IMMIGRATION REFORM
1) Immediate and unconditional citizenship will be extended to all persons born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants or brought here as young children, the only life they have known;
2) A one-time last-ever conditional amnesty and citizenship will be offered to the approximately 11.4 million immigrants now illegally in the USA if, and only if, they register, apply, and comply with all the amnesty requirements for becoming legal U.S. citizens;
3) Deportation and lifetime debarment will be applied to any immigrant who manages to enter our nation illegally, or who otherwise violates our fair and just immigration laws and procedures including failure to comply with all terms of the conditional amnesty;
4) Fines will be levied against U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants, with severe penalties for employers who exploit poor, vulnerable workers and pay slave wages while claiming they can’t find Americans willing to work;
5) New Regional Population Carrying Capacity Assessments (RPCPA) by the federal government will guide regional planning and development policies of federal and state agencies through this century.
6) Illegal immigration across the southern U.S. border will be eliminated by creating military bases along the entire border and staffing them with returnees from the thousand-plus units presently deployed and encamped in other nations around the world. Routine encampment security will be augmented by electronic ground and satellite surveillance along 100% of the U.S.-Mexico border.
A few details
The U.S. Census Bureau will determine how many humans can be accommodated in each region/subregion of the USA subject to the current status of 1) Earth “carrying capacity” in each undeveloped region/subregion of the USA, and 2) earth/industrial/commercial carrying capacity in each developed region/subregion. These data will be directly shared with every local government nationwide.
Congress will set U.S. yearly immigration quotas annually at a specified fraction of the nation’s remaining carrying capacity selected to ensure ample large undeveloped tracts for a century ahead. The Department of State will administer visas, and immigration applicants with more skills and education will be favored over applicants with less skills and education.
New immigrants legally entered will be accepted subject to their agreement to settle in areas that aren’t overpopulated relative to assessed carrying capacity, and to remain there at least five years.
All foreign “guest worker” programs are abolished effective immediately. Agricultural employers who complain that they can’t find Americans willing to do the work will find they have no problem at all after they’re required to start paying a decent Living Wage.
Henceforth all illegal border crossers will be acquainted with our rules on legal immigration and immediately put back across the border they just breached with advice to deal with their own countries’ problems instead of adding to ours.
All American military bases in foreign nations—now numbering in the hundreds or thousands but unknown publicly—will all be brought home and reestablished along our entire southern border with Mexico. All (which means “all”) illegal border crossings will be eliminated by the border’s new 100% military presence, augmented by ground and space electronic surveillance technology rendering it impossible for any living thing to remain undetected in and near the border corridor.
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Immigration and our national policies governing immigration—or the lack of them—have become terrible divisive political issues in the United States. They fester and boil, they invite outrage pro and con, while year after year nothing gets resolved one way or another. Such unsolved problems are tearing apart the civic unity required for our nation and our democratic method to endure. As dividers, immigrants and resentment of them are way down there with abortion, gun rights, and senseless mass murders of innocents using guns.
If we don’t want our nation to fail, these problems must be resolved. If we lack the moxie to resolve them, we deserve what we get. We’ve resolved far worse than these in our time as a nation—say, for example, between December 1941 and May 1945—and I believe we can do it again. Our military buildup during the twelve months following Pearl Harbor, that alone, was miraculous. And not all of our heroes are dead.
In this brief writing I describe what I feel sure would be a lasting solution to our immigration problem. While few of its ideas may be called entirely new, the comprehensive structure within which its seven parts reside and interrelate is completely new in ways I have seen nowhere in anyone’s writings or thoughts.
My proposal is presented here as one section of a legislative act of Congress—an invention purely my own that I call by its acronym “CaFMaC.” The compleat CaFMaC Act in its encompassing ninety-five sections (with Martin Luther’s little precedent in mind) appears in my book POPULIST CORRECTIONS. The book is available for purchase, or may be perused scot-free in semi-proofed version on this very website. Amongst the entire 95 sections, immigration reform is only number 36. CaFMaC’s corrections fix a lot of wrongs, and show us how good things could be were they righted.
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The Capitalist Free Market Corrections Act (CaFMaC )
Section 36. Plain English for the Voting Citizen: 1) A new federal agency will determine how many humans can be accommodated in every section of the USA, and will pass this understanding of Earth “carrying capacity” to every local jurisdiction nationwide. 2) From now on, U.S. yearly immigration quotas will be set, untainted by xenophobic bigotry, in accordance with the nation’s remaining carrying capacity. 3) Legal immigrants will be accepted subject to their agreement to settle only in areas that aren’t overpopulated, and to remain there at least five years. 4) All foreign “guest worker” programs are to be immediately abolished; it’s hard enough trying to ensure jobs for all our own citizens who were born legal, and agricultural employers who complain that they can’t find Americans willing to do the work will find they have no problem at all after they’re required to start paying a decent Living Wage. 5) A one-time, last-ever general amnesty will accept the existing millions of illegal immigrants if, and only if, they register and comply with all the rules for becoming legal U.S. citizens. 6) Henceforth all illegal border crossers will be acquainted with our rules on legal immigration and immediately put back across the border they just breached with advice to deal with their own countries’ problems instead of adding to ours. 7) U.S. military base placements along our full southern border will eliminate the vast majority of illegal border crossings.
The Legislative version: There is hereby created the United States Environmental Carrying Capacity (USECC) project. The USECC shall within one (1) year quantitatively establish and thereafter annually update the environmental and infrastructural carrying capacity for density of human occupation in every census district, county, state and region in the United States. Under policy direction and supervision of the Cooperative Research and Technological Development Administration (CRTDA), the USEC Project shall be implemented by the U.S. Census Bureau with advice and unqualified support from the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the National Interest Advisory Council (NIAC), from every other federal department and agency the NIAC identifies as possessing relevant data and information, and from all universities, libraries, commercial enterprises and institutions of every nature which possess relevant and objective data and information, and concealing or withholding of such information from the USECC shall be a felony.
All four hundred twenty three (423) national parks, all state parks, and all wetlands, forests, arid lands, and other environmentally protected and/or designated environmentally at-risk lands and wildlife habitats of every nature and designation throughout the United States shall be exempted and excluded from the USECC project’s designation of carrying capacities. For all other areas clear distinction shall be made between carrying capacity of the natural environment per se, and carrying capacity of manmade infrastructure such as but not limited to bridges, schools and levees which have aged to obsolescence and/or danger-of-use because of failure at any level of government to properly maintain or replace that aging infrastructure. The project shall highlight all areas and infrastructure which at present are either above or below their environmental carrying capacity, and this information shall be made widely available free of charge to public media, federal agencies, state governments and other institutions of every nature.
The Congress hereby acknowledges that the United States population is maldistributed and, in common with most other nations, is locally overpopulated beyond the environmental and infrastructural carrying capacity in many geographical regions, urban and rural areas. Effective upon passage of this Act the annually designated sum of all by-country quotas for legal foreign immigration into the United States shall be set strictly on a basis of the aggregate carrying capacity of our nation’s environment and infrastructure without reference to immigration’s impact, or lack of it, on the U.S. economy or on economic growth. Secondary and tertiary immigration priorities, such as but not limited to educational and technical expertise, economic contribution potential and humanitarian considerations, shall be subordinate to first-priority emphasis on the carrying capacity of environment and infrastructure, and in no United States region shall that capacity be exceeded by acceptance of new foreign immigrants into that region.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service shall adopt new guidelines for accepting legal immigrants subject to immigrants’ agreement to settle in a subregion that is not already so overpopulated, and to remain in that sub-region for not less than five years, and the U.S. Department of Labor shall assist such immigrants to find employment and housing in such sub-region. Given this Act’s requirement that all co-op employees shall be United States citizens, a foreign national legally present in the United States and seeking employment may be employed only by private entrepreneurships until such time as that immigrant acquires U.S. citizenship. Universal Adequate Living Wage provisions required by this Act shall equally apply to every immigrant employment situation.
Foreign guest worker programs of every nature and description are herewith abolished. The Congress hereby acknowledges that the H-1 and H-2 temporary worker visa programs, in all their iterations and varieties of so-called guest worker arrangements, constitute a nefarious device which many U.S. employers have knowingly used and continue to use to exploit, rob and abuse foreign temporary workers, to use these programs to suppress wages to intolerably low levels and thereby to drive these jobs out of the normal U.S. job market whereby they could otherwise be filled by U.S. citizens, while using circular argument to claim that they must import foreign temporary workers because U.S. workers decline to work in these low-wage jobs. The Congress further notes that the Adequate Living Wage requirement mandated by this Act would soon render these programs moot in any case, and that this Act sets forth appropriate penalties for U.S. employers who criminally exploit their own government to brutalize and exploit their fellow humans who aspire only to raise their lives above destitution.
Enforcement of U.S. laws prohibiting illegal immigration shall be reinforced by the many military units returned or returning home from foreign deployments, as provided in this Act, by their strategic placement in encampments along U.S. land borders with 1) Mexico and 2) Canada, by securing U.S. ports and air terminals, and by patrolling U.S. coastal waters. Upon implementation of these actions the shores, ports, air terminals and land borders of the United States shall be rigorously managed to ensure that the only immigrants entering this country are those who fully comply with our reasonable immigration laws and rules, thereby showing their respect for U.S. laws and their worthiness to seek U.S. citizenship by behaving as law-abiding citizens from the outset. Any U.S. citizen displaying disrespect for our nation’s reasonable immigration laws and rules by hiring illegal immigrants as cheap labor in violation of U.S. labor and immigration laws shall, upon conviction, be sentenced to eighteen (18) months in Poverty School.
Congress hereby declares a one-time general amnesty, to be conducted during the twelve (12) months following passage of this Act, to accommodate those foreign nationals illegally resident in the United States who register and fully comply with all amnesty regulations and provisions, including enrollment in the process for becoming legal United States citizens, learning English as a second language and acquiring legal employment.
Effective upon expiration of this general amnesty and thereafter, excepting only foreign nationals who hold diplomatic immunity or visa privileges, any foreign national found to be in violation of the provisions of this nation’s one-time amnesty, or of any other U.S. legal immigration requirement, shall be acquainted with our rules on legal immigration and then immediately deported to the country of origin, with the sole exception that if a designated deportee declares that deportation to the home country threatens life or liberty, that declaration shall be adjudicated by a Deportation Special Review Board (DSRB) hereby established within the Department of State for that purpose and, if the DSRB sustains the deportee’s declaration, that refugee may be granted temporary asylum at a specified location, and with a specified limited range of movement, within the United States for up to two years subject to readjudication.
Upon termination of this general amnesty, and without exception, no person who thereafter enters the United States by illegal means of any nature may, for their remaining lifetime, be granted asylum, apply for citizenship, or qualify for visa privileges.
With this measure it is the intent of Congress, to the benefit of the common good of the nation and of equal treatment and opportunity for all U.S. citizens as well as all foreign immigrants, to terminate once and for all the disruptive uncertainties resulting from uncontrolled hordes of immigration abetted by U.S. employers who flout the national interest and common good by exploiting ultra-cheap labor of illegal and vulnerable foreign immigrants.
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