Time To Go Home

(Originally published May 25, 2007)

Many Americans don’t often publicly discuss their displeasure over the policies and actions of political leaders who offend them. They would rather simply mind their own business. But every now and then when our nation’s security and survival is at stake, Americans turn from their daily pursuits. At such times, a great wave of patriotism, common sense and wisdom rises up, takes the helm from the politicians, and steers the great ship of state back on course. This is such a moment, and the issue is the illegal immigration crisis and the proposed amnesty bill before Congress.

We have an illegal immigration crisis because national politicians have refused or failed to enforce our existing national laws. Their failure to protect our nation’s borders has resulted in a literal invasion of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in recent years. President Bush recently reported that 6 million tried to breach our southern border between 2001 and 2006. Of these, 500,000 had criminal records. Some proceeded to commit violent crimes in the U.S.

For the first time in our nation’s history, large numbers of Americans have begun migrating out of California and other western states. In the 1990s, two million Americans began a migration from California to pursue new lives in other states. That exodus continues.

Some of the immigrants who have taken the place of these Americans speak of reclaiming for Mexico the land they now occupy in our largest state. Senator Jim DeMint, who has stood for the people of South Carolina in resisting what some have termed “national suicide,” courageously admits that we are “in a fight to retain our country.”

To address this crisis, a small group of Congressional insiders have developed a several hundred-page amnesty plan. They are attempting to quickly pass it without permitting others sufficient time to read it, without Congressional hearings, and in defiance of overwhelming opposition from the American people.

They deny that their proposal is an amnesty plan. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, let’s call it what it is. Their proposed amnesty plan is a brazen attempt to create the appearance that the growing immigration crisis has been addressed. Like previous amnesty plans, it will only encourage more law breaking and more illegal invaders.

Their legislation would require illegal immigrants to acknowledge that they broke the law, pay a $1,000 fine, undergo a criminal background check, pay an additional $4,000 fine, complete English requirements, leave the U.S., return to their home country, and then apply for a green card. If some members of Congress really believe that a government that won’t even defend our borders is going to enforce this complicated law, then they believe in what never was and what never will be.

People are outraged by the pie-in-the-sky plan being force-fed upon them. They know that if politicians would only secure our borders and enforce the laws already on our books, the problem could be addressed.

People here illegally, many driven by the lure of good paychecks, will not stay if they can’t find work to support themselves. Our government and America’s employers need to ensure that only legal residents of the United States, including legal immigrants, work in the United States.

To Washington insiders, it’s all about politics. But in South Carolina, it’s all about our families, our homes, our jobs, and our communities. In South Carolina, we also respect our laws.

As for members of Congress who act in defiance of those of us they’re elected to represent, a grassroots revolution seems to be afoot. Americans may be poised to push aside those who refuse to act in our interest and who believe instead that they know better than we do. Perhaps like illegal aliens, when they are denied their jobs in Washington, D.C., they also will find their way home.

Our English Language Unites Us

Speaking of the power and importance of language, Winston Churchill once said:

The English language is one of our great sources of inspiration and strength,and no country, or combination, or power so fertile and so vivid exists anywhere in the world.

Churchill knew that language, more than just the means for communicating information, is the fabric of nations -- their culture, history, art, music and commerce. He knew also that the power of shared language has forged a bond among all the English-speaking peoples of the world. In crisis after crisis throughout much of our history, we see a “special relationship” with those who share our values and language -- Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries. Yet in recent decades the fabric that has united us with English-speaking countries around the world is being destroyed within our own country.

Thirty-six million immigrants, a third of them illegal, live among us today. That number equals all those who previously came during the nearly 400 years between the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the presidential election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960. These millions of current day immigrants, 90% of whom come from Third World nations, are demanding that we recognize their languages, culture, and history while, in some misguided spirit of multiculturalism, we remain silent about our own.

Our first act of national surrender occurred when President Clinton signed Executive Order 13166 effectively making our country a multilingual one. His order requires that any entity receiving federal funds must provide services in any language. For example, doctors, hospitals and clinics that accept Medicare or Medicaid must provide, at their own expense, interpreters for any language spoken by any patient, even illegal aliens.

The financial cost of this invasion is staggering. We’ve spent billions of dollars on bilingual education that nurtures a permanent, non-English-speaking culture. Schools in New York City teach students in 82 languages. The 1974 Supreme Court decision, Lau v. Nichols requires that “special assistance” be given to non-English-speaking children. It’s estimated that this assistance alone costs American taxpayers $15 billion each year.

Yet, the cultural costs to our nation far exceed the financial costs. The melting pot has become a salad bowl of competing ethnic groups that are sometimes ignorant and contemptuous of our national history, purpose, and ideals. It is vital that we secure our borders and assimilate those immigrants that have come to our shores. Their first obligation, if they want to stay and reap the privileges of being Americans, should be to learn English. How can anyone hope to succeed and prosper without learning our shared language and accepting our shared culture?

Perhaps President Theodore Roosevelt foresaw our time when he said “The one absolute certain way of bringing this nation to ruin would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities. We have but one flag. We must also have but one language, and that language is English.” Now, more than ever, we need leaders like Theodore Roosevelt.