Category Archives: immigration

“Not to my Knowledge”

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When then-DNI James Clapper said that under oath during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in response to a question regarding whether the Federal government was using FISA to collect communications that it knows are entirely domestic, he was plainly lying, as lately released information has revealed.

When Progressive-Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar (MN) said that [the first 30 seconds carries the exchange; the rest of the 8 minute video is just The Hill‘s “analysis” and commentary] in a cable news interview in response to a question about whether she had married her brother, she may or may not have been lying. On watching the video of that exchange, it seemed to me that she and her pressman interviewer were bantering and make fun of the whole question of her immigration status (opinions may vary on that), but it’s not possible to tell whether she was lying (and if she was, there’s a big so what attached: she was talking to a pressman with no particular legal need to be truthful).

DNA evidence that has been collected during the recent raids on her DC residence and those of some of her family members will shed some dispositive light on her genealogical relationship with that man, but it will take patience to wait for the outcomes.

It was reported in the press some years ago that the two were half-siblings, and it was “widely reported” that at that time the half-sibling nature of their relationship was “well-known.” The press, though, has never provided any evidence of either of those claims, most especially of the latter; we’re just supposed to believe their smiling faces’ unsubstantiated pronouncements.

Proximately, though, what’s carefully missing from today’s press hoo-raw about Omar’s “not to my knowledge” (from both the Left and the Right side of the press) is any information about the history of the woman and the man: were they raised together in the same family household, or had they been widely separated at birth or while still babies or toddlers? If the latter, it’s entirely plausible that the two didn’t recognize each other as siblings at the time they met and then married. If the former, she’s lying (though subject to that so what).

At this point, we have too little information, and the press (and too many Congressmen) are wasting too much of our time fixating on this bit at the expense of covering her many and already manifest failures as a politician.

There’s an additional contaminant in this question. It’s also been claimed in the press (yeah, yeah) and in government immigration circles that Omar married “her brother” in order to facilitate his legal entry into the US. It’s a contaminant because whether he was her brother or not is wholly irrelevant to this. Sham marriages intended to circumvent immigration law is itself a felony. Omar is already being investigated, albeit only desultorily, on that ground.

Birth Tourism

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President Donald Trump (R) has signed a couple of Executive Orders aimed at curbing, if not eliminating, birthright citizenship. One of those orders seeks to greatly reduce, if not eliminate, birth tourism.

The second order instructs the departments of State and Homeland Security to take steps to limit foreigners from traveling to the US specifically to have children born there, a practice generally referred to as “birth tourism.” …
Though the order doesn’t specify how officials would screen for people intending to come to the US for the express purpose of giving birth….

One way to achieve this would be to not bother screening for purpose. Simply limit visas to three weeks duration for women with two months left in their pregnancy—and to strictly enforce the requirement to leave or be deported on expiry—and to refuse visas to women in their last month until after those women have given birth.

Denying Visas

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When a person, whether private or a government official, applies for a visa to come into the United States, the fact of his application clearly means he has not entered our nation; he’s still outside of it.

That brings up Chief Judge (DC District) James Boasberg’s ruling regarding the administration’s denial of visas to foreign officials and other foreign nationals considered responsible for or complicit in suppressing American free speech.

Boasberg ruled that the administration’s reason constituted viewpoint discrimination and so was a First Amendment violation of the applicants’ free speech rights. He dressed up his opinion with this:

The policy [to deny visas to those considered responsible for or complicit in suppressing American free speech], at its core, does not burden all speech about platforms, all research into content moderation, or all advocacy about online harms. It presses its enforcement thumb against one side of the scale: the view that platforms should do more to moderate content, label disinformation, restrict abuse, share data with researchers, or take responsibility for the harms their systems amplify.

The problem with Boasberg’s position is that those folks, being outside our nation, have no US constitutional (or any statutory) rights whatsoever. His argument is, thus, nothing more than a cynically offered non sequitur.

Boasberg’s rationalization is all too typical of the hysterically anti-Trump bias in his rulings.

“Did That…?

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Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Tim Walz posed three questions after he pardoned convicted child molester Tou Lue Vang and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had him immediately deported.

Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?

Ex-Los Angeles Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt responded in his own way:

If you find yourself defending a child molester, saying: “WE can’t be judged by OUR worst day,” you probably need to have your hard drives checked.

I answer Walz’ in my own way.

Absolutely, kicking that child molester out of our nation made us safer.

Absolutely, it made the children left behind vey much more stable, with the threat from that molester gone from their lives.

The idea that we can’t be judged by our worst day is a cynically offered red herring and nothing else. It is, though, a mark of Walz’ awesome self-importance that he thinks that question is in any way substantive.

Sadly, dangerously, Walz’ attempted cover up plaint and softness toward child abuse and abusers are an all too typical example of Party’s general softness on crime, especially those committed by illegal aliens.

The Pope’s Error

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Pope Leo XIV, sitting on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa decried the fate of folks who made it that far and others who did not as they left their home countries, mostly in Africa, looking for a better life in Europe.

There are also those who choose not to be a neighbor and those who choose not to make a decision. Those who have lost their lives in this sea are victims both of decisions that were made and of decisions that were not made. Indifference to the common good and corruption in their countries of origin; a global economic system that generates poverty and exclusion; fear that fuels prejudice and contempt; the belief that such problems do not concern us; the criminal calculations of those who profit from the suffering of others; the slow and difficult transition from mere emergency management to the development of comprehensive and shared policies[.]

No. The problem here is not that the European nations are not accepting all of these folks, nor is it that they are beginning actively to block their entry. The correct answer is for Europe to leave off its [i]ndifference to the common good and corruption in their countries of origin and devote the resources those nations are misallocating ins to supporting those folks making it to Europe and to blocking further flows, instead to working the source: the criminal natures of the home countries so those folks don’t feel the need to try to leave.

The Pope sort of recognized this, but with badly misplaced emphasis.

Thanks to its geographical location and institutional framework, Europe is capable of addressing the crisis, in this region, in a comprehensive manner, integrating immediate relief efforts into a long-term strategic plan capable of receiving, protecting, supporting and integrating migrants, while at the same time assisting developing countries so that no one is forced to emigrate.

The Pope further muddles his argument with his insistent conflation of migrants with illegal aliens, which is what most of those making to Europe are and most of those getting to Lampedusa, and other waypoints, want to become.

That geographic location does place Europe conveniently close to the source, but it should be committing those resources exclusively to assisting developing countries so that no one is forced to emigrate. Half measures don’t accomplish anything other than waste and lost opportunity.

Then there could be fruitful trade between those nations and the nations of Europe, and that would potentiate the benefits for those then-erstwhile home nations and their populations as well as work to the economic—and moral—benefit of Europe.