Tragedy in Arizona. SB1070 will become Law today. And it didn't have to be...

The story of SB1070 is a testimony of the complete and utter failure of the United States federal government to come up with a sane solution to the problem of illegal immigration.

Let's call a spade a spade right now. Illegal immigration is actually a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. I have no hard facts or statistics to back up my next statement, but reason and prudence dictates that over 99.9999% of the people who have entered our country illegally are doing so out of desperation to find a job, any job that will put food on their family's dinner table and maybe put a decent roof over their heads. And it's American greed, on the part of private individuals and on the part of American business interests.

The homeowner that has an undocumented worker trim and maintain their yard or property because they can get the work done at a low cost is guilty for this problem.

The business that employs undocumented workers by sharing taxpayer SSN or EIN numbers, or pays them under the table for low wages is guilty for this problem.

The Latin-American community, and especially the Mexican-American community are guilty because they have done absolutely nothing to help stem the tide and in fact are actively involved in protecting them. What infuriates me is that they constantly paint this issue as evidence of racism by the government. State Senator Russel Pearce has stated frequently that "illegal immigrant" is not a race issue. It's a crime. Somehow, it seems that illegal immigrants have some kind of "right" to live here in the United States. Nothing is further from the truth. If you are not born a U.S. citizen, then you must earn the privilege. And that can't be done while living in the shadows.

The federal government is in a real rough place. Back in the 1980's, Pres. Reagan granted amnesty to roughly two million illegals, with the understanding that the gates to the country would then become more strongly guarded. Businesses and private citizens alike claim that they need the low labor costs that undocumented workers provide in order to stay competitive. And yet, the federal government has a Constitutional responsibility to be able to track the activities of every alien currently in our country.

So the federal government has done nothing for over twenty years. The number of illegal aliens in our nation has grown from an estimated two million in the 1980s to somewhere between twelve and twenty million today. The vast majority of these people are working in hotels, fast food restaurants and in the agricultural sector. But that doesn't change the fact the government has no visibility to what these people are doing in our country.

In Arizona, five of the last eight police officers who were killed in the line of duty were killed by illegal immigrants, most of whom were involved in illegal drugs or human trafficking. Additionally, in just the last couple of months the murders of several southern Arizona ranchers have been tied to drug runners who are Mexican nationals.

I want to make my position perfectly clear. SB1070 is bad legislation and bad law. I believe that it will be challenged as being in violation of Constitutional guaranteed rights to protection from illegal search/seizure. I believe that it will open the door to many instances of racial profiling. I should point out that racial profiling works, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a violation of basic civil rights.

But what is Arizona to do? Our officers and citizens are being killed by Mexican nationals who are in our state illegally. The federal government is doing very little to stem the flow across our border. It is also doing nearly nothing to help those who desparately want to work in the United States but who are also not U.S. citizens.

Catholic churches are strangely aligned with human traffickers and their drop-houses by providing sanctuary to illegal aliens. The Church is doing so for very human and compassionate reasons. The human traffickers have very different reasons. They are protecting valuable assets, nothing more than human "cattle" in their eyes.

To add insult to injury, the federal government in the form of President Obama calls SB1070 to be misguided. I disagree with that entirely. I believe that SB1070 is actually a sign of desperation, a sign of a state legislature and governor who has pleaded with the federal government for help. If the federal government would step up to the plate and actually perform it's constitutionally mandated duty to both enforce our border security as well as to provide a mechanism for people who want to work here to let them do so.

So, what would I do if I were King of America?

1. I would give American businesses until Jan 1, 2012 to verify that every single employee can be verified to either be a United States citizen or a foreign national that has a valid work-visa. After that date, any business found to employ undocumented foreign nationals will be fined daily at a rate of $100 per day per undocumented worker until the employees are terminated. Failure to solve the problem within 30 days will result in progressively higher fines and/or suspension/termination of business licenses.
2. I would provide an application process where a foreign national (but specifically Mexicans) could apply for a work visa from their own home. They would have to provide their respective national ID number. The U.S. government would have one month, upon receipt of the application, to determine if the applicant has a criminal history or pending criminal case. Upon approval, the applicant would be directed to a valid port of entry, whereupon after paying an application fee of $350.00, they would have full fingerprinting, a photograph taken. That information would then be immediately registered in a federal database. The applicant could then stay in the country for the duration of the visa provided that they checked in with ICE every 90-120 days.
3. Deportees would go into a federal database, along with their fingerprints. Once in this database, it would become part of the e-verify system, and being flagged as a deportee should be an automatic "do not hire" flag.
4. Once the applicant is an approved alien worker, they can immediately go on the list to become a United States citizen.
   

I'm sure there's more.... but that's a start.