“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. … As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”
—Abraham Lincoln, 1862
The storm is here. And today, the most radical threat to our Constitution doesn’t come from a foreign army or a global treaty, it comes from inside our political class.
For decades, Americans were told that border security and immigration enforcement were just matters of policy, to be managed with common sense and compromise. That narrative has collapsed. We now see that this was never simply about immigration. It is, and has always been, a campaign to erase the distinction between citizen and noncitizen, and to collapse the legal, moral, and constitutional framework that makes America a sovereign nation—a constitutional republic.
This campaign is no longer limited to the political Left. It is now openly embraced by key factions of the Republican Party. And that is why we must speak.
Consider the rhetoric now coming from Republican leaders who insist that immigration enforcement should only target “violent offenders and criminal aliens.” This mirrors, almost word-for-word, the policies of Secretary Mayorkas and talking points of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who once declared that the women and children at the border “are not a security threat, they are a humanitarian challenge.” This reframing, repeated by Left and Right alike, narrows enforcement to a symbolic handful and leaves the rest of the illegal alien population untouched. It is, functionally, a mass amnesty—disguised as pragmatism.
This shift is not accidental. It is a deliberate strategy designed to trigger what scholars of weaponized mass migration call “hypocrisy costs”: to morally shame any attempt at enforcement by portraying it as cruel, inhumane, racist, or unchristian. The more illegal immigration is normalized, the harder it becomes, politically, socioeconomically, and culturally to oppose it. And when Republicans adopt this moral framework, they do the Left’s work for them: redefining citizenship not as a constitutional contract, but as an arbitrary privilege, easily acquired by presence, sympathy, or economic utility.
Several bills now moving through Congress illustrate this betrayal with alarming clarity. The so-called Dignity Act offers legal presence, work permits, and eventual permanent residency to millions of illegal aliens, under the guise of “redemption” and “earned status.” The Dream and Promise Act hands out green cards to over 3 million illegal aliens without requiring a single step toward border security. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act openly rewards illegal alien labor while expanding guest worker quotas, ensuring permanent dependence on foreign agricultural labor. And new registry bills propose that simply remaining in the country illegally for a set number of years should entitle one to legal status—making time itself the loophole.
This is not policy drift. It is policy design.
In this new framework, the law does not constrain. It accommodates. And citizenship is no longer something to be protected—it is something to be redefined, broadened, and ultimately, dissolved. The American citizen becomes not the sovereign, but the subordinate—subject to an ever-growing regime of international norms, economic pressures, and moral manipulations that override constitutional allegiance and legal distinction.
The realignment is total. The Left frames illegal immigration as a humanitarian right; the Right now echoes that framing under the guise of compassion and market necessity. Both erase the border between legal and illegal. Both deny the right of a sovereign people to define and defend their own community. Both undermine the rule of law by replacing it with emotional appeals and prosecutorial discretion. And both are leading us to the same destination: a nation where citizenship is conditional, rights are transactional, and sovereignty is symbolic.
This is not just unsustainable. It is civilizational suicide.
What we are witnessing is the abolition of citizenship by attrition. And the tragedy is that it’s being done in the name of dignity, bipartisanship, and economic growth. But no nation survives when its citizens are asked to compete with subsidized foreign labor, fund public benefits for illegal aliens, and surrender the rule of law to emotional identity politics. No republic endures when its borders are porous, its laws optional, and its identity negotiable.
This is why the Texas Public Policy Foundation is drawing a hard line. We are not here to split the difference between law and lawlessness. We are not here to repackage amnesty in conservative language. We are here to defend the American citizen—legally, economically, and morally. That means restoring full enforcement of our immigration laws, resisting attempts to normalize illegal alien presence, ending the abuse of guest worker programs, and elevating citizenship as a sacred trust—not a bureaucratic status.
Through research, model legislation, public testimony, coalition building, and state-level policy action, TPPF is leading the fight where Washington has not. We are advancing the legal and constitutional tools necessary for states like Texas and Florida to reassert sovereignty in the face of federal abdication. We are exposing the moral shell game that now dominates both parties. And we are unafraid to say what must be said: the rule of law cannot coexist with mass amnesty.
To preserve our republic, we must preserve the very concept of a citizen. And to do that, we must dismantle the false moralism now driving immigration policy on both the Left and the Right.
The fight ahead will not be easy. But as Lincoln once warned, “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”
The time for hedging is over. The time for courage has come.
