Category Archives: immigration

False Dichotomy

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are at it again. Their lede lays out their (unrecognized) mistake.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on President Trump’s birthright citizenship order. Win—or more likely—lose, he might take note that the success of the US men’s national soccer team in this year’s World Cup is the product in part of America’s historically welcoming immigration system and automatic grant of birthright citizenship to children born in the US.

Correcting the decades of misapprehension of the 14th Amendment and “birthright citizenship” wouldn’t at all make us unwelcoming. All the correction would do (sadly, the editors are likely correct about the likelihood of a favorable ruling) is eliminate the automatic citizenship granted to babies whose parents, by their own intent and action, hold themselves outside our nation’s jurisdiction, being present only under our nation’s power.

The editors closed their piece with this bit and no trace of understanding of its irony:

America’s World Cup men’s team shows again how bringing in foreign talent can be a win for the individuals and for the country.

Legal immigrants. Immigrant citizens or sons of immigrants (because FIFA’s national teams are required to be citizens, not hirelings), who vastly outnumber the one birthright citizen on the team.

Legal immigrants, after the end of birthright citizenship, would remain highly welcome and encouraged to come and join our great nation. The fact that one of the players on our national soccer team is a birthright citizen is irrelevant to any of that.

The Only Even Remotely Legitimate Move Re TPS

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The Supreme Court heard last Wednesday in an expedited manner (“certiorari before judgment” for the judicial nerds among us) oral argument in a case centered on whether a President’s Executive Branch agency can withdraw, on its own recognizance, Temporary Protected Status from immigration populations who remain here under that status. Several District and Appellate courts have said no, not without (judge-determined) sufficient interagency review of the matter.

The governing statute is quite clear: granting, withdrawing, extending, or not extending temporary protected status for folks from particular nations is not a justiciable matter; courts have no standing to adjudicate these decisions.

The only legitimate recourse those demanding TPS be extended/maintained for Haitians (for instance) is to argue that that governing statute limit is unconstitutional and should be struck. Even this, though, is itself doomed to failure. Here’s Art III, Sect 2, Clause 1 on judicial jurisdictions:

The [Supreme Court] judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity…to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party….

DHS, which is the agency with TPS responsibility within the United States, most assuredly is “the United States” in this context.

Here’s Art III, Sect 2, Clause 2 on judicial jurisdictions:

…the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Under the Immigration Act of 1990 as amended, which created the Temporary Protected Status facility, there “is no judicial review of any determination” of the DHS secretary “with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.”  That’s a pretty clear act of setting such Regulations—limiting the courts’ jurisdiction—here withdrawing TPS actions from judicial scrutiny.

And Art III, Sect 1:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

Federal District and Appellate courts, being inferior to the Supreme Court are bound by those same jurisdictional limits.

For good or ill, US courts have nothing to say regarding any aspect of Temporary Protected Status settings.

The Act, as amended, can be read here. The Act withdrew references to court jurisdiction and placed that jurisdiction within the State or INS district, or in the main, within the DHS.

The Editors’ Misapprehension

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In writing Wednesday about the (later that day) Wednesday Supreme Court oral arguments for Trump v Barbara, the Wall Street Journal‘s editors have badly misunderstood the situation. Leave aside that the editors completely ignored the matter of birth tourism in the US, wherein pregnant women enter the US, legally or illegally, to give birth and then to return to their home country, with their purpose for being present for birth being wholly and cynically confined to gaining US citizenship for their newborn. The editors’ argument only concerned the children of illegal aliens and the current automatic conferring of US citizenship to those newborn.

The editors correctly argued that the nub of the matter concerns the 14th Amendment’s reference to children born to parents in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, and they agreed with the plaintiff argument that

Under the longstanding definition, undocumented immigrants are domiciled in this country: they reside here, with “an intention to remain[.]”

This, though, is an incomplete definition of “jurisdiction.” The illegal aliens certainly do intend to remain, but by having entered our nation illegally and refusing to correct that illegal status, they continue to hold themselves apart from our laws, outside our legal strictures, and so outside our government’s jurisdiction—making themselves only subject to our government’s power. These people, in the words of the government’s argument, are incapable of and do not owe “direct and immediate allegiance” to the Nation, and so they both may not and cannot claim its protection.

The editors did acknowledge that

the place to fight [illegal immigration] is at the border, and Mr Trump has virtually halted migrant flows.

A place to fight illegal alien influx is at the border, but that’s not the place. Other necessary battlefields exist, too, battlefields that contain incentives for continued efforts at illegal entry, and these include the birth wards of hospitals and our courts. The present courtroom battlefield is an arena in which birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens (and of birth tourists) must be ended. That, in turn, will facilitate the successful outcome of the birth ward battlefield.

Not Just Vetting

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The headline and subheadline laid out the problem; the article expands on it.

Naturalized but radicalized: Recent terror attacks expose glaring problems with citizenship vetting
After four attacks on the U.S. with one common thread—immigration—the time may have come to make transformative changes to the system that decides who comes in.

That’s a mostly accurate description, but only that; Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (R, WY) identified the other critical dimension of the problem.

Throughout history, we have expected people who immigrated here to become assimilated to the American culture. And I think over the last 30 years or so, there’s been this idea that we no longer need to do that, and this is an example of the consequences of those kinds of bad policies[.]

Our vetting does nothing to assess a potential immigrant’s interest in or willingness to assimilate into American culture, a culture that prizes individual initiative, individual responsibility, and acceptance of, or at least willingness to, live under American values of free speech and religion, keeping and bearing arms, and the rest as illustrated in our Bill of Rights.

Once in the US—legally, mind you—and on what amounts to probation, remaining here on a green card or while on the green card working toward citizenship, potential immigrants are not pushed to learn American English (or even British English) beyond taking a few simplified English as a Second Language courses, nor are they required to learn about American culture and values beyond what it takes to pass a dumb-downed citizenship test.

English needs to be specified as our official language, and government officials at all levels of our hierarchy need to interact with citizens and immigrants in English. Beyond that, their children need to be taught in American English in school, not in their native language, and that schooling needs to include more American history and civics (as it must for the children of us citizens, come to that).

With no incentive to assimilate anywhere along the way, potential immigrants, staying separate from us, gain a sense of isolation even in their enclaves. Of course they’re easily radicalized.

Lowered Going Away Fees

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The State Department has greatly reduced the cost to an American citizen of renouncing his citizenship.

The US State Department has cut the fee all the way down to $450 from $2,350.

Even though this just restored the I Quit Fee to its 2010 level, it’s still a big deal.

It’s also not all bad. The quitters shouldn’t let the door hit them in the fanny on the way out. We won’t miss them.

Even better: our nation will get a little bit more conservative and a little bit less Precious- and Progressive-infested with each departure, since those who love our nation, Left or Right, will be staying and continuing to work to improve it.