America Opposes Britain’s Power Grab – Immigration

 

[Part of the 90 Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor – 

Exploring the Declaration of Independence]

90-Day Study Essay Schedule 2021 – Constituting America

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: Grievance Number 7.  "He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."

In December 1773, King George III (reigned 1760-1820) suspended the “Plantation” or “Immigration” Act of 1740.  His intent was to strike at the heart of the economic engine fueling economic independence among the American colonies.  His other goal was to extinguish momentum for independent thought and religious expression.  These actions formed the basis for Grievance Seven in the Declaration of Independence.

George II (reigned 1727-1760) was the last foreign-born King of England.  He supported expansive and permissive immigration to the American Colonies.  In his world view, expanding population among the colonies generated demand for British goods.  Skilled immigrants would increase the productivity and profitability of colonial agriculture, bringing healthy returns among Royal Charter holders and their investors.

Just as important, the attraction of America as a land of opportunity and tolerance served as a “safety valve” for removing “free thinking” or “noncomformist” Protestants, and restive Scots and Irish, from the “home country” through legally approved immigration.  Church of England supporters and Royalists were more than happy to be rid of them after nearly 200 years of strife.

England also benefited from helping oppressed minorities, such as the Huguenots (French Protestants), leave Europe.  It allowed England to gain the “moral high ground” in the geopolitical power struggles of the time. Bringing Scandinavian and German peoples to America forged important alliances while enriching the economic and cultural mix of the Colonies.

On June 1, 1740, the “Plantation” or “Immigration” Act of 1740 went into effect to streamline immigration and naturalization.  It allowed any Protestant alien residing in any of their American colonies for seven years, without being absent from that colony for more than two months, to be deemed "his Majesty’s natural-born subjects of this Kingdom."  Over the course of several years, individual Colonies began to directly administer immigration and citizenship.  Many colonies, led by Pennsylvania, expanded coverage to include Catholics and Jews.

Benjamin Franklin was an eloquent supporter of immigration:

“Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old Inhabitants are not jealous of them; the Laws protect them sufficiently so that they have no need of the Patronage of great Men; and everyone will enjoy securely the Profits of his Industry…

"These new settlers to America create a growing demand for our merchandise, to the greater employment of our manufacturers...

 Multitudes of poor People from England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany, have by this means in a few Years become wealthy Farmers.  They create a continual demand for more Artisans of all the necessary and useful kinds, to supply those cultivators of the earth with houses, and with furniture & utensils of the grosser sorts which cannot so well be brought from Europe. Tolerably good Workmen in any of those mechanic arts, are sure to find employ, and to be well paid for their work, there being no restraints preventing strangers from exercising any art they understand, nor any permission necessary.”

 These free-wheeling immigration and citizenship policies came to an abrupt end when George III became King.

 The King’s Advisors raised concerns that non-English immigrants had little connection or loyalty to the “Mother Country” or its ruler.  In this world view, the expanding and diversifying colonial population was creating an independent challenge to the economic and political power of England.

 King George sent secret agents to America to assess the condition and “state-of-mind” of the colonists. “A large influx of liberty-loving German emigrants was observed, and the King was advised to discourage these immigrations”.

 Based upon these reports and recommendations, George III began to delay and obstruct new migration from England and other parts of Europe. In his Royal Proclamation of 1763, he prevented settlement west of the Appalachians, hoping to limit further agricultural growth. This angered those wanting to settle in the west, and ignited opposition from those with significant investments in western real estate.

 King George, and his Prime Minister, Lord North, took additional actions to end immigration, naturalization, and expansion of the Colonial economy.  In December 1773, they forbid Colonial naturalization of aliens, under any conditions.  A ban on royal land grants was finalized in February 1774.

 England’s far reaching assault on colonial naturalization laws and suspending the “Plantation Act” was considered intolerable, and therefore, was included in the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence. 

Fourteen years later, the “Plantation Act of 1740" would be the model for the “Naturalization Act of 1790”, the first immigration policy of the new nation.

FUNDING THE WALL

[Published on Newsmax]

The solution to America’s Border Wall is hiding in plain sight.

Instead of fighting what may be a losing battle with Congress, President Trump should trigger a well-established, legal, and proven good management practice of “reallocating unused federal funds” to build America’s Border Wall.

All it will take to complete the next phase of the Border Wall is the stroke of President Trump’s pen and a push of a button from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The simple solution is mining “unobligated balances” throughout the Executive Branch.

Every year funds are allocated for federal projects and programs based on estimates. Congress adds money when those estimates fall short, even if caused by waste and fraud. Funds sit idle when spending is less than expected.

Families face this situation all the time. You take cash to buy fast food and have change left over. That change ends up in a coin jar. A family member eventually takes the coin jar to a bank or Coinstar to turn pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters into easier spent dollars.

Presidents, since Lyndon Johnson, have funded their priorities mining these unobligated balances through the mechanism of a “budget sweep”. The President authorizes the Director of OMB to request Executive Branch Departments and Agencies to return unobligated and unexpended funds back to the Treasury.

Johnson funded his Great Society and the Vietnam War with the billions in “loose change” lying around Executive Branch Agencies. Nixon funded the Vietnam War. Carter funded expanding domestic programs. Reagan brought down the Soviet Empire. The Bushes fought their Iraq wars. Clinton juggled funds to stay within Republican Congressional budget limits.

Then something changed. During his eight years in office, President Obama allowed $914.8 billion in unexpended, unobligated, funds to pile-up across the federal government. He never did a budget sweep. This number continues to climb under President Trump, who has also not authorized a budget sweep.

Unexpended, unobligated funds are dutifully reported under “Assets and Balance Sheets” of the federal budget released each year by the Office of Management and Budget. These funds are documented, in detail, in every Department and Agency budget under the accounting code “1941”. For the current fiscal year, there is over $150 billion in “1941” unexpended, unobligated balances in the Defense Department alone.

An additional $1.028 trillion remains unexpended among general accounts, and $461 billion remains unspent in trust funds. While these funds are technically obligated, the fact that they languish for years raises questions about their use, management, and relevance.

There is, therefore, a total of $2.651 trillion in existing Executive Branch funds potentially available for immediate reallocation.

In June 2012, to his eternal credit, former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn issued a blistering report, “Money for Nothing” that exposed these funds for the first time. Unfortunately, not even conservative media covered it.

Senator Coburn documented this in his “Money for Nothing” report:

“In total, the federal government is projected to end fiscal 2012 with more than $2 trillion in unexpended funds that will be carried over to next year, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. While more than two-thirds of this amount is obligated for specific purposes, $687 billion remains unobligated, meaning it is essentially money for nothing."

The existence, processes, and uses of unexpended, unobligated funds were reported by the few conservatives among Trump’s Transition Team, to no avail. OMB officials were given detailed 1941 account spread sheets, as were several Cabinet Secretaries and their staffs. Nothing happened.

Trump must take control of the Border Wall project with processes and funds that already exist and are in plain sight.

COLUMBUS - UNITER NOT DIVIDER

[Published in Newsmax]

Columbus and his achievements are about unity. The forces of political correctness have no idea what they are talking about. 

Columbus’ discovery of the Western Hemisphere permanently reconnected the Earth for the first time since the Pangea super continent broke apart 175 million years ago.

A brief period of record low sea levels, caused by the last Ice Age, allowed pre-history humans to migrate into the Americas from Europe around 20,000 BC.  An Asian land bridge opened another short-lived migration corridor along the Alaskan coast in 12,000 BC.  The indigenous people of the Americas were actually its “first immigrants”. Rising seas then sealed them off from the rest of the world.

It was inevitable that humankind would ultimately reconnect.  It was only a matter of time.  The Viking sagas chronicle exploration and fishing settlements in Newfoundland around 1,000 AD.  This is when warmer global temperatures made Greenland and the Arctic waters suitable for navigation and far northern lands viable for habitation.  Others may have stumbled upon the Americas, but their interactions were short lived and isolated.  The reunification of Earth would have to wait another 400 years.

Unique forces of economics, history, and knowledge eventually led to reunifying humankind and the world’s ecosystems. 

The events that set Columbus and his three ships towards destiny began with the fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453 to the Ottoman Empire.  The Islamic Ottomans took control of all the overland connections to India and China.  They made the Silk Road, and other lucrative trade links to the East, prohibitively expensive and problematic.

In 1412, the Portuguese began methodically establishing an alternative sea-based trade route to Asia.  In 1488, Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Portugal, with its line of African forts and massive fleet, aspired to join the Ottomans in controlling  Asian trade.

No other European power was capable of competing against these two international forces as most were locked in internal strife or were content with being regional powers.

On January 2, 1492, Spain defeated the last Islamic forces on the Iberian Peninsula.  The duel monarchy of Ferdinand and Isabella turned their vision of conquest to competing with Portugal.

Christopher Columbus was uniquely situated to make the Spanish Monarchs’ dream come true.  Besides being a skilled seaman, Columbus was a highly astute scholar.  He spent years acquiring knowledge about the Atlantic Ocean, including what would become known as its “trade winds”, which would speed travel.

Columbus was at the center of the debate over the size of the Earth.  Educated people knew the Earth was round, but they differed on its size.  No ship’s crew could be provisioned to sail west over a vast ocean all the way to China.  Columbus was armed with knowledge of the Vikings and knew a large land mass was much closer than current wisdom assumed.  His mistake was thinking it was Asia, not an entire undiscovered hemisphere. 

Columbus convinced the Spanish Monarchs it was good business and a wise investment to underwrite an expedition sailing west into the unexplored areas of the Atlantic Ocean.  The Monarchs knew that Spain would become a major world power by building their own trade monopoly if Columbus was successful.

Starting on August 3, 1492, the single most pivotal action in the Earth’s human history began.  On October 12, 1492, Columbus and his landing party stepped onto a Caribbean beach and nothing would ever be the same.

The “Columbian Exchange” fundamentally altered the Earth’s ecosystem and its human history.  The “New World” introduced dietary staples like corn, potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, pineapples, avocados.  “Old World” domesticated animals such as horses, pigs, cattle, cows, and goats fanned out through the Americas, while onions, lettuce, peaches, wheat, rice, sugar, and apples took root.

Detractors scoff, stating that the people of the Americas knew where they were and did not need to be discovered.  Anti-Columbus historians decry the spread of disease and conquest that devastated the first peoples of the Americas.  Reunifying the world after 175 million years had irreversible consequences, good and bad. None of Americas’ cultures had a maritime tradition outside of brief fishing and hunting sojourns within sight of land.  Reunifying the Earth was only going to happen from the “Old World”.  The mingling of flora and fauna created impacts that resonate to this day.

Columbus is rightly recognized as the person who changed the world.  He embodies humanity’s striving to acquire and apply knowledge, and our desire to explore.  Many South American nations, along with Italy and Spain, celebrate Columbus and the day everything changed. 

The United State celebrated the 300^th Anniversary of this epic moment in 1792.  It became our nation’s official holiday in 1937.

We should be honoring this unifying moment in history instead of trying to erase it.

[Scot Faulkner advises corporations and governments on how to save billions of dollars by achieving dramatic and sustainable cost reductions while improving operational and service excellence. He served as the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He also served on the White House Staff, and as an Executive Branch Appointee.]

 

TRUMPING IMMIGRATION

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6247901002205261824/

Also published on Newsmax.    #TRUMPING

President Trump is aligning immigration policy to our national wellbeing.  His approach is comprehensive and consistent.  It is a welcome change and not a moment too soon.

Immigration is a privilege not a right. 

A nation has every right and reason to make sure those who enter are who they say they are and those who want to stay are beneficial not burdensome.  It is amazing that these fundamental sovereignty issues are debated.

A border wall with Mexico is a necessary requirement for protecting national sovereignty and blocking future illegal immigration along America’ southern border.  Hopefully, Israel will be consulted on design as their walls are the most successful of the modern era.  National Park lands along the border could effectively use razor sharp sisal and other natural barriers to mitigate visual impacts.  Instilling a culture of proactive excellence among border and customs enforcement professionals is another critical element to assure our safety.

Eliminating sanctuary cities and reinstituting the rule of law is necessary for public safety.  Punishing companies who hire illegals must show that laws matter.  President Trump’s strong stand on enforcing immigration laws has already had an effect.  Intercepts of illegal immigrants along the Mexican border plummeted 40.5% from January to February.

Trump’s temporary ban on issuing visas to people from failed states is prudent and legal.  The six targeted countries continue to be chaotic war zones where viable public records are nonexistent.  Bribes and terrorist agendas creating fake identities are a border control nightmare.  Better to pause and plan, with appropriate documented waivers, until integrity is established

Trump aligning U.S. policy with established and proven policies in effect in other countries is a strategic step in the right direction.  Many nations use economic benefit as the guiding principle of their immigration policy.  Australia and New Zealand have always filtered for needed skills and education.  Australia issues visas to skilled workers based upon a points-based system, with points allocated for certain levels of education.  Visas are often sponsored by individual Australian States, according to their specific skill needs. Australian businesses also sponsor visas for highly sought after skilled workers.  Australia and New Zealand have never been assailed for racism or nativism.

In the 19^th Century, America needed people to populate its ever expanding territories.  The federal government gave transcontinental railways vast land grants to incentivize laying rails to link the continent.  The Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads launched major advertising campaign throughout Scandinavia to attract settlers to turn their land grants into vibrant farming communities that, in turn, used the railroad to ship goods.

In 1882, U.S. policy turned away from economic development and went down the slippery slope of nationality based immigration.  Initially, California workers wanted to block Chinese immigrants to stabilize wages.  Other laws followed, which established national quotas instead of skill-based immigration.  This shift came to grief in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.  Liberals, led by Senators Ted Kennedy and Phil Hart, filled the legislation with diversity goals and codifying the concept of “anchor babies”, where a child of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil establishes entitlement for family members to move to America. 

President Bush supported the Immigration Act of 1990 (IMMACT90), which established flexible immigration caps and made permanent the admission of "diversity immigrants" from "underrepresented" countries. The cumulative result opened the floodgates to burdensome instead of beneficial immigrants.  Immigration policy completely changed from economic wellbeing and security to a liberal social engineering effort.

The 1965 and 1990 laws completely wrecked U.S. immigration policy.  I encountered this bizarre new regulatory world, twice.  In the 1980s, I had to personally appeal to Attorney General Ed Meese to allow the former CEO of KLM and his wife to retire in Florida.  It was amazing that U.S. immigration officials had rejected a wealthy corporate executive because there were too many Dutch immigrants.  In 2006, I had to appeal to the Bush White House to allow a Swiss Doctor, and his Nurse Practitioner wife, to join their parents in America and work for a Washington area hospital.  These happened at the same time poverty stricken immigrants from Third World countries were being welcomed on a daily basis.

Liberals, and even some Republicans, have spent decades creating damaging and surreal U.S. immigration policies.  These policies threaten national security, burden government services, and deprive America of people who can substantively contribute to the national economy. 

Thankfully, during his February 28, 2017 speech to Congress President Trump embraced a “merit based” immigration policy to benefit America’s economic revitalization.  Trump’s subsequent Executive Orders and initiatives are putting our national interest in the right place, in the right ways.

Republicans in Freefall

This was published in The Washington Times

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/03/opinion-republicans-in-freefall/

Things could not be bleaker for the Republican Party. Its fund raising fell apart over a year ago as a backlash to immigration reform. Regularly, President Bush sets new record lows for how much a modern president can be disliked and how completely his policies can be rejected. Three special election defeats in Republican strongholds are proving that there will be no safe-havens in November. The latest polls show voters preferring Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 53 percent to 32 percent. This is nearly twice the deficit the Republicans faced going into the disastrous 2006 elections.

This is a portrait of a party in freefall, yet many Republicans remain in denial. They grasp at straws about America’s racial undercurrents and the Democratic Party’s uncanny ability to lose elections. These retreats into fantasy will not prevent the tsunami that is heading toward the party on Nov. 4.

Republicans I speak with are just as fed up with their party as Americans in general. The Republican Party seems like a random collection of egos and personal agendas. Many of these personal agendas have embraced Big Government and Big Brother with more zeal than the most ardent leftist. They see dispensing favors and funds as their ticket to electoral bliss. They ignore the epic failures of the Bush presidency, and those of the recent Republican era in Congress, in the hopes that Americans will somehow do the same.

The Republicans have a razor-thin window of opportunity before all is lost. The November elections are just over five months away. Voters want something real, and their skepticism and cynicism are reaching record levels. They know the campaign calendar dictates that everything said by a politician is suspect from now through the election. Candidates from across the political spectrum prove this during every campaign cycle when they say anything, including fabricate and outright lie, in order to dupe voters into supporting them. Voters want to see real actions that back up the words.

The Republicans can still do something that could save them. They could treat the Bush administration like it was the opposition party. Can you honestly envision Republican members of Congress, as well as their pundits and activists, letting Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton get away with the corruption, incompetence, waste and abuse regularly displayed during the last seven years by the Bush administration? Of course not. Republicans would have scrambled to the microphones attacking every moment of the administration and hauling every official they could before their oversight committees.

The strategic error made by Republicans is that they began looking at everything through a partisan lens. If a Democrat does it - it is fundamentally bad. If Mr. Bush or another Republican does the exact same thing - it is fundamentally good. Most Democrats suffer from this same myopia, but they are not the ones perceived to be in power. Oversight hearings and spirited attacks by Rep. Henry Waxman and others are viewed as holding our government accountable. Republican efforts to hamper these actions are rightly viewed as a conspiracy to shield the Bush Administration from accountability.

This is a no-win situation for Republicans. Their only hope is to begin exposing the foibles of the Bush administration with even more zeal than Mr. Waxman and his Democratic colleagues. This should be easy for a real Republican or real conservative. There is very little worth preserving from the last seven years. Except for some excellent appointments to the federal courts, Bush and his acolytes have been the antithesis of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater on everything that matters. The sooner their legacy is erased the better for the Republican Party.

The Republicans can start their return from the dead by returning to their roots - displaying a healthy skepticism of Big Government and fighting government waste. Waste is waste and corruption is corruption, no matter which party is in charge. Republicans must recover their moral compass.

Members of Congress should begin their resurrection by aggressively conducting investigations and oversight of waste and mismanagement in the federal government. In recent weeks, $7.8 billion was reported spent in Iraq without adequate documentation. There are reports of highly unethical and possibly illegal procurement and contracting actions at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Coast Guard is not adequately investigating and preventing marine accidents. The list of improvement opportunities is endless. Criticizing these, and other examples of mismanagement, is a good first step for the Republicans in Congress to show some real concern about government integrity. Republican journalists should also be aggressively pursuing and reporting on incompetence and wrongdoing in every other nook and cranny of the current administration.

The Republican Party must take this kind of substantive action if it wants to convince voters that it is mending its ways. With the August recess, national conventions, Olympics and probably an early adjournment, there are only a few precious weeks left for the Republicans in Congress to avoid electoral oblivion.