke 11:46

The same principle is found in our 5^th and 14^th Amendments. “Due process of law” means basically “the same laws everyone else lives under”.

No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law… 5^th Amendment to the Constitution

…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. … 14^th Amendment to the Constitution

Immigration laws which oppress 12 million American residents with burdens neither the rest of us nor any of our pre-1882 ancestors would ever touch, are destroying America’s Rule of Law.

“Rule of Law” has come to mean, to my fellow Christians, the opposite of what it meant to America’s Founders. Now my fellow Christians seem to think it means the rule of mindless legalism – the perpetuation of laws that serve no good purpose, even if they hurt ourselves.

Gone is the concept of fixing a bad law. Our laws must be obeyed, not repaired! To fix a stupid law so that it no longer criminalizes noncriminal behavior would let off those who, under the stupid law, would have been “lawbreakers”, and letting them off like that would be “amnesty”.

I have searched in vain for a definition of “amnesty” objective enough to help two people looking at two immigration plans agree whether the plans are “amnesty”. “Amnesty” has morphed into a pejorative meaning “the other guy’s immigration solution, if it is any more merciful than mine.” Having listened to various politicians accuse each other of “amnesty”, I have not found the word applied to any more objective criteria than that. It’s like the word “cult”, which has little more objective meaning than “other religions which I think are crazy”.

Arlen Specter, on the floor of the Senate June 27, 2007: “I have grave reservations about punitive measures which do not have some substantive meaning, but that concession has been made to try to avoid the amnesty claim. We have gone about as far as we can go. Amnesty, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder.”

“Amnesty means to reward lawbreakers with the object of their crime”, declared Congressman Steve King when he filled in July 4, 2007, for WHO talk show host Jan Mickelson.

How can a lawmaker, with law dictionaries all over his office, come up with a definition like that? Every time a law changes, it makes actions legal which used to be illegal, or vice versa. This didn’t used to be called “amnesty”. This used to be called “passing a law”.

Passing a law is what lawmakers do. It is the only thing they do. It is what they are supposed to do. In fact, the stupider the law, the better reason they have to change it. It is not “amnesty”, even though whenever they do it, the definition of who is breaking the law changes. Raising the speed limit from 5 mph to 70 mph is not “amnesty”, even though those who have always gone 65 are now rendered innocent. (See www.TequilaPartyOnline.US/Amnesty.htm)

KEEPS OUT TERRORISTS.

This doesn’t mean we have to let everybody across the border. We can still stop terrorists with bombs on their bellies. We can have laws against known terrorists being here. We can deprive violent immigrants of liberty just as we so deprive violent citizens. That is “equal protection of the laws”.

The enemies of America always come in pairs. There are the people who would violently destroy our laws, our Constitution, our economy, and our liberties. And there are the ideas which motivate them. An outline follows, of how to keep terrorists out of America, and of how to neutralize the ideas which motivate them. The twin threats can’t be neutralized by the same means.

One way we can do it is by firing TSA and hiring Israel, not only to scrutinize people boarding planes, but crossing borders. They are very successful, without racial profiling. One example: they look at travel history. Recent flights to Yemen subject a passenger to extra scrutiny. If we require that visas be applied for at least six months in advance, that would be long enough to do these checks, to the extent we follow Israel’s lead. Where a 6 month wait is impractical, there could be extra security, such as a requirement that sponsors check the whereabouts of the applicant twice daily, or electronic tracking bracelets, until the background checks are complete.Early in 2011 they unveiled technology that can identify show pictures of terrorist activities that are recognizable only to terrorists, and that can detect elevated heart rate and breathing remotely, and can distinguish between an ordinary passenger nervous about flying.

NGO’s (NonGoverment Organizations) such as churches and charities would help with character references if we let them. If they had that authority, immigrants would come to them to bring whatever documentation or witnesses were asked. Character references would be valuable for immigrants who come up blank on record searches by DHS.

To prevent the creation of NGO’s motivated by bribes, or by facilitating the immigration of terrorists and drug runners, we could have a point system that rates their accuracy. High points for years in operation without criminal or terrorist connections, and for providing positive character references for immigrants whose DHS background checks come up clean, and who stay crime free after immigrating. When applicants have high character references from an NGO but flunk DHS background checks, that NGO’s rating would drop.

LOYALTY OATH. Current law requires an oath of allegiance to become a citizen, but not to visit or work here. The oath transfers allegiance from another country to the U.S. The current oath is:

I hereby declare, on oath,

that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;
that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law;
that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law;
that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law;
and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

In acknowledgement whereof I have hereunto affixed my signature

But everyone who applies for a work visa, or even for a visa to visit, or a student visa or any other visa, should take an oath renouncing terrorism

“I pledge to honor the United States and her people and Constitution, including its Freedoms of Speech to criticize any religion or religious leader, and Freedom to choose one’s own Religion by converting to it at any time from any other religion. I renounce, reject and condemn any political, philosophical or theological system which justifies or promotes violence against these fundamental freedoms, or against the people or Constitution of the United States.”

We could require each oath taking to be evaluated by some lie detection technology, whether the old way with the wires, or voice analysis, or some new system. We could videotape it and post it online with the lie detector results. The results should be available to other lie detector experts for independent analysis, at an applicant’s request when an applicant doesn’t pass.. Lie detectors are not completely accurate, and terrorists could train to pass them. But they are accurate enough that a terrorist who passes one would be less trusted by other terrorists, and would risk becoming their target.

The results of lie detection analysis should not be taken any more seriously than the track record of the technology merits, but should be regarded as just one more piece of evidence.

(Lie detectors can’t be required for citizens, because of their inaccuracy along with invasion of privacy. But they are offered in courts as an opportunity for a defendant to present positive evidence for himself which often reduces investigations, legal maneuvering, and incarceration. In the same spirit, we could let an immigrant refuse a lie detector test, but our alternative would be a much more thorough background check, paid for by the applicant, with its additional months of waiting.)

Such an oath would impress peaceful Moslems who have been thinking about the violence verses but whose hearts are not hardened enough to lie or be violent. The oath would put a little pressure on them to make the right decision, and then to abide by their oath. Their own integrity would then balance later pressures by violent Moslems to support them.

Another value of such an oath would be that it would declare a standard. It would educate immigrants about what is important to America. It would begin their education about how our freedoms work. It would inform them that they, too, now that they are in America, may speak freely; and that through mere words, without swords, they are allowed the power to correct evil.

The report on the oath should include any gestures detected which cast doubt on the sincerity of the pledge. [Examples: placing their right hand over their left while taking the oath, which is a ritual of Islamic prayer (http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/41675) and was the manner in which Mohammed took an oath (http://www.witnesspioneer.org/vil/Articles/companion/04_uthman_ bin_ghani.htm). When Texas Congressman JeremiahDenton was in a Vietnam prison camp, he was tortured into appearing on TV to assure Americans that POW’s were being treated well. He did so, but as he was talking, he blinked the word “torture” in Morse Code. It took only one veteran to notice, and America was alerted.]

The American Freedom Defense Initiative has an 18-point plan for saving America from Islamization. Their agenda for immigrants similarly calls for some inquiry into citizenship applicants’ commitment to fundamentals of freedom, although the agenda has no detail and applies only to citizenship applications, while my proposal applies to all Visa applications and proposes the verbiage of an oath. But the AFDI’s proposed inquiry, in the third point below, will be moot if the second point ever becomes law – an “immediate halt of immigration by Muslims”. If no Muslim can even come here, or work here legally, how will any supporter of Sharia qualify to apply for citizenship, which requires living here legally for years?

– AFDI advocates deportation hearings against non-citizens who promote jihad in our nations. – AFDI calls for an immediate halt of immigration by Muslims into nations that do not currently have a Muslim majority population. — AFDI calls for laws providing that anyone seeking citizenship in the United States should be asked if he or she supports Sharia law, and investigated for ties to pro-Sharia groups. If so, citizenship should not be granted.

Deporting all professing Moslems without credit for the peacefulness of some would fail the “smell test” for most Americans; it would sanction, for the first time in America, government-led religious persecution, which would not likely remain focused on Moslems long before it is transferred to Christians; and it would drive Islam underground, making it harder for investigators to identify terrorists. Perhaps it is for reasons like this that God is against the idea too, according to a series of Bible studies I posted in response to the advancement of the idea by radio talk show hosts Jan Mickelson and Steve Deace. They said “God made immigrants convert.” Their reasoning suggests they think “The first amendment” to worship other gods, so long as you don’t commit the crimes they promote, is “a huge mistake”. Perhaps they are confused by what the Bible says about “blasphemy”. I have to guess, because they never cited any Scripture in support of their pronouncement that God required all immigrants to convert. But I know these Biblical topics have confused many.

We also need to dust off “conspiracy” laws, 18 U.S.C. § 371, which apply when “…two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy…” Merely concealing terrorist connections while immigrating is “defrauding” an “agency” of the United States. An estimated 100,000 Moslems living here have multiple wives, supported by at least two fatwahs justifying them. These marriages, and these fatwahs from imams living here, defraud the United States. We need serious investigation in mosques and stateside training camps, and serious prosecution. And when the object of the conspiracy is acts of terror, we need a longer prison term than five years. (For legal discussion, see http://law.jrank.org/pages/10334/Smith-Act.html or http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c103.htm)

STOPPING THE IDEOLOGY.

Terrorists justify their cruelty by quoting their Koran as if it were a declaration of war against our freedom of religion and speech. We cannot deny that their interpretations are reasonable. Even credible. In fact, alternative interpretations are not very reassuring because of their lack of credibility on their face, combined with their general rejection even by “nonviolent” Moslems. But neither can we deny that many Muslims here are nonviolent, so far, for whatever reason; they manage a contrary interpretation, or perhaps have never read the violence verses. Or they have developed a plausible theology of the Koran which does not support violence. Profiling is justified because of the many acts of war against us already, in combination with the large proportion of Muslims who publicly call all Muslims to support this war, based on the violence verses of the Koran. Yet Romans 2 warns us not to criminalize faith alone.

Moslems are probably not more violent than others by nature, but by culture and religion. And fear. The religion can motivate protest signs saying “Freedom go to Hell”. Dehumanization of Christians and Jews, founded on lies utterly closed to reason and evidence, has a certain attraction to the baser part of each of us. It is an easy way to deal with guilt, to blame others. To imagine others such monsters as to make ourselves righteous by comparison. Any gossip can relate to that; fortunately most American gossips are unarmed. Those that are, we put in jail; the ones who dehumanize their neighbors enough to justify violence against them.

But freedom is equally attractive to the nobler part of each of us. Good and evil struggle within each of us.

We need to tell the nonviolent from the violent, because we need as many nonviolent immigrants as we can get to help defend our nation against increasingly hostile enemies, while we need to keep out death-loving terrorists. We have interviewers in refugee camps to discern, through conversation, which refugees are peaceful and have a work ethic, as opposed to the violent who are members of gangs. In return for repeal of Numerical Limitations, NGO’s would gladly step up to the plate to assist with this vetting at our borders. (Terrorists mostly come across the Canadian border.)

Christians and freedom-loving Muslims must work together. It has been possible, in America, since America’s first war, with Moslem pirates who quoted the same surahs that Moslem terrorists quote today, during which American voters elected our first Muslim congressman: John Randolph. That spirit was born in 1620, when the Pilgrims (not the Puritans) brought over more people who were not members of their church than who were, and then gave them all the vote, knowing they could always be outvoted! (See www.Saltshaker.US, “1620: When Freedom Was Reborn.”)

Americans understood then that some Muslims can be trusted, and some Christians cannot. This point is dramatically made in Romans 2. But many Christians today have forgotten how this works. They don’t know how we can welcome the peaceful without enabling the violent.

Not everyone follows their own profession of faith. Atheism supports the lawlessness of “survival of the fittest”, which is how nations operate where Atheism is dominant; yet Atheists living here in America live pretty much like Christians. Moslems, also, in America, live pretty much like Christians, comfortable with laws alien to Sharia Law which were inspired by, and are consistent with, the Bible.

And yet we cannot forget that competing ideologies are a threat to our liberties. We must deal with them. But not just Islam. And not just Atheism. That would leave Apathy unaddressed, but we have more to guard against than even that. In fact, every idea is a threat to the extent it does not offer pure support for our liberties, and every impurity must be resolved by, and only by, national discussion.

What makes Islam a greater threat than any other, right now, is not its power to destroy but our response to it: we are afraid to analyze it as frankly as we do our other threats.

It is not enough to keep out the violent, conspiratorial Moslems with criminal intent. Islam itself is a threat. It is a declared enemy of peace, Freedom of Speech and Religion, and any freedom at any level for women. At least that interpretation, besides being held by the vast majority of Moslems and rejected by a tiny minority, is a reasonable, credible interpretation, and we must exercise our freedom to say so.

But it is a different kind of enemy. Its battlefield is the mind, and it cannot be defeated by swords or police restraint. It can only be defeated, and America made safe, by Freedom of Speech exercised by Christians.

“We are teaching the world the great truth that governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of government.” –James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, 1822

“In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.” –Alexander Hamilton

Our national security rests on our ability to push back the ACLU’s and court’s efforts to stifle criticism of Islam, and advocacy of the Bible. Christians must assert their freedom to expose the Koran’s declaration of war on a whole range of Western freedoms and values, and explain the Bible’s support for those freedoms and values.

“It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.” –Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet, 1803

This requires that Bible discussion be once again accepted in the “public square”. We should expect Atheists to balk, even though the liberties they love rest upon it. The challenge will be to stop Christians from feeling ashamed when a candidate quotes the Pages of God.

But our liberties depend upon pushing even that mountain into the sea. America will remain undefended in the war of ideas, as long as Moslems are able to say “well the Bible has violence in it too”, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Moslem scholars interpret the Koran as a mandate for dehumanization, persecution, and war against Christians and Jews while not one Christian theologian can be found who interprets the Bible as a mandate for violence against unbelievers, and Christians are not allowed to answer without facing the resistance of fellow Christians.

ENCOURAGES “ASSIMILATION”.

We blame immigrants for not “assimilating”, and yet our immigration policy gives strong disincentives to assimilate. Undocumented immigrants fear mixing with fluent English speakers for fear of detection, and documented immigrants are not endeared to fluent English speakers because of the racial profiling that spills over from hating “illegals”.

We can reverse our disincentives with a new immigration policy that rewards applicants for Legal Permanent Residence for high scores in history, government, and English tests, as well as a documented work history which gives extra credit for work which requires English fluency.

I’m not talking about high scores in the current citizenship test, which is a joke. Although occasional questions can’t be answered by an embarrassing number of citizens, other questions are embarrasingly easy, the whole test is embarrasingly short, and it unnecessarily consumes USCIS manpower by being administered, not as a written, multiple choice, machine gradable test, given to hundreds at a time, but as an oral test given to one person at a time.

If you answer the first 6 questions correctly, you pass. If you can’t you get four more chances, to a maximum total of 10 questions. One question asked of WHO radio host Simon Conway was “How many stars are on the flag?” the question was asked orally, in front of a flag.

Besides staying crime free, staying off welfare, and paying back any emergency hospital bills, applicants for Legal Permanent Residence should be tested for English, and should be able to read, speak and write at a certain grade level. (This requirement would not apply to refugees, who currently are given automatic LPR status with no English requirement.)

A 2^nd grade level might even be attainable. If this seems a difficult standard for many, remember that our current system offers no incentive for learning English, and for undocumented immigrants, a strong disincentive for mixing with fluent English speakers – fear of being reported, which can disrupt your life even if investigators only find you are here legally. Reversing those incentives will make learning English a lot easier.

LPR applicants should also have a good work history, to reduce the likelihood of needing welfare if they become citizens later.

Some understanding of our government and how our freedoms work should also be tested as a condition of LPR. The test now given for citizenship does not seem beyond the reach of LPR applicants.

It may be objected that we shouldn’t require immigrants to meet a higher standard than natural born citizens can meet. That is true, and an embarrassing percentage of citizens would flunk even the pathetically simple citizenship test. But even if our tests require more head knowledge than citizens have, that may be necessary just to equal the experience citizens have. Citizens live and breathe freedom of speech and religion, and the right and duty to vote after political campaigns. Just the 18 years of political TV commercials, with their blistering criticisms of opponents, is a world unknown to many immigrants.

Also keep in mind that many of the questions which an embarrassing percentage of citizens can no longer answer, were once answered by them on tests in public schools. We forget much of what we learn if we don’t keep it up, and immigrants may later forget the answers. But having once known them is still valuable. We at least remember where to find the answers.

There are two very important advantages this would give immigrants.

First, it would give them hope. They would start becoming familiar with the opportunity ahead to exercise a voice in their government. They would start getting used to feeling like a citizen. They would start to feel pride in their new country, instead of the fear and resentment which our present policy generates.

Second, LPR would graduate from being a mere indulgence granted by a bureaucrat without regard to qualifications, to a diploma assuring all citizens that these new LPR graduates are entering our economy well qualified. The certification of English and History proficiency would become an assurance to employers of basic education, in the same way a high school diploma is.

The citizenship test should of course become more advanced than the LPR test. With the blessings of Liberty secure and the help of NGO’s, I wonder if even a GED diploma would be an attainable goal, with exceptions for the retarded? It would certainly make new citizens more employable and respected by other citizens! Even if we don’t make such high standards an absolute requirement, we could at least reward their attainment with speedier citizenship processing times. For example, if applicants could graduate directly from work visas to citizenship in two years by passing a GED in addition to other requirements, I think only a minority would go through the lengthier intermediary step of Legal Permanent Residence.

REDUCES THE USCIS WORKLOAD.

Thousands, instead of millions, crossing the Southern border between legal checkpoints will give the USCIS a lot less to do. It takes a lot less manpower to sit at a desk while a long line of immigrants gives you their sponsors, arranged addresses, oaths of allegiance, fingerprints, etc. than it does to drive through moonlit wilderness to find and arrest long lines of people doing everything they can to hide from you, while very few of them are armed and dangerous but you don’t know which ones.

Monitoring compliance with criteria will not noticeably add to the USCIS workload provided that the criteria are objective and simple enough to be machine gradable.

Another reason criteria need to be objective and simple is that they need to earn the confidence of immigrants, who will not participate if they seem arbitrary, unpredictable, and subject to significant human prejudice.

Another reason is that applications need to be processed promptly, instead of taking sometimes decades. Babies are growing. Parents are dying. Families can’t wait decades to be reunited. They will, and must, continue coming illegally if coming legally requires them to wait for decades.

By abandoning its hostile stance towards immigrants, the USCIS will convert NGO adversaries into allies glad to help with expensive labor-intensive procedures like background checks.

DOESN’T GENERATE UNSUSTAINABLE POPULATION GROWTH.

Republican prolifers reject population density as a negative thing, when it justifies abortions or other methods of population control. Their response is to show how easily the entire world population could fit into a small fraction of the U.S. land area. But some of the same prolifers accept population density as a negative during discussions of immigration. They then join pro-abortionists in worrying that allowing more immigration will make us crowded and poor like Bangladesh.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric is based on one of the paranoid excuses of abortionists for killing unborn babies: the Population Control myth that we don’t have room for all the hard working, non-criminal immigrants who love freedom and opportunity, so we have to drive them out. That is not prolife. That is the ideology of Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood, and Hitler, not the Republican Party, at least not before Pat Buchanan poisoned it while he was a presidential candidate.

It is said that if Numerical Limitations are repealed, “the whole world will come! We won’t have room!”

The U.S. already being an economic and military powerhouse, and the world’s tyrannies retaining somewhat fragile control mostly with the indulgence and some support from the U.S., not very much more of the world’s population could come here without the U.S. becoming so overwhelmingly influential that tyrannies would finally topple, overtaken by governments which no longer drive out their own citizens.

Many others say another legitimate government interest is in limiting population growth to what is “sustainable”.

We will address the scenario of the whole world coming here. But first, some reasons that won’t happen:

(1) If we process citizenship applications in 2-5 years as America’s Founders did, immigrants sending money to starving families back home will export political experience with the money – a combination that will enable families back home to transform their governments so they no longer drive out their own citizens. Under today’s system, by the time people who send money back home acquire political experience, their families back home have all died of old age.

(2) As the Declaration of Independence touches on, when enough of a population are disturbed enough with their government to endure the upheaval and risk of leaving for a better land, it becomes easier to reform their government so it no longer drives out its own citizens.

(3) The U.S. already being an economic and military powerhouse, and the world’s tyrannies retaining somewhat fragile control mostly with the indulgence and some support from the U.S., not very much more of the world’s population could come here without the U.S. becoming so overwhelmingly influential that tyrannies would finally topple, overtaken by governments which no longer drive out their own citizens.

(4) There are a lot of violent, lawless people in the world who prefer living where they can resolve disputes with bullets rather than ideas, where they can own slaves, hack Christians to death, rape children, and where they can get a good job as a government torturer. They hate freedom, especially of speech and religion, and they consciously war against prosperity. For example, a well publicized Moslem demonstration photo shows a sign reading “Freedom go to Hell.” They don’t want to live like us. They want to conquer us and make us live like them. There must always be land set aside for hearts hardened against all things good and beautiful. In Eternity, that land is called Hell.

(5) At some point along the immigration of the whole world into the United States, the United States would annex the whole world.

I have in mind a number of immigrants I want welcomed to the United States: the same number as our own babies whom we have mercilessly slain. God’s substitute workforce offers us these advantages:

(1) We attract the best quality immigrants who want to acquire wealth by honest hard work that benefits others, rather than by oppressing others. Our immigrants are like the Levites and other righteous citizens in 2 Chronicles 11:13-17 who left Israel with its two golden calves to live in the more righteous Judah.

(2) National security. We need as many freedom-loving, nonviolent immigrants as we can get to help defend our nation against increasingly hostile enemies. Judah’s immigrants “strengthened the kingdom of Judah”, just as ours strengthen our God-blessed (so far) land. Many immigrants serve proudly in our armed forces, and as war spreads, we will need more. In an increasingly armed world, a significant increase in our population of citizens committed to our defense may be our only salvation.

While people born here tend to take Freedom for granted and see little urgency about understanding it, much less fighting for it, while even ignorantly voting against it, America is rejuvenated by refugees from freedom’s absence. We are a magnet to the best quality Freedom Fighters any free nation could ask.

(3) Technology requires for its invention, and then for its maintenance, a brain pool of free citizens. The larger the brain pool, without diminishing freedom, the greater the technology, and thus the greater our technological edge over our military enemies and economic competitors. Legalizing our 11 million undocumented residents will free their “brains” to join us in our “pool”. The more mature our technology, the better jobs will become for everybody.

(4) Elevation of America as the lightouse of the world.

Freedom is a Judeo-Christian value, not a Muslim or Hindu value. That is one of the things that makes America profoundly a “Christian nation”, to this day. A Republic in which leaders are elected by popular vote after political campaigns goes back to Moses’ institution of “judges”. According to Calvin’s Institutes, this system was applied to the selection of pastors of Christian churches for their first several centuries. It was resurrected by the Pilgrims, who for the first time in a thousand years gave the vote to everybody; not just free men but servants, not just church members but atheists, and not just men, but when my ancestor Richard Warren died in 1607, his wife Elizabeth, as head of household of 7 children, was allowed to vote. (For documentation, see www.Saltshaker.US, click on “1620: When Freedom was Reborn”.)

It is this sense that atheists, Moslems, Hindus, and pagans who live here under our freedom and enjoy it, live more like Christians than like the brutal societies in which those professions dominate.

Even citizens who profess Atheism’s Communism-supporting evolution-justifying “survival of the fittest” live here under our laws. Honest, not violent, not criminal, their temperament self-controlled, serving others with quality, integrity, wisdom, and a commitment that goes beyond mere concern for future business, treating wives well, treating others as they want to be treated, not necessarily given to drink or drugs.

Even relativists, who live here, live by some kind of “moral code” with principles so important to them that violating them is unthinkable, and which, when violated by others, seems to them “wrong”. And sometimes even “abominable”.

Non-Christians who live in America, while hardly professing Christianity, live much more by Christian principles than by the principles of other world religions. The religions they profess do not fully articulate the moral codes by which they live, when they live in America.

“But what if half the world comes?”

Although this will be impossible for the above reasons, let’s fully dispose of the Population Control Myth by demonstrating the potential good of even that much population density.

If ½ the world came, the U.S. would be only a little more densely populated than Polk County, Iowa.

I live in Polk County. Polk County is the heart of Iowa, host to the starting gate for Presidents. Polk County does not have an unsustainable population! We don’t have very many people crammed in high rises; mostly homes. And about half our land is farm land. We could grow all our own food if we had a reason. Fewer are leaving Polk County for farms, than are coming to Des Moines from farms.

Quality of life is proportional, not to population density, but to freedom of religion, speech, and opportunity protected for all. Here is the proof. The first figure is population density per square mile. The second figure is average annual income.

U.S. 71/$22,212.

Mexico 115/$2,936.

China 315/$370.

U.K. 611/$15,000.

Israel 658/$10,500.

Polk County 756/$23,654.

Japan 865/$27,321.

U.S. if ½ the world came 912/$___

Bermuda 1,088/$36,845.

Taiwan 1,669/$8,083.

Manhattan 66,940/$100,000+.

Even if the whole world came here, leaving the rest of the world for farms and hunting, the U.S. would still have only 3% of the population density of Manhattan, where many prefer to live by their free choice. To this day people flock from rural areas to densely populated cities to take advantage of the opportunities, jobs, culture, and technology which is always increased, the more condensed the pool of free, secure brain power.

It isn’t population density that makes anyone poor. It’s corrupt government, and laws and religions of hate. Where there is freedom, and love of neighbor, technology flourishes, enabling us to use space better. Mexico has about 126 people per square mile to the U.S.’s 79.6, which makes us almost adjacent on a world density chart. Illegals aren’t fleeing population density: they come, mostly, to California’s 217.2 people per square mile.

The threat to America is not numbers, but declining understanding of how our freedoms work, and/or declining interest in freedom.

If the entire world population were packed as densely as Chicago’s 13,000 people per square mile, (less than half the density of New York City and the Los Angeles metropolitan area), they would fill up a metropolis consuming only 10% of U.S. land, leaving 90% for agriculture and parks. (Thanks to Dowingba.com for the perspective.)

Density poses problems to be prepared for. But it also offers opportunities to be grasped, through the multiplied brainpower available to us. Against this perspective, it is tragically foolish to imagine we are defending our interests, by deliberately limiting the opportunity of other human brains to share their potential with us! We have room! At least on our land. The issue is whether we will make room in our hearts.

The source of the Population Control application to immigration is hardly Christian, conservative, prolife, or associated with America’s Founders. The philosophy barreled into immigration politics with the help of one man, John Tanton. The Wikipedia article about him says “Tanton has also held national positions in environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth, and local leadership positions in the Audubon Society and Planned Parenthood.” The main article excludes this list, but relegates it to the “talk” page:

“Here is a list of 13 groups in the loose-knit Tanton network, followed by acronyms if the groups use them, founding dates, and Tanton’s role in the groups. Those organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center are marked with (&). In this list, “founded” means a group was founded or co-founded by John Tanton. “Funded” means that U.S. Inc., the funding conduit created and still headed by Tanton, has made grants to the group.”

&American Immigration Control Foundation, AICF, 1983, funded

&American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together, 1992, funded

California Coalition for Immigration Reform, CCIR, 1994, funded

Californians for Population Stabilization, 1996, funded (founded separately in 1986)

Center for Immigration Studies, CIS, 1985, founded and funded

&Federation for American Immigration Reform, FAIR, 1979, founded and funded

NumbersUSA, 1996, founded and funded

Population-Environment Balance, 1973, joined board in 1980

Pro English, 1994, founded and funded

ProjectUSA, 1999, funded

&The Social Contract Press, 1990, founded and funded; publishes The Social Contract periodical.

U.S. English, 1983, founded and funded

U.S. Inc., 1982, founded and funded

Source: “John Tanton’s Network.” Intelligence Report. Summer 2002. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 02:40, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

DOESN’T INCREASE NATIONAL TRACKING.

Conservatives are supposed to want to kick “Mark of the Beast” national tracking schemes like E-Verify back to Hell to join Hillary’s 1993 National Health Card.

Conservatives are not supposed to want to increase national tracking of any kind: whether a national ID card like the “Real ID”, the combining of national databases, the addition of biometric information to national databases, or the building blocks of future national tracking.

Today’s allegedly “conservative” immigration policy relies on Big Brother (or Mark of the Beast) government tracking databases and technology – the E-Verify system, with its Facial Recognition software which, once nationally mandated and filled with images and data on everyone who works, will have the potential capacity to chart the movements of every American through surveillance cameras across America.

I am a very conservative Republican who ran last year against Iowa’s openly gay state senator, but forcing employers to sic Big Brother on every employee, so that a man can literally not work, without which most cannot buy or sell, without this metaphorical “mark”, is not the “conservatism” that I signed on for! When Hillary tried to do a fraction of that with an ID card pegged to her national health plan in 1993, conservatives shut down the switchboards and made Newt majority leader. That national ID card was the primary catalyst for Newt’s rise, as I recall. That’s my memory of the meaning of “conservative”.

What makes E-Verify so different from the Real ID and BELIEVE Acts that the former is praised and the latter vilified even by some “end times” radio preachers? The clearest difference is that with the former you don’t have to carry a card. Your face is the card, through E-Verify’s “photo tool” which uses Facial Recognition software. That makes it better? The databases are about the same; under any plan, there is pressure to merge state and national databases. The “Immigration Compromise” of 2007 would have combined Social Security, IRS, and state DOT (drivers’ license) records. The ironically named “Save America Act” would have instead combined Social Security records with state birth and marriage certificate records.

E-Verify database errors force at least 0.3% percent of citizens to wrestle with database bureaucrats to keep their jobs. No one knows how many of the remaining 2.3% percent not allowed to work are citizens who never figured out how to appeal, or didn’t want to bother, or are still waiting for a hearing. Three years ago, the wait time for a hearing was 499 days.

If E-verify were mandatory across America, that would add up to between 800,000 and 7 million citizens not allowed to work. That is probably more than the number of undocumented immigrants that would not be allowed to work; especially since there is no clear evidence that E-Verify has reduced the undocumented population at all.

But far more frightening than a government database whose errors would put 7 million citizens out of work, would be a government database with zero errors!

E-Verify relies on the Social Security database, which has about 18 million mismatches between names and numbers, over 12 million of which are for citizens.

At least those figures are the main reason a California court stopped the USCIS from mandating E-verify nationally by administrative rule.

(“Order Granting Motion for Preliminary Injunction” of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. C, 07-04472 CRB, 10/10/2007. After a similar scheme was rejected by the U.S. Senate – “The Immigration Compromise” – the USCIS attempted to accomplish the same thing through an administrative rule. 72 Federal Register 45611 August 15, 2007. A coalition led by the AFL-CIO filed a Complaint August 28: AFLCIO v. Chertoff, Northern District of California.)

What will happen to you if you are one of those 12 million? What if a previous employer, or the SSA, misspelled your name or number on a W2 form? What if you got married and didn’t tell both the IRS and SSA? What if a W2 form was turned in for you that wasn’t completely filled out? What if your number is used by someone else?

Those were four main reasons given by the Court why the SSA has so many errors.

The SSA Inspector General testified February 28, 2008, that there are 751,767 cases waiting for a hearing decision, causing an average wait time of 499 days. That is how long you might be out of work if you can’t quickly resolve a mismatch about you in SSA records and have to go before an SSA administrative law judge, where, by the way, even citizens don’t have a right to a court appointed attorney.

The SSA already sends out eight million letters every year to employers about their employees whose names and numbers don’t match. But the letter honestly says that is not evidence that a worker is not a citizen. The USCIS wanted to change that disclaimer, and give employers 90 days to resolve that no-match, fire their employees, or face huge fines. The Court said “If allowed to proceed, the mailing of nomatch letters, accompanied by DHS’s guidance letter, would result in irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers….Kenneth Apfel, ex-Commissioner of the SSA, believes – based on his prior experience at the agency – that “there will be many legally authorized workers who cannot resolve a mismatched earnings report” by the deadline imposed by the new rule. See Apfel Decl. ¶ 17. Because empirical research suggests that mass layoffs often follow receipt of a no-match letter, see Theodore Decl. ¶ 11, there is a strong likelihood that employers may simply fire employees who are unable to resolve the discrepancy within 90 days, even if the employees are actually authorized to work.”

But now the GAO says the error rate is much lower.

“USCIS has reduced TNCs [Temporary NonConfirmations] from 8 percent for the period June 2004 through March 2007 to almost 2.6 percent in fiscal year 2009.”

Let’s translate.

In 2007 the Court said the SSA database had 12.7 million no-match errors involving citizens. Now the GAO says 4 years later there is an error rate of 2.6%.

U.S. population according to the 2010 census is 308,745,538. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States]

That’s how many SSN’s there should be, of living Americans, as opposed to Chicago voters.

2.6% of that many, minus 11 million estimated undocumented residents, comes out to 7,720,000 citizens with no-matches.

But are the no-matches errors? Perhaps not! only 0.3% were proved to be eligible for work after they contested their TNC. At that rate, a scant 800,000 U.S. Citizens would be at risk of having to wrestle with bureaucrats in order to keep working, were E-Verify made mandatory for all U.S. employment! (Not reported is how much work it was to wrestle with the database bureaucrats, how much time it took, and if anyone is still wrestling.)

Except that there is no way to be sure about that other 2.3%, according to the February 2011 government Accounting Office report. Maybe some were citizens who were never told they could appeal their TNC, suggested the GAO. Maybe they were citizens who just didn’t want to fight it; there is no way to even find out what is in USCIS records that led to the TNC. Without knowing that, how can you correct it? If those 2.3% who lost their jobs were also citizens, then at that rate, if E-verify is mandated across America, then we should expect 7 million American citizens to lose their jobs!

Here are excerpts from the GAO report posted at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11330t.pdf

USCIS has reduced TNCs from 8 percent for the period June 2004 through March 2007 to almost 2.6 percent in fiscal year 2009. As shown in figure 1, in fiscal year 2009, about 2.6 percent or over 211,000 of newly hired employees received either a SSA or USCIS TNC, including about 0.3 percent who were determined to be work eligible after they contested a TNC and resolved errors or inaccuracies in their records, and about 2.3 percent, or about 189,000, who received a final nonconfirmation because their employment eligibility status remained unresolved. For the approximately 2.3 percent who received a final nonconfirmation, USCIS was unable to determine how many of these employees (1) were authorized employees who did not take action to resolve a TNC because they were not informed by their employers of their right to contest the TNC, (2) independently decided not to contest the TNC, or (3) were not eligible to work.

USCIS has reduced TNCs and increased E-Verify accuracy by, among other things, expanding the number of databases that E-Verify can query and instituting quality control procedures to screen for data entry errors. However, erroneous TNCs continue to occur, in part, because of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in how personal information is recorded on employee documents, in government databases, or both.

….In addition, identity fraud remains a challenge because employers may not be able to determine if employees are presenting genuine identity and employment eligibility documents that are borrowed or stolen.⁵ E-Verify also cannot detect cases in which an unscrupulous employer assists unauthorized employees. USCIS has taken actions to address fraud, most notably with the fiscal year 2007 implementation of the photo matching tool for permanent residency cards and employment authorization documents and the September 2010 addition to the matching tool of passport photographs. Although the photo tool has some limitations, it can help reduce some fraud associated with the use of genuine documents in which the original photograph is substituted for another.6 To help combat identity fraud, USCIS is also seeking to obtain driver’s license data from states and planning to develop a program that would allow victims of identity theft to “lock” their Social Security numbers within E-Verify until they need them to obtain employment authorization.⁷ Combating identity fraud through the use of biometrics, such as through fingerprint or facial recognition, has been included in proposed legislation before Congress implementing a biometric system has its own set of challenges, including those associated with cost and civil liberties.

….USCIS is challenged in ensuring employer compliance with E-Verify requirements for several reasons. For example, USCIS cannot monitor the extent to which employers follow program rules because USCIS does not have a presence in employers’ workplaces.8 USCIS is further limited by its existing technology infrastructure, which provides limited ability to analyze patterns and trends in the data that could be indicative of employer misuse of E-Verify. USCIS has minimal avenue for recourse if employers do not respond or remedy noncompliant behavior after a contact from USCIS compliance staff because it has limited authority to investigate employer misuse and no authority to impose penalties against such employers, other than terminating those who knowingly use the system for an unauthorized purpose. For enforcement action for violations of immigration laws, USCIS relies on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to investigate, sanction, and prosecute employers. However, ICE has reported that it has limited resources to investigate and sanction employers that knowingly hire unauthorized workers or those that knowingly violate E-Verify program rules.⁹ Instead, according to senior ICE officials, ICE agents seek to maximize limited resources by applying risk assessment principles to worksite enforcement cases and focusing on detecting and removing unauthorized workers from critical infrastructure sites.

Senior E-Verify program officials said they expect improved technology enabling automated analysis of E-Verify data to be implemented by fiscal year 2012.

….USCIS does not have operating procedures in place for USCIS staff to explain to employees what personal information produced the TNC or what specific steps they should take to correct the information.

….USCIS and SSA face challenges in accurately estimating E-Verify costs. Our analysis showed that USCIS’s E-Verify estimates partially met three of four characteristics of a reliable cost estimate and minimally met one characteristic.¹² As a result, we found that USCIS is at increased risk of not making informed investment decisions, understanding system affordability, and developing justifiable budget requests for future E-Verify use and potential mandatory implementation of it.

IS FAIR, MORAL, BIBLICAL.

Our goal: an immigration policy that Is fair, not laying burdens upon others which neither we nor our ancestors would touch with one of our fingers. Moral, so that we can proudly call for enforcement of our laws which will have become the envy of the world, without feeling ashamed or defensive when we are reminded of the impact of our laws on real people. Biblical, so that Christians do not have to choose between the principles of their God and cooperation with America’s immigration laws.

For a vision of a FAIR immigration policy, see the section on “Rule of Law”.

“Fair” means by the same rules everyone else plays by. In American law, “fairness” is called “due process of law” in the 5th Amendment, and “equal protection of the laws” in the 14th Amendment.

The following is a summary of legal arguments that Numerical Limitations (which allow fewer immigrants to come legally each year than the number of future citizens we slaughter by abortion) are unconstitutional. The entire brief is at [www.TequilaPartyOnline.US/Deportation-Brief.pdf.]

These arguments are offered in defense of those who have become “undocumented immigrants” through no action of their own, and who are thus innocent of violating our laws. This could describe possibly half of undocumented immigrants. These arguments additionally challenge the constitutionality of Numerical Limitations. “Equal protection of the laws” (14th Amendment) and “due process” (5th Amendment) require reasonable access to the Fundamental Constitutional Right of Liberty for all applicants, whether living here or abroad, who meet the qualifications which citizens meet, and who have not done anything which would be crimes if citizens did them.

Those who are under the jurisdiction of our laws, and thus entitled to their equal protection, include everyone whose liberties and rights are affected by our laws, whether living here or abroad. Plyler v. Doe (1982) said even those who reside here “illegally” have “fundamental rights” which cannot constitutionally be abridged except by laws which can pass “strict scrutiny”. Of course, courts restrict the liberty of lawbreakers all the time. Our police arrest them, our courts try them, and our jails hold them. But immigration law violates Fundamental Rights when it prosecutes millions of U.S. residents who have broken no laws.

Millions of undocumented immigrants have broken no laws, yet are under a cloud through which the rays of liberty can never shine. They are in six categories.

Undocumented immigrants brought here as babies and as children with no voice in their coming here. They have no “culpability” (legal responsibility), or “mens rea” (“criminal intent”). It is a stronger case when they are not citizens of any other country either, so that it is impossible for them, even after they become adults, to bring themselves into compliance with our laws by leaving, because there is nowhere they can go. If the case is so strong that even USCIS prosecutors are ashamed to prosecute them, the immigrant might consider being an appellant in suing because they are denied opportunities by laws that criminalize their very existence.
PRUCOL cases, where defendant came to be “undocumented” because bureaucrats failed to act on applications as our laws require, while defendant’s living arrangements were based on a good faith expectation that the bureaucrats would follow the law. For example, an immigrant marries a citizen and comes here on a 6 month visa, and immediately applies for an Adjustment of Status. The USCIS gives applicants 8 months of protection from deportation after the visa expires, while the applicant is waiting for the ruling which should automatically approve them. That 8-month protection supports a good faith expectation that the USCIS will rule within that 8 months. But the USCIS often delays three years. The case is stronger when the applicant can’t afford to satisfy our laws by moving to her home country because her money is tied up in lawyers trying to rouse bureaucrats out of their Rip Van Winkle contest. The case is still stronger if the defendant has begun sending money to help relatives back home who otherwise are at grave risk of serious injury or death due to starvation, lack of medical care, and having to work in unsafe areas. The case is still stronger if the applicant has given birth to a citizen child during the 6 months, and moving out of the U.S. to the middle of a drug war in her home country would violate our child neglect laws.
Victims of Status Rulings Conflicts. The defendant was ruled “legal” by the State Department, or the USCIS, or by the courts. Trusting in good faith in the authority of that branch to rule on status, defendant set down roots, only to have another of the three then rule differently. Depending on the circumstances, such a case could invoke “speedy trial” and “double jeopardy” issues.
Life-saving heroes. When defendant’s violations of our laws saved human lives through defendant sending life-saving money to his family in his home country to prevent starvation, to provide medical care, and/or to enable a move to a safer area, our “necessity defense” and “defense of others” defenses often rule that the defendant did not violate our laws.
Any defendant charged with violating immigration laws which create deprivation of fundamental rights, from which citizens are exempt, and which no citizen would tolerate were he in the immigrant’s shoes. Laws which restrict liberties of people are fine if they are invoked by defendant’s actions deemed criminal by lawmakers, or by defendant’s lack of qualifications, AND if citizens are not exempt from them. But when fundamental constitutional rights like Liberty are substantially denied a whole population group without regard to actions or qualifications, by laws that are not “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling government interest” by the “least restrictive means possible”, they violate “equal protection of the laws” and “due process”. (14th and 5th Amendments.) Has there been anything approaching national consensus on what “compelling government interest” is served by Numerical Limitations? Most Americans, especially anti-immigrant conservatives, haven’t even heard of them.
Immigration plaintiffs not charged with being here illegally, suing because they are denied a “line” or opportunity to apply, without regard to their qualifications or actions. Co-defendants, to help give standing, would include citizen siblings, cousins, aunts or uncles.

This sixth category of arguments explores the boundaries of the meaning of “jurisdiction”, in determining who merits “equal protection of the laws”. (The 14th Amendment says everyone who is under the jurisdiction of a state’s laws, must be given the equal protection of those laws. The 5th Amendment uses the phrase “due process” to apply the same principle to federal laws.) Does the responsibility of our lawmakers and courts to apply our laws fairly, equally, to everybody, indeed end at our borders?

Relief for these plaintiffs relies on the assumption that to the extent our laws affect the liberties of human beings, they must treat all whom they affect equally. They must be fair. They must be equal. Liberty cannot be “rationed” – given by lottery to a tiny fraction of those praying for it. Our entrance requirements must be the same for all. Our constitution requires Equal Opportunity Immigration.

If Congress has authority to deliberately make laws that are unfair and unequal, do they not have unlimited power to do so? If Congress is excused from enacting “equal protection of the laws” [the phrase which ended slavery] towards any group of human beings, what other constitutional restraint prevents them from bringing in immigrants to be treated as cruelly as slaves, or indeed to be sold as slaves?

“Liberty” is no mere penumbra of a right, (the kind of shadowy right supporting Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion), but an enumerated fundamental right. (It is a right specified in the opening sentence of the Constitution.) It is also in the Declaration, where it is the second right listed, after the Right to Life.

No one has asked the Court to rule on whether the alleged need to limit immigration creates a sufficient “compelling government interest” to ration liberty through Numerical Limitations – which are a literal lottery of enumerated fundamental rights – to innocent U.S. residents who have broken no laws.

How about population reduction? Can such a government interest be asserted, as long as populations still shift from farms to cities, people regard as “luxuries” the technologies only possible through large, free, peaceful populations, and federal courthouses are placed in the largest cities?

Plyler mentions an additional test which a law must pass before its restriction of a fundamental right can be constitutional: the “cost to the nation”. Not only must the law not unnecessarily restrict rights, but it must not create unacceptable side effects which outweigh the law’s “compelling government interest”. The “cost to the nation” of Numerical Limitations is our national security. Border agents could easily catch our few thousand violent threats, if they weren’t overwhelmed by having to hunt down millions guilty of hard work. We would no longer have a huge illegal “haystack” in which violent criminals hide, if our “line” welcomed all who obey the same laws which citizens obey. 99% of our present illegal caseload would sign up to “be in the system”.

Can the court count, as a “compelling government interest”, the legislative goal of deporting millions of U.S. residents – or any other goal which is as a practical matter impossible, which has never been remotely met*, which Congress refuses to seriously fund, and which would become theoretically possible only at the cost of our freedoms as we know them, through the complete loss of privacy and the absolute power of Big Brother’s national tracking bureaucracy over citizens in every area of life?

When congressional action has utterly and decisively abandoned a goal, can statements about congressional intentions, by a congressional minority, support the finding that the goal is a compelling government interest?

For a study of about 200 immigration verses, see www.Saltshaker.US/HispanicHope/Stranger-Bible-Study.htm. For a study of how E-Verify technology already satisfies the physical description of the Mark of the Beast, see www.Saltshaker.US/HispanicHope/Mark-Beast.htm. For a correlation between this win-win solution and Scripture, see www.Saltshaker.US\HispanicHope\Recipe.htm, Part 5.)

THE ALTERNATIVE: GOD’S JUDGMENT FROM FIVE DIRECTIONS! The anti-immigrant approach puts Bible believing Christians on the Paving Crew for the Road to Hell through …

(1) … their fast-tracking of the Mark of the Beast. National tracking is the only sin in the Bible so grievous to God that everyone who takes it goes to Hell. If that is true after the penalty for not taking it is beheading, how much more judgment must befall Christians who clamor for its implementation, motivated only by myths clutched to justify dehumanization of “the least of these my brethren”, Mat 25?

(2) …their refusal to “take in the stranger”, Mat 25, (see enclosed Immigrant Scripture postcard), which is one of a half dozen reasons Jesus assigns people to Hell.

(3) ….love on life support. God says again and again “love ye the stranger, for ye were strangers”. My 12^th generation Richard Warren sailed on the Mayflower in 1620, so I know no one except Native Americans have families much more settled than a dozen generations. So what makes a 13^th generation immigrant any more authentically American than a 3^rd or 1^st generation American? Our ancestors were immigrants not that much longer ago. Why are we putting burdens on immigrants today which our own ancestors probably would not have survived? Civilization is bound together with love. Civilization is people serving each other with their talents, with an ethic of quality, integrity, and trust that goes beyond what can be secured by mere money or force. As love dies, crime soars, corruption spreads, and society breaks down. Abortion struck at the heart of love, and anti-immigration is finishing love off.

(4) God’s Justice! God has a way of bringing upon people what they do to others. “According to their works”, Pr 24:12, Mt 16:27, 2Ti 4:14. Double, if we still don’t repent! Rev 18:6-8, Isa 40:2, 61:7, Jer 16:18, 17:18, Zec 9:12. Did you notice from my analysis of the E-Verify statistics that E-Verify apparently puts the same number of citizens out of work as it does undocumented immigrants? Our policies have created a huge population of disenfranchised, voiceless, financially desperate immigrants, so it is only just that we ourselves teeter on the brink of utter financial collapse. It is also just that just as God offered Israel, through Jeremiah, a way to cut their losses during the Babylonian invasion about a dozen times, God today offers America a way to regain our financial composure lost through slaughtering our children whom we refused to love, by finally opening our hearts to the immigrants whom God has sent to replace our children. So that if our hearts remain closed, God will witness to us just as He did through Jeremiah, that we are not judged for the sins of our fathers but for our own! (Jeremiah 31:29-30)

(5) We can blame Democrats a little more than Republicans for slaughtering our very own babies by over 50 million. Not very much more, since church members kill about as many babies as pagans, and so-called “moderate” Republicans are by no means vanquished from the Republican party. But on the immigration issue, Republicans own the anti-Biblical position – with all the dehumanization and excuses for denying rights which Democrats have for the unborn.

50 million. The Democrats led in the slaughter of our very own babies, leaving us on the brink of utter financial disaster because we have too few working taxpayers for our entitlement-suckers, and now Republicans are leading in the rejection of the replacements God has sent us to save our nation.

For these reasons I fear Republican immigration policy is an even greater hazard to the souls of Bible believing conservative Christians than America’s abortion holocaust. Democrats face the greater judgment for abortion, while Republicans face judgment over immigration.

BASED ON FACTS, CLEAR REASONING, CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF OPPOSING VIEWS.

Based on facts, clear reasoning, and clear understanding of opposing views, not obscured by rhetoric, confused by uninformed passion, and justified by junk science. Comprehensive, based on reading source documents and laws to understand hundreds of details of immigration law, along with meeting people experiencing the bureaucracy and the experts managing it; not based on simplistic rhetoric from 300 word news articles and fundraising letters which spin facts, use personal attacks, and dehumanize opponents in order to move normally apathetic readers to at least do something – to at least care.Tested by honestly and prayerfully listening to, responding to, and reasoning with ideological opponents, offering them every opportunity in a fair, respectful forum to refute any detail of your solution, following the example of Jesus who sought out the world’s experts on his area of concern, reasoned with them, and as part of setting an example for us (1 Peter 2:21, Hebrews 4:15) tested His own understanding by their inability to refute Him, and then pondered that experience for 21 years before changing the world. Except that I pray we don’t need 21 more years to fix this problem.

Where is there a forum where clear thinking solutions can be patiently vetted? I offer a forum at www.SaveTheWorld.saltshaker.us,

Benjamin Franklin [E]very Man who comes among us, and takes up a piece of Land, becomes a Citizen, and by our Constitution has a Voice in Elections, and a share in the Government of the Country. (1784 — letter to William Straham. Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 1102.)

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