Alan Keye's Speech Continued...
Now, does it strike you as fair that after all this time building and defending a country in which we can sustain a certain quality of life, and in which we gave been able to work out a system where we don't allow a wealthy few to keep the wealth from circulating into the hands of all the people who helped to produce it--do you think after working so hard to produce that result, we should stand by and allow an immigration policy that has as its explicit purpose the objective of cheapening labor in this country?
Have we lost our minds?
I really don't understand what's going on here. And when I listen to folks tell me that there are some union leaders championing the cause of illegal immigration, I just scratch my head. I suppose these are folks who sort of feel like if we all get into a situation of oppression again, we'll feel like we have more need of them. But I, frankly, would like to celebrate the idea that working together, we can make life better in this country, and that we don't have to do it by making us all so miserable first.
But that is part of what has motivated folks: slavish service to these narrow, special, economic interests, while ignoring the broad and clear interests shared by our whole people in maintaining and bettering, not lowering, the quality and standard of life in America.
I have to tell you, from firsthand experience, this is a quality and standard of life that a lot of people around the world either envy or resent. And that's not just folks in "poor countries," as they say. I can remember listening to folks in Europe getting on their high horse, talking about how Americans are too well off, and we're too pampered, and we ought to be paying more for gas, and we ought not to have these big houses. Most Americans get used to a certain square footage around them that people in Europe would die of envy to have.
And yet, we think they're going to be over there applauding us and thinking it's wonderful, but no. They're saying, "Let's drag them down to our level."
So, when you hear these politicians talking about internationalism and globalism, you might keep this in mind. When you are the exceptional country, that kind of globalism could mean that you're going to be brought down to the lower standard that is the rule for most humanity. And I don't believe this is supposed to be our destiny.
The kind of hope we have responded to is not that we are going to be a city on the same plane as everybody else, but we shall be that city on the hill which raises the hopes, raises the aspirations, raises the ambition of humanity. This is what we have done, this is what we should do in the future, and we should not now be induced to abandon this mission!
[applause]
Now, in addition to the economic "why," there is the political "why." And that political "why" is that some politicians sniff in the air and start thinking to themselves, "Well, if I pander to this group or that group, then I'm going to get votes. If I could create a fast track to citizenship for this or that group, then once folks become citizens, in gratitude, they'll keep giving me their vote, and I'll get power."
I have to tell you, I think that insofar as that is truly a part--and it certainly is--of the present disconnect between the leadership politically and the grassroots people on an issue like this of border security and control, I think it goes deeper than just the border. It means that we have political leaders who are more interested in expanding their coalition of power than they are in preserving constitutional self-government in America. They have a stronger allegiance to the selfish interests that can help build them up than they do to the Constitution, established by the sovereign people of this country, that they are now with their foolish neglect and their malicious abandonment willing to tear down.
And that suggests that, as much as it might pain us to think about it, we need to lay before the elites who are offering us this kind of nonsense a simple and clear challenge, and that challenge, my friends, is that they should remember their oath.
It's really very simple. Do you realize that every official in America--whether they are at the national level, the state level, the local level--everybody in this country, when they go into official office have to swear an oath that includes an oath of allegiance to preserve, protect, or in some form of words, uphold and support the Constitution of the United States.
[applause]
Last time I looked, that was there everywhere. Up and down the line, their first order of business is to preserve our institutions of liberty, not to sacrifice them in principle or in fact so that they can hold on to their power.
And when you find a generation of political leaders on an issue so vital to our national security who are willing to sacrifice the interest of the sovereign people who made the Constitution in order to build up the power that they hope will allow them to rule over this people, it is time to let them go!
[applause]
Now, I realize that this is the point in my talk where some folks would be--and this is particularly true of some of the adversaries on this issue, after you've lead people through this, and they've realized, I think, that there's a lot of power, there's just some commonsense power in what we've been sharing tonight. And it's not something difficult. It doesn't require that you spend years of study or anything. This is very simple stuff. If you want to have a country, you gotta know where the borders are.
[laughter]
If you want to have borders, you've got to defend them.
Oh, yes! Good.
If you want to have laws, you must enforce them.
Simple little things like this, which make you wonder how they could have forgotten. Well, they haven't forgotten, they've just been looking the other way. So, they know that at this level, they're defeated. At this level, they are convicted of years of neglect, of incompetence, of malicious and willful abuse of the national interest of our people.
And I'll tell you, this message has finally started to get through in Washington. We have a lot of political leaders running scared.
I think this is one of those cases where you shouldn't just allow a little trace of fear to be out there. I think we ought to take to heart some of the examples that our Lord, Himself, gives in the Bible. Yes, He sets out the rules and He lays the blessings and curses out, and sometimes He'll send a prophet or two to really let you know there will be some bad consequences if you keep going down that road. And then every now and again, guess what? If you just are so stubborn that you've got to keep on ignoring, He'll just let the consequences hit you.
Now, I think it's about time, if the people of this country still want to govern themselves that we look especially at an egregious situation like immigration, we are long past the point where these people need a warning shot across the bow. We're at the point where you'd better let them know that they shape up, or we will kick them out!
[applause]
And the only way, the only way, absolutely the only way that they will get this message is that you have got to pick a choice few and kick them out! You've got to let them know that you mean business.
Now, I am not going to suggest, I wouldn't want anybody to accuse me of standing here suggesting tonight that folks in Utah have an opportunity for that little demonstration.
[laughter]
Far be it for me to say this!
Now, I wouldn't want to put my paltry little understanding on the line against that of the folks who live in this state, but I've had the great pleasure of working with and knowing a great many folks from Utah, and they really know how to smell the coffee when they wake up.
[laughter]
I don't think I have to belabor this point, do you? I hope not! See, because this is a service that could be done for America.
But we're at the point now when, in addition to things like that, people will be asking, "Well, then what do we do?" That's what the media is always fond of asking. And they always act as if you should address this question in terms of the way it has been framed by the President and by others. And they've framed it as, "Well, we've got to do something about this population of illegal immigrants." I keep thinking to myself, this is interesting. Have you ever been warned against the folks who show up at your front door to help you put out the fire that they've just got through setting in your backyard?
[laughter]
I often think that that's a good caution, see. Because, you accept help from people on those terms, you might just encourage them--and that will lead to a lot of burning in your backyard, if you're not careful.
That's the situation we have right now. We have a bunch of political leaders who have spent the last several decades creating this enormous mess and who now tell us that the top priority of our lives is to clean up this mess!
And I'm thinking to myself, no, gentlemen, the top priority of our lives, in the first instance, is to deal with the neglect that lead to the mess in the first place. Basement's filling up with water? My suggestion is, we turn off the water first. See? It will make the job of bailing out the basement easier.
[laughter]
But they don't get this! I think it's really, right now, as simple as that. It's one of the reasons why, as folks debate the Senate bill and all of this, I just look at all of this and say forget it. It may very well be, I'm not convinced of it yet, but let's accept, though, for the sake of argument that there may be some jobs where it would be helpful to have folks come in as temporary workers from Mexico. First thing we need to remember is that this must never be allowed to become an objective of our policy. I don't care what these people say about economics. The aim of allowing foreign folks to come reside in the United States should never, ever be simply to exploit them like beasts of burden for their labor!
[applause]
The notion that on any terms whatsoever we would allow the build-up in this country of a population of foreign-born folk who come here to work and who end up paying taxes and doing other things, and yet would be deprived of citizenship, disenfranchised, have no say over what goes on in the communities in which they live, you and I both know that such an outcome would be contrary to every principle of American justice and American decency. We cannot let it come about!
So, when they tell us that some guest-worker program should be allowed to establish some permanent communities of exploited foreign-born labor, I think we ought to stand up and tell them, as Theodore Roosevelt did many decades ago, a resounding "no." Because it's un-American, and we are still, contrary to what they like to example to us, all of us Americans who believe in this country and mean to see it survive.
[applause]
Now, with that in mind, I would think that even if at some point down the road you were going, on a very limited basis, with people staying here only temporarily, to let folks come in, work a little while, go back, if you were going to do that, do you think it's safe to do that while the door is still open? Because I have a problem with that, see.
Let's say we do what the Senate wants. You create a new credential, really easy to obtain, no great proof required of this or that or the other thing, when you read the provisions of that bill, all it is is just an enormous expansion of immigration and the creation of a new visa level that will make it easy as pie to either obtain an actual document by stepping across the border for five minutes, or obtain one on a fraudulent basis that nobody would question.
And we're supposed to let that sort of a document go out there, floating around, come into existence, while we still have people coming in by the thousands and thousands and thousands every day across an open border?
And we think it's going to decrease that flow, do we, when they know that it's going to be easy as pie once they get here to establish that they have the right to be here, regardless?
Well, my friends, laws don't mean anything if you can't enforce them, so all we're doing is creating more opportunities for fraud. And I think the people who put the Senate bill together know that that's true. They know that that bill will be a recipe for an endless and expanding universe of uncontrolled entry into this country, and that's what they mean to foist on us.
So, it becomes crystal clear, doesn't it? At the moment, I believe there is only one safe course for our people, and that course is to tell all these folks, yes, we know there's this problem you guys created, but before we talk about that, shut the door. Before we talk about that, put the bolts back in place, so that we can control when it opens and when it is closed. Before we talk about that, do what is necessary to remedy the confessed incompetence that the President of the United States declared. We will not even discuss what they want for their ambition and their special interest until they have served the common good of the American people. They must secure the border, or they will seal our fate, and we will not accept that!
[applause]
And that means that what needs to be done right now is really very simple--and it has nothing to do with all of this experiment. You don't need 700- and 800-page bills to deal with it, either.
They're telling us, "Oh, we can't do this and we can't do that. It's such a complex problem." And I'm thinking to myself, "Let's see. 9-11 occurred, and it practically, in government terms, didn't take them two minutes before they established a TSA, took over all these functions," and so forth and so on.
One of the things that I believe--and this is just my personal view at the moment, I'm not sure it's shared by very many people--in the shorter term, I think folks like Chris Simcox are right. We have got to stop shrinking from the problem and start putting on the border the manpower that is needed to deal with the situation, and not just to play games at it. Because, that border situation requires document checking, you're also dealing with dangerous people who are bringing in drugs and carrying all kinds of automatic weapons. We have dangers as well as immigrants. And when you've got immigrants, it might be a police problem, but when you've got dangers, that's a military problem.
See, this is one of the things we don't understand. What's the difference between a policeman and a soldier? A policeman defends the law. A soldier defends the country.
Along our border we have both challenges. There's the need to defend the laws and regulations we put in place with respect to entry, and there's the need to defend our country against some really dangerous people who mean to poison us with drugs or kill us with their terrorist intentions.
There is, therefore, both a police and a military challenge. And you can't deal with them in separate boxes. That suggests to me, my friends--and I know it might be hard because we've had this long history where we pretend that we haven't had to secure our southern border. If you know the history of the 19th century, you and I both know that's not true. No, the need to secure our southern border actually took us all the way to Mexico city a couple of times, I think. Didn't it? Right, I remember that. Why has everybody else stopped reading that history?
It's a lie to say we've had this wonderful open border we haven't had to defend. Occasionally we have had to defend it, occasionally we have had to do more than defend it--and we have got to defend it now. And that means that we can no longer live with the comfortable delusions of the past. We need to develop a border guard that can meet the challenges of the present time, and into the future, and that means that we have got to stop pretending that border police are enough. They are not. We need a force that is trained in both police and military techniques, as they are applicable to our border, and we need it now!
[applause]
And it may be that you can't snap your fingers and get it, but I'll tell you, you don't get anything you don't start on. All these folks telling us we need to start issuing new documents that can be the basis for fraud before we start putting together the kind of force that can actually get this job done along the border, I don't understand them.
Second, in order to help make it easier to do the job, I don't believe, by the way, that putting up some wall or a various and assorted fence, even when we add our sophisticated technology, and then we'll flick a switch and automatically control the flow across the border. What nonsense. Things can't substitute for people--but you may have noticed that sometimes they can help people do their job. It's sometimes rather easier.
We have a problem in our area where I live, there's a large problem because there's a large herd of deer, and they come in and they eat up people's flowers, and so forth and so on. Now, it may be very true that at any given moment, you can't be sure that you're going to be able to do something about these deer. But you know what people have found? It can reduce the problem greatly if they put a fence up and discourage the deer a little bit.
Now, if you put a fence up, and in addition to that, you put a professional force of people watching the fence who would go shoo the deer away every time they tried to come along, then you might even get better results.
So, it seems to me we need to stop acting like we can't. We have the technology and we have the resources to seal that border. We can put up the fences that are needed, not as the whole solution, but as part of the solution. We can put in place the border guard that's needed, and develop the proper training and techniques to get the job done.
And, finally, we can encourage our leaders to stop their arrogant dismissal of the volunteerism of the American people. If there are thousands and tens of thousands of Americans willing to act as an auxiliary to put eyes on that border, I say more power to them! The government should work with them, not against them. It's about time!
[applause]
One of the things that I believe has been quite evident in their response to the Minutemen--I think it's the clearest sign, from the President on down, that they don't want to get this job done. When was the last time, you've got a job to do, so Americans show up--a lot of them, by the way, are people who had military backgrounds, police backgrounds, things like this where they had training already in the discipline that's required. And they have exemplified this, by the way, in the results as they have gone about doing their business. And they show up, and, you know, this is not one of those Clinton-style volunteer efforts where you've got to get paid for your volunteerism. These are folks who are actually willing to give up their time and come try to help get the job done.
Now, we are still living in the United States of America, right? We are still living in the country that was opened up by people on their own initiative, braving the dangers of the frontier, opening up the country and setting up the farms and doing what was necessary, putting themselves on the line in order to defend their community. That is our heritage, isn't it? I still believe so.
Now, given that that's our heritage, if people step up in the spirit of that heritage and say, "We want to join in. We want to help. We want to do so in a law-abiding and peaceful way. We'll provide the eyes and we'll let you know where we see the problems."
If they tell us it's such a challenge to keep eyes on that border, why are they rejecting the help of good, well-intentioned Americans who want to lend their eyes to the effort? It's because they don't want to get the job done.
See, when you turn away well-intentioned Americans who are volunteering to put themselves on the line to get a job done for America, then you've either gotten to the point where you've arrogantly abandoned the real understanding of self-government, or you don't want to get the job done. Because, last time I looked, government of the people, by the people, for the people--that means the people are involved.
Now, I know our leaders have a tendency to forget it. "I did this. I did that. I did the other thing." They do this all the time, don't they? And something will happen in the community, you know, a library is built, a new school comes in, and so forth and so on, and at the next election, they'll say, "I did that, and I did this," and, yeah, your money paid for it, too.
[laughter]
That's why they talk about our tax dollars like they belong to them, but they don't, y'all. There's not a thing accomplished in this country, especially not a thing accomplished by the government, that hasn't been accomplished by the ingenuity and the sweat and the courage and discipline and the work and the sacrifice of our people, and I deeply resent and I am deeply dismayed by a leadership that will dismiss the spirit of volunteerism in the serious business of our security as "vigilantism."
I think it's about time we took that word apart. Vigilante. I think the root of the word is "vigilant," and that it comes from a word that means "to stay awake." So, when people tell you that they don't want you to be vigilantes, what do they mean, that they want you to go to sleep?
Well, maybe it's because we've been asleep at the wheel that we have millions and millions and millions of illegal immigrants wandering around the country with nothing being done.
I, frankly--excuse me.
[audience member: inaudible]
Excuse me. Actually, it's a Latin root. That is a word that has a Latin root, and so I have no problem at all using Latin root words in English. But, the simple fact of the matter is, that we are a people determined to remain awake, and our leaders should represent that vigilance, not arrogantly dismiss it. They should encourage that wakefulness, not contemptuously brush it aside. They should welcome that spirit and work with it, and I think it's about time they do.
So, here are the ingredients of a successful policy. The properly-trained and structured force, put it along that border. And yes, since it's going to be a force that's trained in the military techniques necessary to defend that border, I suppose the President would call that militarization. I was shocked when I heart him use the word "militarization" as if it were a curse word in his speech. I kind of thought Republicans kind of liked the military. And, being as how he's taken advantage of the courage skill of our military over there in Iraq, he might show a little respect for militarizing the borders. You know, if we weren't militarizing the war against terror, we'd be in serious trouble. And being as how that border is a front in the war against terror, the possibility that we would have to take some military steps to secure that border ought to be welcomed, not dismissed as if it's some kind of terrible stigma that we might have to do something militarily along our borders. Let's face facts.
So, yes, maybe we will have to do that--not with a view, by the way, of setting up some hostility or anything else. One of the things I think ought poignantly to have come through in the film that we watched earlier, was that in a certain sense in a terrible way, this is already an invasion that is costing many lives and affecting the fact of many people on both sides of the border.
In some ways, we are, because of the incompetence of our leaders, like a person who has allowed a nuisance to develop in a neighborhood that then attracts kids and other folks to come in and get themselves hurt or killed. And we all know that that's something that must be stopped. Our failure to secure our border has become an issue of life and death, for people who are dying because of the false allure that is created by that neglect, and of a nation whose identity is threatened because we are allowing our commitment to who we are and what we should be for the world to be diluted, by our neglect of this vital prerequisite of our life in common.
I would say, quite simply, that we need as a people to raise this up, right now, to the level of focal attention that's needed to send a message that cannot be missed by our political leaders, so they will take the action that is necessary to get this job done.
Do I believe this is the only problem that faces our country right now? Obviously not. I even think that there are problems that, over the long term, if we can deal with this one, will still pose deep and profound challenges to the survival of our liberty. I believe strongly in defending the great principles of our Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. We must defend the name of the Creator and our right to invoke that authority in our public affairs. We must defend our faith, and we must defend the consequences of the discipline that comes from respect for the Creator's will, starting with the truth that we have no right to assault innocent life in the womb or anywhere else, in a contravention of basic human rights.
I think that all those principles must be defended with stout courage until our respect for them has been fully restored, and I think we have to remember that you cannot save in principle what you have lost in fact.
And if we let the borders collapse, if we let them get away with their scheme of internationalizing our situation, then, my friends, we will have lost this nation in fact, and we can lament all we like the loss of our Constitution and our principles, but they will nonetheless be gone.
If we want to continue this battle to restore the integrity of America's heart, spirit, and soul, then we must engage and win the battle now to defend the integrity of America's borders.
For, those borders represent something to us--something that I'm afraid our leaders aren't taking seriously anymore--and that is the truth that even though this nation offers hope to people all over the world, that hope right now extends to responsibility we as representatives of all those peoples have to build and maintain the success of constitutional self-government. We cannot have contempt for this. Too many people have given life and blood.
It is no longer "just a piece of paper." For, it is a piece of paper whose terms and meaning, whose hope and reality has been consecrated by their sacrifice. Every word, now, written in their blood.
Together, as a community, we must dedicate ourselves to preserving the hope, the dream for all humanity, for which previous generations have struggled and have fought and some have died.
If we can do this now, then we will keep alive this "last, best hope," as Lincoln called it. And don't you think that's still our mission? They want us to be all preoccupied with money and with jobs and with all these things that they claim are so much more important, but somewhere in the midst of what we do in our work, as we work for the money and the family and jobs and the enterprises, there is a place in our heart. It is a place that is reserved for America, a place where we know that we are still a people dedicated in the midst of all of that to the things that together we can achieve for the best hope of humanity.
This is, in the end, our common cause, our common purpose, our common pride. And our willingness to defend the border that defines the universe of this responsibility must be the first and urgent sign that we mean to fulfill it well.
God bless you.
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