A Simple Government (18 page)

President Obama doesn’t see it this way and said, “Our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others. . . . And that includes . . . the recent efforts in Arizona.” By calling Arizona irresponsible, he turned the truth on its head. Arizona was the one acting responsibly here, the one being a grown-up, by simply trying to enforce our existing immigration laws.

President Obama’s criticism of Arizona contradicted his own 2010 National Drug Control Strategy, which explicitly states that our borders “must be secured,” recognizing that “uncontrolled drug trafficking contributes to violence, kidnapping, robberies, and other crimes throughout the country, but
especially in border areas
.” (Emphasis added.) This was precisely what the Arizona law was designed to deal with.

Drug trafficking has made Phoenix the kidnapping capital of the United States, second in the world to Mexico City. But just as illegals wouldn’t come if we didn’t give them jobs, they wouldn’t come if we didn’t provide a market for their drugs. The 2009 National Survey of Drug Use and Health found that twenty-one million Americans (ages twelve and older) admitted using illegal drugs within the last month.

Instead of securing the border, the Obama administration put up signs in Arizona warning Americans not to travel on their own roads, in their own country, because of drug-related violence. The signs read “DANGER—PUBLIC WARNING, TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENDED.” The administration surrendered sovereignty over our territory, ceding it to lawless thugs, as if we were Somalia or Yemen.

Governor Brewer asked President Obama for more troops for the border, and his response was to send a busload of lawyers instead. The Arizona law finally pushed the federal government into taking action—unfortunately, it decided to sue Arizona! On July 6, 2010, the Department of Justice filed suit against Arizona in U.S. District Court asking that the Arizona law be declared unconstitutional. Immediately after it was signed by Brewer, Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder began criticizing the law. It wasn’t long before they reluctantly had to admit they’d not bothered to actually read it yet. Meanwhile, the president characterized it as “a misdirected expression of frustration over our broken immigration system.” I consider his law-suit a misdirected expression of frustration over Arizona’s calling him out on that broken system. The lawsuit wastes taxpayer money and government resources that should be used to go after illegals, not the American victims of government abdication.

The Arizona law is constitutional because it is consistent with federal law, and the state was simply conducting “concurrent enforcement.” A state law does not violate the Constitution’s supremacy clause unless it conflicts with federal law. For instance, if Arizona were to declare that anyone crossing the border could become a citizen in a month, such a law would violate the supremacy clause because it would contradict federal law. Holding illegals accountable to the law is, by its very nature, simpatico with the law.

As a former governor, I can imagine how furious Governor Brewer was to hear about the lawsuit from an interview Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave in Ecuador, rather than from the courtesy of a phone call from the Justice Department. Justice rejected the State Department’s request that it announce the lawsuit before Secretary Clinton’s Latin America trip.

In one of the most outrageous—and bizarre—episodes in all of America’s diplomatic history, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, during a sit-down with the Chinese about human rights in May 2010, spoke unabashedly about the Arizona law as if it were somehow analogous to China’s horrific record of evil toward its own citizens—as if asking someone for identification, when the police have stopped him for a valid reason, is like mowing down an unarmed civilian with a tank or forcing a woman pregnant with her second child to have an abortion. It seemed like a
Saturday Night Live
or
Daily Show
satire, but Posner was serious. It made me wonder if Posner isn’t an alien himself—an alien from another planet!

Perhaps the most telling statement, you might even call it a Freudian slip, in this whole ordeal came from the office of Mexican president Felipe Calderón: “The Mexican government condemns the approval of the law” and “the
criminalization of migration
, far from contributing to collaboration between Mexico and the state of Arizona, represents an obstacle to solving the shared problems of the border region.” (Emphasis added.) President Calderón makes an interesting choice of words here—it’s not “migration” that Arizona has criminalized; it’s
illegal
migration (which was criminalized by the federal government) that Arizona is seeking to curb by simply enforcing the law. This is a distinction Calderón and many others seem unable to comprehend.

Arizona is not the only state that is fed up. In the first quarter of 2010, almost 1,200 bills and resolutions dealing with immigration were proposed in forty-five states. In fact, a recent
New York Times
/ CBS News poll showed that 89 percent of Americans believe either that our immigration system needs some “fundamental changes” or that it should be completely rebuilt. But states shouldn’t have to do this. It is one of the few things the national government is actually supposed to do, and yet, despite how big the government has gotten and how much they spend, the feds can’t seem to take responsibility. Instead of policing the states, they should police those who are actually breaking the law.

In 2006, Congress voted to build a fence along our border with Mexico, and even though President George W. Bush began work on it before he left office, President Obama halted that work in 2010. We must finish the fence. With apologies to Kevin Costner, if we build it, they
won’t
come.

In May 2010, President Obama agreed to send up to 1,200 National Guard forces for a year to support our border patrol. This was nowhere near enough, and their mission should not have been limited to a year. Under President Bush’s “Operation Jump Start,” we had six thousand National Guard at the border, which is what Governor Brewer asked President Obama for.

But securing our border is a broader concept than simply preventing people from crossing. It includes discouraging people from approaching the border in the first place. Illegals must view our border not as an obstacle to overcome but as a dead end with no opportunity for them on the other side. So securing our border means securing our workplaces. Illegals are doing many of our jobs only because the federal government isn’t doing its job.

If illegals can’t find work, those who are here will leave, and those who would consider coming will stay home. We must enforce the law, and we must go after employers with hefty fines and prison time for repeat offenders. As one attorney who represents illegal immigrants said, “It’s like our border has two signs: ‘Keep Out’ and ‘Help Wanted.’” We can’t have it both ways.

In November 2009, President Obama rescinded President George H. W. Bush’s “No Match” rule, under which the Department of Home-land Security tracked false Social Security numbers to find illegals and then required employers to dismiss them.

In 2008, under President George W. Bush, workplace arrests totaled about 6,000 in FY 2008. But under President Obama, these arrests fell to just 900 in FY 2010.

President Bush replaced “catch and release” with “detention and removal” after workplace raids. But President Obama has brought back “catch and release,” after which illegals just disappear. He has been conducting payroll audits instead of raids. That means illegals sometimes lose their jobs, but they don’t get deported; they just find other jobs.

Even when we try to bring illegals to justice, we are hopelessly ineffective. About 60 percent of illegals who are not held in jail don’t show up for their hearing. About 90 percent of illegals who lose in court don’t appeal the decision—why bother when it’s so easy to just leave the area and move somewhere else in this country?

The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that 1.2 million illegal Mexican immigrants went home between 2006 and 2009, more than double the number who went home between 2002 and 2005.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that illegal Mexican immigration in 2008-9 was one-fourth that in 2004-5.

The number of border apprehensions, which is used to determine how many people are trying to come into the country illegally, was down 23 percent in 2008-9 compared to 2007-8.

But as the economy improves, they’ll try to come back. That’s why we can’t wait to secure the border.

The Kauffman Foundation, which studies entrepreneurial activity, found that in the last decade, immigrants started one-quarter of all new American high-tech companies. We should allow more foreign students receiving science degrees to stay here. As I said at the outset, the problem isn’t immigrants; it’s immigrants that we don’t choose. This is our country; we have to decide who comes here and who stays here.

We need fewer people looking for low-skilled work and more people who not only can perform high-skilled work themselves but also will create high-skilled jobs for Americans. This is a notion that goes back to early America, when George Washington wrote in a 1794 letter to John Adams that there was no particular need to encourage immigration, “except of useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions.”

California is a perfect example of what happens when we are overrun by uneducated, unskilled people who are a burden rather than an asset. In 1970, California had the seventh-most-educated workforce in this country. By 2008, with its immigrant population having tripled, California was dead last, and large numbers of U.S.-born Hispanic students remain “English language learners” through most of their school years due to insufficient academic and language skills.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) issued a report in July 2010 entitled “The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers,” which found that illegal immigration costs all of us $113 billion a year, with $84.2 billion coming from state and local governments and $28.6 billion from the federal government. The largest cost is $52 billion for education. Among our states, the largest shares were borne by California at $21.8 billion, New York at $9.5 billion, and Texas at $8.9 billion. The average American household pays $1,117 per year toward the cost of illegal aliens in our country.

Immigration reform is not easy and will require a multipronged strategy. As a matter of public policy, it’s like the Gordian knot—you can’t untie it, and if you cut through it in one reckless stroke, you’re going to have a lot of loose ends on your hands. An estimated eleven to thirteen million illegal aliens are already living among us. But we can’t even begin to untie this knotty mess until we secure the border and stop the constant flow of illegal crossings adding to the problem. When you can’t control entry, you don’t have an immigration system; you have a free-for-all.

There is no single, clear answer to the illegal immigration problem, but there is a single, clear first step—secure the border. Only then can true immigration reform take place.

 

 

 

 

W
e all remember exactly where we were on September 11, 2001. For most of us, that day was spent glued to the TV with family or maybe coworkers as unspeakable horror unfolded. But I remember just as clearly where I was on September 11, 2002.

On that fall morning, I stood on the steps of the Arkansas State Capitol to address a group of citizens gathered to mark the one-year anniversary of 9/11 and honor those lost at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in a nondescript field in rural Pennsylvania. More than anything I said that morning, I remember the looks on the faces of those who attended, for they were neither partisan politicos nor folks with an agenda—the usual crowd in the halls of state government. Instead, they were simply Americans who had come together to share in a moment of remembrance and find strength in unity.

But I also remember how their faces changed as I told them about a guy named Richard Cyril Rescorla, better known as “Rick,” who died in the World Trade Center. If ever a man was destined to leave this earth a hero, it was Rick Rescorla. He had served in the British military before immigrating to America and joining the U.S. Army to serve in Vietnam. He fought with distinction at Ia Drang, a famously bloody battle that was chronicled in the book and film
We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young
. But Rick did not leave his devotion to duty on a foreign battlefield.

As chief of security for Morgan Stanley’s offices in the World Trade Center, he spent much of his time assessing the risk terrorists might pose to those under his watch. As early as 1992, he warned authorities that the supporting pillars in the center’s basement parking garage presented a prime target for attack. A year later, you’ll recall, his warning proved all too prophetic.

Over the next decade, Rick’s evacuation plans became the stuff of legend at Morgan Stanley. He insisted that everyone, from the stuffed-shirt executives to the messengers in bike shorts, learn and practice evacuation procedures on a regular basis. As a veteran of armed conflict he understood that a plan could be effectively executed in the confusion of battle only if it had been practiced in peace and reinforced until it became almost a matter of muscle memory. But more important, he understood the essential fact: The terrorists who failed in 1993 would try again.

So Rick Rescorla was prepared when the first plane struck on 9/11. While the rest of us watched without fully understanding at first and authorities urged everyone to remain calm and stay put, he ignored the ill-advised warnings and, according to plan, briskly led more than two thousand Morgan Stanley employees on twenty floors of Tower 2 down the stairs and out of the building to safety. He also made sure that the one thousand Morgan Stanley employees in nearby Building 5 were evacuated. Throughout the operation, Rick sang songs over his bullhorn, including “God Bless America,” the hymn of his adopted country.