Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Local Government: The GOP and the School District Dilemma

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Ed Hubbard
Ed Hubbard

I want to follow-up on my last post about the importance of local government to the principles that we conservatives and Republicans hold dear, and to return to the issue of education reform as an example of the challenges we face at the local government level.

To set the stage for this discussion, let’s establish some context.  Remember that our Founders stated in the Declaration of Independence that government should be grounded “on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  Madison then described the proper allocation of governmental power to create such a government in Federalist Paper No. 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.  Those which are to remain in the State government are numerous and indefinite.  … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The leader of the modern Republican Party and conservative movement, Ronald Reagan, made Madison’s allocation of governmental power the centerpiece of his plan for a New Republican Party.  In his 1977 speeches about this New Republican Party, Reagan referenced the 1976 GOP Platform as being “the major source from which a Declaration of principles can be created and offered to the American People.”  Within the 1976 Platform is a proposal that would commit the New Republican Party to actively apply Madison’s governmental structure to address real issues facing Americans:

A National Urban Strategy

The decay and decline of communities in this country is not just a physical and economic crisis, but is traceable to the decline of a real “sense of community” in our society. Community development cannot be achieved merely by throwing dollars and mortar at our community problems; what must be developed is a new sense of mutual concern and responsibility among all members of a community for its improvement.

We recognize the family, the neighborhood and the private volunteer sector to be the most basic and vital units within our communities and we recognize their central role in revitalizing our communities. We propose a strategy for urban revitalization that both treats our urban areas as social organisms and recognizes that the family is the basic building block in these organisms.

…This policy must be based on the principle that the levels of government closest to the cities’ problems are best able to respond.  …

As I have argued since 2009, and especially in my posts last year, the proper education of our children is one of the most important actions that any community can take to “effect their Safety and Happiness;” and from the Northwest Ordinances, to the Texas Declaration of Independence, to the Texas Constitution, our forefathers recognized that providing a proper education to our children was a critical responsibility of state and local governments—those governments closest to our problems.  Viewed in this context, our schools are the most important and fundamental local governmental institutions that exist within the Madisonian structure of government to which our party re-committed itself over 3 decades ago.

The irony is that, although the local school is the one governmental institution that each of us is guaranteed to come in contact with during our lifetimes (either as students, parents or taxpayers) and we champion the local control of our schools, we know so little about our school system, we often misunderstand it because we judge it based on our understanding of national politics and government, and we have tried to find too many quick fixes to specific problems rather than address the needs of the system as a whole.  As a result many of us don’t effectively participate in the governance of our schools, and we have tended to create deeper systemic problems over the last 30 years as we’ve tried to implement quick fixes.

There are essentially four steps to providing a public education system:

  • Identifying the knowledge that we want our children to have an opportunity to learn before they become adults, and delivering that knowledge to each student;
  • Creating and implementing the standards and measurements by which we assess the adequacy of and accountability for the delivery of that knowledge at each grade level, and at each level of the educational system from the classroom to schools to the districts to the state agencies to the Legislature;
  • Developing and implementing the process by which the knowledge is created and delivered; the system is assessed; and the facilities, labor, administration, and governance are provided throughout the system; and
  • Developing the budgets for, and raising the revenue to finance, the system.

Under our State constitution, our State government has the primary responsibility for providing this system and for making sure that it functions properly to deliver knowledge to more than 4.3 million children every school year—an aggregate student body second in size only to California.  The State Constitution and the Legislature have allocated the responsibility for these four tasks primarily among the Texas Education Agency, the State Board of Education, and over 1,000 school districts across the state.  The primary responsibility of each School Board is to make sure that its district is providing the facilities, labor and administration needed to meet the knowledge, delivery and assessment requirements set by the State, and to raise the revenue needed to meet its responsibilities.  Collectively, the State’s role is to provide the requirements for knowledge, delivery, assessment, and processes, and to supplement the revenue each district needs to meet these requirements so that each child in Texas has a roughly equal opportunity to obtain the knowledge to be delivered.  On top of all of this, is layered the Federal Government’s mandates that impact the State’s requirements and the School District’s responsibilities and costs.

Over the last 30 years, our State government has tried to separately address problems with each of the four steps described above.  In fact, during the present Legislative Session, there are at least 9 bills on file in each chamber addressing public education.  In addition to legislative and regulatory initiatives, our State Supreme Court on at least three occasions has found the methods used to finance the educational system to be either inadequate or unconstitutional, and we will soon face another round of litigation later this year over the same issue.  The result of all of these initiatives has been a mixed bag, with some positive initiatives and some wholly ineffective initiatives, and this mixed bag really presents an complicated, unfocused and inconsistent system statewide that actually leaves so many of our students undereducated.  For example, I challenge anybody to sit down and study how the “Robin Hood” financing system actually works, and then try to explain it to someone else without that person pleading for mercy—it is ridiculously Byzantine.

Complicating this system further has been the nature of population growth in Texas and its impact on public schools.  Over the last 20 years, Texas has grown enormously from child births, migration, and immigration, and the metropolitan school districts in and around the major cities have borne the heaviest burden of this growth, as well as the additional burden from the internal migration of people from rural areas to these metropolitan areas where over 75{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of Texans now live.  This growth not only has changed the overall number of students these districts have to educate, but also has changed the type of student they have to educate by increasing the number of students with special needs and/or for whom English is a second language. Many metropolitan school districts, especially those covering the outer rings of these communities that have experienced such explosive growth, were ill-prepared to absorb these new students.

Unfortunately, none of the bills being considered now in Austin will come close to fixing this mess.  Almost all of the bills address only certain components of the second and third steps—standards, measurements, and process.  Being creative with these components is essential if we are to fix the system, but it is irrelevant if we don’t try to fix the entire system.

We have not stepped back and looked at the system as a whole for many, many decades—if ever.  As I started to write about last fall, a serious systemic review must start with the first step—defining the knowledge we must teach and determining how best to deliver it to our students—and move to each step until we have a coherent system prepared to meet the foreseeable educational challenges over the next two generations; and then we must dedicate the proper resources and time to make the system work and last over several decades.  I have been waiting to resume those posts until we have a written order from the trial court in Austin.  But, frankly, unless we use that order as an opportunity to conduct a systemic review and reform (including adjusting and better coordinating some of the specific reforms that have been adopted over the last few sessions), the financing system won’t be adequately fixed, no matter what the Supreme Court eventually says, because we won’t really know how much money a properly functioning system will need.

So, where does all of this lead a Republican worried about the local school?  We must work on three fronts simultaneously:

  • Support our Republican Congressmen and Senators in Washington to continue to fight any further attempts by the federal government to involve itself in the operation of our schools, and to reduce the current level of involvement whenever possible, in order to reduce the burden and inefficiencies caused by federal mandates;
  • Call for a systemic reform of all four steps of the educational system, starting with curriculum review, teacher qualifications, and classroom dynamics, and then tailoring the standards and measurements to this new foundation; moving to a Sunset review of all state agencies and school districts in order to allow for the re-organization of the process of educational regulation, administration and governance; and ending with the abolition of “Robin Hood” as part of a complete overhaul of how we finance education across the State; and
  • Engage in the actual life of our local schools and the operation of our local districts.

As for this final step, we must look at our school boards as they are—not as a local reflection of all the problems we see in Washington or Austin, but as the governing body charged primarily with managing the process and local financing of the State’s educational system in our communities—and then judge their actions accordingly.  In this light, we need to understand the special dynamics facing each community and the students each school district must educate.  Then, we must challenge our school boards to cost-effectively provide the process and revenues to address those dynamics—opposing them when they are wrong, but (just as importantly) supporting them when they are right.  Eventually, we will need to help these boards implement the reforms we will ask the State to adopt.

Most importantly, our school districts need us on school boards—not just protesting from the outside looking in.  Although there have been, and continue to be many good Republicans on many of the 24 school districts covering all or part of Harris County, they need our help.  Too often, because few people engage in the school board or school bond election process, we end up with board candidates and trustees who are there to promote their own narrow, fleeting agendas, or to promote the special interests of unions, contractors, or advocacy groups connected with school system in some way.  So, we get the school board we deserve by our inaction.

What happened to the Republican bankers, doctors, lawyers, philanthropists, civic and religious leaders, and local businesspeople, who used to come forward with their education and experience to serve on these boards?  We need fellow Republicans to re-engage in the communities in which they live and to run and serve on these boards in greater numbers.  So much of the misunderstanding and misinformation about the state of our school districts could be fixed, and our efforts focused on the real systemic problems in our educational system, if we would just serve on these boards rather than complain about them.

Finally, we need to be there to implement the systemic reforms we want Austin to adopt.

The Election Choice—Can Romney make it simple? Can Romney be Romney?

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Ed Hubbard

Watching all of the pundits say that Romney has to make himself likable is beginning to drive me crazy.  Of course no one wants to embrace a dour person (though Richard Nixon was on 4 of 5 winning national tickets, just proving that there are exceptions to every rule), but Romney is not dour, and the times require a serious, steady, positive message.  I am going to say something I never thought I would say a few months ago—let’s let Romney be Romney.

What would that mean?  It would mean that we should allow Romney to make the case to the American people about the choices we face, and how he is the best man at this time to help us make those choices because he has lived those choices all his life.

Romney knows the correct answer to the fundamental question of this election:  Who builds this economy and this country, the federal government or private businesses and the individuals they employee?

And the answer is:  private business and the individuals they employ.  If you don’t understand that fundamental answer, you do not deserve the public’s trust to hold an office in our government.  Period.

It is private business that generates the jobs that provide for families and that build neighborhoods.  We spend more time every day with our co-workers than with our families, and the positive bonds formed through this activity ripple out in every direction.  Employing people affects the lives of both the employer and the employee, from which both grow.  The products or services generated by a business affect customers, and spur innovation by others through competition.  But, most importantly, every paycheck signed sets aside a retirement fund, pays for health care, provides for the sustenance of a family, pays for a mortgage and a college education, pays for the charity from a church or non-profit organization, and creates the tax base for the infrastructure and protection of a community.

Government is nothing more than a service that we pay for with the taxes from our paychecks and profits.  It is a service through which we have chosen to hire some of our neighbors to provide education to our children, create and maintain a physical infrastructure, provide for our defense and protection our communities and nation, and preserve a safety net for those unable through no fault of their own to help themselves (or find private charitable help), while we work and build the foundation of wealth and happiness for our families, our communities, and our country.  In essence, government works for us, at our direction, and to the extent we feel we need it—we do not work for government.  To increase government’s role in our society beyond providing these services effectively and efficiently, is to threaten the delicate balance among free people that this system has long maintained—and that makes our experiment in self-government so unique and exceptional.

President Obama and the modern Democratic Party do not believe in this delicate balance.  Instead, they want to transform it so that Government indeed becomes the source of all wealth and happiness in our society—and as they do so, they are putting our delicate balance in mortal jeopardy. The Democrats have long wanted to change the fundamental relationships in our private sector, and between the private sector and government, by inserting government more and more into the private relationships that a private-sector paycheck has always supported.  This process has reached a tipping point now.

Because no one knows which way our system will tip—how much further the federal government will interfere in the private market and private relationships, and how much taxes will be seized to pay for the massive public spending and debt incurred to fund that interference—a cloud of uncertainty now hangs over our country (and, by extension, over the world economy).  And that uncertainty keeps business from hiring people, and that cuts the paychecks that support families and communities. That uncertainty, if allowed to continue, will tip the balance toward a new pervasive government and the nation the Democrats have long tried to create.

We must bring an end to this transformation that disguises itself as “hope and change,” and “moving forward.” This transformation does not promise progress, but, instead, a benign peonage for future generations.  Is that what prior generations fought for?

Through his work in the private sector, in his church, and through the charities he has supported, Romney understands, and indeed embodies the best of the balanced system I have just described.  He understands the challenge and threat the Democrats’ vision has created for the delicate balance of our unique society.  He just needs to be honest with us; and then challenge us to help him stop this transformation, to make the necessary reforms to remove the uncertainty, and to restore the historic balance between the private sector and government, so that private business will write those paychecks again.

It’s that simple.  Great speeches by Ann Romney, Chris Christie, Condi Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan have all paved the way for him.  Now, let’s hope Romney will be Romney.

 

Citizenship and “Right-Wing Social Engineering”

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Last night, as I listened to Newt Gingrich’s victory speech after winning the South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary, he made several statements the caught my attention—but none more than his nod to Governor Perry’s endorsement and their shared commitment to the 10th Amendment and returning power to the states.  As he discussed this point he said that one of the reasons he was asking voters to be “with me not just for me” was because as “we shrink the federal bureaucracy” we must “grow citizenship back home to fill the vacuum.”

I could not agree more strongly.  As I’ve tried to challenge fellow Republicans over the last few years, if we are successful in electing Republican majorities at every level of government and a Republican President, in 2012; and if we are successful in passing the legislation needed to limit the size and scope of the federal government and balancing its budget—what then?  The needs of our fellow citizens that the left has tried to address through federal-government schemes over the last 50 years won’t miraculously disappear.  The divisions that Charles Murray discusses in this new article, The New American Divide, which culturally exist within every racial and ethnic community in this country, won’t magically dissolve.  No, the paradox of our victory will be that it only will start our job to fix this country, rather than end it.

For our victory to last, we must use our political freedom to re-assert our liberty, which includes our reciprocal responsibilities as citizens—responsibilities to govern ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, and our states. This renewal of self-governance will require our active participation in the life of our communities, rather than continuing to delegate such participation to faceless bureaucrats in distant capitals.  This active participation is the growth in “citizenship back home to fill the vacuum” that Gingrich is championing.  If we don’t accept this responsibility, the activists of the collectivist left will re-emerge and re-take control of government from us—and our unique system won’t survive another spasm of leftist policies.

Now for those who think this is just another “off the cuff” idea from Gingrich, you’re wrong.  In fact, he has been tremendously consistent about the relationship between limiting the federal government and a re-assertion of citizenship for many years.  He made this point in his first major speech as Speaker-elect to the National Press Club in late 1994, and in the “American Civilization” college courses he taught in the mid-1990s.  Nor is this idea new and revolutionary—it formed the heart of our Settlers’ and Founders’ view of America that de Tocqueville observed in action, and it formed the foundation of Reagan’s blueprint for his “New Republican Party” in 1977.

In fact, in a uniquely Gingrichian way, his widely derided critique of Paul Ryan’s budget proposal last year was consistent with his view of the need for citizenship.  His point was not that he disagreed with the ends or the means of that budget, but that such broad and fundamental reforms contained in that budget would not work unless and until the people were ready to re-accept their responsibilities at the local level—it was putting the cart before the horse.  To force such a sweeping change on people until they are persuaded to accept what that change means to their lives, would be “social engineering” from the present status quo that depends on federal involvement.

Now, I agree that Newt’s choice of words was wrong, but his point was correct.  As we fix the federal government, we must persuade the American people to re-assert their citizenship and to accept the responsibilities that citizenship will require from all of us.  Like you, I want, and the country needs, Paul Ryan’s approach to fixing the budget and the federal government, but it won’t work, and it will only delay the day on which we become a European welfare state, if we don’t become real citizens of this great nation again.  In fact, look in the mirror and ask yourself—isn’t this re-commitment to citizenship what the Tea Party movement was all about?  I can tell you that this re-commitment to citizenship is what forms the basis for the “Renewing the American Community” plan that I and others have been working to develop for the last two years.

So, whether Newt, Rick, Ron or Mitt becomes our nominee, we must dedicate ourselves like our forefathers did—with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor—to not just taking back the government from the left, but to rebuilding the bonds of citizenship with each other in order for our reforms to work and for America to remain the exceptional and indispensable nation—and Reagan’s ideal of a Shining City on a Hill.

 

Can the 10th Amendment provide a path to address the “Immigration Issue”?

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Why can’t we seem to resolve the “immigration issue” this country has been debating, off and on, for the last forty years (and which we have debated intensely and incessantly for the last 4-5 years)?

This question has been nagging at me for more than a month now.  It most recently arose during the November meeting of the Clear Lake Area Republicans, when our focus-group discussion identified several issues that we bundle together as the “immigration issue” as the most important local and federal issues we currently face.  Then, in mid-December, I attended a debate about immigration policy between two well-intentioned and well-regarded local Republican leaders sponsored by a local chamber of commerce, which ended-up stirring the issues around rather than providing much clarity. I walked away from both of these events feeling that this issue—or bundle of issues—seems to be a wound that we can’t get to heal, no matter how hard we try.  In fact, the harder we try to close this wound, the more we seem to bleed from it.

This feeling is exacerbated for me, because I deeply believe that the long-term solutions to many of this country’s problems will be solved, if at all, by re-balancing the allocation of responsibility and power of government based on the principles contained in the 10th Amendment—and yet, effectively addressing the immigration issue has seemed to me to require a more coherent and aggressive federal, rather than a state and local response.  Because Washington seems increasingly incapable of addressing its own responsibilities wisely and effectively, this problem has seemed impervious to resolution, which is why States have tried to act on their own to attack the issue.

But, just when I decided to stop thinking of this issue for a while, some thoughts came to me, which I want to share with you as we move into 2012.  I am not promising that my thoughts provide all the right answers, or even the right path toward any of the right answers.  But, I hope they will provide a different perspective that could get us closer to finding at least some answers.

I think the reason that the present immigration debate seems like it is beyond resolution, is because the current problem arises from a structural dilemma related to the federal structure of our governments.  To understand this dilemma, I first want to digress to discuss that federal structure.

In Federalist 45, James Madison made this following observation about the nature of the different spheres of responsibility and powers delegated to the federal government and retained by the states:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.  Those which are to remain in the State government are numerous and indefinite.  The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.  The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

Consistent with this view, the Supreme Court, after the Civil War and the passage of the post-war amendments that expanded the scope of federal authority over civil rights of citizens, articulated the difference this way:

… the United States is not only a government, but it is a national government, and the only government in this country that has the character of nationality. It is invested with power over all the foreign relations of the country, …, all of which are forbidden to the state governments. It has jurisdiction over all those general subjects of legislation and sovereignty which affect the interests of the whole people equally and alike, and which require uniformity of regulations and laws, …– all which subjects are expressly or impliedly prohibited to the state governments.

Knox v. Lee, 79 U.S. 457, 555 (1871).

While under our Constitution and form of government the great mass of local matters is controlled by local authorities, the United States, in their relation to foreign countries and their subjects or citizens, are one nation, invested with powers which belong to independent nations, the exercise of which can be invoked for the maintenance of its absolute independence and security throughout its entire territory.

The Chinese Exclusion Case, 130 U.S. 581, 604 (1889).

What these statements show is that the general division of responsibility and power between the federal and state governments was based on a division between authority over external and purely national issues on the one hand, and authority over local issues on the other hand; and on a further understanding that most issues faced by government were local in nature.  With these general understandings in mind, Hamilton, in Federalist 32, describes the further idea of the limited nature of the delegation of authority to the federal government this way:

But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, exclusively delegated to the United States.

He goes on to identify three types of exclusive delegation:

…where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; where it granted in one instance the authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally contradictory and repugnant.

Finally, Hamilton identifies the express delegation of the power to “establish an Uniform Rule of naturalization throughout the United States,” as an example of the third type of express delegation, and this view is elaborated upon by Madison in Federalist 42.  So, what our Founders intended was to give us a federal government vested with expressly delegated responsibilities, which were intended to address external and purely national issues.  One of those expressly delegated issues was Naturalization.

Now, before we return to the primary topic of this post, we need to address the difference between “naturalization” and “immigration”.  Naturalization is the process by which a foreigner, once having arrived in the country, may stay and become a citizen.  Immigration is the process by which a foreigner comes to, and enters the country.  The power over naturalization was expressly delegated to the federal government, in large part because of the problems the colonists encountered with restrictions imposed by Britain prior to the Revolution, and inconsistencies created by the States under the Articles of Confederation.  However, the Constitution is silent as to the power over immigration (except for an odd reference in the provision related to the continued importation of slaves until 1808).  Consistent with this silence, and with the colonists’ anger over limitations on voluntary immigration imposed by Britain before the Revolution, the federal government did not impose restrictions on voluntary immigration until the 1880s.

When the federal government first imposed restrictions upon immigration, the action was not justified as an exercise of the “necessary and proper” power related to naturalization but, instead, was justified as enforcement of treaty provisions with China and Japan, which restricted immigration from those countries. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that the authority to regulate immigration was inherent in, and arose from all of the powers vested in the federal government to conduct foreign affairs—or, as the Founders would have said, from the delegation of powers over external issues.  Then, as we in Texas remember all too well, about 30 years ago in Plyer v. Doe, the Supreme Court narrowed the ability of States to regulate the conduct and status of persons who had entered and stayed in the country in violation of federal immigration laws, by requiring that States provide the children of such persons equal access to public education.  And that opinion has led, in large part, to the tremendous strain on States and communities caused by the “immigration problem” in this country ever since.

So what is the structural dilemma I spoke of earlier?  Unlike most of the problems that have arisen from the allocation of power during our history, the current immigration problem is unique.  During most of our history, we have battled over the adequacy, extent, or legitimacy of the power delegated to, or usurped by the federal government from the states or individuals.  Whether the issues have been slavery, civil rights, economic, or social regulation, the debates normally centered on whether the national effects from local actions actually made the issues national in scope, and whether the power being debated could be exercised legally and effectively from Washington.  The current immigration debate is the exact opposite.  The immigration debate involves an issue that is expressly or inherently vested in the federal government to address (whether it be naturalization, immigration, or border security), but which creates negative effects that are almost exclusively local in nature.  From the strain on public schools and hospitals, to the local insurance and job markets, communities are absorbing the brunt of federal inaction.  In the meantime, communities and States have very limited legal means at their disposal to address these effects.

That the federal government has failed, and continues to fail, to address today’s immigration and naturalization issues is beyond serious debate.  It has failed to develop and maintain an appropriate bilateral relationship with Mexico within which border security and immigration could and should be handled.  It has failed to secure our borders to know who is coming and going, and to enforce current restrictions on entry.  It has failed to address the problem of expired visas for students and temporary workers.  It has failed to enforce laws on the books designed to stop the employment of persons who have entered and stayed in violation of law.  It has failed to enforce deportation laws.  It has failed to create positive laws that promote immigration of workers we need for today’s economy.  These failures have created a de facto federal policy of non-enforcement of illegal entry restrictions.

Though this de facto federal policy has created stresses on State and local governments throughout the nation, the problem is most acute where the policy is most abused:  in the States and communities closest to the border with Mexico.  In the meantime (though we should get some clarification from the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue by June, 2012), current legal precedents limit the extent to which States and local governments can address the impact of this policy.  While there is no question that State and local governments can, and constitutionally should enforce federal immigration laws, the current administration has been hostile to even modest attempts by state and local governments to cooperate in or assist with such enforcement.  Beyond basic enforcement, state or local regulations that attempt to regulate the activity of people because of their immigration status, to deny benefits to people because of their immigration status, or to impose additional state-law penalties for violating the federal immigration laws, have rarely been upheld by the courts.

So, while the federal government continues to dither, what can we do?  What should we do?

The simple answer is that we must do what we can do, and what we can do is take back control of our communities and States, consistent with the 10th Amendment and with the federal structure I discussed above.  To take back this control, we are going to have to embrace a paradigm shift in our thinking, though.  This paradigm shift will require a more realistic and forgiving attitude toward those who have come here, or who have stayed here, in violation of the law; and it will require a more appropriate self-image of ourselves and our role in this process.

First, the realism:  millions of people who crossed the Rio Grande and stayed illegally over the last generation, or who over-stayed their visas, will never go home.  Whether it is because we won’t have the stomach or the resources to do it, we will not deport that many people; and many of them will have planted too many roots here to ever leave voluntarily, no matter how bad the economy gets.  Moreover, for those who have established homes in the Southwestern U.S., why would they go home when they can build a better life in a place that is still culturally and historically familiar to them?

Second, the forgiveness:  except for our most serious crimes, such as murder, every crime has a “statute of limitations” period, after which someone can no longer be prosecuted.  Crossing the border and staying without complying with federal law in order to work and make a living are crimes, but they aren’t murder.  Just as society forgives other crimes over time, we need to begin forgiveness (especially if it comes with repentance, such as compliance with payment of fines and prohibition against citizenship).  We also need to remember that one of the hallmarks of our legal rights has been the principle that the “son is not liable for the sins of the father,” which is embodied in the Constitutional prohibition against bills of attainder, and to stop condemning children for the crimes of the parents.  Finally, we have to understand that all of us—citizen and illegal immigrant alike—have been harmed by the failures of the U.S. and Mexican governments to address the problems that have caused and attracted this continued exodus into the U.S.

Third, and maybe most importantly, we have to stop wallowing as victims over this issue.  For years, we have seen ourselves as the victims of a wave of illegal activity without protection from our federal government, and, to add insult to injury, we’ve seen ourselves as having to support the “villains” with public benefits.  In response to this feeling of victimization, we’ve come to sound and act collectively like “Inspector Javert,” the character from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, who eventually loses his soul over his quest to bring the petty criminal Jean Valjean to “justice” long after Valjean had paid his penance.

Ladies and gentlemen, these “villains” are our neighbors, regardless of who they are, where they came from, or how they got here.  And, as I noted before, most of them and their children will be here a very long time.  The Democrats and other organizations know this, and they are advocating that these neighbors remain separate from the rest of the larger community, and, therefore, dependent on unions, government and their political party for years to come.  As long as the Democrats can maintain the federal status quo, and we refuse to engage with these new neighbors, we condemn these newcomers to become wards of the long-term Democratic strategy for our country.

So, if the federal government won’t act, the paradigm shift requires us to use the principles of the 10th Amendment positively and aggressively to build better communities for the future.  To accomplish this shift, we will have to take control and build neighborhoods with these new neighbors.  The only way to build these bonds of neighborhood is through assimilation, and real assimilation is hard work—and takes both parties to make it happen.

That means, it is time we roll-up our sleeves and help our new neighbors to assimilate:  to privately establish the network of churches and private organizations that help neighbors and build communities; to teach English and help them become literate in our culture and history; and to mentor the establishment of private businesses and employment through which they can pay taxes, and support the public institutions that now support them.  We can not, and should not, reward the adults among them who committed the initial crime by granting them amnesty through a citizenship path (and we couldn’t do that anyway because that is the essence of the power of naturalization delegated to federal responsibility), but we must begin to fold their families into our neighborhoods so that their children—who will stay here because this is the only home they have known—become productive neighbors, and their children and grandchildren become productive citizens.

I know this paradigm shift does not address the actual needs at the federal level.  I do not address the federal problems, because, frankly, we know what needs to be done to secure the border and re-gain control over the legal flow of people into this country.  Our elected leaders in Washington will either have the will to pass this legislation, or we will have to keep electing new leaders until we find those who will.

But we can not wait for the stalemates in Washington, and between Washington and Mexico City, to resolve themselves before we begin to retake control of our lives and our communities.  That is the purpose of this idea of the paradigm shift—to use the ideas of the 10th Amendment to positively address the problems created by federal inaction and build stronger citizens and communities in the future; rather than to use the 10th Amendment as a negative argument to joust with the federal authorities over whether and how to should enforce federal law.

Some may label my paradigm shift as amnesty by another name, but it is not.  Amnesty, or other such regulations, deal with naturalization, and that is a federal responsibility.  In fact, if my idea would be implemented, there may indeed be neighbors who we help who eventually will be deported if and when the federal stalemate ends.  But the conditions of our schools and our communities, and the demands on our local infrastructures, require that we take control of this situation here and now where we live and work.  Frankly, this is what the Founders would have expected us to do.

I know many of you will disagree with what I have written here.  Do me a favor—read it once, give it some thought, then read it again.  Afterwards, give me your comments and let’s start a dialogue on this important issue.