Liberty and Tyranny (16 page)

In the meantime, the effects of the Enviro-Statist’s agenda continue apace. American society is now threatened by dangerous obstructions to the supply of electricity.
Forbes
magazine’s Mark P. Mills reports that the same policies that have led to supply dislocations and price instability in oil and gas are at work in the provision of electricity. “By as early as [2009] our demand for electricity will exceed reliable supply in New England, Texas and the West and, by 2011, in New York and the mid-Atlantic region. A failure of a power plant, or a summer-afternoon surge in the load, could make for a blackout or brownout.”
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The reason is that most electricity is generated by coal. “Anticoal activists brag that 59 coal-fired plants were canceled in 2007. Nearly 50 more in 29 states are being contested.”
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Adds Mills, “[Nuclear power plants] produce 20% of U.S. electricity. But there hasn’t been a new nuclear plant started in three decades, and licenses are expiring on existing nukes. Opponents are fighting renewal of those licenses.”
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And the future does not look bright. President Obama’s secretary of energy, Dr. Steven Chu, a 1997 Nobel laureate in physics, is a global warming advocate openly hostile to the use of coal and a foot-dragger on expanding nuclear power.
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The Enviro-Statist poses as the defender of clean air, clean water, penguins, seals, polar bears, glaciers, the poor, the Third World, and humanity itself. But he is already responsible for the death and impoverishment of tens of millions of human beings in the undeveloped world. Now he has moved on to bigger tasks—imposing his societal designs on a free and prosperous people, dictating their lifestyle, controlling their movement, and breaking their spirit.

President Obama’s appointment of former Clinton-era EPA administrator Carol M. Browner as his “global warming czar” makes clear his intentions. Browner, who is responsible for coordinating the administration’s environmental and energy policies, was recently one of fourteen leaders of the Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society. As the
Washington Times
explains, the commission “calls for global governance and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.” It also seeks “binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”
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New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, author of
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America,
recently expressed his frustration with the slow pace of the enviro-statism agenda by wishing that “our government could get its act together and launch a green revolution with the same persistent focus, stick to the same direction that China does through authoritarian means.”
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China? This is the same regime that sends political opponents to reeducation camps or worse and has one of the dirtiest environments on the planet.

The Enviro-Statist declares his allegiance to science and knowledge when, in fact, his only faith is to his ideology. Now that climate models suggest a slight global cooling (again?), his terminology changes from “man-made global warming” to “man-made climate change.” Henceforth, Mother Nature’s doings will be mankind’s responsibility no matter what science reveals. The Enviro-Statist has declared war on the civil society and he is impatient.

T
HE
S
TATIST’S ARGUMENT FOR

Of course, to say this is a nation of immigrants is to say every nation is a nation of immigrants. Mexico, the source of most immigrants in the United States today, is a nation of Spanish (and other) immigrants. The implication is, however, that both legal and illegal immigration, no matter how extensive, is another moral imperative justifying the transformation of the civil society. This is not so.

Once again, the Declaration of Independence provides guidance on this issue. It states, in relevant part, that “to secure these [unalienable] rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Moreover, “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish [the government], and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness….”

Have the governed—American citizens—consented to the current state of legal and illegal immigration in the nation? Do current immigration policies and enforcement practices affect the safety and happiness of the people?

The Statist insists that, in particular, the twenty-first-century immigrant in the United States is the spiritual heir of the immigrants who helped build the nation. His motives are as noble and his ambitions as honorable as those of the Founders. To deny him access to America’s bounty and freedom displays an un-American meanness of character and is a renunciation of America’s heritage. Even worse, the Statist portrays the immigrant as universally more virtuous than the citizen. He is said to aspire to and, indeed, achieve a higher position of worthiness than the citizen, for he is doing “jobs Americans won’t do,” “is a person of faith,” and “a strong family man.” The citizen is said to owe his sustenance to the immigrant, who builds his home, maintains his property, harvests his food, raises his children, goes to war, etc. Therefore, even the illegal immigrant deserves a privileged status in society in the sense that his lawbreaking is said to be of personal necessity and societal value. Consequently, he must be urged “out of the shadows” and into the light. He must be celebrated as a role model. And his virtuousness must be rewarded with citizenship.

For the Conservative, this is a truly odd formulation, since it demeans the citizen and his paramount role in American society. It is the community of citizens who consent to be governed and for whom the government exists. The principal responsibility of the government is to the citizen. Otherwise, the government ceases to be legitimate. To say that the citizen, who is in fact primarily responsible for the nation’s character and the culture to which the alien immigrates, is less valuable to American society than the immigrating alien is nonsensical.

No society can withstand the unconditional mass migration of aliens from every corner of the earth. The preservation of the nation’s territorial sovereignty, and the culture, language, mores, traditions, and customs that make possible a harmonious community of citizens, dictate that citizenship be granted only by the consent of the governed—not by the unilateral actions or demands of the alien—and then only to aliens who will throw off their allegiance to their former nation and society and pledge their allegiance to America.

Claremont Institute senior fellow and California State University professor Edward J. Erler, reflecting Aristotle’s observation, writes, “A radical change in the character of the citizens would be tantamount to a regime change just as surely as a revolution in its political principles.”
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The government, therefore, is not only justified but obligated to qualify immigration to those most likely to contribute to the well-being of the civil society, and to create the conditions in which aliens of differing backgrounds can be absorbed into the American culture.

In 1965, as part of the Great Society, the Statist did, in fact, lay the foundation for radically altering the character of American society and the relationship of the governed to their government. When he signed the Hart-Celler Act, President Lyndon Johnson said, “This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”
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And during the debate over the bill on the floor of the Senate, Senator Ted Kennedy claimed, “First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same…. Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset…. Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia.”
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Johnson, Kennedy, and the other Statists were wrong, and it is hard to believe they were not intentionally deceiving the public. In 1964, Republican vice presidential candidate Representative William Miller well understood the overall increase in immigration that would result from the 1965 act: “We estimate that if the President gets his way, and the current immigration laws are repealed,” he said, “the number of immigrants next year will increase threefold and in subsequent years will increase even more.”
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The bill abolished the decades-old policy of national quotas, which was said to be discriminatory because it favored immigrants from Europe (especially the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany) over the Third World. Thus it increased immigration levels from each hemisphere, setting in motion a substantial increase in immigration from Latin America, Asia, and Africa—to the detriment of previously favored aliens from Europe. The bill also introduced, for the first time, a system of
chain migration,
which, as the Center for Immigration Studies notes, “gave higher preference to the relatives of American citizens and permanent resident aliens than to applicants with special job skills.”
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Those who receive preference for admission include unmarried adult sons and daughters of United States citizens, spouses and children and unmarried sons and daughters of permanent resident aliens, married children of United States citizens, and brothers and sisters of United States citizens over the age of twenty-one.
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Consequently, the historical basis for making immigration decisions was radically altered. The emphasis would no longer be on the preservation of American society and the consent of the governed; now aliens themselves would decide who comes to the United States through family reunification. With the elimination of national quotas and the imposition of chain migration, aliens immigrating to the United States were poorer, less educated, and less skilled than those who had preceded them—a pattern that continues to this day. The Manhattan Institute’s Steven Malanga writes that the first great migration a hundred years ago attracted “Jewish tailors and seamstresses who helped create New York’s garment industry, Italian stonemasons and bricklayers who helped build some of our greatest buildings, German merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans—all [of whom] brought important skills with them that fit easily into the American economy. Those waves of immigrants…helped supercharge the workforce at a time when the country was going through a transformative economic expansion that craved new workers, especially in cities.” Moreover, as a result of the 1965 law, “[l]egal immigration…soared from 2.5 million in the 1950s to 4.5 million in the 1970s to 7.3 million in the 1980s to about 10 million in the 1990s.”
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Furthermore, as political and economic circumstances in the Third World deteriorated, particularly in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the egalitarian nature of the 1965 law and the growing American welfare state also encouraged the unprecedented and
illegal
migration of millions of additional destitute and uneducated aliens to the United States. So, too, did the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act’s grant of one-time amnesty to about 3 million illegal aliens, which was conditioned on border security and immigration enforcement that never materialized under subsequent administrations.
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The late author Theodore White, who was no conservative, wrote that “the immigration Act of 1965 changed all previous patterns, and in so doing, probably changed the future of America…. [It] was noble, revolutionary—and probably the most thoughtless of the many acts of the Great Society.”
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In the 1960s, Cesar Chavez, one of the founders of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, vehemently opposed illegal immigration, arguing it undermined his efforts to unionize farm workers and improve working conditions and wages for American citizen workers. The UFW even reported illegal immigrants to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
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In 1969, Chavez led a march, accompanied by Ralph Abernathy, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Senator Walter Mondale, along the border with Mexico, protesting the farmers’ use of illegal immigrants.
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But most unions soon changed course and today they lobby to confer amnesty and ultimately citizenship on illegal aliens. These include: American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Farm Labor Organizing Committee; Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union; Laborers’ International Union of North America; Service Employees International Union; Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees; United Farm Workers; and United Food and Commercial Workers.

The unions view the large influx of both legal and illegal immigrants as a new source of political clout that favors their allies in the Democratic Party and potentially adds membership to their own dwindling numbers. They came to the same realization as historian Samuel Lubell, who noted that the voting-age children of the first great migration constituted “the big-city masses [who] furnished the votes which re-elected [Franklin] Roosevelt again and again—and, in the process, ended the traditional Republican majority in this country.”
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And there can be no doubt, as a practical matter, that the Statist’s benefits-for-votes promises is an attractive albeit destructive enticement. Despite President George W. Bush’s and Senator John McCain’s long record of advocacy for more legal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens, it was not enough to compete with the Statist’s agenda. In 2004, 44 percent of Hispanics, for example, voted for Bush for president and 53 percent voted for John Kerry. In 2008, 31 percent of Hispanics voted for McCain for president and 67 percent voted for Barack Obama.
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The Statist tolerates the illegal alien’s violations of working, wage, and environmental standards, because the alien’s babies born in America are, under the current interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, treated as United States citizens. And under the Hart-Celler Act, upon turning twenty-one years of age, the child can sponsor additional family members for citizenship. From the Statist’s perspective, the pool of future administrative state constituents and sympathetic voters is potentially bottomless.

But does the Fourteenth Amendment grant automatic citizenship to the children of illegal aliens? The relevant part of the amendment reads that “all persons, born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
are citizens of the United States.”
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This language requires more than birth within the United States. The amendment’s purpose was to grant citizenship to the emancipated slaves, who were born in the United States and owed sole allegiance to it. Native Americans who were also subject to tribal jurisdiction were excluded from citizenship. There is no legislative history supporting the absurd proposition that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to empower illegal alien parents to confer American citizenship on their own babies merely as a result of their birth in the United States. Foreign visitors and diplomats are not subject to American jurisdiction. Illegal aliens are subject to the jurisdiction of their home country, as are their children, whether they are born in their home country or the United States.

The combination of intended and unintended consequences, and legal and illegal immigration, is transforming American society. Using the U.S. Census Bureau’s data collected in March 2007, the Center for Immigration Studies reported, in part:

The nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007.


Immigrants account for 1 in 8 U.S. residents, the highest level in eighty years. In 1970 it was 1 in 21; in 1980 it was 1 in 16; and in 1990 it was 1 in 13.


Overall, nearly one in three immigrants is an illegal alien. Half of Mexican and Central American immigrants and one-third of South American immigrants are illegal.


Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, compared to 8 percent of natives. Since 2000, immigration increased the number of workers without a high school diploma by 14 percent, and all other workers by 3 percent.


The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 33 percent, compared to 19 percent for native households.


The poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 17 percent, nearly 50 percent higher than the rate for natives and their children.


34 percent of immigrants lack health insurance, compared to 13 percent of natives. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for 71 percent of the increase in the uninsured since 1989.


Immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades. In 2007, there were 10.8 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States.
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