The Impact of Illegal Immigration

Arizona has a $6.3 billion agriculture industry, 7,500 farms and ranches, 56,000 farmers and 60 percent of those working the farms are illegal immigrants. There is a bill to deal with the emergency need for guest workers to work in agriculture. The system is broken and needs fixing, and the federal government needs to lead the charge. We can deal with some of these issues at the state capital but the bottom line is that it has to come from Congress and the President. We have millions of unauthorized people in our country, and we need to know who these people are, for homeland security reasons, and the current system doesn’t do that. Workers are necessary, but we need to allow them a place in our society. The state needs reimbursement for prison and law enforcement, and the state should reimburse the local governments for what amounts to unfunded mandates. He doesn’t believe that any Democrat or Hispanic wants open borders. We’ve been let down by Congress, and Bush and Kerry didn’t talk about illegal immigration during the campaign. Illegal immigration is a plus. They pay into social security, are here to work, not get welfare. Our economy is booming and we have a surplus. We have a workforce shortage, but a lot of us don’t want the low salaries. In response to a question about the matricula card, he said he supports it because law enforcement can make use of it.

A crackdown on illegal immigration may come in the wake of a terrorist attack, as almost all of the 9/11 hijackers entered the country legally and overstayed their visas, and eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote. There are limits to what governments can do in a free society, and we can’t fight the war on drugs and illegal immigration at the same time. Corruption is a real and genuine concern on the border, so we need technology to help as well as the border fence. Bilingual education was a failure, and condemned an entire generation of children. Assimilation is increasingly a dirty word, but we need it if we’re going to have immigration. Any balanced program of reform has to include a guest worker program. He rejects any contention that we are heading to a master/servant relationship, we are a country of economic opportunity. Certain parts of border enforcement are working very well, as it takes two hours to cross the border into the US. Children born here automatically become citizens, so there are unintended consequences of bracero programs. Between reforming welfare and enforcing immigration laws, welfare reform is easier. If the goal was citizens workers, then improve public education with vouchers and charter schools because a lot of American’s don’t have the necessary work habits and skills. He opposes the matricula card because using unreliable information coming from Mexican authorities. Every state has had a different approach to illegal immigration.

The basic question is what kind of society do we want and what kind of society does mass immigration create? Some states, like Arizona, have a two-tiered society. Immigrants represent one third of all Arizonans in poverty, one third of the welfare caseload, and half of people without health insurance. Forty three percent of immigrants lack a high school degree, and there is a mismatch between our labor supply and the need for unskilled labor. This artificially inflates the supply of low skill workers, distorting the development of agriculture. Mechanization of harvesting ground to a halt because of the labor supply, so why would farmers invest in machines when laborers are bidding down wages? All the proposed legislation from Bush to

McCain to Kyl does not address the basic problem of creating a master/servant society. One option is mass deportation, another is amnesty/surrender. But there is a third way: enforcement, but we’ve never tried that. All guest worker programs create illegal immigration, they don’t replace it. The bracero program led to illegal immigration, and a million people were rounded up and moved out. If you want to live like Saudi Arabia, workers will live in barracks and march to and from work. There is nothing as permanent as a temporary worker. The immigration bureaucracy can’t handle the four million applications they have now, let alone the 11 million. He has plenty of suggestions for changing the law, but would be happy just enforcing the law we have now. Right now we could enforce employer hiring of illegal immigrants but we don’t. The White House told them to stop enforcing the law. We can’t have open immigration in a welfare state, but that is what we have. We’re importing clients into the welfare state, and it’s not sustainable. The matricula card is outrageous, and we need enforcement first, because all the amnesty programs were failures.

Our system is broken, and the business community urges congressional action. The number of people in the US workforce age 25 to 34 is projected to increase by only three million over the next decade. Arizona’s population in that age bracket will increase only 158,000 over the next decade, while those 55 and older will increase 773,000. By 2012 those age 45 and older will have the fastest growth rate and will be the largest group by far. By the year 2020 the birthrate will decline to 1.9 children per woman. So by 2010 America will have 168 million jobs but only 158 million Americans to fill them. We need to provide a process to settle the status of the 11 million undocumented workers. The best answer is legal immigration, so Congress should enact reform to protect the border but also enable businesses to hire available workers. In response to the question about the Governor’s declaration of a state of emergency, he said it was helpful to those who got the funding. The tougher the enforcement is at the border, the longer migrants stay. They are coming here and having children, burdening school system. In response to the report that illegal immigrants contributed $300 billion to the US gross domestic product, he said we have to look at the Medicare and Social Security money pouring in that won’t be paid out, so it’s a wash. Whole populations are forced underground, often they are victims, so you have to balance enforcement with a guest worker program. In response to a question about the matricula card, he said because of the immigrations laws and the penalties there is a real reason to use false documents.

Cochise County has led the nation in illegal alien apprehensions for the last seven years. Federal policymakers have made a very serious error, and there is suffering in terms of financial burden to the criminal justice system, economic issues, environment, and quality of life. The error was in trying to funnel illegal immigration into Arizona from because the hostile natural conditions faced in crossing there would turn people away. Any time someone crosses the fence they’re often in someone’s backyard and the reaction to that is very visceral. Twenty–two to 24 percent of our budget is directed to issues of illegal aliens. Twenty years ago we would catch them and they would surrender, now they run and have started to shoot mostly when narcotics are involved. Pursuits are very dangerous to the public. It’s a federal responsibility, but the reality is local law enforcement has to be engaged. Immigration is not a civil matter, but the federal government has some discretion to use administrative courts, even though first time border crossing is a misdemeanor it’s a felony the second time. Nobody objects to rendering human aid, but some groups use it as a veil to exercise another agenda. We could make a formal request that the governor call out the national guard, but he’s not a big fan of the military presence but there’s 83.5 miles of border, and 35.3 of those miles are private property which would make military vehicles undesirable, though in a support role they would be beneficial. Policing a free society is a very complicated problem, and we should choose the least invasive option. Eight to nine percent of the people apprehended in Cochise County have criminal records in this country, like homicide, sexual assault or sexual predators. One thing he learned in 30 years of law enforcement is that if you don’t do your job somebody else is going to do it for you and you may not like the way they do it.

Many people apprehended at the border are looking for economic opportunity, but certainly not all. If there are a million or so Mexicans that are being apprehended at the border there are probably five to six times that number getting away. From October 2004 to July 2005 119,000 “Other Than Mexican” were caught. Many come from places known to sponsor terrorists. There is a war going on for the free world, involving a totalitarian ideology called islamofascism. Some people crossing the border are our enemies, they don’t assimilate, they use illegal documents to conceal there identity which all contributes to the larger problem and undermines the rule of law. Elected officials should take a pledge to enforce the law. The plan is for those ten principles to be endorsed by politicians, common sense principles. We should use the military on the border because this is a foreign invasion, and a physical barrier along the entire length of the border. We need automated entrance and exit systems at the border. The interior enforcement must consist of workplace enforcement, local law enforcement personnel, secure documents, background checks, and end abuse of visas. What we need is triage, using limited resources to track the most serious threat. Politicians are complacent so they need the Secure America pledge. The problem in France today is local law enforcement refusing to go into immigrant communities to enforce the law, and it will happen here.

Nothing like the current influx has taken place in American history. Previous immigrants assimilated, which makes them much different than the current migration which is creating a strain on medical facilities, and on the border counties. People have been migrating since the 16th century but there was a huge surge at the end of the 19th century which stopped in 1924.

Then a new wave began. Now, cheap labor is holding down wages, and environmental damage is tremendous to the state and national parks along the border. There used to be a friendly relationship along the border when workers trickled in, but now people break down fences and leave gates open, dogs are poisoned, and murders committed. It takes a long time to respond to a criminal act out in the desert, so people arm themselves. It is tied to the drug trade and organized crime, and the problem is inexcusable and this problem threatens the legitimacy of government itself. Most of the people come here to work and that’s the only law they break, but it causes criminal activity to thrive. One aspect of uncontrolled mass migration is the lack of inoculation and diseases that should have been eradicated. We should have uniform standards regarding identification documents, and need to reverse the federal stand-down of immigration enforcement.

Immigration has its own mythology. Other immigrants went through great hardship and crossed oceans to get here, so why should we single out folks from Central and South America? She finds that to be racist and involves racial profiling. Most people come here for economic benefit, and we present the notion of equal opportunity and thus perpetuate the myth. Crime is down all over the county, except in Maricopa County, but it is not true it’s caused by the influx of immigrants. We should have immigration reform that is humane, constant, and done by the federal government. She’s worried about fear-mongering and anti-immigrant feelings that are unjustified, and one result is that crime goes unreported. Arizona bears the shame of the hatecrime in which a Sikh man was killed in racist vengeance after 9/11, and people are taking the law into their own hands. Others are criminalized for providing humanitarian aid. Immigration is a civil matter, not a criminal one. Local law enforcement is not trained to enforce immigration law. An example is what happened in Chandler, Arizona, where local law enforcement rounded up people based on skin color or their language without reason. Law enforcement relies on relationships with the community and wants to find people actually engaged in criminal activity.

The only law locals can enforce is against those smuggling immigrants or an actual invasion. In this country we have not yet heard the phrase “show me your papers” which should send chills up and down the spines of Americans. All our enforcement efforts must measure up to the Constitution. If there is a compelling need, we need to look at the social and economic effects, the right of travel, privacy, and freedom from search and seizure

Most troubling is the erosion of the rule of law, that a law is passed to keep one side happy and then not enforced to keep the other side happy. If all we do is fortify the border it will make no difference, we would need roadblocks all around the country, stopping people without probable cause. They don’t really get welfare benefits, but do get emergency care and education. Even if we could enforce the law, within a decade American agriculture and food processing would have moved to Brazil and China. Seventy percent of the agriculture workforce is undocumented.  It’s hard to imagine the automated busboy or nurse’s aid. Most low-skill labor industries have moved, but not all can, like agriculture, construction, and hospitality, so the proposal is asking them to commit suicide. We need to recognize the reality and manage it better, and that’s the consensus that ranges from the President to Senator Kennedy. We need a three part approach: a legitimate way for employers who can’t find American workers to get the job done, enforce realistic limits on immigration, and reestablish the rule of law. If we shut out immigrants it would drive up the demand for unskilled labor, so kids who mostly want to have jobs inside working with IT would be tempted to pick lettuce because it pays more. Illegal immigrants don’t get welfare benefits, only emergency and K-12 education. Immigration needs better regulation, and law enforcement will tell you they’re distracted trying to catch economic refugees rather than the terrorist who are coming over the border in the same wave. It’s like Prohibition: it takes an awful lot of resources to try to make it work and it’s just unrealistic. We have 11 million people with no background checks and we should ask them to come forward, register, get fingerprinted and pay the penalty and wait their turn.

We have generated a system in which everyone has a stake in the status quo. Big business gets to have cheap labor and that brings pressure to keep other wages down. Democrats get all those votes, and Republicans get donations from businesses thriving on illegal labor and don’t want to be prosecuted. Republicans also get credit for compassion, and the Catholic Church can evade the results of their birth control policies. Media and cultural elites get to appear transnational, although illegal immigration is just not a topic of conversation.  The Mexican government gets to dump their excess population and avoid taking care of them, and they can import cash and become more of an international player. The Mexican government publishes textbooks to be used in American schools, particularly Los Angeles, with an anti-American perspective that resists assimilation. Our politics are so corrupt that it’s enough to just create the illusion that you’re doing something. Even the Sierra Club has abandoned advocacy of low population.

Reform has got to come first; we can’t just have another amnesty. We should put pressure on Mexico to take care of its own, especially the poor. The economy will respond as it always has. Reform comes from the bottom, and in this case it’s the Minutemen and they’re spreading nationally. Bush’s program is amnesty with a bit of a fine attached. Every university in California has pressure groups that force every new Hispanic into their separatist group. On the other hand American popular culture is so rancid and coarse it’s impossible to separate from it. Japan runs a successful economy and has no immigration, so why are we the first economy in the world that has to keep importing half of Latin America to make it run.

For 25 years the federal government has failed to secure the border. All guest worker programs are amnesty programs. Five to ten thousand illegal aliens cross our border every single night, 20 to 23 million residing in the US. Border protection is a federal responsibility, but once they’re here it’s the rest of us: criminal justice system, education and neighborhoods. He’s glad to pay three dollars for a hamburger because his health care will be cut in half. We’re asking local law enforcement, when in the course of doing their jobs, to find people in the country illegally and arrest them. In Los Angeles 95 percent of the outstanding homicide warrants are for illegal aliens. Were he on the other side of that border, he would come to the US too. A job, free education, free health care, and free food stamps of course that’s the case. It’s not right to those who are legitimate. Law enforcement has the authority, the ability and the responsibility to enforce the law and we should demand nothing less. Some cities have de facto sanctuary policies and don’t enforce immigration law, others have actual policies. It’s frustrating for the police officer on the street because ninety percent of what they’re dealing with involves illegal aliens who are involved in all kinds of crime, yet their hands are tied. When they come across these individuals that are in this country illegally they need to act. And if they have to commandeer the National Guard armory or the sports arena or build a tent city, they need to detain them. We need to downsize, secure the border and enforce the laws, cut off welfare benefits and start going after employers of illegal immigrants. We can’t afford not to enforce the law, and the cost of building a fence is very mild compared to the dire effects of ignoring the problem.

There are less than 2,000 interior enforcement agents at ICE, but more than 700,000 state and local police officers across the country, so even casual enforcement would have a tremendous impact. Every police officer has the inherent authority to make immigration arrests, and the Department of Justice backs that up for both criminal and civil violations. Every year 300,000 calls are made to ICE from local law enforcement officials who are exercising their right to arrest in immigration violations. The Supreme Court said officers do not need reasonable suspicion to ask for name, date, and place of birth or immigration status. Local assistance is most helpful in four contexts: terrorists, absconders, gangs and alien smuggling. Four of the 9/11 hijackers had been previously stopped for speeding by state and local officials, and there is a system to disseminate information from the federal government to locals. Forty thousand immigration law absconders were listed during a federal initiative, and almost half of them have been arrested, most during traffic stops by local law enforcement. The violent street gang MS-13 now operates in 33 states, and a majority of the members are here illegally. Local officials shared names of gang members with ICE, which led to the arrest of103 people in the country illegally. Los Angeles had 515 murders in 2004, and 291 were gang-related. Smugglers stopped for traffic violations are often caught by local law enforcement and this must continue. In the ordinary course of law enforcement police officers may, based on reasonable suspicion, ask about immigration status, even outside the context of an arrest.

We all recognize that 9/11 brought immigration to the attention of the public, along with the subject of local police enforcement of immigration laws. A lot of our efforts are to fight terrorism now, although the tradition in the past has been to preclude local police from enforcing immigration law. Specific agreements are needed if the local governments are going to enforce immigration civil immigration law. The reason is that every law enforcement authority that gets involved with immigration law must have training and certification. We should not have a piecemeal solution, but comprehensive immigration reform, and we can’t let emotion get in the way. No one wants to be subject to extra questions because they’re brown, or Latino, or racially profiled any more than they already are. What is proposed specifically does that. Civil rights leaders and religious leaders all over the country are opposed to it. It is clear that delegating authority for immigration enforcement to local law enforcement contradicts decades of federal case law and policy, and it’s dubious on constitutional grounds. He maintains that immigrant communities and people who are undocumented do not trust local authorities and are unwilling to cooperate. A few people will come forward but there’s a tremendous unwillingness to cooperate with the police if there’s going to be enforcement of immigration laws. We need comprehensive immigration reform, and a reasonable debate about what is best for the people of this country, and the economy of this country. Even though emotion is involved, we cannot let emotion get in the way.

Illegal immigration accompanies criminal enterprises like smuggling rings, drug rings, human trafficking, identity theft and terrorism. Local law enforcement routinely encounters illegal aliens of all cultures and races, so it’s common sense to involve them in looking for immigration violators. Law enforcement agencies make do with the resources they have. Local officers

should not be sidelined, that’s a terrible attitude. All law enforcement should cooperate, that’s key to homeland security, it’s the eyes and ears on the home front. The idea that immigrant communities will lose their trust of law enforcement if they know the law could be used against them is just an excuse. We get a lot of information from informants, and we continue to, because the police have the authority to exercise that discretion. Plenty people get stopped for traffic violations and don’t get tickets, the same is true of emergency calls. There are hundreds of officers on patrols, they know the area, and they can spot crime and things that are out of the area. When it comes to illegal immigration, that’s an untapped resource that could be used. There should be good training of the officers, it’s just a question of who pays for it. Even drug dealers come in and turn on each other, and they get caught them all the time. People never stop calling for help. Local police know their beats better than the chief, and they know the people in the communities, and they need to be properly trained.

We’ve had a very pro-growth economic policy in this country, and decisive action following 9/11. Yet now we hear from the federal government that it will be another decade before we get control of our borders, and that’s an outrage. We must maintain our standards for the rule of law, and we know of the islamofascists that use Hispanic aliases and try to blend in. The enforcement first legislation increases criminal and civil penalties for employers who hire illegal aliens, with 10,000 homeland security investigators for enforcement. The reality is that we are a nation at war, and this is a dangerous world. Border security and national security are one and the same. The threat of economic dislocation is nothing compared to the threat of something worse that 9/11. If we fail we will propagate the balkanization of America and witness the dissolution of our grand republic. There are security concerns and we need to enforce the laws and close the loopholes. Even the amnesty bills under consideration have an element of enforcement, so why don’t we enforce the laws first. We did it with Medicare, and if there are unintended consequences we can amend to address that. We need to make the pilot program mandatory for employers. Enforcement first should be our priority. The challenge in a free society is to recognize the urgent as well as the important. Border security and national security, these are matters of urgency. The legislative process is an imperfect system.

It’s important to include the agriculture industry in this discussion, because the industry has been saying for a long time that the status quo is over. The only debate is about what the new paradigm will look like. This is a costly issue from all angles. No one can defend employers who knowingly violate the law or employs people off the books. But social change always precedes the legal process, so if new laws aren’t rational they’ll fail before the ink is dry. Fraudulent documents are a huge problem. One employer has 2/3rds of his employees who have worked for him for over five years, but he still has 60 percent of them with Social Security number mismatches. He has broken no laws, and this is quite common. We have to recognize we’re on a collision course, improve our technology. Despite the technology in agriculture, Arizona still has a huge reliance on labor, and labor is tied to the location of the land, it’s not mobile on a day to day basis. The native-born workforce is simply not interested in most agricultural jobs, even at higher wages because there are economic limits. We need a consistent, reliable, and legal labor supply. Agriculture already faces outsourcing, and lopsided reform will promote that. Immigration form needs three parts: border security, enforcement, and access to a legal and reliable labor supply. It took 20 years to create the culture we have now, and we can’t transition overnight without affecting the economy. If the pilot program to verify employment is going to be mandatory, it should be made reliable first because the current time it’s an unreliable tool.

Three events happened in the last year which attracted a lot of the attention we’ve been trying to get on this issue, and two of them happened here in Arizona. Proposition 200 passed and showed illegal immigration was on the front burner. The Minutemen have had amazing media penetration. And talk radio has become the new mainstream media in this country. Now we’re solution oriented, and one of them is employer sanctions. Unless we end the magnet of employment in this country we will not be able to stem illegal immigration. Congress created employer sanctions in 1986, but the execution failed because of the large scale market for fake documents. Employers are rarely if ever prosecuted. Capturing terrorists is important work, but it’s not the only work that needs to be done by immigration enforcement officials. There is an effective document verification pilot program, but it’s still voluntary. Employers are at a competitive disadvantage when the comply with the law, so the federal government should assume responsibility for verifying which aliens are legally in the country and entitled to take jobs. Agriculture has become addicted to cheap labor, so the public must pressure Congress to implement these reforms. It is better to start locally. We need to motivate elected officials in Washington to do something about the problem, it’s not just the border states anymore. Border Patrol is not a social service agency, it’s a law enforcement agency. They started spot inspections in meat packing plants and found a lot of illegal immigrants, but under pressure from senators from those states they began giving 72 hour notices and no more illegal immigrants were being found, so they stopped the inspections. We could have employment eligibility verification at the speed of light. We don’t need the labor, it’s a commodity like any other commodity, and we need to pull together as Americans and defend our nation.

We should work toward common ground, even though the system is broken on all sides. We need to match the need for labor with the available labor. There is no simplistic solution, and our children are not going to take those low wage jobs, the menial jobs. Seven percent of the native born population does not have a high school diploma, so there’s not a sufficient supply of labor, as the Department of Labor says that 20 percent of our future jobs are service industry jobs.

Even today, the visa program cannot respond fast enough to agricultural needs. When there’s a frost and hundreds of workers are needed there is still a cumbersome delay as the needs fluctuate. Immigration reform is needed, and there’s a lot of frustration. How are we going to deport masses of people? You can’t address one part of the interlocking system without triggering consequences at the other end. Agriculture is time-sensitive.  California needs 50,000 workers, and it’s comparable to what happened to the price of gas when a couple of hurricanes hit. There are a lot of people here illegally who have paid dearly to produce and contribute to the economy of this country, and without them there just won’t be a functioning system. There is a need to deport certain elements, but there’s not a lot of public agreement on who else to deport. We need to take the debate beyond border control and beyond benefits like medical care. Seventy percent of all unpaid hospital bills in this country are native born people.

Nothing is going to happen until the Bush administration and Congress come together and agree to support a realistic enforcement program. We need to give priority to strengthening the borders with Canada and Mexico, and we need the military to do it. There won’t be any increases in civilian enforcement personnel in the immediate future. The full time backup operations should be restored, like transportation checks in the airline, bus and train terminals and on the highways. Most illegal immigrants are not from Mexico and they are being arrested but released the same day. We were promised the last amnesty was a one-time event, and we’ve had seven more amnesties since then. Last time they planned on 1.2 to two million applicants, but got 3.2 million applications. Last time we had counterfeit document vendors selling fakes within sight of immigration offices. We need rigid enforcement of the employer sanctions laws, and we need a counterfeit-resistant and electronically verifiable Social Security card. We should also do a better job standing up to Mexico and President Fox when he makes his demands. Combining the many different jobs and divergent missions into one agency, Homeland Security, was a huge mistake. There’s nothing wrong with eliminating the anchor baby, or citizenship for the children of illegal aliens born here. Canada has long had a very liberal immigration policy. The Minutemen are nothing more than responsible citizens calling attention to the irresponsible failure of the federal government, they are heroes. The rank and file border patrol say the Minutemen behave very well and did their job, at their assigned locations and didn’t stir up trouble.

In the Seventies and Eighties federal officials had conferences like this and tried to get the local officials to show up. Now the opposite is true, which is no surprise because the federal government has completely abrogated responsibility over all aspects of immigration and border patrol over the last thirty years. The federal government and Congress have been unable to move forward and take responsibility on these issues and enforce the law, let alone improve the law. Two elements are needed to have a more secure border: a massive increase in personnel and technology, and a dramatic increase in interior enforcement. The magnet needs to be turned off, because two thirds of the six billion people in the world live in the third world, and all of them would love to come here and work, so this is not just a problem with Mexico and Latin America. Only the military can respond in the short term, and it’s doubtful the President is going to do that. No one is looking for the eleven million non-terrorist, non-criminal aliens. We’ve done interior enforcement before, and we should bring it back. The Department of Labor has been asleep at the switch because they should be enforcing this along with other labor laws, like Social Security, fair labor standards, overtime provisions, and OSHA to destroy the incentives to hire illegal aliens. Our country has benefited from legal immigration, not illegal immigration. Many countries don’t permit anchor babies, and there is a question as to whether it can be changed by statute or requires a constitutional amendment. Deportations are unduly complicated and should be streamlined, and there’s a lack of detention space. The cost of not enforcing the law is higher than its enforcement.

People seem to forget that the one thing the US Constitution specifically states is one of the primary purposes of government is to protect citizens against foreign invasion. It’s not being done. Homeland Security issued a report that 3.6 million people here overstayed their visas, and less than 100 were deported. Where is the money going? There are 51 full time agents assigned to those visa overstays, but the job isn’t getting done. Local officials are stepping up because the federal government isn’t doing its job. They need a trial court judges who’s not so sympathetic to illegal immigrants. Throughout the country a tremendous number of Muslim women are coming here pregnant, but they lie to the inspectors and get phony Social Security numbers and Medicaid is covering the costs of the births. They can then sell the birth certificates to someone who can then enter the country freely. We need to end the automatic birthright. Forty thousand Palestinians hold US citizenship, because a lot of their parents were in the US when they were born, and they can vote in our elections and collect welfare checks. Many times illegal aliens are smuggled in from Canada and many of the ingredients to make methamphetamine which are illegal here are legal there. We should have local governments reimbursed for the costs associated with local enforcement. We need to support the federal agents who are trying to do their jobs, and stop worrying about bad publicity or what is politically incorrect. We need to tell the guest workers who are already here to go home.

If we separate terrorism from illegal immigration, we can look at the wages which attract the workforce. In Latin America the prospect is that one can never own property, and in most Latin countries the lower 75% can not transfer property, as they don’t have property rights. So the pressure on our country is excessive, especially now that socialism and communism could be on our borders spreading from Latin America. When the border is tightened, the profit for coyotes increases as does the motive to become more sophisticated, so the price rose from $400 to $1,000 for a coyote to get someone over the border. There is an effect on consumer prices in areas with high illegal immigrant populations, and services like housecleaning, babysitting, landscaping and agricultural is 24 percent less than in other parts of the country. Most troubling is the increased level of government in the lives of Americans, and we need to think about issues and solutions that don’t enhance the role of government in our individual lives. Do we want officers inspecting every house in America to see if there’s an illegal housekeeper? Do we want to sacrifice our individual liberties? We need to look at what’s going on in Mexico, because the wages earned here and sent there are their second largest source of revenue. Closing the border is not going to do it, but will only raise the cost, and it will be like the war on drugs. We need more than just a simple answer like putting the military on the border. The biggest problem with the economies of Latin America is that a high percentage of the population have no private property ownership. They’re squatters with no mortgages, and it’s a movement away from private ownership and toward socialism. We need to figure out how we can give them a chance to improve their lives without damaging what goes on in the states.

The deterioration of the border is a cause for reform from not only the federal but state and local government as well. Crime is at the core of our concern, and Arizona is disproportionately affected. The connection between illegal immigration and crime is clear and unavoidable. We’ve passed a human smuggling law, because if we can target people who are at the center of criminal activity is has a multiplier effect on the overall crime rate. Illegal immigrants are not victims, if they come here illegally they are breaking our laws and we need to recognize that. Many illegal immigrants are not held responsible in our courts for their crimes because they post bail and slip back across the border or even get deported by immigration officials. Arizona will have a measure on the ballot next year to end the right of illegal immigrants accused of serious felonies to get out on bail.   An alleged triple murderer recently escaped to Mexico, and we could not seek the death penalty or a sentence of life without parole in order to have him extradited. This is extortion on the part of the Mexican government. Arizona has the highest crime rate in the nation, and it’s connected to identity theft and illegal immigration. Law-breaking is endorsed by the Valley’s leading Spanish newspaper because they advocate using false documents. Each prosecution for identity theft costs $11,000, which hurts our economy. Identity theft should not be part of the American dream. Non-citizens have been prosecuted here for violating the sanctity of the ballot by registering to vote, and also later claiming not to be citizens when called for jury duty. We have a sense of human rights, and should not tolerate the excuses for having a sub class of people who are denied those rights. There are good faith disagreements on these issues, so name-calling is misplaced. What ties us together is our citizenship, and it is appropriate for us to decide how we constitute our republic and deal with threats to our citizenship and public safety.

The battle lines are drawn in Arizona, and Arizonans have been successful in getting this issue in front of the American Public. Prop 200 was an important, uphill battle against the political establishment, as is the Minutemen. The fence in San Diego is applauded by people on both sides of the border, because of the drug activity and the smuggling caused both sides of the border to be lawless areas which also destroyed the land. The fence went up and now property values are skyrocketing, but putting up the fence is only part of the answer. Before talking about a guest worker program we need border protection and interior enforcement. There are four thousand adjudicators that decide on green cards and visa, and a third of them do not have access to any criminal or terrorist records. They process six million applications per year, and they’re in a complete meltdown. We don’t have time to wait and get this under control, which makes the Minutemen so important as well as the state and local governments. The government of Mexico is aiding and abetting those who violate our laws, and they send back up to $20 billion. Mexico should privatize its economy and address the corruption. There have even been military incursions from Mexico into the US. The cult of multiculturalism is responsible for trying to destroy our unique identity and our rule of law. Our population is growing but it’s not because of the birth rate it’s because of immigration. It’s caused by the economic problems in those countries, and there are also environmental reasons to be concerned about illegal immigration.