That question came up during the fight over the census a couple of years ago – do you count “people” or citizens? The Constitution does not use the term “citizen”, it specifically says things like “counting the whole number of persons “, or “people”, as in “People of the several States” and “right of the people”.
I was hiking with my wife and the dogs today and sort of listening to the Steve Deace Show in one ear and one of the topics was whether the Constitution should be amended to change the reference to “people” and “persons” to “citizens”.
And I thought about that for the rest of the day – well, it was not at the front of my mind - but there was at least part of one of the core processors the aliens installed when I was abducted working on it. I was a little surprised at the output.
It got me to thinking about how illegal immigration, and how and why America has assumed a defensive/bunker mentality about it. I researched immigration up till WWII – Ellis Island (1892 to 1954) and Clinton Castle before that – and illegal immigration was not a huge deal until the post-WWII era.
It certainly was not even a real consideration until President Dwight D. Eisenhower, newly elected in 1954, initiated the largest single deportation effort in American history on Operation Wetback. When Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a sieve. By modern standards, the flow of illegal aliens was not terribly large, somewhere between 3 and 4 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points unknown.
Up until Ellis Island closed and Operation Wetback was initiated, immigration was largely an offensive action, people were screened for diseases, skills that could lead to jobs so that the immigrants would not immediately go on the public dole and political radicalism – to avoid agitation against American society and government. The incentive was always to make them citizens.
So, what changed?
Our government changed. Beginning with the FDR regime, government started increasing its reach and control over society. It continued to expand the welfare state and who could access it all the way up until today – with the current president seeking to expand it even more.
And government changed its view of citizens vs. non-citizens. Today, non-citizens (i.e., illegal aliens):
Receive standing in the courts citizens do not get.
Have access to resources (financial aid, welfare, and healthcare) citizens cannot access.
Receive sanctuary and protections citizens do not.
Are not subject to the same laws as citizens.
Are not subject to the same taxation as citizens.
Often get preferential treatment at colleges and universities.
Are counted toward allocated House seats, changing the balance of power between the states.
None for which are they responsible - government made discrimination between the categories relevant. If you are a citizen, certain things are required of you that are not required of non-citizens.
That is why we have become defensive.
If you consider it in total, it makes rational sense. Before government began to differentiate between the classes, nobody really cared if all the applicable laws were followed – and up until the state began to grow (implementing income, social security, and other taxes, plus minimum wages and welfare programs) – there were a minimum of laws. People crossing the border were true migrants, not illegal aliens (the US government created that class).
If a migrant from Mexico City opened a carpentry business or a dude from Paris opened an art studio, as long as they did not have a communicable disease, it seems to me that pretty much no one cared, largely because government did not have a claim on their productivity or planned to redistribute the productivity of the citizens in exchange for political advantage.
There is now an incentive NOT to make immigrants into citizens because Democrats derive power from the manufactured conflict.
I am 100% in support of legal immigration if America maintains an offensive approach, the same as we did in the Ellis Island decades – but I am 100% against open borders, especially given the Democrats traditional approach to it. Under those rules – like those under the Biden administration - a defensive approach is subject to manipulation and is as leaky as a screen door on a submarine.
Milton Friedman called it – you can have a welfare state or an open border, you cannot have both.
Absolutely right! European concessions to unlimited migration should be a warning to us. Look at the French military’s letters to French leadership. Are they all wrong?