Category Archives: immigration

A Misunderstanding

Posted on by
Reply

In a house editorial concerning the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding President Donald Trump’s authority to reallocate some DoD funds toward building a border wall, The Wall Street Journal expressed the hope that the ruling—which lifted a nation-wide injunction issued by a Federal district [sic] judge—would send an appropriate signal to district judges regarding nation-wide injunctions.  The editors also had this remark regarding such injunctions.

The proliferation of national injunctions has inserted judges into policy debates in ways they should avoid….

This is a misapprehension of the situation and a mischaracterization of what the judges are doing.

The proliferation has inserted no one; it is a result of judges choosing to insert themselves into policy debates.

Judges must avoid this, but they consciously have chosen to go outside their Constitutional authority and make policy—make law.  These judges have ignored the simple Constitutional fact that policy discussions and debates are solely within the purview of the political branches of our government and that legislation is solely within the purview of Congress. Article I, Section 1, of our Constitution makes this abundantly clear even to an eighth-grade Civics student.

With their carefully considered decision to act extra-Constitutionally, these judges have equally carefully decided to violate their oath of office, which enjoins them to defend and to uphold our Constitution, not to depart from it.

Asylum Seekers

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump administration has moved to make it harder for folks arriving on our border to claim to be seeking asylum, and the American Civil Liberties Union and American Immigration Council don’t like it.  Here’s AIC’s Managing Director Royce Murray:

…the Trump administration is “throwing everything they have at asylum seekers in an effort to turn everyone humanly possible away….”

Which, of course, misrepresents the facts.  The vast majority of folks arriving at our border claiming to be asylum seekers are nothing of the sort. Their presence on our border or illegally crossing it demonstrates that they’ve already rejected asylum offers, even job possibilities—offers and possibilities Mexico has offered them.

The folks running the ACLU and the AIC know this full well.

Distortions and Misguided Solutions

Posted on by
Reply

Wrong answers:

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have called on the EU to implement a series of measures aimed at assisting people trapped in Libya or at risk of dying on the Mediterranean Sea. The suggestions include restarting a program of organized sea rescues.
In the past European State vessels conducting search and rescue operations saved thousands of lives, including through disembarkations in safe ports,” the IOM and UNHCR noted in a statement on Thursday. “They should resume this vital work….”

Why is there no effort, though, no euro—not a single cent—committed to helping these people at the source?  Certainly, it would be very difficult to help Libya, Sudan, Niger, et al. improve and correct their situation, political and economic, so that their citizens wouldn’t feel constrained to leave.  But “hard” means “possible,” and France has shown some of that possible in Chad, and Niger has made progress on its own with very damn little—too little—help from outside.

But it’s cheaper in the short-term and easier to focus on rescues at sea and “disembarkations in safe ports” than it is to do the hard work of a long-term solution.

But were such long-term efforts brought about, the flow of refugees would fall off markedly, and sea rescues and relocations would become much more feasible.

Of course, at that point, the virtue signalers would need to find something else with which to signal their…virtue.

And now the distortion: the IOM and UNHCR pronounced in a joint statement

NGO boats…must not be penalized for saving lives at sea.

DW contributed to the distortion:

Independent rescue operations such as Sea-Eye…which rescued 44 people near Libya earlier this week [as of 12 Jul], have attempted to fill the void left after earnest EU efforts ceased, but non-government organizations face increasing persecution from governments such as Italy’s, which has tried to frame their efforts as criminal.

Italy has done no such thing. Italy has said nothing about rescue operations; it only has enforced its laws concerning entering Italian territorial waters, even Italian ports, without permission—these are criminal acts, no framing required.

The situation concerning the refugees is not helped by such shenanigans.

Free Speech

Posted on by
Reply

…Progressive-Democrat style.  Here’s Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D, FL):

people who are “making fun of members of Congress” online “should be prosecuted”

Because, she went on, making fun of Congress intimidates Congressmen.  In fact, she went on in that vein for more than 40 seconds, just in the recording.

Wow.

Misunderstanding

Posted on by
Reply

This one regards the rescue of those escaping from northern Africa and their disposition on arrival on European shores.  The particular case concerns Italy’s arrest of a German national who is the captain of an NGO ship that had rescued a number of refugees whose ship was in danger in international waters in the middle of the Mediterranean. Carola Rakete, captain of the Sea-Watch 3, was arrested after she docked her ship at Italy’s Lampedusa, an island in the southern Med—and closer to Tunisia than to any land of Italy’s.

UK [and UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres] spokeswoman Stephane Dujarric said in a daily press briefing that “no vessel or ship master should be at risk of being fined for coming to the aid of boats in distress, where loss of life is imminent.”
“Sea rescue is a longstanding humanitarian imperative. It’s also an obligation under international law.”

Dujarric went on:

the UN was “concerned by the recent decree from the government regarding NGO vessels.”
She was referring to Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s successful implementation of legislation to fine ships that flout orders to stay out of Italian waters.

Dujarric is mischaracterizing the situation, and a part of the incident that matters has been omitted by Deutsche Welle in its piece at the link.  Italy has not criminalized rescue on the high seas.  Italy has only responded to the illegal entry into Italian waters, compounded by the illegal entry into an Italian port, by a captain and her vessel that not only had no permission to enter either, she had been explicitly denied that permission.

Furthermore, that denial had been enforced by an Italian police vessel that Rakete rammed and forced her way past as she docked at Lampedusa.  That was elided by the DW article.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is upset over the arrest of the German national for her criminal act.

Haggling over refugee distribution is undignified and must stop. We urgently need a European solution—one that is also in line with our European values.

Indeed, the haggling must stop.  The EU must respect the European value of territorial integrity of its member nations.

In the end, regardless of what we might think of Italian actions in the present incident, such…confusion…reduces the credibility of those favoring the transfer of rescuees from the rescuing ships to a nation’s shore regardless of that nation’s expressed wishes and of that nation’s laws. And of that nation’s sovereignty.