Powell Gammill - 2004 Congressional Candidate - Arizona - District 2 - U.S. House of Representatives - Libertarian

"Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless,

tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

– Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, 1883. Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

Immigration

This country was founded upon free immigration. There was never any power vested in the federal government to judge which group should, and which group should not be allowed into the country. Yet whenever an economically depressed populace begins flocking to the USA seeking a better life, those in power fear such unpredictable instability and try to block the immigration of a segment of the world’s population. The Germans, the Irish, the Chinese and now those from south of the border.

Making immigration illegal leads to organized crime, which leads to:

Violence
Extortion
Official corruption
Government restrictions, intrusions and loss of our rights

There are two groups of immigrants: Those that plan on staying and building a new life in our country, and those who wish to earn a nest egg and return to their country with capital upon which they can build wealth. Both activities are healthy for America (both the USA and the Western Hemisphere).

Both groups provide cheap labor for jobs few in our nation desire. For example, unskilled labor such as cleaning houses and mowing lawns. This frees up our time to produce other items that have greater value on the free market, than if we had spent our time cleaning our house or mowing the lawn. This is what turns America’s great economic engine!

Those who come here to earn money to take back to their own country, witness first hand what life is like in the USA. They often take these observations back to their country and ask why cannot their country be the same? Where the police are not bribed. The elections seem real. Public opinion is uttered without fear. The courts seem not corrupt.

They aspire to alter their country to be more like ours in the ways that they have seen and approved. And they now have the economic leverage to grow their country’s middle class to form the power base to make that vision a reality.

With the exception of the aboriginal people, those who came here to live, left their homeland. For someone to choose to leave, must mean there was little reason to remain: that is, they felt their country was a pretty bad place to live due to poverty and/or a repressive government, corruption, and crime.

Such people come here ready to take advantage of the opportunities the USA gives them. They raise children with high expectations and demands to better themselves. That is why they excel in school’s and business. Industrious, and hard working. They produce. They consume. They help fuel and turn the economic engine. They have a very strong reason to preserve our way of life, because they came from a life that was far less desirable. And immigrants bring unique perspectives and ideas to our shores. As well as international business contacts which further increases both two-way demands for products, and expands potential customers in a world wide marketplace.

There is a terrible downside to prohibiting and restricting immigration. Who determines who will make a “good” immigrant? Why the government of course, who cannot seem to do anything right for long.

With prohibition of immigration, just like the war on some drugs, comes organized crime. Where government prohibits an activity where there is a demand, criminals are created who are doing nothing more than providing a service for a healthy profit, to fill that demand. With organized crime comes the violence of not being able to settle disputes in court, extortion of victims who cannot report the crime to government since they are committing a “crime,” and the bribing of government enforcement OAFicials to more freely conduct this prohibited business, and the ever increasing price on this service.

Private land owners near the southern border are constantly howling for more border protection. The government loves you suckers! Begging for more government.

Do you want immigrants to stop trespassing on your property, leaving their trash behind and consuming your resources? Then stop sniveling for more government. Instead, demand free immigration now! The only reason immigrants are not using the safer routes the highways provide at the border, is because their immigration to this country is blocked by our government. So they sneak in through your property.

Depending upon the government to stop people from immigrating is like believing in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. The people living along the Mexican border have demonstrated far more ingenuity in detecting and tracking immigrants on private property, than the federal government could ever hope for. And they did it for a fraction of what the government spends. Not to mention the fact that the federal government has arrested many of you for defending your property, and showing the government up. The government is NOT your friend. It is your enemy, and is wholly responsible for the mess in which you find yourselves.

Wake up, and grow up. This is a government created problem that you are experiencing the brunt of. Eliminate government, and your problem will go away. You will also have a bigger and healthier labor pool to choose from. Lastly, I will point out to you that you could be renting to these immigrants short term places to stay on your property, instead of what the thousands of dollars they pay Coyotes (guides who help sneak immigrants across the border) presently, if there was open immigration. And since they would want to stay on good terms with you during the duration of their stay on your property, they are likely to respect and not mistreat your property.

Support open immigration, and end all welfare at the same time, and you will get loyal people coming to America to produce and labor for you.

National ID card: One of the many reasons government loves the debate on illegal aliens (as well as terrorism) is their desire to force ALL Americans to carry with them a national ID card. One that if caught without will have you jailed until you prove citizenship. This photo ID card will have your fingerprints (so you will be fingerprinted like any other criminal), biometric data, pertinent data, even retinal patterns. Make no mistake, "your papers please," is coming. Your Right to be anonymous will be forever gone. Your internal passport issued. And wait until they start seizing your ID just like a passport ... better not leave the house.

How many times have you forgotten your driver's license? How many times are you asked in stores, etc. to produce a driver's license? When will failure to produce a national ID at a grocery store produce an immediate call to Homeland Security?

Two thoughts: 1) The Constitution authorizes Congress to set the Rules of Citizenship (i.e., Naturalization), but this is not the same as immigration, which is the migration of individuals across a border, who may or may not intend to become citizens of a sovereign state. There is NO power granted to Congress in the Constitution with regards to immigration. It is not discussed. Historically, the States made their own immigration rules, typically requiring sponsorship (assuring the financial self-sufficiency and good conduct) of an immigrant by a citizen of that state. In less populated states, frequently there were no rules set up with the intent of encouraging immigration. Under the Tenth Amendment, the State's have reserved the power of deciding immigration, and the federal government has once again usurped the superior state privilege. [Thank you John Wilde.]

2) Before the socialist warfare/welfare state, there was no border problem. The root of our immigration problem is socialism, not immigrants. Strike at the root of the problem, not the symptom. Strike at socialism both in our country, and around the world. Get people producing in free markets and what floods across the border will be desired products at low price, more than people. People will be better off in their own countries, and will be coming here mainly to spend their vacation money, and check out their investments. Prosperous countries, tend to be peaceful countries. Prosperous populaces tend to demand and respect both peace and the rule of law, because there is incentive to respect both, and cost if you do not. [Thank you Jeff Greenspan for inspiring this.]

My response to immigration article in Arizona Republic

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0919deportation19.html Some victims seek reparation for deportations 1930s actions sent immigrants back to Mexico Ben Fox Associated Press Sept. 19, 2004 LOS ANGELES - Ignacio Pina was 6 when immigration officers came to his Montana home, held his family behind bars for a week, then herded them onto a train bound for Mexico - a country he and his five siblings had never seen. "They just kicked us out with what we were wearing," the U.S.-born Pina recalls more than 70 years later. It was 1931, the first year of a decade-long effort to remove Mexicans to free up jobs in a U.S. economy mired in the Great Depression. Estimates of the number of people caught in the raids range from 50,000 to 2 million, with researchers agreeing that they included tens of thousands of legal immigrants, as well as children like Pina who were born in the United States. "Mexican Repatriation," authorized by President Hoover and carried out in cooperation with local authorities, targeted areas with large Hispanic populations, mostly in California, Texas and Michigan. It left festering emotional wounds that for many have still not healed. Pina, an 80-year-old retired railroad worker who lives in Bakersfield, Calif., still gets angry when he recalls how his family was uprooted and forced to struggle to survive in a foreign country. "It's a feeling I will have until I die," he said. "This government did a very wrong thing." He and others have long sought an apology and official acknowledgment of their plight in U.S. history books. Now, there is a chance they may get their wish. The California Legislature has passed two bills addressing the issue: One would create a privately funded commission to investigate Mexican Repatriation; the second would open a two-year window for victims to file damage claims since the statute of limitations has long since closed. Supporters of the measures compare the survivors of the repatriation to the Japanese-Americans held at internment camps during World War II who received an apology and $20,000 in reparations from the U.S. government in 1988. U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., plans to introduce a bill in Congress this year that would investigate the Depression-era deportations and consider whether reparations would be appropriate. One challenge is that the number of survivors is unknown. Many who were deported never returned to the United States. Those who did are scattered. State Sen. Joseph Dunn, a Democrat who authored the two state repatriation bills and has researched the topic for two years, estimates that perhaps 50,000 are still alive, although his office has compiled a list of barely two dozen. Survivors, meanwhile, say they are eager to see official acknowledgment of their losses. But it needs to happen fast. One of Pina's brothers has died and he says three of his sisters, who live in Arizona, have health problems. Ruben Jimenez of Whittier, Calif., an 80-year-old retired probation officer whose family was forced to leave in 1932, is the only one of nine siblings still living. Others tell of similar losses and favor dropping claims for reparations to save time. "If I were to get compensation, it wouldn't help me much because by the time I get it, I'll be dead," said Jose Lopez, 77, a retired autoworker in Detroit. "Really, all I want to do is tell the public what happened because a lot of people don't know." It is a common refrain among the survivors, who say the public is largely unaware of their struggles. Pina, who was born in Carbon City, Utah, says he was unable to speak Spanish adequately when he arrived in Mexico, and he and his siblings were very different culturally from native-born Mexicans. "They looked at us like freaks," he recalled. "We didn't belong there." His father came to the United States around 1907 and, after working for years as a miner in Utah, eventually found work at a sugar beet farm near Hamilton, Mont., where immigration agents rounded up the family. When they returned to Mexico, his father died and Pina went to work as a shoeshine boy to help support his siblings, never attending school beyond sixth grade. In 1945, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City issued him an affidavit confirming his birth in the United States and he returned to the country the following year, eventually settling in California's Central Valley, working for the railroad and raising four children with his wife. The memory of his family's upheaval, he says, remains fresh. "I'm 80 years old and I probably don't have much longer in this world," Pina said. "But how can I forget that?"

anti-illegal immigration PAC survey on my responses to their positions

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