On Independence Day, Remember the Founding Fathers: Government Gets its Power from ‘the Consent of the Governed’

Immigration advocates have co-opted Independence Day to use as an amnesty propaganda tool. Every year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services holds multiple naturalization ceremonies throughout the United States.

On Independence Day 2012, President Obama, in one of his most audacious speeches, touted his recent executive deferred action for childhood arrivals order, an unconstitutional action that resulted in more than 500,000 aliens removed from possible deportation. This year on July 4, Obama will host a naturalization ceremony at the White House claiming, in the most tedious of immigration canards, that: “We are a nation of immigrants.”

Proponents rely on the “nation of immigrants” argument as if the phrase were the last and winning words in the amnesty debate. The expression is parroted so often that it’s obvious that no one has stopped to realize that all nations are historically comprised of various immigrant mixes.

The difference between earlier immigration and now is that, once, the immigration process was slow and allowed time for immigrants to assimilate. Today, immigration is an unmanageable rush of legal immigrants, visa holders and illegal immigrants. The visa holders often overstay; few illegal immigrants go home. The result is unsustainable, mass immigration and not the flowery, romanticized version that Obama praises.

Even though House Speaker John Boehner officially declared immigration dead for 2013, legal immigration continues, enough of it to easily qualify the U.S. as a bona fide nation of immigrants. Between 2011 and 2013, an annual average of more than 1 million foreign-born received lawful permanent resident status. The total number of foreign-born living in the U.S. has more than doubled from 19.8 million in 1990 to 40.7 million in 2012.

Since Obama’s 2009 inauguration, America has welcomed about 5 million legal immigrants. Even in a depressed economy Obama wants more immigration and has promised to use executive, but unconstitutional, orders to circumvent existing immigration laws. This is the type of overreaching, dictatorial government that the Declaration of Independence signatories rejected and which the Supreme Court has repeatedly warned Obama against.

As stated in the Declaration of Independence, the government gets its power from “the consent of the governed,” and if that consent is violated, the people have the right “to alter or abolish” it.

The months ahead will be fraught with peril for Americans who love their country and want its sovereignty maintained, a goal that Obama seems determined to thwart.