IMMIGRATION - WHAT IS THE COST?
By
Pastor Roger Anghis
April 28, 2013
NewsWithViews.com
Today we are seeing a move to open the borders of America to any and everybody that wants to come. This concept is primarily the brainchild of the Democrat Party. There are some Republicans in the mix, RINO’s all of them, with the new Senator Rubio among them. I will state up front my position on this subject so there is no question as to where I am coming from.
Senator Rand Paul made the statement that we need to find a place for those that have stolen across our borders, taken American jobs, stolen social security numbers and flaunt the fact that we don’t enforce or laws and that statement is a slap in the face to all American citizens and those that have immigrated to America legally. My position is simple. The only ‘place that I can find’ for these people that spit I our face is on the other side of the border and standing in line to come back. If that take 15 or 20 years, so what? These people have broken the law. Why reward them with a ‘pathway to citizenship’? They should be at the back of the line. Period!
Our Founders set up an immigration schedule because they knew that open borders would not work. There has to be a certain amount of economic growth to sustain any kind of immigration. If there is no economic growth then immigration numbers will only make matters worse. Immigration was encouraged because the industry of the time was agriculture and we had an abundance of that. But even then the numbers had to be controlled. In the first one hundred years the biggest restriction was on the religious affiliation. Most Colonies did not want Roman Catholics to immigrate to the new country. Even Massachusetts had restrictions on any immigration that was detrimental to the States prosperity. They drafted a charter which Governor Winthrop defended in court stating: “The charter gave them authority to protect themselves “by all fitting ways and means whatsoever, from all such persons as should attempt the destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance of any of the plantations or inhabitants thereof."[1]
Not all of the Colonies restricted immigration. Rhode Island had no restrictions and enjoyed the title of the Mecca of the Americas having what was called the perfect religious liberties even though the Roman Catholics were denied freeman status, very few civil liberty restraints and some of the most fertile land of the Colonies.
During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the majority of immigrants settled in New Your, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware because of the great waterways and harbors, fertile land and very open policies on religion and politics. This region had the most diverse population of immigrants from Europe – Swedes, Finns, Germans, French and Scotch-Irish and Highlanders.
Pennsylvania was established as a safe retreat for the Quakers but as long as you professed the Christian religion you were allowed to settle there. The only restrictions that were considered were those for felons brought into the Colony for the purpose of labor. There was even an effort put forth to completely restrict the importation of black slaves but in the early 1700’s the measure was disallowed.
The largest, by far, of immigrants to Pennsylvania were Germans. Most of the immigration took place after Louis XIV drove thousands from their homeland and they began to pour into the Quaker State. In 1729 the numbers began to be so great that an Act was passed setting a duty on foreigners and Irish servants. The duty was enough to send almost entire ships of immigrant s to New Jersey and the Carolina’s.
Even in the very early years of our nation we saw a limit on immigration. Many for religious reasons but we also saw immigration laws for the purpose maintaining a good economy. When the nation won its independence from Britain they established a limit on annual immigration numbers because they knew that without the growth in the economy we would not be able to handle the influx of people. Today’s politicians, specifically the Democrats, cannot see or refuse to that far ahead. What they are looking for are future voters. And they don’t really care how they get them or what the consequences are to our nation in getting them.
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Our Statue of Liberty has a sonnet that states: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-lost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” The life that America promised to the world was one that drew the entire world to our shores. Even though in the early years of our new nation there was no promise that the American experiment would be successful, the promise was there and the prosperity that America had shown the world up to that time assured them that this would be a lasting land of opportunity.
Immigrants to this great nation had one promise; if you worked honest and hard your success was in your hands. No other nation could promise that. In one generation you could go from the lowest to unbounded heights. But there was a controlled amount of immigration that was allowed into America. Our immigration laws were enforced. As history is witness all things can be abused. The Democrats didn’t like the limits that our immigration laws called for. In an article posted on Political Outcast by Marilyn Assenheim, she describes how Senator Ted Kennedy led the charge to destroy the limits on immigration that helped control that influx of people and help keep a stable economy. She wrote: Ted Kennedy changed all of that. In 1965 Kennedy revamped the entire immigration system. He eliminated firm immigration caps and introduced chain migration into America from every overpopulated country in the world, smashing annual immigration numbers.
In the 1970s Kennedy massively expanded refugee programs, introducing enormous loopholes and encouraging a national resettlement trade that became a major lobby for more and more immigration.
Kennedy was far from finished. In 1986 he got Republicans to agree to blanket amnesty; the amnesty to end all amnesties. This is the amnesty the Left always lays at Ronald Reagan’s feet. The law was deliberately written in a way that was guaranteed not to work. Just a few years later, Kennedy would use the inability to enforce the 1986 rules as an excuse for issuing more green cards and more amnesties. So much for Democrat promises.
Kennedy’s 1990 Immigration Act boosted immigration by another 35%. George H.W. Bush was his accomplice. Today’s Republicans seem eager to compound that disgrace. The 1990 Immigration Act also randomly gifted 50,000 green cards a year to people from countries selected because they had few ties and cultural connection with America. Worse still, highly skilled, European, English-speaking immigration applicants were denied, almost to a man.
The make-up of America’s immigrant population had been changed.
Frosty Woolridge also writes considerably concerning immigration and how, at the rates we have today, it is not sustainable. I don’t agree with all of solutions, but what he has declared that is coming, is coming.
We can’t allow the new immigration law that is being pushed by the Gang of Eight to pass. Think about it. Two of the eight are Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsay Ghramnesty. Both are RINO’s and seem to care more about illegal immigrants than legal US citizens. Neither should still be in Congress.
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Giving the 11 million illegals (some say it is closer to 30 million) a path to citizenship is not fair to those that have been waiting for years nor is it fair to the American worker who has lost his job to the lower paid illegal. Combine that with the right they will be given to bring their families here will raise the number of immigrants to 100 million in five years. This is a number that we simply cannot endure. Our economy cannot sustain that number and we will become nothing more than a banana republic with all equally sharing poverty.
It is time to stop the madness but there is little time to do that. What we do, we must do now!
Listen to Pastor Roger Anghis on www.crusaderadio.com on Tuesdays at 5:00 pm MDT for the American Intelligence Briefing Hour discussing current event and how they effect our Constitutional freedoms and our Religious freedoms.
Footnotes:
1. Colonial Immigration Laws, Emberson E. Proper, Thee Federalist Papers Project, Columbia University Press, p.22
� 2013 Roger Anghis - All Rights Reserved
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Pastor Roger Anghis is the Founder of RestoreFreeSpeech.org, an organization designed to draw attention to the need of returning free speech rights to churches that was restricted in 1954.
President of The Damascus Project, TheDamascusProject.org, which has a stated purpose of teaching pastors and lay people the need of the churches involvement in the political arena and to teach the historical role of Christianity in the politics of the United States. Married-37 years, 3 children, three grandchildren.
Web site: RestoreFreeSpeech.org
E-Mail: editor@restorefreespeech.org
