By Raoul Lowery Contreras
March 23, 2000

What kind of society would we have in the United States if each individual city in it could decide who was an American citizen? We would have a society like Switzerland. If so, the United States of America would cease to exist as a constitutional republic and as the greatest country the world has ever seen.

Yes, Switzerland allows towns to approve foreigners who apply for Swiss citizenship. There is no national naturalization process in the tiny Swiss nation as most civilized countries have. Imagine Boston Protestants voting to allow Irish Catholics to become citizens in the 1800s. Or, imagine white Southerners voting on citizenship for black people.  Or, imagine further, Texans voting on citizenship for former New Yorkers.

Each person applying for Swiss citizenship must list salary, tax status, personal background and hobbies on the application for citizenship. Personal information includes racial, religious and ethnic information. Here lies the rub. In Emmen, an industrial suburb of Lucerne, 48 people were just turned down by the town’s electorate for citizenship. Only eight people were approved. They were all of Italian backgrounds. Almost all those turned down were from the Balkans, Bosnians mostly. What is the ethnicity of most of Emmen’s electorate? Guess.

The basic population of Switzerland is made up of German, French and Italian-origin people who speak four different official languages, German, Italian, French and Romanesque. Swiss demographics mirror that of Germany and Italy and, absent immigration, the population is aging and shrinking. Sounds like the United States, where German and Anglo backgrounds predominate, where our native-born population is not reproducing itself and is getting older by the minute.

From 1990 until 1995, for example, according to the Census Bureau, the median age of the United States increased from 32.2 years to 35.2 years and is closer to 40 than not today. According to NBC News, an American turns 65 years of age every 12-seconds.

According to the New York Times (Elizabeth Olson), this local voting on citizenship is a test of the political strength of the right-wing anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party.  “This is Swiss direct democracy,” declared party member Urs Ischi. Push-ahw! Baloney!

“Direct democracy” may make sense in New Hampshire, but the Swiss must be suspected of ulterior motives. Switzerland’s People’s Party is a growing hard-right-wing movement that scapegoats immigrants with ethnic hatred and dislike rising from the depths of their souls. The same political process is working in ostracized Austria.

This is not new to Europe, or to the United States. The Know-Nothing Party in America flourished (six governors) in the mid-18th century as an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant party. Noted former Ku Klux Klanner, David Duke, today, runs for office every election as an anti-immigrant candidate. Duke and his compatriots are fueled intellectually by the likes of anti-immigrant writers Peter Brimelow (Alien Nation) and Harvard’s George Borjas.

Imagine if David Duke’s hometown could vote on who could become a U.S. citizen.  What would Serbian Chicago do if a Bosnian applied for U.S. citizenship? Would Spanish speaking El Cenizo, Texas, welcome Mexicans applying for citizenship, as would predominately Mexican-origin El Paso, but cast aside Scotsmen or Swiss?

This is all pertinent to us because there are people in California, and other states, who would institute a form of local control of citizenship. Proposition 187 was passed by California in 1994, despite everyone’s knowledge that it was unconstitutional on its face. Even it’s supporters acknowledged a court test. That proposition was intended to set up a state system of immigration control in a total trashing of the United States Constitution. Immigration, naturalization actually, is a specific duty assigned to the Congress (Article 1, section 7—“To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization…)

Specifically, Californians voted to expel children from school if they or their parents were “suspected” – not proven in a court of law-- but “suspected” of being in the country illegally. The word “suspected” appeared several times in Proposition 187.

In 1994, I had the self-proclaimed principal author of Proposition 187, Ron Prince, on my radio show. I questioned him about the 187 provision that mandated that all “law enforcement agencies” check citizenship of anyone under “arrest” which can mean stopped for a broken taillight.  When asked exactly what documents would be necessary for proof of citizenship or legal residency to a beat cop, he answered that documentation would be up to each local chief of police or sheriff.

Switzerland, land of gnomes and watches, shows Ron Prince the way. Yes, let each locality unleash the forces of meter maids to check papers and report “suspected” illegals to a “higher authority.”

This issue of locals overriding the United States Constitution would be laughable in light of the courts dismantling of Proposition 187. But Mr. Prince and a small cohort of his anti-immigrants are trying to get “Son of 187” on the November California ballot.

Their efforts are not laughable, they are, like Swiss citizenship “direct democracy”, unconscionable and, worse, they are, in a word, unconstitutional. If a law or proposed law is unconstitutional, it is un-American, as are the law’s proponents, no matter how many people vote for it.

Contact Raoul at raoul@raoul.net

Raoul Lowery Contreras'columns are syndicated by the New York Times Syndicate, New American News service.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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