Solutions no one in Congress wants to bring up

I am concerned about one big glaring problem with all the immigration proposals: the judiciary. I worry that, even with Roberts and Alito on board the Supreme Court, we are still facing the very real possibility that any meaningful national immigration reform will go the way of California Proposition 187: overruled.

In order to counter this, we need to bypass every court in the land by going directly to the Constitution prior to enacting any new law. Therefore, I propose the following Constitutional Amendment, which I believe would easily pass:

Amendment XXVIII

1. Upon ratification of this Amendment, only persons born within the United States of parents legally residing within the United States, persons naturalized under the laws of Congress, and persons already declared citizens prior to the ratification of this Amendment, shall be citizens of the United States.

2. The rights, liberties, and protections of this Constitution shall only apply to citizens of the United States, and to aliens legally residing within the borders of the United States. None of the rights, liberties, or protections of this Constitution shall be construed to apply to aliens not legally residing within the United States.

3. The official language of the United States shall be English. All official functions of the United States, and every State and local government therein, shall take place in the English language. All citizens of the United States shall be required to learn the English language. All legal resident aliens shall, as a condition of their residence, be required to understand the English language, or else be required to attend educational classes on the English language during the duration of their residence.

4. The Congress shall have the power to implement and enforce sections 1, 2, and 3 of this Amendment.

Only after the passage of an Amendment such as this can we address legislation to properly enforce the borders and regulate immigration to our nation.  Extreme?  You bet.  Necessary?  After the lessons of Proposition 187, absolutely.

But will it pass?

Well, when polls overwhelmingly show super-majority support for serious immigration reform, I believe so.  The only question is: does Congress have the political will to move this forward?  I doubt it.  Our Congress has consistently failed to achieve any meaningful reform, in any area of the law, due to partisan obstruction combined with pork barrel hijacking of every bill.

Therefore, we must go the non-Congressional route, and advance this through the States.  Contact your state legislators and governors, and ask them to support a Constitutional Amendment on immigration reform.

Comments

[pete]

I really like your section 2. It sickens me that criminal illegal aliens who come here for the purpose of selling drugs, running gangs, etc., get the same due process rights as American citizens. I believe citizenship, and even legal residence, should be the key to the Bill of Rights.

Furthermore, section 2 would give us a key weapon in the war on terror: gone would be any discussion of granting rights like free lawyers, trial by jury, etc., for enemy combatants captured on the field of battle in the war on terror.

I don't know about the broader immigration picture. Until this weekend, with the mass protests (that are starting to resemble to moslem uprising in France), I really hadn't put much thought into it. But my eyes are open now, ironically thanks to the protesters themselves.

I have no idea what new laws need to be passed. But I cetrainly agree with you that whatever is done must be done at the Constitutional level.

[trotsky]

typical paranoid xenophobic racist jingoism from the nationalistic white male kristjan religious ultra right. would you like a slice of holocaust pie with your serving of nazi crow? thought you were over the top before, but now you put david duke and pat buchanon to shame. que bueno!

[Sailor Republica]

I see pork chops, I see ham, I see beef flank, I see SPAM!

[Pubby]

The desire to stem the flow of illegal immigrants is indeed understandable, but the adoption of a Constitutional Amendment such as the one put forth by Gullyborg is foolhardy at best.

Pete's comment, "It sickens me that criminal illegal aliens who come here for the purpose of selling drugs, running gangs, etc., get the same due process rights as American citizens." shows a lack of understanding of the fundamental founding principles of our nation. The Declaration of Independence tells us that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain, inalienable rights. The Bill of Rights is not an outline of the rights afforded to us the government, but rather an enumeration, for the benefit of the government, of the rights gifted to all human beings by the Almighty, and, as such, held sacrosanct by the people.

To vilify the individuals seeking a land and life where those rights are recognized and respected by the government is what ought to be criminalized. Most illegals do not cross the border with malicious intent; they are merely searching for opportunity.

Their good intentions, though, do not excuse their illegal status. The call-to-arms today should not be for a new amendment that sets new litmus tests for being an American, but rather for real, honest-to-God border enforcement, to keep people who do not have legal status in our country out. It must also be a call-to-arms to increase the efforts to keep those who wish our country ill, out, and ease the legal path for those who seek only a better life for themselves and their families, so that they need not cross the border illegally.

[Gullyborg]

Yes, we can all be equal in the natural rights with which we are endowed by our Creator -- and at the same time make rational distinctions between different classes of people.

Children under 18 can't vote. Adults over 18 can. It's in the Constitution. And I don't think our Founders would have had a problem with that (after all, they owned slaves who counted as 3/5 of a person, denied women the right to vote, and other atrocities -- they were hardly perfect and enlightened).

Accordingly, we can rationally distinguish between Citizens and illegal aliens under the law.

Most of the due process rights accorded to criminals are creations of judges and legislatures, long after the Founding Fathers passed on. What Man giveth, Man may taketh away.

Should an illegal alien be given free legal counsel provided by citizen tax payers when he is arrested for dealing meth?

I don't think the Founders would have thought so. After all, the idea of free legal counsel being a "right" of the people only goes back to the Scottsboro Boys case of the 1930's.

The problem, Pubby, is that without a Constitutional Amendment, any attempt to create the laws you endorse will fail. As long as illegal aliens, once across the borders, can claim the same due process rights and civil liberties as citizens, such laws will ultimately be ineffective at best and voided as unconstitutional at worst.

This does not violate the self-evident rights recognized by our Founding Fathers. We cannot force the illegal aliens to be slaves. We cannot convert them to a new religion. We cannot strip them of all their possessions. We cannot imprison them forever without trial. We cannot kill them indiscriminantly. These were the grievances our Founders had against King George III. This is a far cry from saying that every person, whether citizen, legal resident, or illegal alien, who is within our borders should be treated the same by our laws. For unless we can enact laws that recognize the difference between citizen and alien, what use is it to even have such classifications?

A constitutional amendment is the ONLY thing which can, at this stage, be done.

What follows that amendment, the legislation that dictates how immigrants may enter, how they become citizens, how they may be deported -- that can be the subject of further debate.

[GunGeek]

I see at least two problems. First, since you specify "parents" what happens when a US citizen gets knocked up by a non-citizen? Maybe while on vacation in another country. That baby isn't a citizen, even if born here.
Second, there has to be some provision for official government activities to take place in a language other than English. If another non-English speaking country passed a similar law, it would severely restrict our ability to maintain good relations.

The rest of it looks good to me.

[Gullyborg]

On Parents:

A good observation. I would change the text to "a parent." That way, an American citizen who is impregnated by a foreigner could still deliver an American citizen.

On English:

I have no problems with things like state functions with foreign governments having translators. That won't stop people using foreign languages. It will simply require that everything be put into English in real time.

Likewise, if a non-English speaker is involved in some government action (like a trial, a welfare application, etc.), then there needs to be a real time translator, rather than having a government officer doing everything in Spanish, on forms written in Spanish.

But then, the latter example wouldn't be much of an issue if we required legal residents to speak English--then most of what would be taking place with translators would be deportation hearings.

The English language requirement would also address something we are learning about this week:

The mass rallies were highly coordinated, but this was mostly unknown to mainstream America, because the coordination was done in Spanish over Spanish radio stations across the country.

This amendment would allow the FCC, which regulates the airwaves as a government function, to mandate that all radio and tv stations that broadcast over public airwaves to be in the English language (cable, satellite, etc. would of course still be unregulated for language, just as they are for sex and violence).

Now before you call me a racist, this is an important national security issue:

If millions of illegal aliens can be coordinated over public radio stations with the bulk of America ignorant as to what went on, then what is to stop terrorist cells from using the radio and tv waves, through Arabic-language "religious" programming, from sending communications to each other?

Granted, coded messages can be passed in any language. But right now, how much intelligence information is being shared openly, without any need for code, simply because it is over a medium that most people can't understand?

It doesn't even have to be in Arabic (and clever terrorists wouldn't be so obvious anyway, since odds are the NSA is listening). How many obscure languages are there in the world? I am certain that there are plenty of languages spoken by a few different terror leaders here in this country, but not recognized even by the intelligence community as fitting any profile.

Finally, America would not be getting into any strange new "single language" territory. Many advanced nations have already been working this way for generations. Look at France: try speaking anything but French in France and getting anyone to help you. Hell, try speaking French with anything but a perfect French accent and getting anyone to help you.

Look at Quebec, where the French language is mandated not just for government acts, but for all commerce. That goes above and beyond what I have called for here (and the First Amendment would, of course, allow people to speak whatever the hell the want amongst each other in non-government related speech).

So I definitely like the idea of enforcing English as the official language of state. There would be no problems.

[IndianCowboy]

All I have to say is Marry Me. Between your post today and Kim's, I think yall have said everything that really needs to be said.

[Gullyborg]

> Marry Me

What, are you one of them "brokeback mountain" cowboys?

[Mr. Completely]

Being born in the US shouldn't get you citizenship. If one of your parents is a US citizen, or if you are naturalized, that should get you citizenship, but just being born here, regardless your parents immigration status, no way.....

......Mr. C.