5 Reasons Illegal Immigrants Shouldn't Be Given American Citizenship

5 Reasons Illegal Immigrants Shouldn't Be Given American Citizenship
John Hawkins
Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Over the last few months most conservatives have quite naturally been distracted by Barack Obama's frightening incompetence, his elephantine spending, and his zealous attempts to swallow as much of the private sector as the government beast can stuff down its gaping maw. But while the cat's away, the mice will play. The little feet you may have been hearing pitter-patter back into the public square? They belong to advocates of amnesty for illegal aliens. Oh, they don't necessarily call it that. They call it comprehensive immigration reform, earned legalization, a path to citizenship -- but, it all amounts to the same thing: rewarding people for breaking our laws.

On behalf of the overwhelming majority of the conservative movement and the American people, let me say, "Not just ‘no,’ but ‘Hell, no’" to giving illegal immigrants American citizenship.

Now, I know what the response to this will be: "You must hate Hispanics!" Actually, it doesn't matter where the illegals are from; they're not welcome here. But, but, but...it'll help the GOP with Hispanics to support amnesty! Tell that to John McCain, who bombed with Hispanics despite being the Republican most associated with amnesty. Well, then you must not want any immigrants in this country! What a despicable argument. Comparing an illegal alien to someone who loves and respects this country enough to come here the right way is like comparing a burglar to an adopted son.

Let me tell you exactly why illegal immigrants shouldn't be given American citizenship.

1) It will only encourage more illegal immigrants to come here. We've already had a "one time only" amnesty deal for illegals. It occurred during the Reagan Administration and the idea was supposed to be that we'd allow the illegals who were here to become citizens and we'd simultaneously beef up security to try to keep the problem from occurring again. Well, guess what? That very bipartisan sounding compromise didn't work. To the contrary, it failed miserably. So why in the world would anyone who actually wants to stop illegal immigration want to try something that has already been proven to be counterproductive? We have far more illegals in America today than we did when the "one time" amnesty went through. Do we want 20 million illegals here when the next amnesty goes through? 30 million? Are we going to be accused of racism if we say the next huge wave of illegals shouldn't be given citizenship either? Where does it end?

2) Illegal aliens take jobs from American citizens. The economy stinks. American citizens are out of work. People are going out every day looking for jobs to support their family and they're coming home empty handed. Meanwhile, there are illegal aliens in this country holding jobs that American citizens would otherwise have. "Oh, but those are jobs Americans won't do!" There's no such thing. There's no job in this country that couldn't be filled if every illegal disappeared tomorrow -- but, here's the catch: the crooked business owners who are knowingly hiring the illegals might have to pay what the job is worth instead of hiring people who let everyone else pay their health care, pay their car insurance, and pay their share of the taxes.

3) We're importing poverty. It's no secret that the majority of illegals are uneducated manual laborers. In fact, that's supposed to be one of their selling points, isn't it? Don't advocates of amnesty say we need illegals to do the dirty, hard, manual labor that "Americans won't do?" But even if that were true, which it’s not, people with very limited skills often turn into liabilities for a society as they age. There aren't a lot of people picking oranges and scrubbing floors at fifty years old. In other words, in order to help crooked business owners get cheap labor today, the rest of society has to be burdened with people who are going to cost society far more than they ever pay in taxes. Are American taxpayers so unburdened that we want to actually bring in even more people to carry on their backs?

4) It rewards bad behavior. It's against the law to enter this country illegally. It's against the law to buy fake documents or steal someone's social security number. It's against the law not to pay your taxes. So after all of that, we're going to give people citizenship? What message does that send to all the immigrants filling out reams of paperwork, paying out significant chunks of their paychecks, and waiting for years in their home countries to finally achieve their dream of becoming an American citizen? Here's the message it sends: You're a chump! This is something you don't normally have to say to people north of five years old, but it's not smart to reward bad behavior and punish good behavior.

5) It cheapens and demeans our country. Is this Cuba? Is this Afghanistan? Is this Rwanda? Are we such a garbage dump of a nation that we have to desperately give citizenship to anybody and everybody we can find? Newsflash: This is the greatest nation God has seen fit to raise up in the history of mankind. We can not only have the cream of the crop from other nations; we can ask them to wait in line, obey our laws, and prove themselves -- and the ones worth having will do it because this is the place people all over the world dream of coming one day. American citizenship is a precious thing and it shouldn't be given to people whose first act upon American soil was to violate our laws.