Charity Must Begin At Home

The candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidential election are on the campaign trail giving speeches and trying to appeal to the voters and, perhaps even more importantly, fundraising.  They will, of necessity, speak in broad sweeping terms to try to appeal to the broadest audience.

Reporters bring their egos and their preconceived notions with them when they interview the candidates.

Polls are conducted, purportedly to attempt to determine where the voters are on the many issues that challenge our nation.  Yet often the way that the questions are asked create false choices and false impressions that instead of simply finding out where Americans stand on the important issues, force them to pick from a field of false choices that create seriously flawed results.

Where the immigration crisis is concerned we have seen surveys where the person participating in the survey is given two choices: deport all illegal aliens or provid them with a pathway to United States citizenship.

Increasingly, public opinion is created by the media not simply reported on by the media.  The advocacy groups who seek to push their goals and agendas have become extremely astute at manipulating the debate.  The "DREAM Act" is a good example of such manipulation.  When Comprehensive Immigration Reform failed to pass the legislative process, the open borders advocates came up with the DREAM Act which was marketed as a program to assist the children of illegal aliens who, through no fault of their own, are now illegally present in the United States.

Of course what was blithely ignored was that the DREAM Act would provide a pathway to lawful status and United States citizenship to illegal aliens who were up to 35 years of age.  All that they needed to do was claim that they had entered the United States before they became adults.

The DREAM Act also contained all sorts of generous and broad waivers so that even aliens who could not meet the already extremely low standards to qualify would be able to seek lawful status if they met the standards to be included within the waiver program.

The immigration anarchists who came up with the DREAM Act understood that Americans are extremely compassionate and eager to help children.  By invoking the image of children who were illegally present in the United States they believed that they had a winning strategy.  What they apparently did not count on was the fact that there would be those of us who understood the strategy would come forward to make it clear that our citizens were being conned by the advocates for open borders and massive amnesty programs for illegal aliens.

The battle for the DREAM Act is not over, however.  Efforts to push for Comprehensive Immigration Reform are continuing and many reporters, perhaps unwittingly, aid these legislative efforts by referring to politicians who seek to enact these amnesty programs as being “political moderates” when the politicians are members of the Republican Party.

What has incredibly missing from the discussions about compassion has been the lack of coverage of American families and American children of all races, religions and ethnicities who are suffering from poverty.  It is important to remember the economic hardships that so many of our fellow Americans are now suffering.  It is also extremely important to understand that while I often focus my commentaries on how failures to secure our borders and create an immigration system that has real integrity enables transnational criminals and terrorists to enter our country and threaten the security of our nation and the safety of our communities and hence our citizens, the massive influx of foreign workers also creates unfair competition for Americans who are desperately seeking jobs so that they can support themselves and their families.

Incredibly, we have a number of politicians who, apparently following the lead of the corporate executives who make campaign contributions, claim that if the United States does not admit many foreign workers and foreign students to take the high-tech jobs, that important American companies will not be able to retain their competitive edge.

Some have actually said that when a foreign student graduates from an American university, with an advanced degree, that the United States should "staple a green card onto their degree."

Could there possibly be a more blatant example of betrayal of our citizens by our leaders?  Why on earth are we educating foreign students to compete with American workers and American students who have the intellect and the desire to succeed and are all too often finding it impossible to attend college or to secure jobs in their chosen careers when they do graduate from college, while foreign workers are being enticed and encouraged to enter our country to take those very same jobs because they will work for lower wages?

While the leaders of countries that send their workers to the United States are strong advocates for their workers- complaining, for example, when the cost of visa applications in the United States rise, the leaders of our country insists that we encourage still more of these foreign competitors to come to the United States and provide them with still more opportunities for practical training and other inducements.

Let us be clear, when the leaders of other countries advocate for their citizens who seek to work in the United States these leaders are not only seeking to appeal to their citizens, they are also acting in the best interests of their respective country's economy.  Every year well over one hundred billion dollars is wired from the United States to the countries from which these foreign workers come.  This is money that helps the economies of these countries but also acts as a major drain to the economy of the United States.  Yet, you would be hard pressed to come up with a single candidate for the Presidency of the United States who would favor a moratorium on the importation of foreign workers or foreign students even in this day of pervasive hunger of America that is largely attributable to the soaring unemployment rate.

Contrary to what the open borders/immigration anarchists will claim, it is not a matter of xenophobia or racism to insist that our nation enforce its immigration laws to protect all United States citizens of all races, religions and ethnicities- it is a matter of commonsense and compassion for all of our fellow citizens.

Of course every candidate for political office claims he (she) wants to get Americans back to work–but until and unless the immigration component of the problem is effectively addressed, our nation will continue to suffer and that suffering will be felt most profoundly by American families and American children.