Perspective

Having royally had it, on April 1, 2005, hundreds of peaceful but righteously indignant civilian volunteers of the month-long Minuteman Project border watch assembled in the storied southeastern Arizona city of Tombstone to petition their government for a redress of their grievances--probably thinking they'd catch some hell for doing so, but not knowing the holy-half of it.

Those grievances include a long train of abuses and usurpations by the royals: President Bush (and the several previous presidents) and the regal career politicians of the U.S. Congress. The imperials have abdicated their responsibilities and violated their oaths of office by creating and perpetuating, through their actions and inactions, one of the most lawless, violent and chaotic border regions in the world.

By deploying citizen observers, "undocumented border patrol agents," to act as a "neighbor watch" along a 23-mile section of the notorious 262-miles of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, the immediate goals of the Minuteman Project's organizers were to yank the covers off the shameful failure of border security and to demonstrate to the royals how easy it would be to fulfill their first obligation: the protection of their citizens. To those ends, in the words of the project's cofounders, it was "mission accomplished" for the project.

But royalty has no limits to its imperial arrogance. President Bush attacked the good citizens of the Minutemen Project as "vigilantes," during a time when project organizers and volunteers were the subjects of scores of racist death threats, lies and damned lies by the open-borders lobby, castigations by august elected officials and vilifications by most of the mainstream press. Concurrently, one of the most pernicious pieces of amnesty legislation--which would have been amnesty number eight--for illegal border criminals was being attempted by the princely U.S. Congress, to courtly applause.

Ours is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny. To prove this, let these facts be submitted to a candid world, including but not limited to:

They have abdicated government here by declaring us out of their protection:

• The president called the Minutemen 'vigilantes" while they were under constant threats of attack and death.
• At best, only one-in-four border invaders is intercepted. Over a seven-month period, in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector alone, more than 20,000 convicted murderers, rapists, child predators and the like, along with those wanted on fugitive warrants for those crimes, were intercepted. That means more than 60,000 such foreign criminals made it through.
• Other than Mexicans (OTM's), including those from terror-sponsoring countries, are allowed to continue into the interior of the U.S. under an "catch-and-release" policy, with the promise from the intruders that they will appear at a hearing in the future. Almost none does.
• One-thousand seven-hundred-and-ninety (1,790) new border patrol agents were striped by president Bush from the 2,000 recommended for this year by the Commission on Homeland Security. The remaining 210 new agents would not cover even the losses of agents to transfers, retirements and from those quitting because of being fed up.

They have consorted with the potentates, dictators, oligarchs and sovereigns and have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws:

• An estimated 3,000 fugitive illegal-alien murder suspects, including accused cop killers, are avoiding U.S. prosecution, because Mexico will not extradite on capital crimes.
• The U.S. government has refused to return illegal-alien criminal to their home countries because "those countries won't take them back." They have instead released those criminal back into the unsuspecting U.S. population, with tens of thousands repeating their crimes against Americans.

They have been dismissive of the overwhelming opinions of the People:

• Poll after poll shows American of all stripes want the borders secured-NOW!

They have failed to for call forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union and repel invasions, as called for in the U.S. Constitution.

They have excited domestic insurrection amongst us by endeavoring to bring on the inhabitants of our frontier:

• Time Magazine has estimated that three-million illegal aliens from all over the world successfully break into the country, annually.

They have refused their assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good:

• Almost the entire U.S. Criminal Code relating to violations of immigration law essentially has been ignored.
• When referring to illegal aliens whose cross the border via the Rio Grande river, president Bush was quoted in Boy Genius: "Hell, if they'll walk across the Big Bend, we want 'em." (pg 73)

They have kept among us a foreign standing army:

• It is estimate that a standing army of 850,000 illegal alien foreign gangsters, thugs, punks and terrorist, including MS-13, the Mexican Mafia, the Russian Mafia and many other criminal organizations, are now entrenched in cities and towns throughout the U.S..

They have failed to establish justice; they have failed to ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare; they have failed to faithfully discharge the duties of their offices; they have failed to exercise their best abilities to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, thereby giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.

Minuteman-like civilian border patrols were carried out during World War II. My father, uncles and grandfather, then citizen residents of the border town of Bisbee, Ariz., were patrol members. There was no continental invasion then, but there is now, with millions from all over the world pouring across the borders, including some of the world's most despicable, dangerous and loathsome: people from terror-sponsoring countries, heavily armed international drug traffickers, agents of international organized crime, along with traffickers of kidnapped women and children headed for sex-slavery in the United States.

But when as long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

On April 30, Minuteman Project cofounder Chris Simcox said:

"We will continue to do the job that you [royals] don't seem to have the will to do, until [you] relieve us from duty by meeting our demands: And that's augmenting Border Patrol with National Guard and military personnel. Until that time, citizens will continue to man the border. No compromise."

I therefore, as a representative of the People of the United States, in their name, solemnly declare our right to be free and independent to do anything we damned well please to secure our rights, our properties, our fortunes, our futures, our posterity, our lives and our country.

Mike McGarry is a spokesman for the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform. He was a Minuteman Project media relations volunteer.

On December 26, 1941, just 19 days after Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill addressed the U.S. Congress and famously raised the following question about the enemy, "What kind of people do they think we are?"

Every crisis is a judgment call on an existing state of affairs; and the deeper the crisis, the deeper the question that is raised.

Churchill's question evidenced a deep crisis. But one that pales beside the question raised by the deepest crisis of all: "Who do we think we are?" Or, in the words of Professor Samuel Huntington's insightful recent book, "Who are we?"...

This is precisely our challenge with immigration in America today....

In liberal circles, the issue is discussed as one more phase in the movement for expanding liberty and diversity, with no attention to issues of national identity and unity. And for my friends in conservative circles, the issue is hotly debated as a contest between "law-and-order conservatives," concerned only with national security and control of our borders, and "pro-growth business conservatives," concerned only with the chronic labor shortage--again, with no attention to issues of national identity and unity.

With little or no discussion of what it means to be an American, this narrow framing of the debate completely ignores the most important issue of all: the national implications of immigration without assimilation....

E pluribus unum is not just our national motto; it is our supreme American achievement.

But our generous attitude toward immigrants has two important consequences. One, we cannot take in the entire world, and two, those who do come must become American....

Many people point to 1965 and the new immigration laws overturning the quotas that since 1924 had favored people from a European background. Certainly these laws caused an important shift, not just in the numbers coming in but the sources. The main thrust of immigration is now from Latin America and Asia, not Europe.

But the real explanation for the problem lies elsewhere. The new views of diversity do not come from the latest immigrants. As we know well, most Latinos and Asians are the most enthusiastic supporters of integration and the best examples of its benefits. Instead, the new ideas come from the oldest and most established areas of our society and they grow directly out of the cultural revolution of the 1960s led by the wealthy, young elite of that day.

There are two main themes in this new view of diversity: a weakened confidence in there being any such thing as Americanism, and a sudden awareness of groups that had been supposedly locked out or left behind by the American dream.

The major result of this crisis of confidence was a new stress on culture and on the differences between cultures. The traditional picture of the "melting pot" is out; "mosaic" is in. "Assimilation" is now viewed as bad; "integration" is good. The emphasis on "Americanizing" helped to create the blind spot that led to America's greatest evils, so "Americanism" itself is suspect--it is said to be essentially coercive, always relentless and sometimes ruthless....

Besides, advocates of diversity say that the chosen metaphor of the melting pot was always an exaggeration and never an accurate description. All cultures are equal--equally true and equally valuable--and therefore unmeltable. Thus the United States is a multicultural society rather than "Western" or "American." Indeed, they argue there is no such thing as Americanism with which to do the melting....

Instead of Americanness, these critics say, what we need to stress are diversity, relativism, and tolerance. According to the liberal psychobabble, all the cultures of the earth are equal, and must be treated as such. What is respected must be protected, and what is protected must be celebrated and promoted. Anything else is discrimination and judgmentalism. Thus all cultures are equal--especially formerly victimized cultures, which are at least temporarily more equal than others.

If ever there was a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water, this must be it. It is one thing to identify occasional excesses of Americanizing and another thing to reject its even more frequent successes and overall dramatic picture. Ironically, the very appreciation of cultural diversity is a fruit of the values now rejected in the name of cultural diversity, just as almost all of America's most distinctive values have roots in the tradition now pushed to one side.

But, far more importantly, the process of Americanizing is crucial for American nationhood. One of the lessons of the 20th century was the explosive power of nationalism--far more potent and enduring than the power of communism and other failed forms of government. E pluribus unum is therefore an extraordinary achievement, and one that we neglect at great peril, for it lies at the heart of our nationhood....

Mexican President Vicente Fox has been scolded for declaring that Mexicans do jobs that “even blacks won’t do.” Curiously, nary a whimper is heard when President Bush insults all citizens by referring to “Jobs Americans Won’t Do.”

Before the Civil War, John C. Calhoun’s views on the equality of human beings were nurtured with a mint julep on the veranda of a southern plantation. This leading North Carolina senator, and presidential hopeful, had a splendid panoramic view of the jobs that Americans wouldn’t do. In spirited debates, Senator Calhoun became a voice for the South in perpetuating the institution of slavery....

The slogan, “Jobs Americans won’t do,” has now emerged as the presidential mantra for importing more foreign labor. The leader of the free world offers an assurance that Americans have graduated to a better life....

In fact, Americans do these jobs. Americans do these jobs with pride. Americans have thrived on these jobs over the centuries. The Americans doing these jobs don’t look any different. They wear the face of America. They do not shrink from work. Americans just resist enslaved wages and indecent working conditions. The soul of America is still found in our commitment to a work ethic. A presidential slogan to the contrary offends the soul of America.

If we hope to restore dignity to labor, then we need to honor it with a living wage....

...This doubt is particularly disturbing in today's America that has been a target of million man invasion of foreign (mostly, Mexican) have-nots, often referred to as "migrants," who due to their sheer numbers and exorbitant fertility rates may soon gain enough political clout to force use of eminent domain as a vehicle of involuntary transfer of property from wealthy Americans to the "migrating" hordes (in order to "improve their lives," as they say)....

If the border and the immigration laws are not fully enforced, the only way for Americans to survive the mass invasion of poor but prolific "migrants," a hostile take-over if you will, and to keep their "wealth" intact, would be to abandon birth control altogether, like so many "migrants" do, and enter a spiral of exponential population growth. This would resemble the nuclear weapon race that characterized the by-gone Cold War era - a strategy that once was deemed losing for all parties involved in the race....

...There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.

Americanization

The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population - no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens, it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is to not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of "Let alone" which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two stand-points. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.

We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?

One America

All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing. Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind.

- Theodore Roosevelt, 1915. From Philip Davis (ed.), Immigration and Americanization (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1920); www.rpatrick.com/USA/americanism

Unlike the Americans, Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada has a plan for the US/Mexican border. He means to eliminate it. In the absence of any rational American response, Mexico may succeed in imposing an open border on a paralyzed U.S. More than most Americans realize, Mexico already has.

Vicente Fox's grand ambitions are published in a five year plan, the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 2001-2006, recently presented to Mexico's Congress...

In the year 2025, Mexico is to be a proud, first-world nation, respected and listened to on the world scene, with her population stabilized at between 130 and 150 million (today it is about 100 million). Until the blessed day arrives, however, Mexico wants her gringo safety valve to the north.

Where the Fox Plan is unusual, and where Americans should take heed, is in its discussion of emigration and the role of the Mexican government in the lives of Mexicans abroad... The Plan asserts Mexico's determination to act aggressively on behalf of Mexicans abroad, no matter what their legal status in their host countries.

In the subsection entitled "Defense of Mexicans Abroad" the Plan gets specific about what Mexico demands of us with respect to the millions of Mexicans now living, illegally as well as legally, in the United States:

It is important to note that even if Mexico has achieved a number of agreements and mechanisms to ensure better treatment of our countrymen abroad, the issue of migration, especially in the United States, needs a new focus over the long term to permit the movement and residence of Mexican nationals to be safe, comfortable, legal and orderly, and the attitude of police persecution of this phenomenon must be abandoned and it must be perceived as a labor and social phenomenon.

So what does the Fox Plan mean for the United States? The Mexican government is now on record, in an executive plan submitted by its President to Congress, about the duties owed to Mexicans, not only by the Mexican government but by the United States...

We are to embrace as many Mexicans as want to come, and accept that their government will be increasingly active in our country reinforcing their Mexicanismo and speeding the path to Mexico of any dollars they acquire here.

We are to welcome, in a way unprecedented in our history, a huge population of dual nationals, with absolutely no reason to believe that their primary loyalty is to the United States.

America has turned its back on Americans. Even illegal aliens count higher with the American government than native-born, taxpaying, loyal U.S. citizens, who are regarded by their government as nothing but resources to be exploited...

The U.S. government is replete with hatred of everyone who sticks up for the rights of citizenship. The government steadfastly refuses to defend our borders. It is more important, says the government, to have cheap household help for elites, and an abundance of fast-food workers to keep down the minimum wage, than it is to defend our country's borders...

Columnist and author Michele Malkin and the web site vdare.com have documented the complete failure of government to protect the meaning of citizenship...

The government's lack of loyalty to citizens has been noticed, not only by illegal immigrants who pour over our borders with rising expectations and demands, but also by U.S. employers...

If it is permissible for illegal aliens to take fast-food jobs away from U.S. teenagers and construction jobs away from U.S. construction workers, it is all right for H-1B visas to be issued to foreigners to take jobs away from American professionals... Now comes the "shortage" of nurses...
 

A new poll provides the most compelling evidence yet that there is an enormous gap between the American people and "opinion leaders" on the issue of immigration.

* The results of the survey indicate that the gap between the opinions of the American people on immigration and those of their leaders is enormous. The poll found that 60 percent of the public regards the present level of immigration to be a "critical threat to the vital interests of the United States," compared to only 14 percent of the nation's leadership - a 46 percentage point gap.

* The enormous difference between elite and public opinion can also be seen on the issue of illegal immigration. The survey found that 70 percent of the public said that reducing illegal immigration should be a "very important" foreign-policy goal of the United States, compared to only 22 percent of elites.

* Also with respect to illegal immigration, when the public was asked to rank the biggest foreign policy problems, the public ranked illegal immigration sixth, while elites ranked it 26th.

This strongly suggests that one of the main reasons the public is concerned about illegal immigration, but the elite is not, stems from the economic situation of the two groups. Opinion leaders are overwhelmingly educated and, compared to the public, much more affluent. Thus it's not surprising that they see little threat from illegal immigration... while the public is clearly concerned about its jobs and economic livelihood, opinion leaders see no threat because they have jobs in which they face relatively little competition from immigrants.

"Population size matters most to the big picture and over the long term. If ...activists don't keep the population issue front and center, who will?"

"We are now less than two doubling times from the billion-plus club. How many others are as scared as I am?"

"We will have to learn then to live on limited labour supply in exactly the same way that we will have to learn to live on limited natural resources, and husband our own demographic resources, not depend on those from elsewhere... The world will not forgive the developed countries today, in the vanguard of the human experiment of living without population growth, if they throw away the chance to reform their society and productivity because of a preference for the short-term convenience of immigration...

Those who promote largescale migration seldom have to live with its consequences. Only those in favour of unbridled capitalism, those who put the short-term interests of employers before anything else, those who cannot see that a society's boundaries must be protected, can be in favour of open borders."