CHRIS POWELL: NATIONAL SUICIDE STARTS WITH “SANCTUARY CITIES”…THERE ARE BETTER WAYS***
http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2011/12/17/chris_powell/doc4eeb59c3c29bd202950830.txt
Having made New Haven a “sanctuary city,” where local government nullifies federal immigration law by awarding city identification cards to illegal aliens to facilitate their lawbreaking, Mayor John DeStefano now proposes to allow illegals to vote in municipal elections in Connecticut.
Ordinary state legislation for that would not be enough, as the state Constitution provides that only citizens can be electors, so a state constitutional amendment would be needed as well. Since federal law forbids anyone who is not a citizen from voting in federal elections, two voter lists would have to be maintained, one for local elections and one for president and Congress. Would the local voter list then be kept secret, as New Haven has concealed its list of city ID card holders, lest immigration lawbreakers become identifiable?
But those are mere details. The point, Mayor DeStefano, says, is about “how you define community.”
Indeed it is, but in a sense far broader than what the mayor means. For the community most at sake is the national community, and the bigger issue is whether the United States should retain the right to define itself as a nation or just default to some amorphous mass and become whatever outsiders might choose to make it.
Opposing any restrictions on immigration, DeStefano and the people associated with Yale University who have promoted the “sanctuary city” operation in New Haven would erase the country’s borders and forfeit national sovereignty. Their view is prevalent in the movement for still another amnesty for the 11 million or so illegal aliens estimated to be in the country.
Of course if illegal aliens are allowed to vote, U.S. citizenship is meaningless, along with the entire civic culture — democratic, secular, and at least dimly appreciative of the country’s history and principles. With immigration unrestricted and illegal aliens allowed to vote, it will become impossible to preserve that culture by choosing immigrants enough so that they are likely to assimilate and strengthen the country rather than break it apart or run it down.
But then the premise in New Haven is that the culture of the United States is not worth defending; that all cultures are morally equivalent and that Western civilization has no special virtue; that Americans should be indifferent to infiltration by characteristics of certain other cultures, like racism, religious fanaticism, oppression of women, sexual exploitation of children, and general ignorance, sloth, and dependence; and that the blood and toil expended during several centuries to make the United States what it is were wasted.
This is the essence of political correctness. It is national suicide.
Responding to Mayor DeStefano’s proposal, Governor Malloy says weakly, “It’s not an idea that I’m particularly comfortable with.” But if the sanctuary city can sneak a few thousand more votes into the right columns in the next election, who knows who might get comfortable with it?
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Advocates of nullifying immigration law caricature Republicans as wanting to deport all 11 million illegals after having each one chased down in the middle of the night by jackbooted federal agents carrying guns and truncheons and shouting, “Raus! Raus!”
Yes, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich may have jeopardized his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination by proposing to delegate to local agencies the power to grant legal status to illegal aliens who have long and productive connections to their communities. But Gingrich’s idea hints at a better approach, one that might win grudging support from both sides in the controversy, those who want to avoid painful deportations and those who realize that the country’s survival requires enforcement of immigration law and that the law will never be enforced if there is still another amnesty, like the amnesty of the Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986, whose promise of enforcement was broken.
That approach would be to expand immigration sponsorship beyond family members and employers — to allow groups of, say, five citizens to vouch for an applicant for tentative legal residency by posting a substantial money bond for him and by requiring him to pass tests in English, civics, and character. The federal government would control the process, the sponsors as well as the applicants would be at risk, and communities would get only those immigrants who had local support and a strong desire to become citizens and assimilate. Most such applicants might become better citizens than most of the native-born, and those with no such interest could be deported.
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