It's not an 'invasion,' but immigration needs attention

Article IV of the Constitution states that in addition to guaranteeing to every state a republican form of government, it also guarantees to “protect each of them against invasion.â€

By failing to secure our borders since 9/11, has the government failed to protect states like Arizona and therefore the entire nation against invasion? Not an invasion of illegal immigrants, but an invasion of those enemies who can and do cross the open borders along with them.

Of course, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had neither illegal immigrants nor terrorists in mind when they drafted Article IV. They were thinking of Red Coats streaming over the Canadian border or attacking from ships anchored off the Atlantic coast. And they surely couldn’t envision a time when a handful of men could seize airliners and kill thousands of Americans in minutes.

In 1994, Arizona (yes, Arizona) cited Article IV when it sued the federal government to recover a modest $121 million it said the state was owed to keep illegal immigrants in Arizona prisons. A federal appeals court threw out the suit, ruling Arizona — and California, which had joined the suit — were not being invaded by a hostile, foreign power. Three years later, the Supreme Court refused to consider Arizona’s appeal.

But on Sept. 11, 2001, our ideas about wars and invasions changed for all time when 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger jet airliners and crashed them into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000. Only the size of the invasion force made it different from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that killed a similar number of Americans.

Sadly, the fact that unknown numbers of terrorists can be among the millions who illegally breach our borders has made no more of an impression on those elected to uphold the Constitution than it had on the pre-9/11 courts.

The House has passed immigration reform, but the last time the United States Senate, that most deliberative body, made a serious attempt to do anything about the 12 or 20 million undocumented immigrants already here and the millions more en route, was in 2007.

The bill, a thoughtful, bipartisan effort, combined upgraded border protection and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. It had the support of President Bush and prominent senators from both parties like Edward Kennedy and Lindsey Graham. Both Hispanic senators, Democrat Ken Salazar and Republican Mel Martinez, favored the bill, as did the two Arizona Republicans, John McCain and Jon Kyl, yet it failed.

It failed because it couldn’t attract the support of the party bases and special interests. It was attacked on the right as being soft on illegals, for granting “amnesty†to those who illegally came here seeking work and rewarding them for violating the law. Civil rights groups on the left attacked a guest worker program that they feared would create a permanent underclass of workers, and unions balked at the specter of nonunion immigrants competing for jobs. It was picked to death, failed four cloture votes and was abandoned, some say prematurely, by the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who informed reporters, “the bill’s over with, the bill’s gone.â€

As David Broder recalled last week in The Washington Post, a disappointed Edward Kennedy asked those who killed the bill what they proposed to do next.

“What are they going to do with the 12 million who are undocumented here? Send them back to countries around the world? Develop a type of Gestapo here to seek out these people that are in the shadows?â€

Last month, Arizona adopted the Gestapo alternative and in doing so, got the attention of that great deliberative body once again. Leader Reid, who killed the 2007 bill before its time, now needs Hispanic voters to save his elective neck back home in Nevada, so he’s willing to try again.

But don’t bet on immigration reform succeeding this election year, no matter how dangerous ignoring it may be.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.