Locals Working to Curb Illegal Immigration

By Randy Alcorn
December 2, 2008

The Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that Arizona’s law prohibiting that state’s employers from hiring illegal aliens is constitutional. The decision was a boost to efforts by state and local jurisdictions to require employers to use the Federal government’s E-Verify system to ascertain the legal status of job applicants.

The court decision in the Arizona case is one among a series of legal victories against illegal immigration across the country that includes efforts to curtail the granting of in-state college tuition to illegal aliens; the gubernatorial vetoes of legislation that would have granted illegal aliens driver’s licenses and access to various taxpayer funded financial aid; local ordinances requiring police to use federal database systems to determine the immigration status of people they arrest. Additionally, anti-illegal immigration bills are working their way through the legislatures of several states.

Because the federal government has chronically abrogated its responsibilities to protect the nation’s borders against unlawful entry and has only halfheartedly enforced immigration laws, more and more state and local governments have confronted the problem directly. These local efforts have often been criticized and contested by the usual suspects—the Catholic Church, the ACLU, indulgent politicians, and various Hispanic activist groups— some of whom have instigated court challenges against these efforts.

Nevertheless, when the allegedly liberal Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rules in favor of legal efforts to combat illegal immigration, it is indicative of both the unavoidable realization that unrelenting illegal immigration has reached detrimentally epidemic proportions, and the inescapable logic that illegal immigration is justifiably unlawful all the way to the top of the legal ladder, the U.S. Constitution.

All the pro-immigration legal sophistry and convoluted logic invoking emotive notions of pan-global social justice cannot overrule the negative realities that unremitting waves of uncontrolled immigration impose on communities across America. The most obvious of these is the impact of unnaturally high increases in population that affect the quality of life of all citizens as it erodes environmental health and taxes limited resources. This is especially acute in those regions most burdened by illegal immigration, the west and the south.

Because of unbridled foreign immigration, the populations of these regions are mushrooming at third world rates and have increased beyond the healthy carrying capacity of natural and social resources. The disturbing results include not only increasing shortages of fresh water and arable land, but also bankrupted hospitals and clinics; packed prisons; overcrowded schools delivering diluted public education; increasing traffic; strained infrastructure; and overburdened tax funded social welfare systems.

While human population growth is the cause of many of the most vexing problems plaguing the nation and the world, these population problems are felt most keenly and personally at the local level. Ignoring, or worse countenancing, illegal immigration encourages over-population and the resultant ecological degradation. It allows dysfunctional nations who have bred beyond their own carrying capacity to export that problem to other nations rather than confront it and remedy it within their own borders.

The increasing incidence of state and local legislation and the ratifying court decisions that are directed at curbing illegal immigration, protecting the value of American citizenship, and reconfirming the rule of law arise from public concerns at the community level of American society, and from the public’s determination to address those concerns through the legal systems of the most accessible jurisdictions—local and state governments.

Politicians on the upper rungs of the governmental hierarchy are finding it more difficult, and politically perilous, to ignore this very clear expression of public will concerning illegal immigration, especially when federal courts are ruling that state and local legislation addressing illegal immigration are constitutionally sanctioned.

While it is regrettable that illegal immigration has festered into such an epidemic problem due to federal politicians, often in league with pro-immigration special interests, deliberately not enforcing national immigration laws, it is encouraging that American democracy and its legal system continues to properly function at its roots. Communities across the nation have confronted the problem and defended their legal efforts in spite of federal malfeasance and legal challenges by misguided or selfish special interests.

Ultimately the issue of illegal immigration is not about race, ethnicity, social justice, or free trade. It is about the immutable laws of mathematics, the reality of numbers. Populations of any species cannot grow ad infinitum. The laws of nature will impose unforgiving limits. What, then, is the rationale for a senseless rush to social and ecological ruin by encouraging more population?

The legislation and court decisions supporting anti-illegal immigration efforts reflect the growing realization among the American public that there is no good rationale for over-population.

Randy Alcorn is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), www.capsweb.org, and can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].