Kris Kobach at Kansas University

I attended a lecture by Kansas Secretary of State Kobach at Kansas University on Tuesday, April 12th. Unsurprisingly, there were a number of college students and others protesting the conservative's policies of "hate."

It is interesting that these protesters are demonstrating in support of illegal activity. I can't think of any country in the world which has the type of open borders policy these folks advocate. Mexico certainly doesn't. More importantly, this is one of only two jobs the U.S. Constitution requires the Federal government to do. Article IV, Section 4, The United States shall... protect each of them from Invasion.... Surely a group of several million people sneaking into the country illegally might fall into that category; the language of the Constitution does not specify ARMED invasion.

Even more interesting, they are promoting activity that runs directly counter to their own interests. As Sec. Kobach pointed out, the presence of illegal aliens (the correct legal title) drives down wages for legal workers and drives taxpaying individuals out of the workforce. Some of these protesters are going to find that they cannot find a decent job at a decent wage due to the very thing they support.

Also, according to one study, Sec. Kobach noted that households headed by illegal aliens consume an average of over $19,000 per year in government (taxpayer) services. If you pay taxes, you are paying to support low wages for your fellow Americans just to enrich some business owners. States, counties and municipalities are running substantial deficits, and Sec. Kobach pointed out that America cannot continue to operate as a welfare state without some of these immigration reforms.

Sec. Kobach also noted that the laws proposed support policies that were passed in 1996 in Federal law. These laws would not send illegal aliens to prison, which many foreign countries do, but only require that the individuals be sent home.

It would seem to me that it is unreasonable to expect America to have an open borders policy in an age of global terrorism. If we are going to tolerate pat-down searches of little children, we should surely expect our security agencies to keep our border secure from those who may actually wish to harm us. I hope we can move our legislators to take steps to solve the immigration problem.