Preserve, Protect and Defend the…De Facto Amnesty

[Rick Oltman]

The momentum has shifted dramatically in the immigration enforcement saga. Anti-amnesty sentiment has never been higher in the country than it is today and the president’s lawsuit against the newest Arizona law is purely defensive as he and his administration struggle to preserve, protect and defend the de facto amnesty we have lived with for years.

Forget an official amnesty, it ain’t gonna happen, at least for now. Official amnesty would be the death knell for politicians who passed it and they know it. What they are doing now with all the usual whiny racial rhetoric, name calling and court challenges is trying to preserve the unofficial de facto amnesty that has existed in our country for almost two decades.

Polls are reporting that anti-amnesty sentiment has never been higher in the country than it is now. And, it will be higher tomorrow and next week and the following week, etcetera.

Arizona’s Proposition 200 kicked off this latest chapter. Its overwhelming victory, winning with 57% of the vote in 2004, was followed by the successful Minutemen deployment to the Mexican border in April 2005. The accompanying press coverage of citizen-watches on the border and subsequent immigration reform legislation in 2006 followed by illegal aliens marching in the streets demanding…well...everything of our country, pushed us into a new phase of the immigration debate. (BTW, thanks for those marches, let’s see some more real soon, ok? Don't forget to bring those great signs.)

Actually, AZ’s Prop 200 did exactly what we Californians hoped Prop 187 would do when we won in 1994 with 59% of the vote. We hoped it would show national and local politicians and citizens too, that there was a problem with illegal immigration and that there was strong popular support for enforcing our immigration laws. But, the message of Prop 187 was just too soon for the rest of the country. The problem hadn’t reached the rest of the nation, yet; it was still confined mostly to the border states. California Governor Pete Wilson’s brief presidential campaign in 1996 featured illegal immigration as an issue that failed to gain traction because the rest of the country just wasn’t ready for it.

Well, they are ready now. The mid 1990s saw a great internal migration of illegal aliens from the traditional areas of the border states, into the interior of the country. Meatpackers, hotels-motels and restaurants were the first recipients of cheap illegal labor as employers discovered that the federal government wasn’t going to do anything about them hiring illegal aliens. And as the rural communities, and soon after the cities, of "fly-over country" swelled with illegal alien workers taking low skilled jobs, then came the drug gangs and other criminals who set up shop in the illegal worker colonias that were shielded by mayors and city councils who wanted to preserve, protect and defend the wave of cheap illegal alien labor that fattened the profits of businesses in their communities.

When politicians from meat packing states in 1999 called for Operation Vanguard to be shut down (INS compliance audits of meat packing plant employees) the message was loud and clear and it was Katy bar the door. (Just as an aside, wages in the meat packing industry plummeted from $16 - $18 per hour to about $8.50 an hour in about a decade as a result of the influx of illegals. “Labor shortage.”? I don’t think so. If you don’t follow, look up “Supply and Demand,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand)

As illegal aliens continued to pour into the interior of the country the culture began to change. I traveled to many meat packing towns in Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Carolina. I visited County Fairs and grade schools. And I would always visit the local Sheriff’s Department. “Where is the center of drug trafficking in your jurisdiction?” I would ask. It was always the community in the county that had the population of illegal workers, usually the town with the meatpacking plant.

The Mexican drug cartels were, and still are, using the interstate highway system to supply drugs to, and from, any wide spot in the road where there are illegal alien workers. Salt Lake City, UT was on track to become the city with the highest crime rate per capita in the country in the late 90s, and it was almost all due to illegal aliens and drugs. Utah? Yes. http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs3/3619/cocaine.htm

Check out the map, SLC is at the hub of several Interstate Highways west of the Rockies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Interstate_35_29_map.png

(A brief aside on the Interstate Highway drug delivery system. While you are looking at the map, check out where I-35 begins in south Texas. It’s Laredo. Across the river is Nuevo Laredo, which not coincidentally is where the drug war violence began, years ago. It was and continues to be a battle to control that end of the Interstate. Why? Laredo is the biggest land port of entry in the country, trucks and rail. I-35 travels north crossing east-west Interstates 10, 20, 30, 40, 70, 80, 90 and 94 ending at Duluth, MN. At Kansas City there is a fork in the Interstate and you can take I-29 almost all the way to Winnipeg.)

In the late 1990s Des Moines, IA had a methamphetamine crime problem created by Mexican drug gangs that was so startling that ABC’s Nightline did a two night story on it (October 13-14,1998 called "Hooking the Heartland".) 80% of felony cases in Des Moines courts were meth related. Citizens in communities all over the previously sleepy Midwest were complaining that they were experiencing problems, “like Los Angeles.” The comparison always seemed to be with, "Los Angeles."

Oh, yeah. One last thing. Des Moines sits at the intersection of Interstates 35 and 80.

Not everybody was asleep. There was a small cadre of immigration reform activists and elected officials who tried to warn the nation about what was happening, but we just weren't convincing enough. Most people need to be bitten by the barking dog to get it, I guess. Well, now they have been bitten and convinced.

In 2010, after two decades of non-stop illegal immigration and internal migration, there is not a city in the country that doesn’t have an illegal alien population. The de facto amnesty, the virtual non-enforcement of immigration and employment laws, has resulted in 25-30 million illegal aliens in all areas of our country. And now everybody understands the impact that illegal immigration has on crime, education, healthcare, employment and the environment. And that is why anti-amnesty sentiment is so high and will go higher. http://www.zogby.com/blog2/index.php/2010/07/19/immigration-reform-now/

I regret this grisly prediction; There will be more ranchers murdered by illegal aliens in the future. There will be more police officers killed by illegal alien gang members. There will be more rapes by illegal aliens. There will be more kidnappings by illegal aliens. And, there will be more illegal aliens driving without licenses or insurance, on welfare, taking jobs that would be done by American workers, etc.

I don’t regret making the prediction; I regret the fact that there will be more innocent victims who will pay the price, some the ultimate price, for the federal government’s de facto amnesty that allows business to feed its addiction to cheap labor. And that is what it is all about, and has been all about for years…cheap labor and, of course, the new customers those laborers become with their first paycheck.

Now that so many communities in the rest of country have had the “Los Angeles experience,” they want to do something about it. They are certainly opposed to an official amnesty. Arizona’s SB 1070 has shown the way to solving the illegal alien problem and many states and cities are considering similar measures. And all this threatens the de facto amnesty and is why all the threats and name calling and fear mongering and the lawsuit are coming out of Washington, DC.

If local enforcement is upheld, and I believe it will be, that will be the beginning of the end of the de facto amnesty.

As local jurisdictions begin to cut off employment, welfare and other taxpayer funded services to illegal aliens their communities will become safer as a result. Another internal migration will begin, has already begun, to areas of the country that don’t want the law enforced.

Sanctuary cities, like San Francisco for example, will begin to receive a new influx of illegal aliens and experience the increased adverse effects. I would say with a smirk that it should be entertaining to watch, but then I think of the innocent victims of the past, present and future. I remember victims like the Bologna family members who were slaughtered on the streets of San Francisco in broad daylight by an illegal alien MS-13 gang member who had benefitted repeatedly from SF’s sanctuary status.

Oh, and Los Angeles will have, well, the “Los Angeles experience” in spades. This is nothing to gloat about because Americans, good Americans of all races, colors and creeds will be hurt worse than they are now by this. But, it’s going to happen.

The momentum in the country has shifted because the body count is growing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfmwZ0QJE10 And as a result elected officials are doing the only thing that elected officials seem to be able to do, respond to a crisis, not act to head one off.

Arizona’s SB1070 is the result of local officials acknowledging that the federal government is not going to solve the problem. Other states and cities, if they didn’t know it before, know it now. Taking local action will continue and maybe some of those local officials will run for higher office and take their desire to protect their community to Washington, DC.

It would really help if more current congressmen honored the oath they have repeatedly sworn. The current congressional oath was enacted in 1884:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

And, let’s not to forget the president: The U.S Constitution specifies the oath of office for the President in Article II, Section 1

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

That’s “...preserve, protect and defend the Constitution...” not the de facto amnesty.

Pick up the phone and call, again. Your congressman, your senators and the president all need to hear from you. Tell them “no amnesty.” Tell them all that you want our immigration laws and employment laws enforced. Verify what the polls are saying, that a majority of Americans want immigration laws enforced, right now.

Calling your elected is official is the most important thing you can do right now to preserve, protect and defend our country and your community.

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