This post takes up a thread started in this earlier post, ADVENTURES IN ILLOGIC: TODAY FEATURING ANTI-BVBL. Alanna posted a comment I thought worthy of further exploration.
Alanna posts at ANTI-BVBL. She is sympathetic to the cause of illegal immigrants, and she holds the People of our nation culpable for their plight (see here, here, and here). While I have some sympathy for her point of view, I disagree. I blame the politicians who lied to us, the greedy people who bribed them, and the illegal immigrants who knowingly broke our laws coming here. Here is my latest reply.
Alanna – Government, no matter what the form, involves contests between rival factions. Because the Founders feared a powerful central government, they gave the Federal Government relatively little power. Moreover, to keep the government from growing more powerful, they tied it up in knots with checks and balances.
When it exercised relatively little responsibility, the People exercised fairly strong control over the Federal Government. Because there were few issues they could affect, Federal politicians ran for office on a relatively clear platform. Unfortunately, because of the poor quality of government-run education, the success in the selling of the “Living Constitution,” the increase in interstate commerce, and the way conniving incumbents have steadily worked the system to ensure their reelection, those days are long behind us.
So what happens now when we each go to the polls? Immigration control is one issue amongst many. How important is that one issue to most people? Because we are not the bigots some suggest we are, and we pity the poverty of our neighbors to the South, not very. Thus, conniving special interests, relatively unopposed, have won the day year after year. So our government barely enforces our immigration laws.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of Americans still do not want illegal immigration. They recognize the increasing costs such immigration imposes upon our society. Yet because we are not executing our system of government as the Founders intended, it is difficult for the People to exercise their will.
So what is the solution? It involves the concept of personal responsibility. Our republic works only to the extent we each accept personal responsibility. When we try to force the consequences of our decisions upon each other, we begin inching towards a totalitarian state. When nobody is responsible, then everybody starts looking for somebody to make responsible. That somebody is a tyrant, which I hope most people still want to avoid.
If each of us is to accept personal responsibility, we require a limited government. If we each are responsible for our own actions, then logic dictates a government with limited powers, one that refuses to accept responsibility for the consequences of individual’s decisions.
With a limited government, we the People can more easily hold the people we elect accountable. In the meantime, our leaders will lie to us, and they will get away with it.
I suppose there is one mitigating factor. Our leader’s lies can be audacious and entertaining. Note in her first comment (see here) Alanna provided a link to a Supreme Court decision, Pyler v. Doe. The decision in this case forced the public school system to accept the children of illegal immigrants. The decision was split 5-4 (see here). Justice Burger wrote the dissenting opinion. For the deadpan humor it contains, this section is priceless.
Without laboring what will undoubtedly seem obvious to many, it simply is not “irrational” for a state to conclude that it does not have the same responsibility to provide benefits for persons whose very presence in the state and this country is illegal as it does to provide for persons lawfully present. By definition, illegal aliens have no right whatever to be here, and the state may reasonably, and constitutionally, elect not to provide them with governmental services at the expense of those who are lawfully in the state. [n11] In De Canas v. Bica, 424 U.S. 351, 357 (1976), we held that a State may protect its
fiscal interests and lawfully resident labor force from the deleterious effects on its economy resulting from the employment of illegal aliens.
And, only recently, this Court made clear that a State has a legitimate interest in protecting and preserving the quality of its schools and “the right of its own bona fide residents to attend such institutions on a preferential tuition basis.” Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U.S. 441, 453 (1973) (emphasis added). See also Elkins v. Moreno, 435 U.S. 647, 663-668 (1978). The Court has failed to offer even a plausible explanation why illegality of residence [p251] in this country is not a factor that may legitimately bear upon the bona fides of state residence and entitlement to the benefits of lawful residence. [n12] (from here)
