Our founders' solution to the border insanity
My wife, Gena, and my hearts just shattered when we heard about the killing of Laken Hope Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student, by a Venezuelan migrant who entered the country illegally near El Paso in 2022. Laken was out for a simple jog near her school when she was horrifically bludgeoned to death by this murderer, who had been previously arrested in the U.S. and released to commit the killing. How heinous and barbaric!
"It's just outrageous," Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, explained to Fox News las Monday. "People are so frustrated. And this is something that we've been talking about for years now, about the porous southern border."
We pray for Laken's heartbroken family and friends. And we, like tens of millions of Americans, hold the present Biden administration responsible for allowing millions of illegals into our country to commit such crimes.
The statistics don't lie.
Just since President Biden took office, 7.2 million illegals entered the U.S., an amount greater than the population of 36 states, as Fox News recently reported.
Here's how those numbers compare to illegals who crossed under former President Trump, according to the Washington Post:
By taking 535 immigration actions (by Jan. 17) over its first three years, the Biden administration has already outpaced any previous president in the entire history of the U.S. as they continue to open the floodgates at our southern border.
And, as if increased numbers of MS-13 crossing illegally into the U.S. didn't raise enough anxiety, "Tren de Aragua," a violent new Venezuelan gang is also intermixing with other illegal migrants, with the FBI in El Paso sharing that some 38 members were arrested in fiscal year 2023.
Most worrisome is the fact that, "In fiscal year 2023, Border Patrol reported apprehending 151 migrants with positive terrorism watchlist matches who entered the U.S. illegally along the southern border, an all-time high for the region that eclipsed the previous record of 98 set in fiscal year 2022, government figures show. … When including those processed at official ports of entry, there were 227 terror database hits with individuals processed along the southern border in fiscal year 2023," as even CBS reported.
And how do you think those terrorist numbers would spike if we were to capture the "at least 1.7 million known got-aways who have evaded apprehension since FY2021," according to Homeland Security?
What's also often overlooked is that American taxpayers are paying tens of millions more dollars to process millions of asylum court cases each year that have at least quadrupled under the Biden administration in the past 10 years:
According to the American Immigration Council:
- Since the creation of DHS in 2003, ICE spending has nearly tripled, from $3.3 billion to $8.3 billion today (Figure below). Much of this funding has gone to increasing the agency's ability to hold immigrants in detention in locations around the country.
- Since 2003, the budget of CBP, which includes both the Border Patrol and operations at ports of entry, has also nearly tripled, rising from $5.9 billion in FY 2003 to a high of $17.7 billion in FY 2021.
To add insult to injury, just since Title 42 ended last May, Biden officials have deported or returned roughly 500,000 illegals to Mexico and other countries. And who do you think pays that bill? Yep, you the taxpayer. Costs we all could save if we simply didn't let illegals into our country or forced them to follow the law and enter legally. What a concept, right?
That's tragically just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to costs and criminalities of illegals crossing into our country. Yet, the feds continue to allow them in at record rates as if they don't even care.
And the question that keeps coming to everyone's mind on the right and even now on the left side of the political aisle: WHY? Why does the Biden administration continue to allow so many unvetted illegal aliens and criminals into our country?
For an insider look into why the Biden administration is intentionally allowing illegals (and all types of contraband and crime) to pass through our borders, please take 10 short minutes and watch "This is All by Design." It is perhaps the single most important video regarding our border and sovereignty. Everyone who calls themselves an American patriot, who cares about and loves this country and is deeply concerned about their children's (and grandchildren's) future, absolutely needs to watch this broadcast:
Now more than ever, we must protect our borders and sovereignty, by providing genuine solutions to the dangers of American border 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 immediately.
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 definitely not the answer. And immigration laws aren't effective if the feds 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.
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 an unvetted open-door policy for immigrants would lead to community and cultural chaos.
While we discuss and debate ways to resolve the social crisis we call illegal immigration, our founders again pointed the way over 200 years ago. Like enrolling in an Ivy League school, they considered and promoted American citizenship as a high honor.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, 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 22 other nations superimposed over the stripes. Rather than catering to foreign allegiances, the students might actually learn something about American patriotism and exceptionalism.
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 crisis and pickle today.
Late country superstar 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 anything against Mexicans. I just have something against criminals and anybody who comes into this country illegally is a criminal. ..."
With terrorists in all 50 states, according to the FBI, and more MS-13, human smugglers and Tren de Aragua Venezuelan gang members entering the U.S. illegally, now is the time to secure our borders and save the future of America.
YES, we need a new president who will stop this border insanity and simply enforce the laws that are already on the books. But the Biden administration does not need to wait one more day to protect the American people by stopping the influx of invaders. He could do that with one wave of his executive presidential pen!
But will he?
As the old adage goes, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always be where you've always been."
Better yet, President Ronald Reagan was exactly right: "A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation."
(To read much more on the immigration crisis and its solutions, I encourage you to read my New York Times bestseller, "Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America")
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