The Congress shall have Power ... To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization....”
-- Article 1, Section 8, U.S. Constitution

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion....
-- Article 4, Section 4, U.S. Constitution

Citizenship is one of the most coveted gifts that the U.S. government can bestow....
-- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (www.uscis.gov), 2008

Since 1963 the John Birch Society has been speaking out against the problem of illegal immigration. For example, Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, stated in the Society's Bulletin for January 1963: "Because of the vicious defiance, circumvention, and undermining of the Walter-McCarran immigration laws during the Eisenhower Administration, there are today at least five million people from foreign lands who are illegally in our country."

You can see from the preceding quote that already in 1963 there were an estimated five million illegal immigrants in the United States. Nowadays we're told that there are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. However, the 12 million estimate has been used for many years now, even though we know that hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of new illegal immigrants arrive each year. Thus, the 20 million estimate used by many commentators is very likely more accurate. At least one person with good credentials in the immigration field has estimated that we have 30 million illegal immigrants, about 10% of our total population.