Both those on the left and right are in a bit of a quandary over GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's softening stand on deporting illegals from our country. Though I think the uproar is a bit exaggerated, especially by the Clinton political machine, I believe Trump would find wisdom and strategy by turning to our founders' solutions for immigration. If he cited them in his plan for citizenship, Trump would stand on more solid ground to those on the right and left.
I've addressed these issues before, but they warrant repeating and expanding because our founders' truths are timeless. (I have also detailed them at length in my New York Times bestseller, "Black Belt Patriotism.")
Now more than ever, we must protect our borders and sovereignty, by providing genuine solutions to the dangers of American boundary fluidity. With estimates showing that by 2060 America will add 167 million people (37 million immigrants today will multiply into 105 million then), it is imperative for us to do more to solve this crisis.
Under the Articles of Confederation (our "first constitution"), each state possessed the authority over naturalization. Such diversity, however, led the founders at the Constitutional Convention to shift the power of naturalization to the federal government. The Constitution, therefore, reads in Article I, Section 8, that the Congress shall have the authority to "establish a uniform rule of naturalization."
But the federal government has miserably failed to produce a viable solution to the illegal immigrant crisis. Amnesty is not the answer. And immigration laws aren't effective if we continue to dodge or ignore them. Furthermore, globalization efforts and the invasion of terrorists into our homeland have only confused security matters, increasingly endangering our borders as well as our national security and sovereignty.
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From America's birth, our founders struggled, too, with international enemies and border troubles, from the sea of Tripoli to the western frontier. While welcoming the poor, downtrodden and persecuted from every country, they also had to protect the sacred soil they called home from unwanted intruders.
America's founders were also concerned with properly assimilating immigrants so that their presence would be positive upon the culture. They expected them to maintain their ethnicity but adopt our culture and customs. They expected their patriotism to be for these United States.
George Washington wrote, "By an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people."
Thomas Jefferson, hailed as one of the most inclusive among the founders, worried that some immigrants would leave more restrictive governments and not be able to handle American freedoms, leading to cultural corruption and "an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and tender it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass."
And Alexander Hamilton insisted that "the safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on the love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family."
According to the Declaration of Independence, "obstructing the Laws for the Naturalization of Foreigners" was one of the objections leveled against Britain that warranted the American colonists' seceding. Yet, even the founders themselves believed that a total open-door policy for immigrants would lead to community and cultural chaos.
While we discuss and debate new ways to resolve the social crisis we call illegal immigration, our founders again pointed the way more than 200 years ago. Like enrolling in an Ivy League school, they considered and promoted American citizenship as a high honor.
James Madison shared the collective sentiment back then when he stated, "I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege, but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States." Hence, they desired only immigrants that contributed to the building up and advancement of their grand experiment called America.
Our founders enforced four basic requirements for "enrollment and acceptance" into American citizenry that we still utilize (at least in policy) to this day but desperately need to enforce. The Heritage Foundation summarizes:
Key criteria for citizenship of the Naturalization Act of 1795 remain part of American law. These include (1) five years of (lawful) residence within the United States; (2) a good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States; (3) the taking of a formal oath to support the Constitution and to renounce any foreign allegiance; and (4) the renunciation of any hereditary titles.
Just think if such immigration tenets were actually taught in schools like PS75, a public school in New York City, where kindergarten students took part in a class project in which the children were made to create an American flag with the flags of other 22 other nations superimposed over the stripes. Rather than catering to foreign allegiances, the students might actually learn something about American patriotism and exceptionalism.
And just think if the federal government actually enforced our founders' immigration tenets. States wouldn't need to use taxpayers monies and time to fight the president's immigration executive decisions – as more than half of them are presently doing, or even need to go out on a limb and create their own immigration laws, as states did prior to our Constitution.
If we held citizenship in the same high esteem as our founders, and simply enforced the laws we already have, we wouldn't be in this illegal immigration pickle today.
Musician Charlie Daniels put it well, when he wrote, "I don't blame anybody in the world for wanting to come to the United States of America, as it is a truly wonderful place. But when the first thing you do when you set foot on American soil is illegal, it is flat out wrong and I don't care how many lala-land left heads come out of the woodwork and start trying to give me sensitivity lessons. I don't need sensitivity lessons; in fact I don't have any-thing against Mexicans. I just have something against criminals. Anybody who comes into this country illegally is a criminal. If you don't believe it, try coming into America from a foreign country without a passport and see how far you get."
With ISIS encroaching on the U.S. and its tentacles in all 50 states, according to the FBI, and MS-13 recruiting young migrants coming into our country from Central America, now is the time to secure our borders and save the future of America. I believe only Trump has a plan and passion to do it. A Hillary presidency will only continue the failed immigration policies and border fluidity of Barack Obama.
As the old adage goes, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always be where you've always been."
(Next week in Part 2, "My advice to Trump on immigration," based upon our founders' immigration recommendations, I will detail a plan to deal with the 11 million plus illegal immigrants in our country today.)
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