Illegal Aliens

What are we to make of the hoopla over illegal aliens? What insanity has overtaken a sizeable portion of the American people that they will ignore the fact that some 11-to-12 million people have entered this country illegally, and instead of demanding that their government take steps to find these people and send them out of the country, they march in protest of a Congressional measure to stiffen the law against people coming to our country illegally?

It is politically incorrect—although technically right on the money—to call those who illegally enter the United States “illegal aliens.” The politically acceptable term, however, is “undocumented immigrants.” The term “undocumented” is purposely deceptive; it is an effort to sway public opinion from regarding these law-breakers as law-breakers. Such Orwellian tactics are demagoguery of the worst sort, and serve only to cloud a serious situation. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented” immigrant is like calling a burglar an “undocumented” houseguest, or a person driving without a license an “undocumented” driver. All three—the “immigrant,” the burglar and the driver—have broken the law.

Even the term “immigrant” is misused. An immigrant is someone who comes to a country to take up permanent residence. Many/most of those illegal Mexican aliens that we euphemistically call “immigrants” are no more than transient illegal aliens who frequently cross the porous U.S. border.

The U.S. Census Bureau categorizes foreign-born as follows:

• Naturalized U.S. citizens (those who have become citizens through the legal process)
• Lawful permanent residents (immigrants)
• Temporary migrants (such as foreign students)
• Humanitarian migrants (such as refugees)
• Persons illegally present in the United States (illegal aliens)

In every one of those categories above, except that of the illegal alien, some process of law was followed. Either foreign-born persons followed the process to become a citizen, or they followed a process to be designated a member of one of the other categories. The illegal aliens, on the other hand, have thumbed their nose at the process.

The problems illegal aliens cause citizens of our country are serious. According to a new report by the Wall Street investment firm Bear Stearns titled, The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface:

• The illegal alien population of the U.S. is about 20 million – roughly the population of New York State.
• The report asserts that there are between 12 and 15 million jobs in the U.S. currently held by illegal aliens, or about 8 percent of the work force.
• Moreover, between 4 and 6 million jobs have shifted to the underground economy since 1990. These are not "jobs Americans won’t do," but rather "jobs Americans used to do."
• "On the revenue side, the United States may be foregoing $35 billion a year in income tax collections because of the number of jobs that are now off the books."
• "We estimate that approximately 5 million illegal workers are collecting wages on a cash basis and are avoiding income taxes."
• "The United States is simply hooked on cheap, illegal workers and deferring the costs of providing public services to these quasi-Americans."

These problems only scratch the surface. The amount of “damage” from illegal immigration in costs is enormous, and the security risk from porous borders is inestimable.

We just have to do better. We have to get control of the borders. We have to locate illegal aliens and do something with them that does not reward them for illegally entering the U.S., and we have to restore the legal process for coming to this country.


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