Immigration is about government control

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Immigration is about government control
BY HOWARD J. BLITZ
May 24, 2006

A Liberty Moment

The Declaration of Independence allows for no government control over individuals other than restraining the individual from interfering with another's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This is the reason for laws against murder, rape, fraud and theft. The United States Constitution on the other hand puts a tremendous amount of restraint on government, limiting government to very few and specific activities.

The current uproar over immigration is just another debate about who ought to be responsible for the individual's life, the state or the individual. America does not have an immigration problem. America has a very massive government-control problem. America's two great documents allow for the individual to be self-responsible and self-sufficient. However, for more than a century now, individuals have allowed government to expand its powers to the degree that individuals are now dependent upon government for practically everything under the sun and that situation breeds the animosity and antagonism between individuals being witnessed today.

Most individuals, whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, discuss securing the border between the United States and Mexico. However, securing and controlling the border with more troops and equipment would require assets well beyond the government's capability. As it is, government cannot even afford the medical care, education and everything else it has no constitutional authority to provide.

The president wants the border open to trade, but free trade cannot take place with all of the government control and regulation in place.

Reducing government control over the individual is rarely discussed. Rather, more government control is spoken of, disobeying the very principles found in America's two great documents. Even the founders of the United States vehemently complained to King George about all of the controls he put upon individuals restricting their movement to the colonies.

More government involvement in immigration results in more criminal activity through sneaking across the border, more deaths of individuals trying to cross the desert in out-of-the-way places, a greater chance of someone being shot with increased military personnel on the border, and more forged documents.

Instead of government trying to control the immigration situation, discussion ought to center on leaving that responsibility to individuals and individual companies. Individuals and individual companies would do the background check to be sure the individual being hired is not a criminal since individuals and individual companies have a vested interest in making sure criminals are not employed because of the risk of losses to their business. By allowing employers to keep track of their own employees, employers would not become criminals themselves, making less criminal activity in that area as well.

Yes, America is a nation of laws, but the laws that force one sector of society to provide education, health care and other services to another are flawed and violate the very precepts stipulated in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and must be changed or eliminated if crime and death is to be reduced and productivity and peace is to increase.

Instead of discussing whether government benefits should or should not be shared by citizens with noncitizens, discussion ought to be centered on whether government has the right to give either citizens or noncitizens those benefits in the first place, as well as whether any individual has an inalienable right to any of those benefits.

Neither immigration, in and of itself, nor amnesty, mean automatic citizenship. Congress is constitutionally authorized to establish and enforce specific requirements to become a citizen, and a foreign-born individual does not become a citizen without meeting those require- ments. If this rule were followed, the melting pot for which this country has been famous would then be honored and immigrants would and could assimilate into the nation as they did so long ago before all of the government control on individuals began.

There is no need for a temporary worker program either. Government only needs to see to it that voluntary employment contracts are enforced. This will reduce the number sneaking across the border since individuals could come to the United States voluntarily. The reason so many sneak across is because of all of the government controls on immigration, just like there is so much criminal activity resulting from all of the government control on drugs.

As President Bush mentioned in his speech last week, every individual does have dignity and value, no matter what their citizenship papers say, but they can only have value and dignity if individuals are treated as such.

Demanding an individual's papers and submitting the individual to government scrutiny, being threatened at the point of a gun, being spied upon by technologically advanced equipment, putting additional troops at the border and building additional fences and walls do not exude value and dignity. It breeds contempt and animosity and creates the environment for a police state where both citizens and noncitizens are spied upon and asked for their papers. Not exactly the free society the United States claims to be.

The idea of individual liberty to solve the existing government control/immigration situation might be considered radical and preposterous, but then the idea of the earth revolving around the sun was considered just as radical and preposterous at one time.

Individual liberty and freedom, not government control, does not make the world perfect, but it does reduce the level of antagonism and provides a greater environment for peace.

If the immigration situation is to be solved, it is going to require a lot less government.

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Howard J. Blitz is a local libertarian and
president of The Freedom Library Inc.,
2435 S. 8th Ave. His e-mail address is
info@freedomlibrary.org