Tag Archives: immigration

A “Misunderstanding”

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors spent a lot of ink and pixels on their editorial regarding the “jostling” between Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott and our nation’s Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden over Abbott’s moves regarding Eagle Pass, the city’s Shelby Park, and the associated stretch of our border with Mexico. They included, though, this bit of…misunderstanding…of the underlying condition along our southern border:

If migrants who have walked 1,000 miles qualify as an invading army….

Leaving aside the pros and cons of Abbott’s argument regarding jostling with the US government on the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, the Editors have blown up their own argument with this fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. These are not migrants who have walked those 1,000 miles, they are illegal aliens. More, they’ve been illegal aliens since they entered Mexico in violation of Mexico’s own immigration laws.

Even could they be migrants throughout their trek across Mexico, when they reach our border and enter illegally, they become illegal aliens. Among those illegal aliens flooding across our southern border are some number of military age single men from the PRC, among other nations. “Some number” estimated from those who have been caught entering illegally and those who have gotten away, but reasonably well IDed in the process. That’s a floor on the total, though, since we can have no idea of how many are among the several thousands per month who escape unidentified or unencountered at all. The danger of that has been amply demonstrated already by Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine with its little green men.

Abbott’s characterization and declaration—along with similar characterizations and declarations by 50 Texas counties—that the flood of illegal aliens constitutes an invasion is correct. With the decision of the Biden administration to not enforce our border, any Constitutional crisis is one of Biden’s construction.

Bipartisan Border Failure

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The Progressive-Democrats running the Senate offered, in return for funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the Republic of China, money for border “security.” Disappointingly, too many Republican Senators agreed to this sucker deal, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has committed to a cloture vote on the thing this week. Hopefully (forlornly), the bill will fail the cloture vote.

Senator James Lankford (R, OK), the lead Republican negotiator for this bill, is especially disappointing in his failure to negotiate effectively and his subsequent meek acquiescence to it.

This is part of what’s in the bill:

(B) MANDATORY ACTIVATION.—The Secretary shall activate the border emergency authority if
(i) during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or
(ii) on any 1 calendar day, a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered.

Seems OK, so far. However.

(A) DISCRETIONARY ACTIVATION.—The Secretary may activate the border emergency authority if, during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 4,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.

And

(4) LIMITATIONS.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—For purposes of paragraph (3), the Secretary shall not activate the border emergency authority—
(i) during the first calendar year after the effective date, for more than 270 calendar days;
(ii) during the second calendar year after the effective date, for more than 225 days; and
(iii) during the third calendar year, for more than 180 calendar days.

And these provisions are only a three year “requirement.” For significant fractions of each of those years, the border is explicitly wide open—just as it is now.

And

(5) SUSPENSIONS OF AUTHORITY.—The Secretary shall suspend activation of the border emergency authority, and the procedures under subsections (a), (b), (c), and (d), not later than 14 calendar days after the date on which the following occurs, as applicable:

“As applicable” consists of those criteria under the MANDATORY and DISCRETIONARY paragraphs cited above. Whenever the illegal alien influx falls to a merely large number (4,000 per day works out to 120,000 per 30-day month or 1.46 million per year as being an acceptable flood). This is the case, even without that SUSPENSION, for those significant fractions of each year when the Secretary shall not activate the border emergency authority.

And this phrasing, which is repeated throughout (6) WAIVERS OF ACTIVATION OF AUTHORITY:

…the Secretary may, in the sole, unreviewable, and exclusive discretion of the Secretary, determine whether to activate the requirements of the border emergency authority….

This is an attempt to prevent Congressional and Judicial constitutionally mandated oversight, here of the Executive Branch, and worse, it seeks to subordinate those to branches’ authorities to the sole discretion of an unelected bureaucrat subordinate to the President. This is Lankford’s abject surrender to the administrative state.

Any one of these provisions, with the possible exception of the MANDATORY ACTIVATION section cited above (though its context deprecates even this much), should be a deal breaker. Overarching that, though is this. Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have, from the beginning, determinedly refused to enforce our existing immigration and border control laws. On what planet can anyone (Lankford? Anyone?) believe that either of these would exercise the expulsion authority that is merely authorized in this latest bill, much less exercise the authority this bill mandates under higher illegal alien influx?

Better to require Biden to enforce those existing laws and close the border first. Only subsequently could the sort of border control tenets in this bill be discussed. But, if Biden actually did that, these tenets would be unnecessary.

The Senate’s proposed bill can be read here.

Ukraine, Israel, and the RoC absolutely need funding and arms, but that should be brought up as three separate, stand-alone bills, just as any legitimate legislative proposal should be. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) has come close with his proposal for funding Israel in a stand-alone bill, but his proposal is a supplemental bill with no means of paying for the funding—just more deficit and associated debt. That bill should be a failure in committee.

Update: Corrected an originally bad number for the number of illegal aliens crossing our border per month before there’s any sort of trigger to start closing our border. My third-grade arithmetic notes need reviewing.

Eric Adams’ Duplicity

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Or it’s the incompetence of New York City’s Progressive-Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.

After warning that a surge in illegal arrivals to the Big Apple would “destroy New York City” and blaming the influx for prompting budget cuts, New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams reportedly plans to provide illegal alien families with pre-paid credit cards.

A key aspect of Adams’ scheme:

The plan will begin with a $53 million pilot program targeting the migrant residents of the Roosevelt Hotel. Run through Mobility Capital Finance, the pilot plan will provide 500 families with an Immediate Response Card for use on food and infant care supplies.

That works out to $106,000 per illegal alien family. How does that compare with the amounts Adams’ budget commits to the city’s resident—and American citizen—homeless families? How does that compare with the amounts Adams’ budget commits to “ordinary” welfare payments to the city’s resident—and American citizen—families who are at the bottom of the city’s economy?

And this:

The city estimates that roughly 15,000 migrant families currently reside in NYC hotels and the administration plans to expand the program to all of them should the pilot program prove fruitful.

At $106k per each, that accumulates, according to my third grade arithmetic, to $1.59 billion. Beyond that, what logic supports the blatantly unequal treatment that favors those 15,000 families while leaving all those remaining illegal alien families literally out in the cold? Of course, that would run the bill up another billion-and-a-third….

From where does Adams expect to draw those $106k per family in his self-proclaimed environment of City destruction and attendant budget cuts? It’s more of his magical thinking.

Lies of a Progressive-Democrat President

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This batch centers on our southern border and the flooding illegal alien crisis (which includes an unknown number of violent criminals; drug and sex-trafficking mules; and worse, terrorists and enemy nations’ special operations soldiers). Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden:

I’ve done all I can do. Just give me the power. I’ve asked from the very day I got into office[.]

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) exposed Biden’s lies.

President Biden said  “I’ve done all I can do” with executive authority to secure the border. That is simply untrue. He’s either lying or misinformed.
Here are just a few of the authorities at his disposal – if only he would use them:
• Presidential Authority to Restrict Entry 212(f)
• Expedited Removal 235(b)(1)
• Discretionary Detention Authority 236(a)
• Mandatory Detention 236(c)
No more excuses.

Johnson went on:

Immigration and Nationality Act coupled with recent Supreme Court precedent give [Biden] “ample authority” to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

Biden also canceled the prior administration’s Remain in Mexico agreement with Mexico, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while waiting for their cases to be adjudicated. Since Biden did his cancelation via his Executive Order, he can reinstate it via his Executive Order, although that would require renegotiation with Mexico (and both Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken have shown themselves unable to conduct serious, productive negotiations.

He rescinded all of former President Donald Trump’s (R) Executive Orders that helped close our border via his own EOs. Biden can, by EO, reinstate those prior EOs or write new EOs to achieve substantially the same thing.

Biden had more:

Give me the border patrol.
Give me the judges.
Give me the people who can stop this and make it work.

The “people” he wants are more bureaucrats to process those illegal aliens that get caught into our nation’s interior on untracked personal “parole.” The judges he wants are to speed up the initial processing and unfettered release. The border patrol he wants are for doing the paperwork for the processing. He wants none of those border patrol, judges, or people actually to seal our border and send the illegals back out of our nation. The “it” he wants so badly to “make work” are that release of all comers at our vaporous border promptly into our interior.

This is yet another example of Party politicians insulting our intelligence, this insult being the blatant lies that Biden thinks we’re too stupid to recognize.

This is what we’ll be facing in November.

Even a Progressive-Democrat…

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…is starting to figure it out.

A Chicago Democrat running for the Illinois House is calling out Mayor Brandon Johnson for allowing migrants to “invade” the Windy City.

Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones did a walk-along with Smith, who showed Jones

two shuttered buildings now sheltering migrants—an academy for young women and a health center that once serviced patients struggling financially. Smith said both were closed due to lack of funds.
“You tell us that there’s no funding or the lack of funding. But then you bring migrants in and make them shelters. That’s not the American way,” Smith said.
“They have the funding. And every now and then they say, ‘Hey, we found more millions, we found more money.'”

That dishonesty and that favoring illegal aliens over American citizens and legally resident aliens in Chicago is all too typical of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Smith is in the Illinois Progressive-Democratic Party primary for the Illinois House against incumbent Kimberly du Buclet. Unfortunately, Smith has no serious influence within Party; from Party’s perspective, he’s a rogue and not to be listened to. It’ll be instructive to see the level of support from Party rank and file that he gets over the course of his primary campaign.