Inger Eberhart in the Marietta Daily Journal today

Inger Eberhart/Letter to the Editor: ‘Path to citizenship’ would reward law-breakers
Published: 06/24/2009

Dear editor,

I’m glad letter writer Tim Tanko (“Open-borders foes not racist, but path to citizenship is needed,” Sunday’s MDJ) noted that there is nothing un-American about standing up for secure borders and an equal application of American immigration and employment laws.

He correctly notes that the constant name-calling from the open borders, anti-enforcement extremists has rendered the words “hate” and “racist” all but meaningless. Not that the fact stops them from spewing their own vicious “hate speech” in place of any reasonable argument against the majority of Americans who want controlled, sustainable and lawfully regulated immigration.

I can attest to the fact that anyone who stands up to the open borders crowd will be called many ugly and ridiculous names.

That being noted, I must respectfully but adamantly disagree with Mr. Tanko and anyone who thinks the way to handle illegal aliens in the United States is to reward them with American citizenship.

The constant false argument advanced by the amnesty-again charlatans is it would be difficult to deport 20 million illegal aliens in a short period of time, so there is only one other option: legalization and citizenship.

This is a false argument. It is nonsense and it is dangerous.
The reasonable third choice for solving the illegal immigration problem is to work toward the gradual but steady attrition of the illegal population through enforcement of the laws already in place.

We tried legalization in 1986. We have proven beyond all doubt that it does not stop illegal immigration.

The open borders lobby points us to what works at stopping illegal immigration with their objections to any and all actual enforcement of the law. We know enforcement works. In literally every community where it is tried, illegal aliens leave.

The illegal immigration crisis, now being all but ignored by the media in hopeful preparation for the Obama amnesty scheme took more than 30 years to develop. It cannot and will not be solved overnight.

Local law enforcement’s use of tools like the now 13-year-old federal 287(g) program which locates illegal aliens who have landed in county jails for crimes in addition to illegal immigration, works. It not only gets results in their deportation, but also causes many illegal aliens who migrate to friendlier counties in fear of apprehension.

Use of the federal E-Verify database to ensure that American jobs go to eligible employees and use of the SAVE program to be sure that public benefits are distributed to legal residents both result in illegal aliens leaving communities where they are used.

It is enforcement of our laws that stops and deters crime, including illegal immigration. Having tried rewarding illegals with a path to citizenship in 1986, it is past time that we try strict and fair enforcement of existing laws as a method of controlling that crime.

Rewarding criminals with exactly what they broke the law to obtain is not a workable or sensible method of stopping criminal behavior.

Another legalization and a path to citizenship program would be sending a message all over the world that to become an American citizen all one needs to do is to break into the USA and wait for the next amnesty.

There is more to being an American than being able to escape our Border Patrol Agents and depend on the illegal alien lobby to smear real Americans who support secure borders.

Inger Eberhart

Acworth

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