Who’s a Second-Class Citizen?

In the February 4, 2014 edition of The New York Times, Daniel Tichenor, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon, wrote about the current immigration debate, “Few democratic principles are more elemental than the notion that people who are subject to government authority have political rights to influence how that authority is exercised.”  For him, that means that illegal aliens should have a path to U.S. citizenship.

Think about that though. Should foreigners in the United States as guest workers or foreign students or illegal residents or tourists have access to U.S. citizenship just because they are subject to the authority of the U.S. government? It is hard to imagine anyone would agree with that thesis.

Tichenor’s argument is similar to the cries from the amnesty advocates that it is unfair and un-American to treat illegal aliens as “second-class citizens.” That may sound catchy, but it is meaningless. The illegal aliens have a citizenship in the country they came from; they have no U.S. citizenship whatsoever.

The real issue in the immigration debate is whether the American people should be forced to accept foreigners who violated our immigration laws in the same way that those who come legally are accepted. That is the issue for the U.S. Congress to decide, although President Obama has been trying to prime the pump for an amnesty by tying the hands of the nation’s immigration law enforcement officers and by giving temporary amnesty to young illegal aliens.