Category Archives: immigration

Italy and Migrant Shipping

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There’s a case making its way through the Italian courts that challenges the government’s policy of denying docking rights to migrant rescue boats.  Critics are up in arms. The policy, they assert, would

leav[e] them in the Mediterranean Sea for days or even weeks—a campaign critics have branded as cruel but that has garnered support from many Italians.

The critics, though, are being disingenuous. To the extent that there is cruelty here, it’s on the part of the “rescue boat” captains and the ships’ operators who have chosen to spend those days or even weeks trying to force entry rather than moving promptly to other nations’ ports where they would be allowed entry.

There are arguments for and against the Italian policy, but this sort of distortion does not advance the debate a bit.

Progressive-Democrats and a Wall

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In a Fox News Online piece about a Fox News Sunday interview with President Donald Trump’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney from last Sunday, there appeared this gem from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D, MS).

…Thompson…broke with some of his fellow congressional Democrats by acknowledging in an interview that he “would not rule out a wall in certain instances,” although he cautioned that the White House needs a better “plan” than simply using a wall as a “talking point.”

But then he said this:

“Mr President, Democrats will work with you.  But you can’t pick what Democrats you work with. We have picked our leaders, and you have to work with our leaders.  The notion that we can’t have barriers is just something that’s not true.”

This is the level of disingenuousness Republicans are stuck working with.  “Walls work in certain instances. You have to work with our leaders. We can have barriers.”  But Progressive-Democratic Party leadership—particularly House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) have promised no wall, no way, not ever.

The Progressive-Democrats are offering only talking points, not negotiation.  Still.

DACA and Walls

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When President Donald Trump made his latest offer and attempt at negotiation last Saturday, it already had been rejected by the Progressive-Democrats—yes, even before Trump spoke.  In a Monday editorial, the Wall Street Journal was generous when it suggested the Dreamers (and TPS folks, I add) are pawns in the eyes of Progressive-Democrats. Reality isn’t that good.  Dreamers and TPS folks aren’t even human to Progressive-Democrats—they’re just votes and potential votes, just marked ballots.

This is shown by Pelosi’s stated utter refusal even to discuss DACA recipients anymore.

Here, though, the WSJ‘s editors are wrong:

Mr Trump is wrong that this will magically reduce drug traffic or illegal crossings. The solution to the flood of drugs is lower US demand [and, better] a legal system that gives migrants the chance to move back and forth….

For one thing, a wall will, indeed, contribute to a reduction of the flow of drugs and illegal crossings. Actual experts, including those who work the borders, say this unequivocally. No less a light than Progressive-Democrat and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer agrees they work in places.

The other thing is that “the solution to…” includes those additional steps. They and walls are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

A Telling Interview

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Progressive-Democrat from Texas, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke gave a wide-ranging, disjointed, somewhat confused interview to The Washington Post.  Here are some highlights.

Beto on the wall:

[It would] cut off access to the river, shrink the size of the United States and force the seizure of privately-held land.
[He] noted that most undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States in the past decade came not over the border but on visas that then expired.
WAPO: So what should be done to address visa overstays?
Beto: I don’t know[.]

What cut-off?  What river?  Walls aren’t contemplated, anymore, for the Rio Grande, just stepped up patrols and tech detection means.

Shrink the size of the US!?  Huh?

Seizure of privately-held land?  Has ol’ Beto read the Constitution?  The 5th Amendment has something to say about that.

Illegals come in via overstaying visas, so nothing should be done about curtailing their illegal entry across our border?  Apparently.  Because if a water pipe leaks over there, also, there’s no point in fixing it here and reducing the leaks’ flow.  All because he doesn’t know how to fix the leak over there.

O’Rourke insists the thorny immigration answers will come from everyday Americans. It’s an approach that puts off specifics that might define him or narrow his appeal in a presidential race….

Or, it’s an approach that allows Beto to virtue signal on the subject without offering anything concrete—or without exposing his ignorance on the matter, as his overstayed visa and his property seizure bits expose.

And this, larger, question:

Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships…and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?

Aside from our obvious lack of an empire—we don’t occupy anyone anywhere, we have no colonies, we have nothing of the trappings of empire—he’s badly mistaken about all of that.

This Progressive-Democrat is saying that the principles of limited government, individual liberty and responsibility, of morality are not universal, nor are they timeless.  He’s saying they’re matters of convenience and political expediency, and that convenience and expedience have evolved.

Watch out, and hold on to far more than your wallets when individual rights and obligations become what the men of government say they are and not what is permanently endowed in us by our Creator.

What? Me Compromise?

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In a Wall Street Journal piece Sunday about the length of the current partial government shutdown—they’re touting is (as are most of the NLMSM) as the longest on record as though a partial closure is somehow comparable to a complete closure—Kristina Peterson, Michael Bender, and Rebecca Ballhaus closed with a description of a bill being developed by Senators Rob Portman (R, OH) and Jerry Moran (R, KS) that would pair DACA recipient legal status with funding for border security, which would include a wall.

However.

Democrats are unlikely to view the bill as a fair trade, as it swaps $25 billion in border security for legal status—and not a path to citizenship—for the young immigrants….

This would be just another example of the Progressive-Democrats’ absolute refusal to negotiate. Such a bill would move the DACA matter significantly in their direction, with nothing at all to prevent them from coming back later with a bill to move “legal status” to “path to citizenship”—the Reagan move of taking half a loaf today and coming back tomorrow for the other half.

The Progressive-Democrats only know “No,” however.