Impenetrable borders

Is border security a priority for the government? The president proposes adding $500 million to the Border Patrol budget, which seems significant until you remember he spent over $3 billion on the “cash for clunkers” program. Further, his solution for the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens already here is to create a way for them to become U.S. citizens. But won’t that just increase future illegal entry into our country rather than eliminate it?

Although I think the president’s approach is wrong, we can solve the problem. We can prevent most illegal aliens from entering our country and we can promote most of the illegal aliens already living here to self-deport. Moreover, not only can we do so comparatively inexpensively, we already have proof it will work. When President Eisenhower carried out a program to deport illegal aliens, for every illegal alien arrested and deported another ten self-deported.

So, we need a different perspective, a different focus. Rather than spending billions of dollars trying to stop people from entering our country illegally or deporting those already here, we need to eliminate the reasons they come. Previously I suggested our porous southern border entices illegal entry, and to a certain extent, it does; but the rewards awaiting illegal aliens in America are the real reason they risk everything to get here. We need to make living here illegally uninviting and unrewarding.

And how do we do that? First, rather than granting citizenship to illegal aliens, pass a law stating that no one caught illegally in this country can ever apply for citizenship. Next, review the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, passed in 1866 to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves and to protect their civil rights.

Ignoring the intent of the amendment, the government has allowed automatic citizenship to a child born to an illegal alien. This interpretation is an abuse of the Constitution. Do you think the authors of this amendment intended it to promote and reward illegal entry into our country?

An obstetrics nurse working in a community hospital near the Mexican border told me that nearly 50 percent of their deliveries were illegal aliens. This must end.

Following the Fourteenth Amendment as intended is neither racist nor immoral. The law needs to specify that if you are here illegally and have a baby, the baby is not a United States citizen; he or she is an illegal alien.

Last, eliminate all job opportunities for illegal aliens, all financial incentives to come here illegally. Federal law already requires non-citizens to carry proof of their legal status “at all times.” This is fair and needed.

Along with this, for each offense impose a $100,000 fine on any employer who cannot prove the legal status of a non-citizen employee. The burden of proof should not be on the government to prove the employer knowingly hired an illegal alien. Instead, the burden of proof needs to lie with the employer and non-citizen employee. It is the individual’s responsibility to provide the needed documentation and the employer’s responsibility to have that proof.

I recently applied for a medical license in Nebraska, required to provide proof of my professional activities for the past 38 years. It was onerous, but it was not unfair or discriminatory. Rather it was a reasonable demand to protect the residents of Nebraska from someone trying to practice medicine without proof of training.

In the same way, we need to expect non-citizens who are here legally to offer proof of their legal status to get work. This protects taxpayers from spending billions of dollars on illegal aliens. If employers don’t want $100,000 fines and non-citizen employees want to work, then they can provide the needed documentation that federal law already requires.

The result of these measures? Not only will the number of people crossing the border decrease to a dribble, most of those already in this country illegally will self-deport. Fair or racist?

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