Daily Archives: 23 December 2013

Broken Immigration

Posted on by
Reply

This is how twisted things can get with a Byzantine legal system, here concerning our immigration laws, combined with an Obama administration that enforces or disregards the laws at political convenience.

Chris Crane, National ICE Council President, says

That’s what we do now, we babysit kids.

The very people patting themselves on the back as humanitarians are putting these children at more risk than they’ve ever been before.

What Crane is talking about is a ruling and public statement issued by Federal Judge Andrew Hanen in US v Nava-Martinez, a case concerning the defendant’s attempt to smuggle a 10-year-old child to her illegal alien parents.

Hanen says that immigration officials arrest human traffickers smuggling children and then

deliver the minors to the custody of the parent illegally living in the United States.

And

The DHS has simply chosen not to enforce the United States’ border security laws[.]

And

Time and again this court has been told by representatives of the government and the defense that [drug] cartels control the entire smuggling process. … the government is not only allowing [illegal immigrants in the US] to fund the illegal and evil activities of these cartels, but is also inspiring them to do so.

And

To put this in another context, the DHS policy is as logical as taking illegal drugs or weapons that it has seized from smugglers and delivering them to the criminals who initially solicited their illegal importation/exportation.  Legally, this situation is no different.

And morally, too.  Except that the guns aren’t at risk of being harmed en route, like the children are.

So: DHS breaks the law to unite children with their parents, while those parents are here illegally.  It’s a truly broken immigration system that allows illegal aliens to be here with impunity, that puts children at risk in smuggling operations ostensibly aimed at reuniting those children with their parents, all while funding drug dealers.  The system needs to be fixed.

Hanen’s ruling can be seen here.

The Fed Tapers

Posted on by
Reply

…and the stock market shoots up.  QE was supposed to be propping up the market, driving it even; heretofore, whenever the Fed mumbled that it was maybe thinking about beginning to taper sometime in the vague future, the market tanked.  What’s up with the hard increase?  John Malkin at AEI suggested three reasons for that.

These reasons center on the fact that the Fed is continuing its monetary easing through other channels (the Fed Funds rate and a lowered unemployment rate threshold); the now fact of tapering reduces uncertainty about the Fed’s actions; and the fact that the Fed actually has been buying $94 billion in bonds monthly this year (not the advertised $85 billion), and no one noticed the drop—the $19 billion reduction was perceived as the advertised $10 billion, so the taper size seems to be no big deal.

To those, I’d like to add a fourth reason, and a warning.  The reason is this: the fact that the Fed actually has begun easing is taken as its advertised criteria for doing so having been met and will continue to be met in the nearby future.  This perceived confidence in the economy’s recovery by the Fed is viewed favorably by the market.

The warning is this.  Malkin opened his article by tacitly pooh-poohing a QE-induced market bubble.  Comparing market performance with actual economic performance, it seems clear to me that a bubble was generated.  Comparing the current market to the current underlying economy, it seems equally clear that the bubble is merely extending in that perception-based optimism.

In the end, the economy will catch up with the market.  Or the market will fall back to the economy.  Heads up.