The more rights we give to people who are in our country illegally the less citizenship means. In New Jersey, we are truly at the tipping point where citizenship becomes completely meaningless.

The latest example of this? State Sen. Joe Vitale wants every child in New Jersey to have health insurance and that includes children whose parents brought them here illegally.

"The downside for children not being insured is multi problematic. Children who are sick miss school, they don't perform well," Vitale said. Schools they shouldn't be in. Schools that aren't even allowed to question their immigration status, which is just insane.

The legislation would, of course, provide funding. Out of a pool of tax money we suspect many of those illegal immigrant parents are not fully paying into. So there's the latest terrible idea out of Trenton. Don't do anything about illegal immigrants, and when they can't afford health insurance for their children, you and I pay for it.

Which of course only serves as another incentive for illegals to find their way to New Jersey. We already have a governor who has declared the entire state a sanctuary state. An attorney general who has issued orders to police departments to not cooperate with the federal government when it comes to immigration issues.

We encourage them to take spots in our state schools that could have gone to U.S. citizens and we give them in-state tuition. So the U.S. citizen living in Bucks County, PA pays full price while someone not supposed to be in this country pays half. Then we established a means for them to get financial aid for college. Of course we didn't leave it there. Now we're even paying millions of dollars a year to give them free lawyers to help them fight their deportations. You and I are paying for that, and Murphy couldn't care less what you think about it.

The benefits of citizenship are being bestowed on people who knowingly broke immigration law. The message here from lawmakers in Trenton like Joe Vitale, from Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and from Gov. Phil Murphy is that citizenship doesn't mean anything anymore. It isn't valued. It isn't special.

If citizenship isn't special, then America is no longer special. I reject their lesson that America no longer has meaning.

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