By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — If no one knew for certain how many election precincts existed in the United States, the interests of ballot security and voting integrity would be among elements demanding an answer.
Finding that answer would seem even more reasonable if other questions already were being addressed, such as whether voters with disabilities were accommodated and if the length of time the polls were open allowed for reasonable access.
Yet when the Trump administration sought to determine the number of people holding U.S. citizenship during the upcoming census — which seems an entirely appropriate topic given the context — one might have thought the White House was demanding to intrude into ordering which sex could use which public lavatory.
Oh, sorry, it was the Obama administration that had jumped into trying to impose actual access for sex predators’ bathroom use.
As for data on items including bathrooms at residences, that had been deemed suitable information to gather in the census.
However, the key question of how many U.S. citizens are here and there seemed all the more appropriate when one hears that there are, say, “about 11 million undocumented persons” residing here — especially because that figure never seemed to increase, no matter how many millions more entered without legal authorization.
An attempt to assemble this information may not have been perfectly accurate, but it would have been better than ignorance.
Firm opposition to the citizenship question came from Democrats and leftists who seemed fearful that if an accurate number was obtained, there’d be more concern than ever about the U.S. being inundated by unauthorized advantage-seekers imposing themselves on taxpayers and ballot boxes. Oh, there are really 25 million here? Thirty million?
In times past, legal immigration implied loyalty by U.S. newcomers to a palpable ideal of Americanization and rejection of corrupt — sometimes socialist — systems back in the homeland that drove seekers of a new frontier here.
Had this ideal been lost to many arrivals who instead saw the U.S. as just a place to get more money, and maybe not even a very nice nation at that? Continuing to feel ties to a birthplace at least during early years living elsewhere can be understandable. But what if the U.S. is seen as more or less just a place to invade for goodies?
Preparations for surprisingly large demonstrations that sprang up in 2006 in the U.S. included warnings to the “immigration” marchers against brandishing non-U.S. flags — as if flaunting them would betray their true sympathies.
Right here in Phoenix, I read about the instruction to marchers on the front page of a local Spanish-language weekly newspaper not to carry the flags of other countries.
It may seem questionable enough that foreign flags wave at rallies demanding easy entry into the U.S., but tensions increase when officially displayed U.S. flags are pulled down. This is incitement whose implications the dominant open-borders U.S. media shudder at.
Protesters pulled down a U.S. flag at an ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colo., on July 13, cheering as they replaced it with a Mexican flag. A news photo in the Denver Post showed a protester wearing dark glasses and a bandana covering the lower part of his face as he dragged a U.S. flag along the ground. The Post reported that some of the protesters tried to burn it.
Fox News said: “The protesters also removed a ‘Blue Lives Matter’ flag, honoring law enforcement, spray-painted it with the words ‘Abolish ICE,’ then raised the flag upside-down, on a pole next to the Mexican flag, local media reported.”
This was part of leftists’ defiant demonstrations against removing illegal aliens who already had deportation orders issued against them. On July 15 the Conservative Review website posted an interview with conservative journalist Michelle Malkin about this sort of assault. She recalled events in 2006.
“Ethnic grievance-mongers raised the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upside down at Montebello High School in southern California,” Malkin said. “The flag wars quickly spread to Florida, Texas, Arizona, and my now-adopted home state of Colorado.
“At the time, I wrote: ‘I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington.’ I was right,” Malkin continued. “Thanks to these unbridled displays of anti-American hatred, citizens rose fiercely to the defense of our borders and our laws — and the (President George W.) Bush amnesty plan crashed in flames.”
On July 13 The Seattle Times reported another violent incident, this time outside the ICE detention center in Tacoma, where a protester died of gunshot wounds after arriving with a rifle and incendiary devices and tossed lit objects around, causing a car fire.
Lawbreaking demonstrators seemed to think that lawbreaking aliens were in need of their services, but they only made a bad situation worse.
The Washington Times posted a commentary by Ken Paxton, the conservative Republican attorney general of Texas, on July 14. He wrote:
“The crisis on the border is a crisis of lawlessness. Over the last decade, lawlessness has gripped all things immigration from head to foot. From President Barack Obama’s unilateral legalization of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants (which has helped attract countless unaccompanied minors), to the exploitation of our outdated asylum laws by coyotes and human smugglers, the rule of law is nowhere to be found.”
Earlier in the commentary, Paxton wrote:
“It is unsustainable for us to open our arms to every downtrodden Central American who wants to come here; it is counterproductive to encourage the Band-Aid solution of mass migration from troubled countries in need of fundamental domestic reform; and it is downright inhumane for Congress to sit on its hands while a leaky border incentivizes vulnerable migrants to endanger their lives on a perilous journey.”
Arizona Cong. Andy Biggs, a Republican who represents a suburban district in the southeastern part of metropolitan Phoenix, has been a consistent voice for conservative principles since winning the seat in November 2016. He previously served for 14 years in the Arizona legislature, the last four as State Senate president.
Biggs posted at the Washington Examiner on June 28: “There are approximately one million people illegally in the United States who have been ordered to leave by a judge. These illegal aliens have had due process, their day in court, and many have even lost on appeal. They have received more protections of their ‘rights’ by having access to America’s judicial system than an illegal alien would receive in most other countries.”
Even though a judicial officer told them, “You must leave our country,” Biggs said, “they refuse to leave. That means that, not just by virtue of legal process or by entering or remaining in the country illegally, these people do not share American values. These illegal aliens are thumbing their nose at the underpinnings of America’s unique greatness: All of us are equal before the law.”
Standing Firm
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer that Biggs has been true to his campaign word.
“Andy Biggs ran as an unapologetic conservative who would join the Freedom Caucus and stand firm on core principles no matter how much pressure the Swamp put on him,” Querard said.
“I think most voters, whether they like him or not or agree with him or not, would tell you that he has kept his promises and is the congressman he said he would be.”
Rob Haney, a retired chairman of the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer that Biggs is an exception to the rule of weak-kneed Republicans.
“There is a widely accepted belief in conservative circles that establishment Republicans have been passing on defective genes to their offspring,” Haney joked. “There is no other explanation for the weak-kneed, gutless, mealy-mouthed posers populating the Republican hierarchy.
“One rare exception to this . . . is Cong. Andy Biggs,” Haney said. “Biggs burnished his constitutional credentials as president of the Arizona Senate when he refused to hear the bill for support of the National Popular Vote in place of the Electoral College.
“He continues to withstand the pressure of the establishment hierarchy as he speaks and votes against illegal immigration — his most recent example being his vote against the H-1B visa bill, which is easily abused by employers to favor cheaper foreign labor over American workers,” Haney said.
“In summary, who do you believe in this debate? The Chamber of Commerce lobbyists who have lied to us for decades in favor of illegal immigration or solid conservatives like Cong. Biggs? Biggs is a leading spokesman of the Congressional Freedom Caucus, who places American workers and their families first,” he said.
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