Wasting Time on the Fourteenth Amendment

Not that the left or the White House has much regard for the Constitution, well, ever, so it is so ironic that they're the ones waving it around these days to defend the whole "anchor babies" situation that has swamped my columns this week.

We'd love it if the left would regard the explicit text of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights with half the reverence with which it suddenly embraces the Fourteenth.  But that won't happen, and we will still have anchor babies, unless we take a different tack to deter illegal immigration.  I have one.  It won't help reduce the 10 million illegals already here, maybe, but it will sure help the border problem.

Many years ago, according to the great 1944 Bennett Cerf book Try and Stop Me, there was a company that produced canned salmon.  Back in the day, canned salmon was a fairly popular item on the grocery shelves, so there was a good market for it.  This particular company had a reliable source of good-tasting fresh salmon and rushed it to market.

The market, alas, did not take to the product, as the salmon they were canning was a variety that was white, and the market was used to more familiar pink color in its salmon.  Rather than endure poor sales with a perfectly good competing product, they hired a clever marketing company to come up with a way to enhance the acceptability of the product.

The solution was clever, and so effective that sales soared, and the company's competitors had to sue to try to stop them in court.  What did the salmon company do?  They simply printed one line on their cans, to make customers feel better about buying a product that did not appear similar to what they were used to.  The line on the label?

"This salmon is guaranteed not to turn pink in the can."

OK, a few stories in that book may have been apocryphal, but the idea in this one is perfectly applicable.  To change people's behavior, simply make what you want them not to do a whole lot less attractive.  You want them not to buy pink salmon?  Make pink salmon sound diseased.  You want them to stop overrunning our borders illegally?  Make them pick lettuce ... OK, maybe that one won't work.

But it really isn't that hard to make it unattractive either to jump the border illegally, or to facilitate the jumping of the border illegally.  And it's a whole lot easier than amending the Constitution to fix the Fourteenth Amendment, at least if you regard Acts of Congress as relatively easier to produce.  You kind of wish that congressmen and senators really knew how to solve problems, but they don't, so sometimes we have to give them the solutions, like this.

The Illegal Immigration Discouragement Act of 2017 (you just know it won't get signed until His Majesty is retired out of the White House) would have the following provisions:

(1.) It shall be a Federal crime (felony) to pay a person illegally resident in the USA for performing any service, either as a contractor or an employee, over $600 in a single year.  This amount shall be aligned to the minimum amount for which a 1099 form must legally be filed.  Penalty shall be a minimum of ten times the amount paid for the first offense, and $1 million plus prison time for the second and subsequent offense.

(2.) It shall be a Federal crime (felony) to sell a home or rent a dwelling to a person illegally resident in the USA.  Penalty shall be a minimum of ten times the amount paid for a sale (or the amount of each year's rent) for the first offense, and $1 million plus prison time for the second and subsequent offense.

(3) It shall be a Federal crime (felony), for the mayor and all members of an elected or appointed city or town council or equivalent, to issue a law, ruling or regulation of any kind permitting employees of the jurisdiction to ignore, in any way, the United States Code regarding the tracking, incarceration, capture or retention of, or otherwise thwarting the instructions of the Department of Homeland Security in regard to the treatment of, persons illegally resident in this country.  All members of such council and the executive shall be regarded as having participated in the creation of any such law, and all are to be regarded as equally involved in the perpetration of such felony.  No Federal payment under any program may be made to such jurisdiction for any purpose whatsoever for a period of one year following the first judicial finding of such a law, ruling or regulation being created.
 
(4) No Federal payment of any personal monetary support, welfare, Social Security, Medicare or any other payment from any part of the Federal Treasury may be made to any person, not a citizen, resident illegally in the USA.

If you cut off the reward system, it becomes completely unsuitable to scramble over the border for a life where it is illegal to hire you, protect you or house you, and where the Federal government can not pay you a dime.  Voila, no more immigration problem, even without a wall, and we can go back to figuring out what to do with the ten million already here.

Of course, since they can no longer be housed, employed, protected or given taxpayer dollars, many will simply wander home on their own.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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