News about Immigration related topics

< Back to Previous Page Senator Tom McClintock Debate Remarks On Senate Concurrent Resolution 113 (SCR 113) Listening to Senator Alarcon talk about the views of the American Founders on immigration caught my attention and my interest. I am quite familiar with the writings of Benjamin Franklin on the subject and Senator Alarcon may be very surprised to learn that there was no more ardent or vigorous critic of illegal immigration than Benjamin Franklin. He wrote about it extensively during the mass immigration of Germans into Pennsylvania in the 1750s. His solution however was not to ban immigration. His solution was to insist upon legal immigration. And that’s the problem that I have with this resolution. The only problem that I have with this resolution is it blurs that vital distinction between legal and illegal immigration. The proponents are absolutely right and absolutely solid in what they say. Ours is a nation of immigrants. Every one of us is either an immigrant ourselves or were the son or a daughter of immigrants. Every one of us. That’s what makes this country great. That is the foundation of a nation built as America has been built. E Pluribus Unum - From Many One. From many people, one people - the American people. From many races, one race - the American race. Our immigration laws were not written to keep people out. Our immigration laws were written to assure that as people come to America, they come to become Americans. That they assimilate into American society. They acquire a common language, a common culture and a common appreciation of American constitutional principles and American legal traditions. Illegal immigration undermines the process of legal immigration that makes our country possible in the first place; and blurring the distinction between legal and illegal immigration is an insult to the millions of legal immigrants who right now are obeying our laws, who are doing everything our country asks of them, who are waiting in line to become Americans helplessly as millions and millions of people cut in line in front of them.