Open Letter to President Obama

July 2, 2009

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President:

I take note that you are pushing for immigration reform and an amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens. Considering the support you received in the past election from Hispanics, I understand your problem. Of course, not all of the others who voted for you necessarily share the view of the Hispanic Caucus regarding what reforms are needed. Therefore, to craft an acceptable and modest reform package, you need input from the real opposition leaders who can show the way to a compromise on the issues before us based on what most voters want.

So what should be the framework for a solution to the immigration illegal alien problem? There are some obvious parameters within which the solution is to be found.

1. The rule of law. As a Constitutional scholar, the rule of law should have special meaning to you. In fact, you have mentioned it many times in various speeches. The rule of law has to be the primary focus of reforms because it is the foundation of all civilized societies. Changing the law to accommodate illegal aliens or to avoid compliance and enforcement issues is not the answer. Rather than actually solving the problemm, this would be tantamount to “sweeping it under the carpet”

2. Protection of American Labor. With 14 million citizens out of work, this is not the time to be adding more cheap labor to our labor force. Surely we can establish some meaningful criteria, perhaps by sector or industry, based on the unemployment rates to guide our immigration and temporary guest worker policies. If the total unemployment rate is above a certain level in an industry, green cards should be cancelled and immigration quotas reduced. With a little attention to the details, we can meter the supply of qualified immigrants more precisely to our actual needs instead of promoting some arbitrary or fixed quota.

3. Finite Natural Resources. The more there are of us, the less there is for each of us. That may seem like a selfish point of view but America’s generosity in foreign aid and relief leaves us with nothing to be ashamed of. We should be trying to do what is best for our own citizens for a change. I like to cite the calculus concept of a “limit”. The limit of finite natural resources per capita as population grows without bounds is zero. The question thus becomes: how far down that road is too far? The primary sources of population growth in America are legal immigrants, illegal aliens, their progeny, and their higher fertility rates.

Pete Letheby writing in the Denver Post put it this way, “… I watch the continuing plunder of the Great Plains’ Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground reservoir in the United States and one of the largest on the planet. It once held as much water as Lake Huron. It is a treasure that took millennia to accumulate. Remarkably, it could cease to be a water resource within another generation…. We are left with yet another illustration of an all too common American [political] mindset: short on vision, mired in denial and unable to comprehend nature’s limits.”

4. A Stable Population. Population-driven economic growth is ultimately unsustainable. The projected doubling of our population before the end of this century is certain to magnify the difficulty of finding a solution to the energy, climate change, and pollution problems. At our present annual rate of output of 20 metric tons of pollutants per capita, a doubling of our population will produce a total of 6 billion more tons annually. Even, if by some technological miracle, we were able reduce our per capita output of pollutants by half to that of Mexico, we will have accomplished nothing if our population balloons to 600 million over the same time period. One might also ask: how will “cap and trade” limits be adjusted for any increase in the number of people who must be served?

5. Illegal Aliens. Many of the illegal aliens deserve special consideration. If they have learned the English language, have children in school learning civics and English, are socially integrated and linguistically and culturally assimilated, they represent no threat to America. If they are holding jobs Americans won’t take if offered a living wage and a hiring preference, they should be cleared for green cards as soon as they can pass a background check and health exam. Of course, employers must provide irrefutable proof that they have made a good faith effort in this regard before they are permitted to retain or hire foreign workers.

Highly-trained foreign students at the PhD level in science, engineering, or mathematics should be given expedited consideration for citizenship if they are willing to renounce their allegiance to any foreign government and give up dual citizenship.

6. Secure borders. The sheer volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic at the borders makes the task of securing the borders all but impossible. Some of this traffic is commercial but a good percentage of it is cross-border work commuters. This must stop. If you are a citizen and you work here, then you should live here and pay all the taxes good citizenship requires, rather than shifting your economic activity across the border. If you are not entitled to be here, you should not be allowed across the border on a daily basis to take jobs away from citizens.
Our borders can never be completely secure and that is of great concern to many Americans. We can do more. When one considers what needs to be done to stop the hemorrhaging at the border, four things come to mind: improvements in border infrastructure and staffing, tougher rules of engagement, an end to birthright citizenship for the offspring of illegal aliens, and most importantly, the creation of disincentives for border violations.

Tougher rules-of-engagement means an end to catch-and-release, whether it is in the immediate environs of the border, at ports of entry, or in the interior. There must be a penalty for border violations or the whole house of cards falls apart. Six months working on border infrastructure at minimum wage would be an adequate penalty for the first offense. A treaty to permit hot pursuit of gang members and drug smugglers should be negotiated with our neighbors.

The best border violation disincentives are the denial of birthright citizenship, the elimination of employment opportunities, and the sine qua non , prompt repatriation of all those who do not have the proper documents to work in the United States. Without these disincentives border security will remain a pipe dream. So far politicians have only given lip service to secure borders. If an illegal knows he cannot get a job and he and his family will be sent home as soon as he is apprehended, he will think twice about violating the borders. On the other hand, if an illegal has good reason to expect an eventual amnesty like the one in 1986 or those proposed in the 2007 and 2008 reform bills, our borders will remain porous and we will be wasting our money on border security.

The 2 million illegals given amnesty in 1986 grew to 12 million today. On that basis, we could expect a continuing growth in the number of illegals of more than 8% per year compounded if another amnesty is granted. Do the math! What will that mean to the country we know and love? Are there no visionaries who are concerned about this or have we become a nation of myopics?

Several immigration-reduction bills have already been offered in the House that would increase border security and interior enforcement; allow local law enforcement officials to enforce immigration laws; reduce the implicit and explicit rewards that encourage illegal aliens, and make E-Verify mandatory nationwide for all current and new employees in both the public and the private sectors.

Your whole-hearted support for these bills would facilitate a later solution to the remaining immigration reform issues.

Sincerely yours,

Ultima