.
With Immigration reform
promised in his first year by President Barack Obama back in 2009, and this
being his fifth year in office, there is a chance Immigration reform actually
might make it through Congress. However,
as far as our nation's capitol, nothing can be guaranteed except extended
procrastination.
Long ago we should have
had meaningful Immigration reform, the first since major bills were passed in
1965 and 1986, if we had not forgotten that when it comes down to the real
facts, we really are a nation of immigrants.
There are a lot of things
the president and congress can do to change or manipulate reality or to rewrite
history but the plain truth is clear. In
2010 there were 2.9 million pure blooded Native American and Native Alaskan
Indians in America
and 2.3 million Natives with mixed blood, a total of 5.2 million.
Since the total US population
in 2010 was 308,745,538 that means just 1.8% of the population are original Americans,
or 98.2% of Americans are immigrants
or ancestors of immigrants.
Unlike the many countries
settled since the discovery of America
in 1492 the United States
has the most diverse ancestry in the world.
The largest ancestral country of origin for Americans is Germany yet it
only represents 15.5% of our total population.
No major country in the world can claim similar diversity of ancestry,
not even newer nations like the US
such as South American nations, Canada
or Australia.
Since the 1800's there
have been more Germans ancestors than any other immigrants to America with 48
million in 2010. Also since the 1800's
Irish have been firmly in second place with 34.7 million in 2010.
The dominant Hispanic
country of ancestry is Mexico
- 31.8 million followed by the English - 25.9 million, Italian - 17.2 million, Polish - 9.6 million, French -
-8.7 million, Scottish - 5.4 million, Dutch - 4.6 million, Norwegian - 4.4
million and Scottish/Irish - 4.4 million show the dominance of European nations
to American ancestry. High profile
immigrants from Russia, China, Cuba,
India, Korea and Japan all range between 1-3
million.
In total about 500
ancestries have been reported to the US Census Bureau on behalf of the American
population.
So I guess the bottom line
in our message to all the nations of the world is, "We are you!" Truly we are the only true melting pot of
culture, religion, society and wealth in the world. It makes us unique, but also makes us
responsible to set the definitive example of how all of the people on Earth
should be able to live in peace, harmony, prosperity and individual freedom.
Such inherent American
virtues and characteristics should be embedded in our laws and actions but the
dysfunctional federal government including the president and congress have made
a mockery of adherence to American values.
They are yet to achieve the most basic of all actions, approving a
budget, and have failed to approve one every year Obama has been president.
Well they better approve
meaningful Immigration reform or the ancestors of immigrants may very well
deport those same federal elected officials.
As for a lingering
immigration issue that may still derail the reform movement, the issue of
securing our borders, several years ago I proposed a very simple and logical way
to achieve security.
We
have about 2.5 million defense soldiers and civilian employees but only 1.1
million are in the USA.
Since about 100,000 are in both Iraq
and Afghanistan
that leaves 1.2 million DOD employees all over the rest of the world.
There
are over 735 American military bases outside the USA including 38 large and medium
size facilities. At the height of the British Empire in 1898 they had 36 bases
spread out around the world and at the height of the Roman
Empire in 117 AD they had 37 major bases. Of course they were both
trying to conquer the world. We aren't supposed to be conquering the world so we
should get rid of the excess bases.
We
could save billions of dollars a year if we moved a number of the very
expensive foreign bases back to America
and strategically located them along our southern border. The presence of tens of thousands of US
military troops and their bases would be a far greater deterrent to illegal
immigrants or drugs than a few thousand more border patrol agents and a higher
fence.
Immigration is not a political issue
and should not be caught in the debate between two partisan parties. If truth be known two partisan political
parties have no business controlling the agenda for America and after their performance
the last few years isn't it time we wake up?
Our Constitution does not guarantee
control of any kind to the Democrats or Republicans so we need to campaign for
freedom from the archaic and worn out platforms and control of the two
political parties and return to what worked the first couple of hundred years,
multiple political parties to choose from in elections.
The following is a summary of the
history of Immigration reform in America
from University of North Carolina - Greensboro.
You should read it and you will better understand the story behind the
Immigration debate.
University of North Carolina Greensboro
by Dr. Raleigh Bailey, CNNC
Director and Research Fellow
The U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
were written by refugees and immigrants and their children who sought religious
and economic freedom. These documents represented ideals that became cherished
around the world. For the first 100 years of U.S. history, there were no
immigration laws.
The first immigration law passed by Congress was the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. At that time Chinese workers were being
recruited in large numbers to do hard labor on the West Coast, building
railroads and other large construction projects. However, California land developers did not want the
workers to have the right to stay, buy land, and become citizens.
At the same time, our northern and southern borders were
essentially porous. Much of what is now Texas,
New Mexico, Colorado,
Arizona, Nevada
and California were part of Mexico until the U.S. claimed the lands through wars
or treaties. As the Southwest became U.S.
territory, the Hispanic populations there came under U.S. rule. In many cases, families
were suddenly divided by citizenship and residency requirements, though mutual
visitation was ongoing.
With the depression of the 1930s, many family farms were
lost. Land was bought up by agribusinesses. Farm labor needs were met by the
newly homeless families who had lost their lands. With World War II, when young
men were called to the military, agribusiness began to rely on migrant
farmworkers from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Many workers were brought as contract labor and others came on their own for
growing seasons, returning to join their families after the crops were
harvested.
Approximately 5 million Mexicans participated in the
Bracero program, a labor agreement between the U.S.
and Mexico,
between 1942 and 1964. The exploitation of these workers is well-documented.
After the war and the growing shift toward manufacturing and urbanization,
agriculture continued to rely on migrant farmworkers, both those who were
documented and recruited by labor contractors and those who simply crossed the
border to continue their seasonal work jobs. That system has continued to the
present day.
The 1960s brought major changes to the U.S.
immigration system. Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights
Act of 1965, a newly conscientious U.S. Congress passed a new law, the
Immigration Reform Act of 1965, which struck down our Eurocentric bias. Persons
from countries around the globe could apply to migrate to the US if they met conditions related to family
reunification, U.S.
employment needs, or refugee status. The flood of refugees to the U.S. after the
Vietnam War led to the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980, which formalized the
refugee resettlement process and established a new flow of people seeking
freedom and security.
Several years later Congress passed the Immigration Reform
and Control Act of 1986. This legislation was the first time a bill made it
unlawful for an employer to hire an undocumented worker, and it created a
pathway to citizenship for migrant farmworkers who had a history of work in the
U.S. and who had no legal problems other than being unauthorized. It was a
significant piece of legislation designed to rectify the fact that the U.S. recruited
and depended upon vast numbers of Latin American farmworkers who did not have
travel documents in order to sustain our agricultural economy. Many of these
people then moved out of the fields and into construction jobs created by our
growing economy. New farmworkers, many of them without documents, then came to
fill the farm jobs.
In 1994 the U.S.
and Mexico
passed NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. U.S. agribusinesses were able to sell
government-subsidized corn in Mexico
at below market prices, destroying the traditional farm economy there. This was
further complicated by the Mexican government’s decision to suspend the “ejido”
system. Ejidos, written into the Mexican constitution, are communal farm lands
shared by families and villagers and passed from generation to generation. The
suspension allowed ejido lands to be sold to multinational agribusiness
corporations. As a result, more unemployed young men who were strong and brave
enough made the dangerous trek to “El Norte.”
In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed two major bills that
severely penalized undocumented residents and restricted legal immigrants from
using many public services, even if those immigrants worked and paid taxes in
the U.S.
The Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRRRA) was
especially repressive as it required people who had an “unlawful presence” to
return to their countries of origin for periods of three to ten years before
they could apply to return. This was true even for spouses of American
citizens.
Another bill, the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) restricted tax-paying legal immigrants
from using most public services and imposed major hardships on low-income
workers, creating major legal and social snafus. Initially, pregnant immigrant
women were denied access to WIC (the food supplement program for low-income
pregnant women). Many premature births of high-risk, malnourished babies
occurred, dramatically increasing medical costs for families and health
providers. The federal government then concluded that immigrant women
(documented and undocumented) could get WIC since it was nurturing their
U.S.-citizen unborn babies.
In the 2000 census, North Carolina
had the fastest-growing Latino population in the U.S. Most of these newcomers were
immigrants, many of them undocumented and connected with the farm labor economy
of the state. In the 2010 census, the state’s Latino population continued to
grow but mostly due to the U.S.-born children of the newcomers from the
previous decade. North Carolina has an
estimated 150,000 migrant farmworkers annually, mostly from Mexico and
other Central American countries. Our state has one of the largest farmworker
populations in the U.S.
With the tightened border security, many farmworkers now stay all year, unable to
return home to see their families for fear they could not make the trek back
across the desert. Some start new families here. Many families back home
continue to depend on the paychecks of their husbands, sons, and fathers.
Other newcomers come on time-limited visas from around the
world as students, business people, or tourists, and then they overstay their
visas. Most unauthorized newcomers fall into this category. Others may be green
card holders, but if U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) does not
have documentation of their place of residence, their legal permanent residence
status is terminated. Populations who come to the U.S.
and to North Carolina
as refugees regularly petition to bring their family members from their
countries of origin. As recently-arrived newcomers, these refugees are
typically low-income wage earners. If their families are granted permission to
join them, they often come as immigrants but not as refugees, which means that
they have no access to most public services. These expanded families struggle
to survive because even though they are working they are barred from
supplemental assistance available to others.
Economic impact is one of the major issues related to the
proposed immigration reform. Most economists are clear that immigration reform,
including a path to citizenship for undocumented residents, would have a strong
positive impact on economic growth. Newcomers are drawn to the U.S. for job
opportunities, are mostly young and entrepreneurial in spirit, and will be
workers, consumers, and taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office, the
nonpartisan research arm of Congress, agrees with this analysis.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank,
provides an alternative analysis. The Heritage Foundation posits that providing
a path to citizenship for undocumented residents will be a drain on the
economy. While they acknowledge that it will be an initial boom to the economy,
they project that it will be a drain over a 50-year period. The reasoning of
their research analyst is that low-income undocumented workers, Hispanics in
particular, have lower IQ’s than U.S.-citizen whites. Therefore, their children
will also have lower IQ’s, creating an ongoing pool of low-income and low-IQ
U.S.-citizen workers who will need government subsidies. In many circles, the
Heritage Foundation analysis is being compared to efforts to defend segregation
in the early and mid-twentieth century.
The U.S.
is recognized as the world’s premier immigrant nation, historically the champion
of freedom, a model of innovation and entrepreneurship, and by far the
wealthiest nation. As we struggle to pass immigration reform and reconcile our
ambivalence toward the undocumented who sustain our economy, the refugees who
are our historic champions of freedom, and the newcomers who are drivers of
innovation, the whole world is watching.
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