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“The greatest source of our security”
Common sense solutions to preserve the rule of law

By Congresswoman Virginia Foxx

With our country’s founding centuries ago, great minds launched a lasting experiment in liberty.  One principle at the core of this experiment, the rule of law, is often overlooked in today’s debates over policy and legislation in Washington.

But this idea that our country is a nation of laws, to be followed by everyone and impartially enforced, was not a trifling thought to the Founders.  In 1794, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton said that “If it be asked, ‘What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic?’ The answer would be, ‘An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last’”.

In other words, without a strong tradition of respect for the laws of the land, the security of our nation and the liberty we cherish becomes severely compromised.

What does this mean for the people of the United States today?  One issue that touches on our tradition of the rule of law is illegal immigration.

The topic of illegal immigration recently surfaced during congressional committee debate over health care reform.  At issue was whether the law would prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining taxpayer-funded benefits.  The bills' authors said it would not.  But Republicans on the committees raised concerns that illegal immigrants would be able to easily evade the bills' restrictions.

They offered amendments to rigorously enforce restrictions on illegal immigrants receiving taxpayer-funded benefits.  It seemed like common sense that a law banning benefits from flowing to illegal immigrants was only as good as the steps the law took to verify the identity of those receiving benefits.

Unlike much of the bill, the amendment was simple and easy to understand.  It required people to verify their legal status with their name, Social Security Number, and date of birth.  By requiring benefit recipients to show a government issued photo ID, the amendment ensured that everyone who receives benefits is in fact a citizen.  Unfortunately, the amendment was rejected on party line vote in the committee.

Many stores require shoppers using a credit card or writing a check to show ID.  You can’t get on a plane without going through checkpoints and ID checks.  But apparently verifying someone’s identity is too much to ask of government-run health care with a $1 trillion price tag.
 
And the impact of illegal immigration on healthcare reform is just the tip of the iceberg.   There’s also the decennial census count.  If nothing changes, next year the Census Bureau will count every illegal immigrant in America and this data will be used to distribute House seats between the states.

The result is that some states will lose seats to a small group of states with huge populations of illegal immigrants.  For example, California, with a population of illegal immigrants that is estimated to be in the millions, tops the charts.

This is fundamentally unfair to the vast majority of law-abiding citizens and legal immigrants living in America.  So I’ve introduced a bill called the Fairness in Representation Act (H.R. 3797) that directs the Census Bureau to identify the number of illegal immigrants in each state.  By numbering the illegal immigrants in each state we will have the information necessary to distribute House seats in the fairest manner.

Currently, the distribution of House seats among the states does not distinguish between legal residents and illegal immigrants.  As a result some districts with high illegal immigrant populations have half the number of registered voters that a typical district has.

After all, illegal immigrants can’t vote, but they are counted for purposes of distributing and drawing districts.  Thus, the votes of the citizens of those districts effectively count for twice as much as the votes of citizens in average-size districts.  But under my bill the Census is instructed to gather data on illegal immigrant populations so that we can fix this representational problem.

These examples from the healthcare debate and the upcoming Census are two simple ways that we can work to preserve the tradition of the rule of law in America.  Even though the widespread practice of illegal immigration poses a threat to this tradition and to our national security, it is not a lost battle.  Common sense steps just like these illustrate that we can reign in the flouting of our immigration laws.