Driver's Licenses = Pseudo Amnesty
In a flip-flop to court the Hispanic vote, California Governor Gray Davis signed a bill (which he had rejected twice before) to allow illegal aliens to get driver's licenses. Shamelessly pandering, he signed it on September 5 in front of a crowd of hundreds of immigrants and illegals who released balloons while chanting "No recall!"

A driver's license is colloquially known as the "keys to the kingdom." It is the "breeder document" that enables an alien to acquire all sorts of fraudulent documentation. A driver's license is pseudo amnesty and just as much "sheer lunacy" as real amnesty; a driver's license confers identity; it works to erase the distinction between legals and illegals.

A driver's license is not merely a license to drive a car. It gives the illegal alien a passport to board a plane, get a job, rent an apartment or a car, open a bank account, enter a federal building, sign up for social services, travel back and forth across our borders with Mexico and Canada, buy a gun, and even register to vote.

Under current law, only residents with a Social Security number can obtain a driver's license, and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) checks its validity with the Social Security Administration. Under the new law, aliens can instead present an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) issued by Internal Revenue Service, but those numbers are worthless for identification purposes and IRS won't share its information anyway.

Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) calls the new law an "invitation to forgery" for terrorists and criminals. That's because the new system (which lacks any credible identity check) will allow criminals of any nationality (even U.S. citizens who already have a driver's license) to apply for a new license under a phony ITIN and use it for illegal purposes.

An internal DMV memo obtained by KCRA-TV shows that the financial cost to California taxpayers will be immense when the law takes effect January 1. When the two million illegal aliens now in California queue up for their first-time driver's licenses, DMV says it will need "1,000 new positions to be located in 16 new temporary field offices for 12 to 18 months of operation."

Gray Davis ignored the big lesson of 9/11. All 9/11 hijackers had one or more state driver's licenses, which enabled them not only to board the fatal planes but also to live and travel in our country undetected while they plotted their crimes. Seven of the 19 hijackers boarded the 9/11 planes with driver's licenses obtained from Virginia, which did not then require proof of identity from applicants (but has since remedied that dangerous policy). New Jersey, another state that provided driver's licenses to 9/11 hijackers, now requires applicants to prove they are legally in this country.

Unfortunately, California is not alone in allowing illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses. Fourteen other states do likewise: AK, CT, ID, LA, MT, NV, NM, NC, RI, TN, UT, WA, WV.

The issue has become a political hot potato in states where illegal aliens have congregated. A sign-waving, slogan-shouting crowd rallied in Atlanta on September 16 to demand that the Georgia Legislature allow the estimated 228,000 illegal aliens in that state to get driver's licenses.

The General Accounting Office told the Senate Finance Committee on September 9 how easy it is to get fake driver's licenses. In two out of three attempts, federal investigators were able to get driver's licenses from motor vehicle departments using fraudulent driver's licenses from other states, birth certificates, or Social Security cards.

The effects of giving driver's licenses to illegal aliens can ripple into other areas such as enabling them to attend some state universities at in-state rates. Illegal aliens are now prohibited from buying or transferring firearms but, since gun transfer forms rely on the honor system to establish citizenship (just like voter registration documents), the driver's license will be a boost to the firearms smuggling rings operating in southern California. Hallye Jordan, a spokesperson for the California Department of Justice, conceded, "If they lie on their dealer record of sale and say, 'yes they are a citizen' when they are not, there is ... not going to be a further check completed."

Californians are collecting signatures to repeal the new driver's license law by referendum. In the meantime, Congress should pass Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R-CO) bill (H.R. 3052) to withhold federal highway funds from states that give driver's licenses to illegal aliens, just as Congress has done to force the states to enact acceptable laws about seat belts, speed limits, alcohol content, and the drinking age.

Don't Change Oath of Citizenship
The new Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) planned to celebrate Constitution Day on September 17 by changing the oath of citizenship which new citizens take when they are naturalized. The surreptitious plan was to make it immediately effective, using it at an immigrant swearing-in ceremony and publishing it in the Federal Register on the same day.

Fortunately, this covert mischief was discovered in time and denounced by the American Legion, former Attorney General Edwin Meese, and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN).

The bureaucrats got the message and announced they are going back to the drawing board. We don't want them to go back to the drawing board; we want them to cancel the whole idea. The BCIS has a big job to do in keeping terrorists and hatemongers from other cultures out of our country, and they shouldn't be spending any time trying to rewrite the oath of citizenship.

There is nothing the matter with the current oath, and there was no public demand to change it. It is really outrageous that the nameless bureaucrats tried to make this change without authorization from Congress and without allowing any public comment.

The BCIS spokesman said his agency wanted the oath to be less arcane and more meaningful. That argument is nonsense because the agency's proposed rewrite is less meaningful than the present oath.

Those who become naturalized Americans are required to take this oath: "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." The redundancy ("absolutely and entirely," "renounce and abjure," "subject or citizen") is clear, emphatic, and essential.

The BCIS revision would substitute: "I hereby renounce under oath all allegiance to any foreign state." That's simply not good enough. Osama Bin Laden is not a "foreign state," but he does come within the definition of "foreign prince, potentate or sovereignty," and his minions are his subjects, not his citizens. Did BCIS think it is no longer important for naturalized citizens to renounce loyalty to the likes of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda?

The current oath of citizenship further states: "I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law." The BCIS revision is not satisfactory. It omits the familiar American expression "bear arms" and instead gives the naturalized citizen the option of defending the United States "either by military, noncombatant, or civilian service." No wonder the American Legion objected.

The BCIS revision requires new citizens to perform this service only "where and if lawfully required." Are there occasions when such service is unlawfully required?

The BCIS cannot be trusted to produce any substitute revisions. The bureaucrats should be cut off at the pass by congressional passage of Senator Alexander's proposed legislation to make the current oath of allegiance the law of the land.

Our current oath of citizenship is a superb statement of what loyalty to America means: both swearing allegiance to the United States and renouncing all allegiance to wherever and whoever the new American came from. New citizens who swear the current oath, "so help me God," absolutely cannot retain any loyalty to their former country or ruler.

And there is no excuse for ever administering the Oath of Citizenship in any language other than English. According to the law, applicants to become U.S. citizens must demonstrate "an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write, and speak . . . simple words and phrases . . . in ordinary usage in the English language."

Rather than rewriting the current oath of citizenship, the BCIS ought to be busy revoking the citizenship of those who violate their solemn oath.

The Mexican government has been openly telling Mexicans who have become naturalized Americans that they can also retain their citizenship and loyalty to Mexico. The U.S. oath of citizenship makes that a moral and legal impossibility. On March 20, 1998, Mexico passed a law that purports to reinstate Mexican nationality for Mexican-Americans who have become naturalized U.S. citizens. Mexico has since issued tens of thousands of documents to naturalized Americans who came from Mexico.

On July 9 a naturalized American, Andres Bermudez, was elected mayor of Jerez, a city in Mexico, declaring himself a "candidate of two nations." Our government should revoke Bermudez's U.S. citizenship, as well as the citizenship of all other naturalized Americans who ran for public office in Mexico or voted in Mexico's elections.

If we tolerate duplicity with the solemn oath of citizenship, we are opening the door for more mischief in the future. Dual loyalty is an insurmountable barrier to assimilating naturalized citizens into the American culture.

America welcomes immigrants -- but only if they want to become loyal Americans, support and defend our Constitution, obey our laws, learn our language, and honor their oath of citizenship.

The Biggest Issue in California
The California recall dominated national news for several months, but the candidates never dealt with California's biggest problem: the costs imposed by illegal aliens on the state budget, the hospitals, the schools and the prisons. The massive numbers of illegals are changing the demographics and the economy in profound ways. Over the last decade, one million people have illegally entered California from Mexico, while two million Americans have fled California to a half dozen nearby Western states in search of lower taxes, less regulation of business, better schools, less crowded highways, and safer communities.

California's problem was caused by the federal government's failure to enforce our immigration laws plus the pandering to the illegals by Governor Gray Davis and his administration. Californians tried to protect themselves from this federal default in 1994 when nearly 60% of the voters passed Proposition 187 to deny most state-funded services to illegal aliens.

A single Jimmy Carter-appointed federal judge overturned the vote of the people, sitting on the case until Gray Davis became Governor, who then kept Prop 187 permanently inoperative by refusing to appeal this judicial outrage. Despite a decade-long smear campaign by the people who profit from open borders, surveys show that Prop 187 would easily pass again if it were re-submitted to the voters.

Two authors have just presented a wealth of documentation about the high price Californians are paying for accepting this flood of low-cost labor from south of the border. A groundbreaking investigation by Fred Dickey of the Los Angeles Times shows how illegal aliens are "creating a Third World chaos in the California economy," and the new book Mexifornia, by Hoover Institution fellow and Cal State Fresno professor Victor Davis Hanson, sets forth the disastrous economic and moral results of our open-borders policies.

The Los Angeles Times reports that 950,000 illegals live in the five counties of Greater Los Angeles. Their economic activity is mostly underground, which means the employers pay low cash wages, no overtime, no benefits, and no taxes. Businessmen who don't go along with this under-the-table racket are at a 20% disadvantage with their competitors. Los Angeles black talk-radio host Terry Anderson says the same auto-repair jobs that blacks used to hold at $25 an hour are now worked by illegals at $8.

John Chiang of the State Board of Equalization, California's tax oversight agency, estimates that the state loses $7 billion a year in unpaid taxes because of the underground sector. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 30.6% of Hispanics receive means-tested government benefits compared to 9% of whites, and tax revenues simply can't keep pace with the rising demand for government services.

Of course, the illegal aliens don't have health insurance, so when the hospitals (which are forbidden to ask about citizenship) accept them as patients, the costs are loaded onto the backs of local taxpayers and patients who do pay their bills. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said the cost of medical care provided to illegal aliens in California last year was $980 million.

California schools are an academic and financial disaster. Even though California spends $2.2 billion to educate children who are illegally in this country, nearly half of Hispanic adults have not graduated from high school.

Mexifornia describes how a de facto alliance of the Corporate/Libertarian Right and the Multicultural Left has unwittingly reduced the standard of living for workers of all races and spawned a virulent and separatist race industry. The book shows that the illegal Mexicans don't assimilate like Italian, Jewish and Polish immigrants of earlier times, but instead congregate in impoverished communities where only Spanish is spoken.

This cheap-labor separatism creates a two-tiered economic and social structure. The illegals have no hope of rising into the middle class and become increasingly resentful of the system in which they remain forever doing menial jobs to maintain Americans in a lifestyle that, by Mexican standards, appears to be one of ostentatious luxury.

Almost a fourth of all inmates in California prisons are from Mexico. Hanson describes the young illegal aliens who vandalize, steal, and deal drugs, and their anti-U.S. attitude that "It's our land anyway, not yours."

Hanson makes the moral argument that current policies have undermined our common culture and harmed the very people the politicians claim to help. He calls for "sweeping restrictions on immigration," an end to the "separatist ideology," and a "stronger mandate for assimilation" emphasizing American culture and language.

Amazing News from India
The U.S. press reported that President George W. Bush and Karl Rove attended a fundraiser in September in Jackson, Mississippi that netted Republican gubernatorial candidate Haley Barbour $1.2 million. To read the really big news about that Jackson event, we have to go to the Internet and call up what was reported by the Hindustan Times on September 16.

The private reception in Jackson was attended by eight Indians, one of whom, Paresh Shah, specifically questioned the President about his stand on the bill introduced by Rep. Tom Tancredo (H.R. 2688) that calls for terminating H-1B visas. Shah told the Indian news service IANS: "Bush spread his hands as wide apart as possible and stated unequivocally that 'Tancredo and I are at opposite ends of the pole. I fully do not support Congressman Tancredo's bill against H-1Bs'."

H-1Bs are visas made available to corporations to import foreigners to work in the United States. Currently, there are an estimated 900,000 H-1B foreigners employed in the United States (35% to 40% of whom are from India), mostly in jobs for which there is widespread unemployment among American citizens. Shah was also quoted by the Indian newspapers as saying that "the L-1 visa program is heavily used by the Indian community." The L-1 is another type of visa used by corporations to import lower-paid foreign workers to replace Americans.

This isn't the first time that American jobhunters got their up-to-date employment news from faraway India. On June 14, the Economic Times of India published a report that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick assured India that its workers who come to the United States on H-1B visas will receive Social Security benefits even though they don't comply with the rules American workers must meet. The Economic Times of India reported that India's Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Jaitley said in Washington, D.C. that Zoellick "gave him the assurance," and that Jaitley also met with Commerce Secretary Bob Evans who presumably confirmed this assurance.

In order for Americans to receive Social Security benefits, we have to pay taxes into the system for 10 years or 40 quarters. Those who come here from India on H-1B visas are allowed to work here for three years and get one three-year extension, for a total of six years (not ten years).

"Totalization" is the bureaucratic buzz word to describe executive agreements to give foreigners employed in the United States Social Security benefits to which they are not entitled. A similar "totalization" plan is now cooking in our State Department to give Social Security benefits to Mexican aliens, even if they are in our country illegally.

A second India-based news source, Rediff.com, reported another comment by Minister Jaitley at that same Washington event. He said that Zoellick promised India (and Jaitley said he quoted Zoellick's exact words) that "the federal government opposes it and is trying to resist it."

"It" refers to the attempt by New Jersey and some other states to ban the outsourcing of taxpayer-paid services to foreign countries. New Jersey taxpayers created an uproar earlier this year when they learned that their state officials had outsourced the handling of calls from the state's welfare recipients to operators working in Bombay, India. At least 12 state governments and nine federal agencies have outsourced computer work to be performed by foreigners whose wages are paid by American taxpayers.

Employees of EDS, a company based in Plano, TX, first found out about their company's outsourcing plan from an Indian newspaper. The next day, EDS announced the elimination of 2,700 jobs.

Another bit of employment news that we learned about only from the Economic Times of India was datelined March 21 from New Delhi. It reports that the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS) has taken several steps to promote the entry of more foreign nurses.

Corporations are induced to import foreign workers not only because the cost of their wages and benefits is substantially less, but because many federal laws (open-borders policies plus the promiscuous granting of H-1B and L-1 visas) encourage discrimination against American workers. Outsourcing jobs to a site in a foreign country enables the corporations to avoid the numerous regulations with which U.S. businesses must comply.

The following email (one of many I've received) dramatizes the impact on individuals: "I'm a victim of the outsourcing of high tech jobs. I was a Systems Analyst/Programmer. Our bought-and-paid-for Congressmen increased the number of H-1B and L-1 visa workers to cover the 'shortage.' Now, I'm reading that the same thing is happening to the medical industry. This is déjà vu. The irony is that I retrained to be a Medical Office Billing Specialist. I thought that if I trained for a small town type of job, I would be safe. Now I find that outsourcing is going to be eliminating that opportunity for me also. I can't tell you how discouraged, disheartened and depressed I am at what is happening to my country. I can't sit idly by while the economy of my country is being dismantled piece by piece. Can you help me?"

President Bush and Members of Congress, are you listening?

Unsafe Life on the Border
The television news media bring us daily, graphic reports from Iraq, where valiant Americans are battling danger, death and destruction of property. So why don't we get coverage about similar dramatic and scary confrontations taking place on the U.S. border?

The compelling truth about the danger and devastation on America's southern border is crying out to be told. Americans need to hear from the likes of Erin Anderson, whose family homesteaded in Cochise County on the Arizona-Mexico border in the late 1880s.

Ms. Anderson says these American pioneers can't live on their own property any more because it's too dangerous. They can't ranch it. They can't sell it. It isn't safe to go on their own property without a gun, a cell phone, and a two-way radio. Their land has been stolen from them by illegal aliens while public officials turn a deaf ear.

Cochise County in the Tucson sector is the major smuggling route for illegal aliens and drugs, and literally thousands cross every night. The Border Patrol admits to apprehending one out of five illegals, but many think it's only one out of ten.

The number of illegal aliens apprehended on the southern border jumped 25% in the first three months of 2004 compared with last year. In Tucson the increase was 51%, in Yuma, it was 60%. The news of President Bush's amnesty proposal spread like wildfire as far south as Brazil. After Border Patrol agents reported that the illegals said the amnesty proposal had prompted them to come, U.S. agents were told not to ask the question any more.

Ms. Anderson says that American landowners watch in horror as their lands, water troughs and tanks, and animals are destroyed. The daily trampling of thousands of feet has beaten the ground into a hard pavement on which no grass will grow for the cattle.

Places that the illegals use as layover sites, where they rest or wait for the next ride, are littered with mountains of trash, garbage, open latrines, and plastic bags, diapers and wrappers of all kinds. When indigenous wildlife and cattle eat the plastic and refuse, they die, so the residents try to clean up the sites as often as they can.

The large number of discarded medicine wrappers indicates the prevalence of disease among the illegals. It is estimated that 10% of all illegals are carriers of Chagas, a potentially fatal disease that is widespread in Central America.

Sometimes the Americans who clean up the sites pick up pocket trash: scraps of paper with the name and phone number of the illegal alien's destination in the United States. This indicates that these border crossings are a very well organized migration.

Other suspicious items picked up by local residents include Muslim prayer rugs and notebooks written in both Arabic and Spanish. These items came from OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) and a subcategory called Special Interest Aliens, who are illegals coming from terrorist sponsoring countries.

The increased crime rate is frightening. Arizona has the highest rate of car theft in the nation, and residents risk home invasion and personal attacks. The increase in violence is very intimidating to American residents. They are afraid to speak out because someone takes note of who they are and where they live, and gives that information to smuggler cartels in Mexico.

People-smuggling by men known as coyotes has piggybacked on the already well established drug smuggling networks and infrastructure, and has become the third largest source of income for organized crime. Drug smuggling and human smuggling are now interchangeable.

Smuggling has become a recognized industry in Mexico. The smuggling route is very mechanized, and some northern Mexican villages have become known as smuggling industry towns. Illegals fly or take a bus from anywhere in Mexico or Central America to an industry town like Altar in the northern region. They are driven to the Arizona border, walk a few miles across the border, and then are picked up by shuttle buses which take them north to Tucson or Phoenix.

Shuttle buses are common carriers, so they are not required to ask for citizenship ID as the airlines do. Often the coyotes take their passengers to stash houses in Phoenix and then hold them for ransom even though they have already paid their smuggling fee.

People smuggling is so lucrative and pervasive that it is corrupting some local American high school kids. Youngsters can make thousands of dollars a week by picking up illegal aliens on the road and driving them to the Phoenix airport.

When is the Bush Administration going to put troops on our southern border to stop these crimes, and when are the media going to interview Erin Anderson and other Arizonans so the American people can know what is really going on?

NAFTA Override U.S. Constitution?
The constitutional issues involved in NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), passed a decade ago, have just ascended the ladder to the U.S. Supreme Court. Arguments were heard April 21 on whether the non-U.S. tribunals created by NAFTA can require our government to violate federal law in order to comply with foreign rulings.

The issue is whether Mexican trucks can have open access to U.S. highways even though they don't comply with U.S. regulations. For several years, this has been a controversy in Congress, where the decision ought to be made since the U.S. Constitution gives Congress exclusive power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations."

On February 6, 2001, a five-member international tribunal established by NAFTA declared the United States to be in breach of its obligations to Mexico because of restrictions on the entry of foreign trucks. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) ignored U.S. domestic statutes (including the National Environmental Protection Act and the Clean Air Act) and ordered implementation of the decision.

Mexican trucks have so far been permitted to enter only a 20-mile zone on our southern border. Their contents are then transferred to U.S. trucks for delivery in the United States.

The NAFTA tribunal ordered the United States to lift its restrictions on foreign trucks, mandating full access by Mexican trucks across the entire United States. This ruling repeatedly referred to NAFTA as a "treaty" and relied on interpretations of past treaties as justification for the decision.

But NAFTA is not a treaty. It was never submitted to the Senate as a treaty and did not receive the two-thirds majority vote that treaty ratification requires, but instead was enacted in 1993 by a congressional law passed by a simple majority.

Implicitly at stake in this case is whether congressional bypass of the Treaty Clause (Article II, Section 2) can bind the United States as fully as a treaty does. Our system of federalism is also vulnerable, due to the deference historically given to treaties over the rights of the states.

The Ninth Circuit decision (from which the government is appealing) correctly required DOT to comply with domestic laws by preparing an environmental impact statement prior to allowing Mexican trucks to traverse U.S. roads. Any impact statement should evaluate the Mexican trucks' adverse effect not only on nature but also on human safety.

We need an analysis not only of pollution caused by truck emissions and the wear and tear on our highways, but also of the loss of life from trucks and drivers that do not meet U.S. standards. Mexican trucks are older, heavier, and more dangerous than U.S. trucks.

Mexican drivers are less familiar with our roads and language and drive longer hours than U.S. drivers for much lower wages. The loss of life from a predictable increase in accidents should be included in the environmental impact statement.

Deaths caused by language incompatibility, such as misunderstanding road signs or directions, are an essential element of an impact analysis. The most tragic and costly truck accident in midwest history, resulting in the incineration of Rev. Scott Willis's six children in 1994, was caused by the Mexican truck driver's inability to comprehend warnings in the English language.

Fatal accidents involving foreigners unfamiliar with our roads, our rules of the road, and the English language are tragically frequent in states far from our southern border such as Colorado and Iowa. Often vans crammed with illegal aliens are driven by "coyotes" who are paid thousands of dollars per person to transport them hundreds of miles north of the border.

The impact statement should also include the increased quantity of illicit drugs coming into the United States in Mexican trucks, much of it headed for "transshipment" sites in North or South Carolina or Georgia. U.S. Attorney Frank Whitney said that, even at the present time, "It's virtually impossible for the border patrol or customs to truly check every one of these vehicles."

In its Petition, the government argued that it would be more efficient to open our borders to trucks from Mexico and that the Ninth Circuit decision should be reversed because it protects "inefficient procedures." We are not impressed with the government's effort to rank efficiency higher than the U.S. Constitution, sovereignty, and laws.

In this Supreme Court case, the government is maintaining that its decision to open up our highways to Mexican trucks is an act of executive discretion, but in fact it is simply complying with an international tribunal never authorized by any treaty. To allow the executive branch to enforce this decision would set a very dangerous precedent for permitting the rulings of other foreign courts in Geneva, the Hague, or Brussels to bypass both the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. judiciary.

Who Is an American Citizen?
In a world of inhumanity, war and terrorism, American citizenship is a very precious possession. It affords rights that residents of other countries can only dream of.

So who is eligible to claim American citizenship? The U.S. Supreme Court may soon consider that question.

Yasser Esam Hamdi was captured as an enemy combatant during the American military operation in Afghanistan. When interviewed by a U.S. interrogation team, Hamdi identified himself as a Saudi citizen who had been born in the United States.

Now that he has been detained, he contradicts that by claiming to be a citizen of the United States based on his birth in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Saudi Arabian parents. There is no evidence that his parents intended to settle in the United States, or even that they had a right to do so.

Hamdi was residing in Afghanistan when he was captured. His father, Esam Fouad Hamdi, joined the lawsuit from his country of Saudi Arabia.

Section 1401(a) of Title 8 of the United States Code defines a U.S. citizen as "a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." This law uses the same language as the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

There is no evidence that Hamdi or his parents ever consented to be subject to the sovereignty of the United States, or sought to settle in the United States or to renounce their Saudi Arabian citizenship. All evidence is that they retained allegiance to Saudi Arabia.

Birth on U.S. territory has never been an absolute claim to citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment does not automatically extend to children born to alien parents at war with the United States, or to the children of diplomatic agents, or to American Indians, or to illegal aliens. If it did, American Indians would automatically have been American citizens since they were born on what is U.S. territory. But Indians who belong to tribes were not citizens until given that status by Congress.

The Supreme Court held in 1884 in Elk v. Wilkins that "Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of, and owing immediate allegiance to, one of the Indian tribes (an alien, though dependent, power), although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more 'born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' within the meaning of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign nations."

The logic of this decision applies with equal force to visitors or aliens who remain loyal to foreign powers. The Fourteenth Amendment did not change this.

In the 1942 case called In re: Thenault, a federal court ruled: "Of course, the mere physical fact of birth in the country does not make these children citizens of the United States, inasmuch as they were at that time children of a duly accredited diplomatic representative of a foreign state. This is fundamental law and within the recognized exception not only to the Constitutional provision relative to citizenship, Amendment Article 14, Section 1, but to the law of England and France and to our own law, from the very first settlement of the Colonies."

In supporting passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull explained that the jurisdictional language in the Citizenship Clause "means 'subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.' ... [Are] the Navajo Indians subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States? By no means. We make treaties with them. ... It cannot be said of any Indian who owes allegiance, partial allegiance if you please, to some other Government ... that he is 'subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.' ... It is only those persons who come completely within our jurisdiction, who are subject to our laws, that we think of making citizens."

The extensive litigation concerning American Indians illustrates that consent rather than place of birth is what controls citizenship. Indians did not receive citizenship until conferred by congressional acts in 1887, 1901, and 1924, long after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Constitution states that "no person except a natural born citizen" is eligible to be President. Everyone recognizes that this provision disqualifies the Governors of California and Michigan who were born in Austria and Canada, respectively.

On the other hand, then Michigan Governor George Romney, whose birthplace was Mexico, ran for president in 1968, and Senator John McCain, whose birthplace was the Panama Canal Zone, ran for president in 2000. Both were "natural born citizens" because their parents were U.S. citizens and subject to the jurisdiction of American sovereignty.

It's not the physical location of birth that defines citizenship, but whether your parents are citizens, and the express or implied consent to jurisdiction of the sovereign. The facts and the law argue against American citizenship for Hamdi.

Giving Criminals a Sanctuary
A favorite argument of those who support amnesty for illegal aliens is: current laws can't be enforced (like Prohibition and the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit) so we might as well adjust to reality. That's about like telling a woman, you can't fight your rapist, so relax and enjoy it. There must be a better solution.

Any comparison of the invasion of illegal aliens with Prohibition or the 55-mile speed limit is totally false. The American people wanted both those laws repealed, but the American people, by a wide margin, want our immigration laws enforced.

That's why Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Zell Miller (D-GA) held a hearing last week on their Homeland Security Enhancement Act (S.1906) to promote cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. It's a reflection on the peculiar times we live in that we even need such a law, but the failure of federal and state law-enforcement personnel to cooperate to protect us from crimes committed by illegal aliens is as dangerous as the now-famous failure of the CIA and the FBI to talk to each other about terrorists.

Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) is the sponsor of a similar bill called the CLEAR Act (H.R. 2671) to give state and local authorities the power to routinely enforce federal immigration laws. The bill has 120 co-sponsors and is one border security bill that has a chance to pass this year.

The numbers tell us why this cooperation is essential. Our fewer than 2,000 federal immigration agents cannot possibly cope with the problems caused by 10 million illegal aliens. We don't want to hire a half million new federal agents.

The answer is to use the police officers who walk their beats and drive our highways and who come into contact with illegal aliens every day. The feds desperately need the eyes, ears, and cooperation of our 650,000 state and local police officers.

The open-borders lobby is vehemently opposed to this sensible cooperation. Many cities and other local units of government have adopted so-called "sanctuary" laws or policies to forbid local police to ask anyone whether they are legally in the United States.

Police officers who suspect violations of immigration law are often prohibited from detaining illegal aliens or contacting federal immigration authorities. Sanctuary laws even forbid police to report immigration violations to federal authorities.

We've seen numerous examples of illegal aliens who were stopped by the local police but then set free to commit their crimes instead of being deported, such as the notorious gang rape of a mother of two in Queens, New York by three illegal aliens who had been arrested numerous times but never turned over to the immigration agency. The most famous example is D.C.-area sniper Lee Malvo, who was caught by local law-enforcement in Seattle, identified as an illegal who should be deported, but then set free by the feds.

Three of the 9/11 hijackers, including the ringleader Mohammed Atta, had been stopped and ticketed for significant traffic violations, such as driving without a license and speeding at 90 m.p.h. Thousands of innocent lives could have been saved through closer cooperation between local police and immigration authorities.

The Los Angeles police department is handcuffed by Special Order 40, which prohibits the police from asking anyone they arrest about his immigration status unless the suspect is already charged with committing a felony. The police may not notify immigration authorities about an illegal alien picked up for minor violations, even though it's well known that enforcing laws against minor crimes often prevents a major crime.

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act makes it unlawful for any municipality to restrict its employees from reporting illegal aliens to federal authorities, and allows the federal government and local police to work together under specific written agreements. A few local agencies have reached such agreements, and Virginia just became the third state to give its state police more authority to detain illegal aliens.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, trying to defend his city's sanctuary policy, fought against that law all the way to the Supreme Court. He lost in court, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "don't ask, don't tell" rule continues to skirt around the 1996 law.

There are 400,000 illegal aliens walking our streets who are under standing deportation orders (known as absconders), of whom 80,000 are criminal aliens and nearly 3,800 are from countries with known Al Qaeda presence. The L.A. police department has more than 1,200 outstanding warrants for illegal aliens on homicide charges.

The foreign born are 30% of federal prisoners. The big-city gangs are mostly foreign born, and their viciousness is illustrated by the 16-year-old who lay in wait and killed a California police officer on April 21. The murder was the boy's admission ticket to the 12th Street Pomona gang, which has ties to the Mexican Mafia.

Birthright Citizenship, Dual Citizenship and the Meaning of Sovereignty were the subjects of a House hearing on September 30 presided over by Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN). It is unfortunate that this important subject received little media coverage.

Birthright citizenship statistics are shocking. At least 383,000 babies are born in the United States every year to illegal aliens; that's 10% of all U.S. births and about 40% of indigent births. The cost to the U.S. taxpayers is tremendous because all those babies, called anchor babies, claim birthright citizenship. Their mothers and other relatives then sign up for a vast stream of taxpayer benefits.

At least 12 million persons now live in the United States illegally. In addition, smugglers operate a thriving business of bringing in pregnant women from all over the world just in time to give birth and claim citizenship and citizens' benefits. Why does the United States allow this racket to continue? Congress has failed to do its duty to protect American citizenship, sovereignty, and taxpayers.

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states that U.S. citizens are "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Federal law uses almost identical language. "Subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is an essential part of the definition. History emphatically confirms the importance and necessity of those five words.

American Indians with allegiance to their tribes, despite the obvious location of their birth, did not receive U.S. citizenship until it was conferred by congressional acts in 1887, 1901 and 1924. Babies born to diplomats or their wives who happen to be in the United States at the moment of birth are not U.S. citizens.

The purpose of the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was to assure that blacks are citizens, thus overturning the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision that blacks could not be citizens. Congress thus rejected stare decisis in overruling that most supremacist decision in history.

The U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, and in the Fourteenth Amendment, gives all authority over citizenship and naturalization to Congress, not to the courts. Congress should end its silence and pass a law stating that a child born to an illegal alien is not a U.S. citizen because his parent has not made herself subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

The peculiar notion that foreigners residing illegally in the United States should enjoy the same rights as American citizens is found nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or federal law. This anomaly was created by supremacist judges who encouraged and protected the large-scale entry of illegal aliens into the United States.

One of President Dwight Eisenhower's mistakes, Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, created a brand-new addition to the Fourteenth Amendment. Brennan's 5-4 opinion in the case of Plyler v. Doe (1982) struck down a Texas law and created the requirement that the State of Texas must provide free public education to illegal-alien children. The Plyler decision gave foreigners a powerful incentive to sneak into our country, enroll their children in our public schools, and start demanding other benefits paid for by U.S. taxpayers. This decision opened our borders to a stampede of illegal aliens, aided and abetted by one bad court decision after another.

Dual citizenship is a problem because some immigrants have falsely been led to believe that they are or can be dual citizens. Mexico has even named a cabinet minister whose mission is to encourage Mexicans (both illegals and naturalized U.S. citizens) to vote in Mexican elections and, as he said, to "think Mexico first."

Congress has never legislated a specific prohibition about dual citizenship and the Supreme Court has never ruled on this precise point. But to become a U.S. citizen, immigrants are required by our law to swear allegiance to the United States and to absolutely renounce any and all allegiance to the nation from which they came.

There is no ambiguity about the solemn oath that all naturalized Americans must take: "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 the law; . . . and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

Any naturalized U.S. citizen who claims dual citizenship with his native country betrays his solemn oath. We want immigrants to come to America and become Americans; we want patriotic assimilation.

Congress should pass a law stating that if naturalized U.S. citizens vote, hold office, or serve in the armed forces of their native country, they forfeit their American citizenship.

The Policy of Bait-and-Switch

Americans are not naive enough to believe the sensational headline and opening paragraphs of news accounts about Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's October 18 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was reported to have said that Homeland Security will now "Return every single illegal entrant — no exceptions."

That's a correct quote, but Chertoff's prepared text proves that he certainly won't start tomorrow to expel and exclude "every single" illegal alien who crosses our border. His statement refers only to the Other Than Mexicans (OTMs) whom our undermanned Border Patrol agents actually catch. Those are the aliens who are the beneficiaries of a Bush Administration racket called "catch and release." OTMs are caught, charged as immigration law violators, and then immediately released on their own recognizance — which allows them to disappear into the American population.

On October 24, CBS Evening News showed pictures of these OTMs sneaking over the border. The announcer explained that these aliens don't try to evade capture but actually want to be caught because they know they will enjoy "catch and release" and then can immediately proceed to their destinations anywhere in the United States and live illegally indefinitely.

Chertoff admitted that 130,000 OTMs received this treatment in 2005 alone. He acts as though he just discovered this travesty when in fact "catch and release" has been government policy for years. Furthermore, Chertoff didn't promise immediate action; he is just "taking steps" to change it, "reengineering" our removal process, and expecting "significant progress in less than a year." Meanwhile, Chertoff admitted that "catch and release" acts as an enticement for additional illegals to enter our country.

Chertoff told the Senate committee that he already has "aggressive efforts underway" to ensure that employers who violate current laws "face appropriate punishment." Really? At least 12 million illegal aliens are now working in the United States, but only three employers in the entire nation were fined in 2004. In President Bush's Saturday radio address, he bragged that "we've doubled the resources for work site enforcement since 2004." Does that mean we can expect six employers to be fined next year?

Obviously, Chertoff has no plans to do anything about the illegal entrants who already slipped over our border and are now living across the country from Maine to California.

It's hard to take Chertoff's promises seriously when they are prefaced by the false braggadocio that "President Bush has placed the utmost importance on border security." The latest 28-question opinion survey circulated to donors by the Republican Party does not include even one question about illegal aliens or immigration, further manifesting the Bush Administration policy of sweeping this issue under the rug. The latest 15-question survey distributed by the Democratic National Committee likewise has not a single question about illegal aliens or immigration. Both parties are pretending that this issue doesn't exist.

In signing the giant Homeland Security spending bill in October and in his Saturday radio broadcast, President Bush for the first time gave us some tough talk about getting "control of our borders," but tucked at the end of his border-security rhetoric was a renewed demand that we offer American jobs to "willing workers from foreign countries." The most accurate way to describe his salestalk is bait-and-switch.

Bush didn't put any numbers limit on the "willing workers" he would like to invite to come and join the U.S. job market. How many "willing workers" around the world would jump at the chance to come to the United States and work for a dollar an hour? Maybe 5,000,000,000?

Conservative Republicans in Congress have wised up to the Administration's bait-and-switch plan. More than 80 House members recently sent a letter to the President stating that "the American people need to see that the current laws against illegal immigration are being enforced before any guest-worker program can be considered."

The letter said we have lost control of our borders and endangered the lives of Americans by not enforcing existing immigration laws. The letter cited the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act that mandated a national exit-entry tracking system for all aliens but, nine years later, the system is still not near completion.

Illegal aliens are responsible for a terrible crime wave that includes the spread into our cities and suburbs of criminal gangs from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The gang called MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha), with an estimated 10,000 members in 33 states, deals in narcotics, gun trafficking, prostitution, and murder by machete after torture and mutilation.

U.S. taxpayers are paying a heavy burden of costs to provide illegal aliens with health care, public schools, in-state college tuition, housing subsidies, and treatment for Third World diseases. The failure to enforce our immigration laws results in a general disrespect for all laws, plus the destruction of private property of Americans along our southern border.

The President can no longer get by with saying "trust me." His record of failure to enforce our immigration laws is too scandalous and too costly for us to be satisfied with mere plans to do better sometime in the future.

Congressional candidates preparing for the 2006 elections should beware: amnesty, guest-worker, and willing worker are all red-flag words that voters find offensive.

A Phone Call from Newt Gingrich
I was sitting at my computer when I received a phone call asking me to listen to an important recorded message from our old friend Newt Gingrich. Expecting to get more information about his new alliance with Hillary Clinton to change health care as we know it, I stayed on the line.

But no, Newt was telling me about the danger from illegal aliens coming across our open borders. He talked about the threat this poses to our national security in an era of terrorism, the high costs to U.S. taxpayers, the follies of multiculturalism, and the urgent need for everyone in our country to be able to speak our English language.

The message was skillfully designed to appeal to Americans who are outraged at our government's failure to protect us from the invasion of illegals. But slyly buried in the middle of Newt's message was an endorsement of a "guest-worker" plan to invite even more aliens to take U.S. jobs.

The politicians and business executives, who are determined to continue bringing in foreigners to work for lower wages than Americans expect, have gotten smart. The plan to import "willing workers" from other countries is now being packaged in the language of concern about border security.

This strategy is obvious in the new White House-backed coalition called Americans for Border and Economic Security, organized by Republican lobbyist (and former Republican National Committee Chairman) Ed Gillespie. Admission to this coalition costs $50,000 to $250,000, fees that will finance a political-style campaign to sell the American people on a guest-worker program wrapped in a few border-security measures.

This bait-and-switch maneuver is also the approach of the legislation sponsored by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Kyl (R-AZ). It's called the "Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act," and it is very comprehensive; the advance summary runs a dozen pages of fine print.

The Cornyn-Kyl bill starts off with authorizing 10,000 more Border Patrol Agents. But more agents were congressionally authorized months ago and the Bush Administration refused to add them.

The Cornyn-Kyl bill increases criminal penalties for alien smuggling, document fraud, gang violence, and drug trafficking. But that only applies to criminals who are caught; our Border Patrol is catching less than half of the illegals coming over the border, and we inspect only a tiny percent of the Mexican trucks which NAFTA has forced us to allow on our highways.

What about the incredible costs to U.S. taxpayers of illegal aliens, such as health care at our hospitals, schooling for their children, subsidized housing, Earned Income Tax Credit subsidies, and in-state college tuition rates? The Cornyn-Kyl bill would deny taxpayer benefits only to aliens found to pose a threat to national security (not to those who threaten our pocketbooks).

The comprehensive Cornyn-Kyl bill contains dozens of excellent and necessary proposals that should have been ordered years ago, such as eliminating the Diversity Visa Program.

But buried in the middle of this vast bill is Title V, which creates a "Nonimmigrant Temporary Worker Category." That's the euphemism for giving amnesty to some 12 million illegal aliens already in the United States, plus creating "guest worker" status for them and for millions more aliens who will be invited into our country to take U.S. jobs.

"Amnesty" means a general pardon for offenses against the government. The Cornyn-Kyl bill includes no punishment whatsoever for the crimes committed by illegal aliens, by makers and users of fraudulent documents, or by employers who hire the cheap labor.

The Cornyn-Kyl bill would establish a new visa category called "W" that would allow aliens to enter the United States "when there are no available U.S. workers." The bill would require employers to pay "W" aliens the minimum wage but not require the market wage. In other words, Silicon Valley corporations could advertise in "America's Job Bank" for computer specialists at the U.S. minimum wage, no American engineers would apply, and thousands of computer specialists from India and Pakistan would board planes to take the jobs for which, allegedly, "there are no available U.S. workers."

The "W" workers would be allowed to extend their time in the United States up to six years, during which period their family members may come and visit for 30 days at a time. The bill doesn't answer the question of what happens when the "W" worker is visited by his wife and they produce an "anchor baby," i.e., a U.S. citizen, with all the rights and taxpayer benefits for the baby and all his relatives.

Amnesty, even under the phony label "guest worker," is highly offensive to the American people. It cannot be made palatable by hiding it in a bill that pretends to be about "enforcement" or "reform" of border security.

Importing Third World Diseases
Dr. Madeleine Cosman, Esq. is a national authority on the diseases brought into our country by illegal aliens, who of course are not given health examinations required of all legal immigrants. Her message should be heard by all Americans. She says that 84 California hospitals closed between 1994 and 2003 because EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, requires every emergency room to treat every patient coming with an "emergency" (including childbirth) even if unable to pay and even if illegally in the United States. The law is tough; hospitals and doctors are fined up to $50,000 for refusing to treat. This unfunded federal mandate has caused dozens of hospitals to go bankrupt.

Dr. Cosman, who is both a Ph.D. and a lawyer, describes the infectious diseases now spreading across the United States. The Centers for Disease Control reports that illegal immigrants account for over 65% of communicable diseases.

Contagious diseases that our country wiped out years ago, such as malaria, polio, tuberculosis, and hepatitis, and rare diseases of Third World poverty such as leprosy, Chagas disease, and Dengue Fever, are coming in. Seven thousand cases of leprosy have been reported in the U.S. since 2001, the majority of which came from Mexico, Brazil and India.

The Centers for Disease Control reported 38,291 California cases of tuberculosis that included Multiple Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, which is 60% fatal and for which treatment costs $200,000 to $1,200,000 per patient. Illegal aliens are also bringing in syphilis and gonorrhea. Bedbugs have invaded the United States for the first time in 50 years, with 28 states reporting recent infestations. Although bedbugs are common in many counties, they were all but eradicated in our country after World War II.

It is a mystery to those of us in heartland America what President Bush must be thinking of when he continues to push for his unpopular guest-worker/amnesty plan to allow millions of illegal aliens in our country to stay here without punishment, and to invite millions more "willing workers" to come on in. How many "willing workers" do you think there are in the rest of the world?

The Pew Hispanic Center has just provided a clue. A Pew survey in May of migration attitudes in 120 locations in Mexico showed that 46% of Mexicans (that means 49 million people) said they would live in the United States if they had the opportunity, and two out of ten are willing to come here illegally.

Two Democratic Governors, Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Janet Napolitano of Arizona, have declared a state of emergency and asked for federal help to deal with the costs of the violence and property damage caused by illegal aliens coming over their southern borders. If President Bush lets those partisan Democrats get to the right of him on the immigration issue, all Republicans will suffer in the 2006 election.

The goal of our post-World War II trade agreements, such as the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), was to lower tariffs mutually in pursuit of worldwide free trade. The trouble is that it takes two to tango and we trade with at least 137 other countries that dance to a different tune.

When other countries reduced their tariffs, they simultaneously imposed border tax schemes, particularly Value Added Taxes (VAT), which add up to almost exactly the same amount as the tariffs that were supposedly reduced. This sleight-of-hand trick is achieved by imposing VAT taxes on imports (a de facto tariff) and rebating VAT taxes on exports.

These de facto tariffs in many countries, including the European Union, are now as high or higher than tariffs were at the beginning of the GATT. Today, 94% of all U.S. exports and imports of goods are traded with VAT countries. These border-tax inequities currently disadvantage U.S. producers and service providers to the tune of $379 billion a year.

The scheme started as a historical accident. The VAT (a consumption tax) was labeled an "indirect" tax, while income/payroll/property taxes paid by U.S. businesses were called "direct" taxes. Incompetent U.S. negotiators agreed in 1955 that "indirect" taxes, such as the VAT, "shall not be deemed to be a subsidy." At that time the rates of VAT taxes were only 2% to 4% and U.S. negotiators looked upon this concession as no big deal.

However, foreign countries caught on to how to use the VAT to cheat the United States. Over the years, other countries' use of the VAT has grown into a major violation of GATT's primary purpose: the reduction of border barriers. The average VAT imposed by all our trading partners today is a whopping 15.7% of the cost. European Union nations average a VAT of 19.2%.

The VAT is one of the major factors causing the loss of 3.2 million manufacturing jobs since 2000 and the dramatic increase in our trade deficit to $763.6 billion in 2006.

The disparate treatment of border taxes is harmful and costly to U.S. workers in two ways. First, the refunds of indirect taxes amount to subsidies to foreign companies that export to the U.S. (although subsidies are supposed to be prohibited by WTO rules). Second, U.S. exporters are subjected to double taxation. They pay U.S. "direct" taxes, and then they pay a so-called "indirect" tax at the foreign border in order to get their products and services admitted. The VAT import tax is levied on the price of the "landed cost," which includes the costs of the product and its transportation.

To remedy this discrimination, the bipartisan Border Tax Equity Act (H.R. 2600) has just been introduced by Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Walter Jones (R-NC), Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), and Mike Michaud (D-ME). It is designed to level the trading field by forcing other countries to eliminate their de facto tariffs. The Act accurately calls the discrimination against U.S. producers "arbitrary," "inequitable," and "a primary obstacle to more balanced trade relations between the United States and its major trading partners."

The Border Tax Equity Act directs our trade representatives to negotiate a remedy for the VAT inequity on goods and services by January 1, 2009. Then comes the mailed fist in the velvet glove. If the VAT countries refuse to agree to a reasonable negotiated solution by then, the United States would charge an offsetting assessment on imports of goods and services equal to the amount of VAT the foreign government rebates to its exporters. In addition, the United States would issue rebates equal to the amount of VAT taxes that U.S. exporters are forced to pay on goods which they sell to other countries.

U.S. businesses have complained about this border-tax discrimination for 40 years, and Congress has repeatedly tried to resolve it by good-faith negotiations with VAT countries. But other countries continue to say "no dice," and the WTO turns a deaf ear. This differential fuels the trade deficit, cripples U.S. competitiveness, and provides a powerful incentive for U.S. companies to shift production and jobs overseas. Thousands of U.S. companies have shifted production to nations that use a VAT where they avoid the double taxation.

To those who say that this bipartisan bill is not WTO compliant, we reply that the WTO's refusal to address this discrimination proves its anti-American bias. It's time to speak up for American industry and jobs.

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The Voters Roared — The Senate Heard
To the surprise and dismay of the media and the political establishment, the highly touted and aggressively lobbied Senate amnesty bill was rejected by the Senate in a cloture vote on June 28.

The American people are fed up with the six years of "silent amnesty" President Bush has given us by allowing at least 700,000 illegals to come into our country every year of his Administration (a) to take jobs in the underground economy (paying no taxes), or (b) to take jobs using a fake or stolen Social Security number and receive massive social benefits paid by U.S. taxpayers, or (c) to roam our streets as conduits for illegal drugs or to participate in criminal gangs.

Bush's silent amnesty results from his refusal to enforce current laws against illegal entry into our country, against hiring illegal aliens, and against allowing foreigners to overstay their visas.

The American people demanded that Congress reject the 700-page amnesty bill that would grant Z visas to make Bush's silent amnesty permanent. The grass roots showed their power over the White House, Big Democratic Establishment, Big Republican Establishment, Big Business, Big Unions, Big Media, and Big Church combined. The Senate bill didn't even get a simple majority, much less the 60 votes it needed to proceed to vote on the bill itself.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who was out front first with specific objections to the Senate bill, pointed out how phony it was to call the Senate bill "reform." He said it would result in only a 13% reduction in the invasion of illegal aliens and would double the number of legal immigrants.

The arguments against the details of the bill were so powerful that its advocates were reduced to repeating the mantra "Something is better than nothing." How dumb do the elite think the American people are? The amnesty bill was far worse than doing nothing; the American people want current laws enforced.

The amnesty bill was written by a handful of "Deal Makers" behind closed doors without hearings or the usual committee process, who then limited amendments and debate, and demanded that the bill be passed only hours after the text was made public. The principal Deal Maker was Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Republicans found it especially obnoxious that all negotiations had to go through Kennedy, the architect of 40 years of failed immigration policy.

Among the many amendments that the Deal Makers rejected or did not allow to be considered were amendments to prohibit felons from getting Z visas, to require completion of background checks before Z visas are issued, and to ensure that drunk drivers are not given legal status.

The pro-amnesty crowd is now engaging in ugly name-calling and blaming its defeat on Talk Radio. In fact, Talk Radio merely gave voice to the grass roots, thereby enabling a "great victory for the American people who demanded to be heard," as Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) said at the post-vote press conference.

Contrary to continuing media propaganda, the 2006 election and the killing of the Senate "comprehensive" immigration bill do not prove that anti-amnesty is a loser for Republicans. The Democrats who won in 2006 campaigned with Republican-rhetoric messages calling for border security, and they kept their promises in the decisive cloture vote.

Republican Senators voted No by a 3-to-1 majority (37 to 12), and they were conspicuously joined by three new Democratic Senators who defeated incumbent Republicans last November after criticizing the failure of our government to stop the entry of illegal aliens. They were Senators Jim Webb (VA), Jon Tester (MT), and Claire McCaskill (MO) who said simply, "I like to keep my word."

The House Democrats who won in 2006 after making border-security promises were equally resistant to establishment and media lobbying. For example, Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-KS) who pulled off one of the most surprising 2006 upsets against an incumbent Republican, called President Bush just plain "wrong" and asserted that "most Americans oppose the Senate's wrong-headed reforms; it's just Kansas common sense."

Bush's duplicity about building a fence destroyed his credibility. Just before the 2006 election, Bush arranged a photo-op to show himself signing the Secure Fence Act, but since then he has refused to build it. The Senate bill he lobbyied for would have cut in half the 700 miles of fencing called for in the 2006 law he signed. Bush likes fences for himself and keeps a high fence around the White House. When he met at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany, he was protected by a welded-mesh fence, topped with barbed wire and video cameras, that began in the water and wound its way through the countryside until it ended back in the water.

Bush has just sent 120 of our best-trained Border Guards to Iraq to help the Iraqis with their border enforcement! With much fanfare last year, Bush sent some National Guard troops to our southern border, but they were not allowed to do anything except observe and are now scheduled to be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Promoting the North American Agenda
When the details of the Senate amnesty bill were released, it became apparent that it was part of the globalists' plan for the economic integration of North America. The bill would accomplish economic integration by immediately legalizing the 20 million aliens who now live in our country illegally, plus inviting tens of millions more (all their remote relatives) to enter legally in the coming years.

Title VI of the K-K bill would instantly turn the 20 million illegal aliens now in the U.S. into legal residents. Nobody knows the exact number, but since the bill had no cap and made it advantageous to declare yourself an illegal alien, fraud would probably grow the number (as did the number who were granted amnesty by the 1986 law). Forget national security and our hope to exclude potential terrorists, criminals, and MS-13 gangs - background checks would be limited to what the government could prove "by the end of the next business day."

Title IV, Section 413 called on Congress to "accelerate the implementation" of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which was agreed to by Bush and the Mexican and Canadian heads of state at Waco in 2005, and then reaffirmed at Cancun in 2006. SPP's purpose and procedures were spelled out in the Council on Foreign Relations document called "Building a North American Community," which identified SPP as a five-year plan to achieve economic integration of the three countries with open borders through which "trade, capital, and people flow freely."

The Senate amnesty bill was a backhanded attempt to give some legislative color to Bush's attempt to achieve his goal of open borders by press releases and confidential SPP meetings in our Department of Commerce with Mexican and Canadian bureaucrats.

The Senate amnesty bill stated that we want to increase access to credit for "poor and under served populations in Mexico," and expand efforts "to reduce the transaction costs of remittance flows" from the U.S. to Mexico (now running at $23 billion a year). The bill would put us into a "partnership" with Mexico for "increasing health care access for poor and under served populations in Mexico," for "assisting Mexico in increasing its emergency and trauma health care facilities," and for "expanding prenatal care" in the border region.

The Senate amnesty bill even called for massive U.S. foreign aid to Mexico to "improve the standard of living in Mexico." Thus, the Senate bill called on the U.S. to assume the awesome economic burden of solving poverty problems in a country where a handful of billionaires sit at the top of a corrupt economy and keep most of the people in abject poverty.

Raiding U.S. Taxpayers' Pocketbooks
The biggest effect of the Senate amnesty bill would be the immense tax burden it would impose on America's middle class. It would require U.S. taxpayers to finance what would be, in essence, a multi-billion-dollar purchase of Mexican poverty. It would integrate millions of poor, uneducated Mexicans into the U.S. economy, giving them and all their distant relatives extraordinarily generous tax-paid social benefits. At least two-thirds of illegal aliens are low-skill, low-wage high school dropouts. A Congressional Budget Office spokesman said that one-third have never gotten as far as 8th grade.

An in-depth Heritage Foundation study by Robert Rector estimates that the average low-skill household in the U.S. receives $30,160 in taxpayer-paid benefits (from all levels of government), and pays only $10,573 in taxes at all levels. Each low-skill household, therefore, imposes a net cost on U.S. taxpayers of $19,588 per year, which added up to $564 billion in 2004.

In addition to public schools, low-wage illegal aliens would become heavy users of over 60 federal means-tested aid programs, including Medicaid, EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit, a cash handout that averages $1,700 per year per household), food stamps, SSI (Supplemental Security Income), Section 8 housing, public housing, TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), school lunches and breakfasts, WIC (Women, Infants and Children) nutrition program, SSBG (Social Services Block Grants), and legal services. Most Americans are unaware of the enormous government transfers from taxpaying Americans to those who pay little or no income taxes.

About 45% of illegals work in the underground economy, thereby avoiding all income and employment taxes. And, since Mexicans send $23 billion a year of their earnings in remittances back to their home country, they are not even paying much in sales taxes for purchases of U.S. products.

In addition to the heavy costs that the Senate amnesty bill would impose on current U.S. taxpayers, it is awesome to contemplate the burden put on our children and grandchildren when the amnestied aliens and their many relatives retire and collect Social Security and Medicare. The Heritage Foundation estimates that the net retirement costs (benefits minus taxes) could be more than $2.5 trillion, which is five times the cost of the Iraq war.

The influx of tens of millions of low-skill workers, who pay almost no taxes and send $23 billion of their earnings out of the country, will increase U.S. poverty and impose a tremendous burden on U.S. taxpayers. The increased supply of low-skill workers will also depress the wages of low-skill Americans who compete for low-wage jobs. The terrible costs of the amnesty bill's buyout of Mexican poverty is not the legacy we want to leave our children and grandchildren.

The globalists try to tell us that bringing in more workers will expand and enrich our economy. That's nonsense. If millions of low-skill, low-wage workers could build a country's wealth, Africa and South America would be the richest countries in the world, and obviously they are not.

Education Secretary Warns About Dropouts
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings made a speech to the National Summit on America's Silent Epidemic on May 9. She said: "The dropout rate for African-American, Hispanic, and Native American students approaches 50% . . . Every year nearly a million kids fail to graduate high school."

Secretary Spellings exhorted us to deal with this problem because it is a "moral imperative." But the Senate amnesty bill would dump many more millions of high school dropouts into our country.

Big business employers know that legalized illegals and guest-workers are willing to work long hours at low wages. Employers know they can avoid paying employee benefits and let U.S. taxpayers provide generous financial benefits. The Heritage Foundation estimates that U.S. taxpayers provide about $20,000 per year of these benefits to every household headed by a high school dropout. That's even before retirement age enables the high school dropouts and their relatives to cash in on Social Security and Medicare.

Secretary Spellings' plan to pour more taxpayers' money into public schools does nothing for the dropouts who have already given up and gone out to the streets where they get into mischief. The high unemployment rate of young minority men is a national scandal. What our own high school dropouts need is a job so they can get started building a life.

Instead of rewarding illegal aliens with a Z visa to enable them to hold a job legally, Secretary Spellings should ask the Senate to authorize a Z diploma to encourage U.S. businesses to hire our own high school dropouts.

Amnesty Attacks the English Language
One of the mischievous proposals hidden in the crevices of the unlamented Senate amnesty bill was a surreptitious attempt to convert us to a bilingual (or even multilingual) nation. Section 702(b) would have forbidden the government to "diminish" any existing rights under U.S. "laws" that concern services or materials provided by the government "in any language other than English." Section 702(c) then gave this section extraordinary legal scope by defining the word "laws" to include "Presidential Executive Orders."

These deviously written sections would thus have exalted Clinton's Executive Order (EO) 13166 to the status of U.S. law. Clinton's EO requires all recipients of federal funds to provide all information and services in any language requested by any recipient of federal funds (such as a private-practice physician who accepts a Medicare or Medicaid patient). Ergo, all applicants for the new Z visa could apply in any language of their choice. Applicants would even have to be provided with tax-paid attorneys to demand their Z visas and challenge any rejection.

Clinton's EO 13166 should be repealed and English should be legislated as our official U.S. language. A new Zogby survey reports that 84% of Americans support this, one of the highest percentages of Yes votes ever recorded in public opinion polls.

CNN's televised presidential debates highlighted the chasm between the two parties on this issue. When Wolf Blitzer asked all the Democratic candidates "to raise your hand . . . if you believe English should be the official language of the United States," only Mike Gravel held up his hand.

A few nights later at the Republican presidential debate, Blitzer asked any candidate to speak up "who doesn't believe English should be the official language of the United States." Only John McCain spoke, hedging his reply by talking about the sovereignty of American Indians in Arizona. Blitzer followed up with the question "is there anyone else who stands with Senator McCain specifically on that question?" No Republican candidate responded.

A good example of the effect of not legislating English as our official language can be seen in this June 22, 2006 release of the U.S. Department of Agriculture about the school lunch program: "Please be advised that we have finalized the process of translating the Free and Reduced Price School Meals Application package into 25 different languages . . . Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese (Mandarin), Farsi, French, Greek, Haitian, Hindi, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Laotian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Serbo-Croatian, Somali, Spanish, Sudanese, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu, and Vietnamese."

Univision, the nation's most-watched Spanish-language television network, has announced it wants to host a Spanish-language TV debate among the 2008 presidential candidates. After specifying that all questions would be asked in Spanish, Univision condescendingly said that candidates may either answer in Spanish or use a translator if they answer in English.

The Univision invitation illustrates why it is important to recognize English as our official language. Since only citizens may legally vote, and being able to speak English is a requirement for naturalization, there is no necessity for candidates to speak to voters in any language other than English.

When a candidate uses a language other than English (as Mitt Romney is now doing in radio ads), it's like whispering behind the backs of most voters. This is unacceptable because the candidate may be making promises or concessions or innuendoes to a minority bloc, and because the process tends to divide the electorate into political pressure groups.

The English language is the greatest force we have for national unity. It would be a tragic mistake to diminish it.

Let's terminate President Bush's "silent amnesty" and demand that our government enforce current laws.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Utah is preparing to challenge a district court decision that properly found the state's new official English law constitutional. Utah voters approved the law as Initiative A on the ballot in last November's election.

Third District Judge Ronald E. Nehring declared the voter-approved official English statute constitutional but largely symbolic. He ruled that government employees may speak any language in the course of doing business, but only communications that are in English are "official," while everything else is "unofficial."

Probably the ACLU will include some of the arguments used to defend Bill Clinton's Executive Order 13166 issued August 11, 2000. Entitled Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency, it requires federal agencies to provide "programs and activities normally provided in English" to non-English speaking residents.

Clinton's Executive Order was an attempt to elevate the inability to speak English to a protected civil right (like race, color, sex, etc.). His Order cannot be justified by any federal law and should be rescinded by the Bush Administration.

The attempt to undermine English as the official language of the American government has powerful political motivations. Influence and political spin are associated with translating laws, official statements, and campaign positions into non-English versions.

Criticism of the Utah referendum and the court decision upholding it is part of a national movement to balkanize America by compelling federal and state governments to carry on official business in foreign languages. Hundreds of U.S. voting districts have already been forced by statutes and court decisions to print ballots in foreign languages.

The fraud called bilingual education was massively rejected by the voters in California and Arizona referenda, but the federal government still pours millions of our tax dollars into this failed experiment. It's a lie to call it bilingual, because it doesn't teach two languages; thousands of immigrant children in public schools are kept speaking their native tongue rather than learning English.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is harassing businesses that try to have their employees speak English on the job. Some U.S. citizenship ceremonies have even been performed in foreign languages.

If an activist court pretends to invalidate the Utah official English law, it won't be long before we see the other side of the coin: a lawsuit demanding that the state's business be conducted in foreign languages. This has already happened in Alabama, where a woman demanded that she be given the state driver's test in Spanish; her case, Alexander v. Sandoval, will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this spring.

The U.S. Supreme Court already held in Employment Div. v. Smith (1990) that we do not have to provide exceptions from generally applicable laws for religious practices and customs. It should certainly follow that a state need not provide exceptions from generally applicable laws and regulations to accommodate languages other than English.

English is becoming the language of the 21st century world and this is no time to discourage U.S. residents and immigrants from learning English. English is now the second most widely spoken language in the world, with only Chinese dialects spoken by more people.

English is overwhelmingly the second language of choice worldwide. English is the official language of the European Central Bank and the working language of the Asian trade group ASEAN.

In multilingual continental Europe, a fierce battle over language popularity appears to be ending with English emerging as the standard. Switzerland has three official languages, German, French and Italian, but it recently adopted English to be taught to all as the second language rather than one of its official languages.

The Germans have given up trying to persuade more Brits to learn German and are now promoting English as the language of the 21st century, with lessons for children as young as six. Germany's leading newspaper produces an eight-page English edition and declared that "English is going to be the lingua franca of the century."

English has exploded in popularity since the advent of the internet and about 80 percent of the internet uses English. Our language has tremendous advantages for internet use: a smaller alphabet than most major languages, no accented or pictograph characters, easy interchangeability of nouns, verbs and adjectives, and little variance in form for pronouns and verbs.

It is a great mistake to think that requiring English is detrimental to immigrants. Official English requirements have an enormously positive impact on those who learn English and then can enter the mainstream of American academic and economic life.

As Winston Churchill observed, "The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance." We shouldn't permit any activist court to interfere with this heritage.

If trend-setting California passes the English For the Children initiative on June 2, that will be good news for public school children all over the country. This initiative would require that all children in California public schools be taught in English, in English-language classrooms.

The term "bilingual education" is a misnomer. No, that's too kind a word. It is a fraud; it doesn't teach children to be fluent in two languages. It's really native-language instruction.

Bilingual education is language apartheid. Didn't our country abolish segregation some years ago? Or did I miss something?

Bilingual education is a proven failure. Three million immigrant children nationwide are kept in segregated classrooms for up to 80 percent of the day, often for five to seven years, never learning English.

Nearly one-fourth of all California children in public schools -- 1,300,000 children -- are classified as not proficient in English. The number has more than doubled during the past decade.

California schools are now mandated to teach in 42 different languages. Across the country, the number is 60. It is depressing to ponder the fact that 300,000 students in Los Angeles and 147,000 in New York City can't speak English.

The initiative's whereases say that California public schools have a constitutional and moral duty to provide all California's children, regardless of ethnicity, with the skills necessary to become productive members of our society. What could be a more important skill than the ability to speak, read and write English, or a greater handicap than to lack those skills?

The whereases also point out that English is not only the national public language of the United States and of California, but is also the leading world language for science, technology, and international business, making it the language of economic opportunity. Speaking English is the pathway to success in America, the only way to enter the mainstream of our nation's educational and commercial life.

Activist judges and power-grabbing federal bureaucrats combined in the 1970s to start us down the bilingual path. The 1974 Supreme Court decision Lau v. Nichols embarked on new ground when it held that the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires schools to give special assistance to non-English-speaking children.

Give bureaucrats an inch and they'll take a mile. They parlayed "special assistance" into a giant empire, spending $12 billion a year of federal, state and local tax dollars ($178 million of which is federal money). School administrators, teachers, textbook publishers, researchers, universities, and attorneys now all have a financial stake in maintaining the current system.

Since schools receive extra tax funds for bilingual education, the schools have an incentive to put more and more children in these classes and keep them there longer. News stories appear frequently about cases of English-speaking children who have been put in bilingual classes just because they have a Hispanic surname.

Sometimes their teachers speak almost no English. It's no wonder that the dropout rate for Hispanics is 30 percent, while the figure is 12 percent for blacks and 8.6 percent for whites.

English For the Children was initiated by Ron K. Unz, a physicist and CEO of Wall Street Analytics, a Palo Alto-based financial services software company. He has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to raise public awareness of this issue.

Bilingual education is not only ruining the prospects for the children trapped in the bilingual bureaucracy, but it is tending to change our national identity from E pluribus unum (From the many, one) to E uno plures (From the one, many). Vice President Al Gore has already confused and transposed these concepts.

This is not just a matter of academic semantics, cultural fads, or political gaffes. The issue goes right to the heart of whether we will continue to be one nation indivisible.

From 1880 to 1950, America absorbed millions of immigrants and they all learned English. Their children were plunged into public schools where only English was spoken, and their parents were happy about that because it made them Americans who could prosper in this land of opportunity.

A Los Angeles Times poll showed that 84% of California Hispanics support this ballot initiative. Immigrant parents want their children to learn English so badly that, last year, they boycotted Ninth Street Elementary School in Los Angeles to protest the school's refusal to allow their children to be taught English.

It is conventional wisdom that the reason why the Republican leadership in Congress pushed through the Puerto Rican statehood bill was to pander to the Hispanic vote nationwide. Republicans would be a lot smarter if they would tell the Hispanic immigrants: We'll teach your children to speak, read and write English, and then they can achieve the American Dream.

Sometimes I think there are only two classes of people: those who can profit by the mistakes of others and those who insist on making their own. With the glaring example of Quebec just across our northern border, a festering wound of ethnic disunity verging on national dissolution, how could the Republican Congress even think of permitting Puerto Rico to play a similar role in the United States?

Once inside our Union, Puerto Rico would be a modern Trojan Horse. The inherent problems of Puerto Rico would leap out and do irreparable damage to our nation.

The most important issue about Puerto Rico is whether Americans are willing to admit a 51st state whose people don't speak English, don't intend to learn it, and are even antagonistic to the whole idea of learning English. At least three-fourths of the people in Puerto Rico don't speak or understand English.

Making Puerto Rico a state would transform America overnight into a bilingual nation. No one could seriously argue that Americans want that to happen, so why isn't this discussed in the national media?

English is the language of our Declaration of Independence and our United States Constitution. It would be divisive and troublesome to bring in a state whose people don't speak the language of our founding documents.

Yet, without resolving or even addressing the language problem, Congress appears to be rushing toward a vote on H.R. 856, the U.S.-Puerto Rico Political Status Act. This bill wouldn't plunge Puerto Rico immediately into statehood, but it would put Puerto Rico on the track to a plebescite that would trigger statehood.

If Puerto Ricans vote to retain their present commonwealth status, then they would have to vote again every 10 years until they choose statehood or independence as the island's permanent status.

When Puerto Rico held a plebiscite in 1993, its people voted 48.6 percent to continue the present commonwealth status, 46.3 percent for statehood, and 4 percent for independence. Under H.R. 856, a one percent majority for statehood would commit us to begin the statehood process.

What sense would it make to admit a new state in which 49 percent of the people are opposed to the idea? Do we want to admit a state that is ripe for secession?

Americans should study the close parallel between the Puerto Rican question and the movement to separate the province of Quebec from Canada. The French-speaking majority in Quebec wants to maintain its language, culture, identity, and even sovereignty in the midst of English-speaking surroundings.

The separatists keep doing better than expected in each election. With a 92 percent turnout in the October 30, 1995 referendum, secession lost by only a razor-thin margin: 50.6 percent of Quebecers voted to keep Canada one nation, while 49.4 voted for Quebec to secede.

That was an unforeseen and dramatic increase since the separatists' 60-40 defeat in a 1980 independence referendum. The close vote adversely affected Quebecan financial markets, caused a flight of capital and people, and left wounds that will take a long time to heal; but the separatists are already gearing up for the next referendum.

The Puerto Rican independence faction is small, but that doesn't mean its members would acquiesce in being outvoted in a democratic election. They are among the most militant groups in the world, and there is considerable evidence that they include Castro's surrogate terrorists.

Puerto Rican terrorist groups were responsible for 55 percent of domestic terrorist group incidents in the United States during 1980 to 1986. Many Puerto Rican extremists are known to have received terrorist training in Cuba.

Statehood would cost the rest of us plenty in taxes. It's no island paradise; the average income of Puerto Ricans is less than half that of our poorest state, and statehood would bring immediate demands for massive federal funding.

Two thirds of the population lives below the federal poverty level. At least half of Puerto Ricans receive food stamps. Unemployment is about 15 percent.

Infrastructure, the environment, and education are all far below American standards. Drug-related murder is worse than New York or Washington, DC., and the incidence of AIDS is higher than anywhere in the United States.

If Puerto Rico becomes a state, it would claim eight representatives in Congress and two U.S. Senators, and they would all be Democrats. That's more Congressional representation than 25 of our 50 states.

The vote that Congress is about to take will have momentous effects on whether America remains "one nation indivisible" or whether we start down the road of Quebec, Ireland, and countries that have fought bloody wars when minority populations tried to maintain a separate language and cultural identity within another nation.

Puerto Rico is a relic of our colonial days; we got it as booty in the Spanish American War of 1898. Let's celebrate the centennial of that War by giving Puerto Rico its independence.