Unless you’ve been living in a vacuum, by now you’re aware that S.1348, the proposed legislation on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” is now in its death throes. That’s not to say it has gone the way of the dodo just yet – it could very well be resurrected - but it’s safe to say that for now, it’s well on its way to the island of misfit and exceptionally bad legislation. For you geography buffs, that’s located in the bottom of Senator Kennedy and Senator McCain’s desk drawer.
Having watched the Senate debate the issues surrounding the legislation, I was jubilant with the result of the cloture vote. There was so much wrong with the bill, it would take an army of legal eagles to sort it all out. Virtually every news outlet in the Nation reported something “bad” about the proposal. Whether it was amnesty, legalization of convicted felons, not making English the official language of the United States, the seeming disdain for our current laws, or something else, there was something in the bill for everyone to detest.
That leads to a most interesting question; with so many things wrong with this bill, what went right? With 45 of our elected officials voting for cloture, one might think it safe to assume there must have been something right about this bill. Didn’t this legislation contain something that every American could latch on to? Wasn’t there a miniscule piece of the legislation that would make life better for all the People of our Nation? As far as I can tell, the simple answer is a resounding “no.” It would have cost us a ton of money and compromised our National security. The open borders brigade and those who seem to think aiding and abetting criminals is just fine and dandy, to use the vernacular, “got busted up.”
While there isn’t much “right” about this legislation, there is plenty “right” about our Nation. When ‘We the People’ got the ill wind of this ridiculous attempt to throw open our borders – especially the southern one - willy-nilly by those charged to do our bidding in Washington, we rose up in droves! According to some estimates, more than 700,000 people signed an on-line petition to persuade those in the Senate to vote against cloture. This is certainly something right. Senate office telephone screeners, in their home states and in Washington, were inundated with calls from angry constituents threatening to vote in another direction should their Senator vote for cloture. That’s right too. There were demonstrations by angry constituents outside the offices of numerous Senators who might have been leaning toward voting for cloture. Right again.
You see, the vast majority of Americans believe, in the most literal sense, that our government is one of, by and for the People. It might have taken a little bit of persuading from those People, but in the end, the majority of Senators got the message. As for the 45 who still don’t get it, I suspect they’ll be singing a different tune in the run-up to the next election.
This legislation was so long and complicated - it was over 360 pages long - it was virtually useless. Our elected leaders would do well to remember the beauty of simplicity. They might also consider the words of two of our most influential founders, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. In Federalist 62, Hamilton and Madison wrote “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.”
‘We the People’ have spoken, and our voices were heard loud and clear. That is as it should be. We want our current laws enforced and we want attrition through enforcement. It’s as simple as that and it only took two sentences as opposed to 360+ pages. We have immigration laws on the books and our direction should be to enforce those laws rather than make new, even more complicated ones. This is precisely what Hamilton and Madison warned against. The critics be damned; let’s try upholding the laws we already have before we attempt to re-invent the wheel.
Finally, 45 Senators voted for cloture. There were 34 Democrats and 11 Republicans. That number equates to nearly half of the U.S. Senate. With that in mind, ‘We the People’ will do well to remember the words of yet another of our Founders, those of John Adams. Adams said “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.” We should heed these words and be very wary of those we entrust with our freedom. That, too, would be very right.