Supporter of Bush’s Guest Worker Program

I support President George W. Bush’s immigration program which would provide a guest worker program which would allow workers to move back and forth across the border, and not trapped in the USA even if they preferred to spend most of the year in Mexico.

The US Senate Judiciary Committee reported out a bill that would strengthen border security, require illegal immigrants to identify themselves, pass a background check, pay a fine and any back taxes, required to learn English and, only if their employer cannot fill the job with an American citizen be legally employed.

I think it’s unfair to call this amnesty. After admitting to have committed a crime, the slate may be wiped clean, but not immediately. Their penalty, as in many non-violent crimes, is to pay a fine. Importantly, there is a path to citizenship, but after those already in line for legal naturalization.

I would add two additional provisions to this law:
■ No longer would children born to illegal aliens while in the United States automatically be considered US citizens
■ When naturalized, new US citizens would have to renounce their prior citizenship; no dual citizenship would be allowed

Maybe a third:
■ Require ballots in United States elections to be in English only

Some may think they know that the Constitution mandates that any person born in the United States is a citizen. See Letter-to-the-Editor to the Wall Street Journal December 7, 2005 from Dr. John C. Eastman Chapman University School of Law. He’s one of the “Smart-Guys” frequently interviewed on the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show

Subscription is required but Dr. Eastman’s letter Constitution's Citizenship Clause Misread includes:

- The 14th Amendment provides that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens . . . ."
- “The clause must therefore mean something much more -- an allegiance-owing jurisdiction.”
- “The author of the provision, Sen. Jacob Howard, announced that the clause ‘will not, of course, include foreigners’."
- “The Supreme Court first considered the clause in the Slaughter-House Cases of 1872, unanimously recognizing that the phrase ‘was intended to exclude from its operation children of . . . citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States’."
- “Congress retains the power to offer citizenship more broadly than the Constitution requires, of course, pursuant to its plenary authority over naturalization.”
- “..determining that the Constitution also mandates automatic citizenship to children of temporary, illegal immigrants not only presses the Constitution's text beyond the breaking point, but significantly intrudes on Congress's plenary power over naturalization.”