The City States of America

By

William D. Dannenmaier

It is fortunate that public schools in major cities teach diversity rather than American history and world history.  Otherwise citizens of those cities might have learned that each state’s legislature’s powers were limited to that which occurred within its borders.  The federal government was to control activities which extended beyond state borders and to protect the nation as a whole.  In world history they might have learned how the quarrels between the city states of ancient Greece, which had no overseeing power of a federal government, destroyed the city states themselves. 

Knowledgeable and thoughtful citizens should be concerned about major cities of the United States that have decided that they have the right supersede the laws of the federal government and give “sanctuary” to illegal invaders.  San Francisco, Detroit, Houston and New York have all done this (Marcelo Ballve, www.alternet.org, story 16748).  In more amazing cases, Washington D. C. and Los Angeles are two examples, police chiefs have assumed the right to “not” enforce federal immigration laws.  Is such behavior Constitutional?  Should every state or city police chief have the right to decide which of the federal laws they shall enforce?

It is, of course, highly profitable for cities to declare themselves “sanctuary” cities: profitable for the officials, not for tax payers.  Free schooling, free medical treatment and free unemployment among other “frees” are all available to anyone who breaks the law by entering the United States illegally and obtaining illegal identification.  Such “free” benefits add up to the need for more public employees; such as police officers, teachers, social workers, and their supervisors.  In these “sanctuary” cities federal funds, tax funds, help pay those people.  Representative Tancredo (Colorado) introduced a bill to stop federal funding to cities declaring their independence of federal laws, but his bill failed in Congress.  So taxpayers across the nation, if we are still a nation, have the privilege of paying the salaries of officials who repudiate federal law. 

Many writers, including news people, fail to differentiate between “asylum” and “sanctuary.”  We have federal laws giving asylum, not sanctuary.  Asylum has existed for thousands of years.  It existed in ancient Egypt and is referred to in the Old Testament.  City states in ancient Greece granted asylum to people fleeing other city states. The United Nations has endorsed the idea of asylum, but it is always because a person suffers political, ethnic or religious persecution, never because he is fleeing criminal acts or simply wants to make more money. 

Sanctuary is another matter, a church matter.  Frank Pastore (Townhall.com, August 26, 2007) reports that a young woman telephoned his program defending sanctuary saying, “If there’s a conflict between God’s law and man’s law, the Christian has got to be obedient to God’s law.”  She has forgotten or doesn’t know the quotation attributed to the founder of Christianity, Jesus.  “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesars; and unto God the things that are God’s.  (Matthew 22: 21b, Mark 12: 17, Luke 20: 25.)

Early Christians did both.  They obeyed the laws of the land and the teachings of Jesus.  When Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion, the state became the church and the church gained enormous political power.  The Roman Empire disintegrated but the church maintained its power.  Throughout the dark and the middle ages, the Roman Catholic Church had the power to tax and seize property if taxes were not paid, to imprison, to torture and to execute.  A “nicer” power was that of sanctuary.  Thieves, rapists and murderers could escape punishment by the government if they could get into a church.  An entire set of rules was developed over the centuries concerning the process for gaining sanctuary, too lengthy and complex to report here.

Change came with the Protestant Reformation, which was followed by a reformation of the Roman Catholic Church.  The founders of the United States knew of the problems which had existed in the intertwining powers of church and state: some had experienced them.  In writing and approving the Constitution they specified that church and state are to be separate. There is no such thing as “sanctuary” in our laws.     

A Mexican woman who twice entered the United States illegally, obtained forged Social Security documents and had an illegitimate son has received great publicity.  She spent a year in “sanctuary” in a Methodist church but left there to make a highly publicized trip to California protesting the expulsion of people who break the laws of the United States.  This is neither exceptional nor new.  Some twenty years ago the television news in Massachusetts showed a group of monks dancing happily because they had taken a group of illegal immigrants into their monastery to escape the law.  They should have been arrested and tried for breaking our laws.  So should the Methodist minister who protected the illegal immigrant.

If every police chief and every mayor has a right to ignore federal laws, if our government under the leadership of President Bush refuses to enforce them, even to the extent of imprisoning Border Patrol agents who attempted to arrest a drug trafficker who was entering the country illegally, we have no nation: there is no “United States of America.” 

The President of Mexico and the Mexican senate have been highly critical of our interest in maintaining the security of our borders, while they imprison illegal aliens entering their nation.  Do they have a vested interest in the disintegration of the United States?  Are they seeking a United Mexico which will include California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Colorado?  Illegal aliens marching under the Mexican flag in California, Texas and other states suggests this.

I have been bemused by the reasons given by some of our brain dead Congressional legislators in their calls for the impeachment of President Bush.  They protest the Iraq war, which they voted for, but ignore his more flagrant neglect of his responsibility.

When Bush took office he swore to support and defend the United States, not Iraq or Afghanistan, and he has and is failing to do that.  His Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Cherthoff, rather than enforcing the laws President Bush swore to uphold and pays him to help uphold, is pro-amnesty for illegals (Ann Coulter, Townhall.com August 22, 2007).

Despite having voted for him twice (I couldn’t stomach the alternatives offered by the Democratic Party) I would support a call for impeachment of President Bush for his failure to secure our border with Mexico from the invasion of aliens.  And it is an invasion.