Category: Illegal Immigration

“All the indications are that this treasonable inflammation – ‘secessionitis’ – keeps on making steady progress week-by-week.  If disunion becomes an established fact, we have one consolation.  The self-amputated members were diseased beyond immediate cure and their virus will infect our system no longer.” — George Templeton Strong in his diary as Southern states voted to leave the union in 1861.

Once again, we are replaying the scene in the immediate aftermath of the presidential election of 1860.  Local and state entities, under the spell of radical multiculturalism, have decided shortly after the election of Donald Trump to effectively negate federal immigration law in their jurisdictions.  “Sanctuary” cities and states have taken the place of South Carolina and the ten other Southern states of 1860-1.  This time, the sanctuaries’ target is immigration law and not the tariff or the spread of slavery.  Attorney General William Barr, like Lincoln before him, has decided to reign in the “diseased members”, in Strong’s words, by announcing federal court action against California, King County, Wa., and New Jersey for inhibiting federal enforcement of immigration law.  Barr’s press conference was the equivalent of Lincoln’s call for volunteers after the firing on Ft. Sumter.

Hurray, it’s finally on!

The sham logic of the seceding jurisdictions goes something like this: we need to maintain the cooperation of immigrant neighborhoods by not assisting federal immigration authorities as we enforce our laws, so we will ignore Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996.  Section 287(g) empowers state and local authorities to assist in the transfer of illegal immigrants with federal criminal violations.  One of the sheriff’s elected in 2018 with the support of $175,000 from the ACLU was Gary McFadden in Mecklenburg County, NC.  He crowed on election night, “287(g) is going to be history!”

Leftists like McFadden use rationales that are invented to hide a real purpose, which in this case is the goal of advancing the idea of a nation of disjointed tribes (radical multiculturalism).  Immigration law stands in the way of bringing about this utopia – or dystopia in reality.

If you think about it, the rationale succeeds at reaching new heights of silliness.  Why single out immigration law for this exclusive treatment?  The same logic could apply to federal larceny, counterfeiting, contraband, and kidnapping suspects who were taken into custody by local authorities on state charges.  Illegal immigrants are by definition lawbreakers and are preternaturally nervous whenever ICE officers appear anywhere for anything.  Whether it’s the receipt of stolen identities, drug dealing, the kidnapping of an adolescent girl across state lines, or nothing, by an “undocumented” neighbor, the rest of the “undocumented” will concentrate on remaining under the fed’s radar.  The “woke” localists’ reasoning is actually a call for an abandonment of all federal law anywhere a large concentration of illegal immigrants exists.  And we have massive concentrations of millions of the “undocumented” (10-22 million, anyone’s guess) since the spigot of immigration – legal and illegal – was first thrown wide open in 1965.

The secessionists hang their hat on their interpretation of 287(g) as “voluntary”.  Voluntary or no, a state or local government can’t inhibit the federal government from carrying out its constitutional powers.  Court rulings have protected state and local governments from being forced to financially support a federal responsibility.  But when does “voluntary” and “not being forced” stray into interference?  Do these jurisdictions generally withhold cooperation with other local jurisdictions, other than the federal government on immigration law?  Are the costs for holding a local suspect for violations of federal law so burdensome?  In a federated republic, like ours, the police powers are shared; therefore, law enforcement in a governmental arrangement of overlapping layers ipso facto mandates the incurring of costs of cooperation since criminal activity strays across the nation and levels of government.  Call it the costs of doing business in a federated republic.

In the end, we are left with radical left-wing localities and states who have in effect nullified federal immigration law as if they have the power to pick and choose the federal government’s constitutional powers that they will recognize.  They refuse to share information and release suspects before the feds can get their hands on them.  The behavior goes beyond the exercise of state and local sovereignty and into blocking the enforcement of federal law.

Segregationists of the old South would be proud.  No state or local government has the power to act as if the 14th Amendment or federal immigration law has been repealed.  The costs of intergovernmental cooperation aren’t burdensome when they are limited to briefly holding suspects or sharing information.  It’s nonsense to conclude that any cost is the equivalent of the forceful conscription of local government for the benefit of the feds.  Otherwise, we are the United Nations General Assembly and not the United States of America.

Go get ‘em Barr.

RogerG

The citizenship question should be on the ballot, and please don’t psychoanalyze repressed racism as is the wont of the pseudo-Freudians in the Democratic presidential field. It’s simply a matter of pure reason. However, there’s more to the story according to John Yoo (UC Berkeley law professor) and James Phillips (Stanford law professor). They see a silver lining in the Supreme Court’s decision (Dept. of Commerce v. New York) blocking the inclusion of the citizenship question for those concerned about rule by unelected administrative apparatchiks (“Roberts Thwarted Trump, but the Census Ruling Has a Second Purpose”, The Atlantic, see here).

First, pure reason dictates the presence of the question. The Democrats’ lollapalooza of giveaways includes the extension of benefits to citizens of other nations in residence here, legal and illegal. How could you determine the fiscal impact of the lunacy if you can’t count the beneficiaries? Mayor Pete (Buttigieg) pulls 11 million out of the hat for the undocumented alone. MIT says its more like 22 million. A range of double means that we don’t know. Though, who would you trust for scientific rigor, Mayor Pete or MIT?

An additional reason cries for the inclusion of the query. I suspect that the foreign-born make up a huge slice of the population. If you want a data base on the nature of the current population for policy reasons – which is one of the reasons for having a census – to exclude a descriptor that stares at you as you drive through almost any hamlet, town, or city in California (and Chicago, New York City, etc., etc.) would limit the census to only being a tool to inflate Democrat representation in Congress. Get real, ferret out the non-citizens and their status.

Secondly, Yoo and Phillips see a positive in the Court’s majority opinion for those with qualms about omnicompetent administrative governance, particularly the promiscuous delegation of Congressional authority to the president and his administrative minions. Since Wilson and FDR, it has been the dream of “progressives” to supplant popular sovereignty with the rule of “experts”, never mind that the rule of experts can resemble the rule of Boss Tweed (“collusion” anyone?). The decision could be interpreted as a slap at “Chevron deference” (courts deferring to administrative judgment) and power-hungry power centers like the EPA.

If we still are prevented from knowing much about the people who are flooding into our country, at least we might be comforted by the realization that the EPA can’t kick us out of our house.

Read the Yoo and Phillips article.

RogerG

Postscript: On Friday, 7/12/2019, Pres. Trump issued an executive order to use other data bases to determine residency status of the population for the 2020 census.  Expect more lawsuits in attempts to obscure the actual number.

We are not well-served by our telegenic punditry class on cable TV nor our increasingly demagogic hucksters running for high office in order to gain power to tell us what to do.  Particularly irksome is the collection of verbiage to avoid using “illegal immigrant” to refer to those who crossed our borders in violation of our laws.  The rhetorical gymnastics are astounding, and misleading.

A favorite euphemism is the phrase “the undocumented”, meaning those “without papers”.  Yes, in a superficial sense, these words work.  Even “illegal immigrant” works, but all have an important ingredient missing.  What’s absent is any indication that the objects of the phraseology are citizens.  Yes, they are “citizens”, but not of here.  These people are the citizens of other countries.  They are not stateless people.

Putting it all together: “the undocumented” are citizens of other countries who willingly broke our laws to reside in our nation.  The fact that they are the citizens of other countries puts the issue of what to do with them in an entirely new light.

So, extending universal health insurance coverage as some have proposed, subsidized by American citizens, to citizens of Guatemala (or any country for that matter) in our country in violation of our laws is an invitation for them to get here by any means available and partake of our fantastic medical professionals and facilities.  American citizens get the honor of paying for the healthcare of Guatemala citizens.  If the point is to rub away the distinction between foreign citizens and American ones, the idea accomplishes the feat in a quick stroke.

Trump’s citizenship question might have to be reworded.  He’ll have to replace “United States” in front of “citizen” with “world” since U.S. citizens, functioning as taxpayers, become the world’s taxpayers for the world’s needy.  Thus, “Are you a world citizen?”

I present the point not as mere sarcasm. If your concern is the treatment of a bleeding Guatemala citizen in our country in violation of our laws, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 takes care of it.  The hucksters, though, are brandishing cradle-to-grave healthcare for … Guatemala citizens, or any country’s citizens who happen to get here by any means available.  American citizenship be damned.

Ludicrousness continues in the call for non-citizens to vote in local elections.  Imagine the spectacle of city council elections turning into UN affairs.  Citizens of Guatemala – or Honduras, El Salvador, Russia, etc. – if they account for a majority in a district due to the laxed enforcement of our immigration laws, get to tell US citizens what to do. So, nonmembers – national membership is the essence of citizenship – govern members.  How does that make sense?

From now on, please clean up the language.  All people are born in some country and therefore citizens of it – with but a few arcane exceptions.  The anomalies are probably focused on the jet-set rich who can afford to be above it all.  For the rest of us, citizenship goes with our presence on the earth.  Let’s talk like we understand the fact.

RogerG

Remember the cry from Republicans that “character counts” during the Clinton impeachment battle?  Now, nary a word of condemnation from them about Trump’s present public and past private (and not so private) behavior.  Don’t worry, the Dems are a mountain of hypocrisies too.  Remember Barbara Jordan (D, Tx.) and her U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform of 1994-1996?  Her restrictionist views on immigration once found a home in the Democratic Party.  If alive today, not only would she never make the stage in either of the recent Dem debates, she would be wiping spittle off her face after a visit to a local DC restaurant.

Don’t expect either party to offer a duplicity-free environment.  Maybe it has to do with life constantly throwing monkey wrenches into our preconceived notions.  What we once condemned – or loved – turns around and bites us in our posterior.

Jordan said the following about immigration policy: “… it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.”  Further, she wrote, “For immigration to continue to serve our national interest, it must be lawful.  There are people who argue that some illegal aliens contribute to our community because they may work, pay taxes, send their children to our schools, and in all respects except one, obey the law.  Let me be clear: that is not enough.”  From there on, she continues to sound more and more like Trump.

The hood ornament for open borders is our giddy sophomore class president, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY).  Lately, she strode into the land of Nazi-shaming about our immigrant holding centers, calling them “concentration camps”.  It’s true that when a person resorts to making anything a clone of the Nazis, you’re close to admitting the sterility of your point.  Game over, Alexandria.

What does she do when confronted with her banality?  She dodges.  In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, she was questioned, “… there were also ‘concentration camps’ under Obama and under Bill Clinton…. did you call them concentration camps at the time when Obama was president?”

Her awkward response was, “Well, at the time, I was working in a restaurant.”  She tried to recover by additionally saying, “… I absolutely was outspoken against Obama’s immigration policies and the detention of families then.”  He didn’t ask her about her past opposition.  He queried her about equating our detention centers under Obama to what is colloquially understood to mean Auschwitz.  She rhetorically zigzags like an Allied troop ship in a u-boat killing zone.

Quibbling is another favorite tactic when caught tasting your feet.  She attempts to bring up a more benign and arcane definition of “concentration camp”.  The over-caffeinated Ocasio-Cortez exhibits all the signs of a zealot caught being a zealot.

Baffoonishness is now a qualification for the political limelight.

Read the story of the Tapper/Cortez interview here.

RogerG