Category Archives: immigration

An Immigration Case and Legislation

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The Supreme Court is heard oral arguments on US v Sineneng-Smith last Tuesday. The case involves the convictions of a woman mail fraud and inducing illegal immigration. The woman billed illegal immigrants $6,800 to file paperwork for an expired pathway to legal residence.  Two of her victims has also testified that, but for the woman’s efforts and billings, they would have left the US otherwise.  That last formed the basis of the woman’s conviction of inducing illegal immigration.

The 9th Circuit struck the second conviction, holding the law unconstitutionally overbroad in violation of the First Amendment.

In the course of those oral arguments, came this item of primary interest, at least to me:

Justice Stephen Breyer noodled the idea of narrowing the law so “it is limited to solicitation of a crime.”

That may or may not be a useful thing to do, but it’s for the political branches of our Federal government to legislate, not for the judicial branch. Leave it to a…liberal…Justice to think it’s OK to modify a law from the bench.

Green Card Residency

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The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote (I’m tempted to say “party line vote,” but CJ Roberts might demur were he not otherwise occupied at the moment), lifted a district court’s stay blocking implementation of the Trump administration’s public charge immigration rule. The rule blocks permanent residency and allows for denial of entry visas in the first place for those in our nation or entering it if they are considered likely to rely on our welfare programs. The stay removal allows the rule to be enforced while the underlying case wends its way through the courts.

Europe, exemplified by Deutsche Welle, is dismayed (even as many of the EU’s members demur from accepting immigrants making their passage from northern Africa).  It’s a harsher immigration law.  It significantly expands the criteria for denying legal residency. It disproportionately put[s] permanent residency out of reach for low-income applicants from developing countries.

The stay-issuing district judge, George Daniels, is in a high dudgeon, too. He wrote in his ruling that the rule was repugnant to the American Dream, and was a policy of exclusion in search of justification.

Last things first. The district judge was—and is—completely out of line in his ruling. His task, his duty as an American judge, is to find the law underlying the rule, or the rule itself, unconstitutional or, failing that, to apply the underlying law and the rule as they are written. Full stop.

Our Constitution and the judge’s oath of office, which enjoins him to uphold our Constitution, bar him from implementing his personal opinion or his personal view of what’s good or bad for our society.

Regarding the alleged disproportional impact on the poor or on third-world applicants, that may or may not be true. However, as is the case with all nations, those entering ours are expected to be beneficial to our nation, not drains on it.

On the beef that the rule makes it harder for an entrant to gain legal residency, that’s the point of borders. No one has an inherent right to come into another nation without that nation’s prior permission. No nation has an inherent obligation to grant that permission. Entry requirements and entrants are solely at the discretion of that nation.

Nor have we any obligation to extend the benefits of our already overstretched (and too inefficiently run) welfare programs to noncitizens. Such an extended overstretch can only work to the detriment of our citizens.

Bold Measures

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UN’s Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, wants the world to rise to the task of protecting refugees across the globe.

At this time of turbulence, the international community must do far more to shoulder this responsibility together. It is a moment to build a more equitable response to refugee crises through a sharing of responsibility.

Absolutely, the international community must, and the time is now.

However.

Taking in refugees ad lib is a fine feel-good measure, but it’s nothing more than virtue-signaling.  All this does is “help” those fortunate enough to escape, while the receiving nations cynically turn their backs on, and abandon, those who cannot escape and remain trapped in what those receiving nations agree—by their acceptance of refugees—are terrible conditions in the originating countries.

No.

If the international community truly wants to help refugees, the constituent nations will attack the problem at the source. They’ll enter refugee-creating nations and help them (or force them) to correct the ills that create such squalid, criminal, and otherwise dangerous conditions that citizens feel constrained to risk their lives trekking across vast deserts with inadequate supplies and security and floating across wide seas in inadequate boats with inadequate supplies to another, any other, nation. They’ll move to eliminate, or vastly mitigate, the need for people to become refugees.

Enter another nation to force changes—what about those nations’ sovereignty? That’s a valid consideration, but we must weigh that against the deprecation of sovereignty caused by accepting—encouraging—the brain drain and the economic drain, such as it is, that is created by encouraging the flight of what’s left of the best of those nations from those nations.

We also must balance those refugee-creating nations’ sovereignty against the sovereignty and human rights of the people themselves left in that squalor and those criminal and otherwise dangerous conditions.

Some Immigrants

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Mary Anne Marsh is a firm believer in the power of immigration into the US, and she’s right. However, the three examples she threw up to illustrate her position merely serve to deprecate it.

For background, she opened her op-ed with this:

[W]e are sorely tested by those who serve not the idea of America but an individual who acts like a tyrannical monarch and puts the wishes of Russian President Vladimir Putin before the best interests of this country.

Fortunately, though, that man no longer is in office. Ex-President Barack Obama (D) openly, nakedly promised “Vladimir” more flexibility once he—Obama—no longer had to worry about pesky, impertinent clingers-to-religion-and-gun American voters.

Then she named her three canonical immigrants: ex-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, NSC staffer LtCol Alexander Vindman, and ex-NSC staffer Fiona Hill.  Marsh, while lionizing these three, chose to elide certain other pertinent information about them.

Yovanovitch testified under oath, in response to Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) readout of a Trumpian tweet and question about it, that she found the tweet “intimidating.” The tweet? It was nothing more than a bluntly put performance review. Yovanovitch’s confession to being frightened by rude words sends a dangerous, emboldening signal to our enemies that we can be pushed around easily.

Vindman testified to concern about a telecon between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a telecon about which both Zelenskiy and his Foreign Minister have averred not only no concerns but positively that the telecon was a good and friendly one. Marsh chose to omit from her paean to Vindman that he had been reprimanded for—during a joint exercise with Putin’s Russia, yet—yocking it up with his Russian exercise counterparts about how foolish the US was and is.

Marsh quoted from Hill’s testimony:

Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.  This is a fictional narrative….

The only fiction here, as was exposed during Republican questioning, was the bit about some on the committee believing Russia “did not conduct a campaign against our country.”  Examples were produced, and under oath Hill acknowledged their accuracy, of the Republicans on the committee having repeatedly sounded the alarm over Russian interference in our 2016 elections—especially with the complicity of the Democratic National Committee—and of their continued attempts to interfere with our 2018 and 2020 elections.

Hill also was exposed for her false dichotomy in her implication that because Russia had and was interfering, Ukraine must not be. A woman as intelligent and accomplished as Hill surely knew her dichotomy was false when she presented it, and her…error…was exposed, also, during Republican questioning.

The value of immigration to our great nation is vast, and it includes those who’ve fought in our defense from our beginnings down through today, serve in our Congress, and less glamorously “merely” work in our business enterprises, charity organizations, and governments at all levels.  Marsh’s three examples do not match these. At all.

Marsh’s keyboard is clacking. She might want to see to that.

A Thought on Brexit

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Supposedly, Great Britain and the EU are close to agreement on a deal governing the former’s departure from the latter. Absent a deal, Great Britain will leave the EU on its own terms.  That last is, I maintain, the best way out.

However.

There remain, as of Wednesday morning, three sticking points to any sort of deal, according to EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier.

  • Customs arrangements for the island of Ireland
  • The issue of giving Northern Irish authorities a greater say over regulatory arrangements, and the ability to veto them
  • Guarantees of a level playing field—that Britain will not be at an unfair advantage when it comes to business regulation

Customs arrangements for the entire island—even though one part of the island is a sovereign nation and EU member and the other part is a member country of the United Kingdom.  There should be nothing to discuss here. A major reason for the successful Leave vote was for Great Britain to regain control over its own borders—including its national border across the island of Ireland.

Giving Northern Ireland—that part of Great Britain—veto authority over the national government’s “regulatory arrangements”—devolution hasn’t gone that far, nor should it. This sticking point is nothing more than a naked early step in dismantling Great Britain in punishment for its effrontery in voting to leave the Holy Brussels Empire.

Guarantees of a level playing field—Great Britain is justified in seeking such guarantees, but it won’t get them, unless it accedes to what Brussels will define as “fair.”

These…sticking points…illustrate with crystalline clarity the EU’s bad faith in dealing with Great Britain—and they illustrate with equal clarity why a no-deal-Brexit is optimal for Great Britain.

Unfortunately, British PM Boris Johnson, in an agreement just concluded with Barnier, appears to have surrendered to the EU on the matter of Great Britain’s border with the Republic of Ireland:

Northern Ireland will remain part of the UK’s customs territory and will be an entry point into the EU’s single market. No customs checks will be done on the border between [the Republic of] Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Johnson surrendered on the second sticking point, also:

The Northern Irish assembly will have to give consent after Brexit for the region’s continued alignment with the EU regulatory regime every four years.

This cedes control of the British border to the EU, with all that that portends for the nation’s future. British sovereignty now hangs, ironically, on whether Labour MFWIC Jeremy Corbyn can deliver his party’s no vote.  Nigel Farage, Brexit Party head and strange bedfellow of Corbyn’s on this, also has come out against the deal, as have the Democratic Unionist Party, which in coalition with the Tories give Johnson a one-vote majority on most things, and the Scottish National Party, which have been NeverLeaveNoWay all along.

It could be, of course, that Johnson has included these poison pills so as to get this last minute agreement rejected by Parliament, and he can get his no-deal exit from the EU. That raises the question, though, of whether Johnson is that Machiavellian.

Johnson wants an up-or-down vote from Parliament Saturday.