Tag Archives: immigration

What’s in a Name?

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Quite a lot, actually, and the Left has this right—even if they’re on the wrong side of the naming question.  DoJ has begun referring to those who’ve entered the US illegally as “illegal aliens,” and the Left has gotten its collective panties in a twist over it.

Here’s Chicago Tribune journalist Todd Slowik:

The phrase “illegal alien” plays into assumptions that immigrants living in this country without proper documentation are criminals[.]

Without proper documentation: in other words, in the US illegally.  Which is a crime, which makes these folks criminals.  Now, I’m one of those squishes who thinks illegal aliens whose only crime is entering illegally, and who since have been solid, contributing members of their community, should be offered a path to make good on their (really quite minor—on the order of a traffic violation) crime and then a path to legal permanent residency and eventual citizenship.  Illegal aliens who aren’t contributing members or who commit additional crimes ought to be tried for those additional crimes, and for the illegal entry now that that has become a problem; if convicted, jailed; and at the end of their sentence, deported with no option for reentry.

Hiding behind euphemisms—undocumented, unauthorized, migrants—just hides the damage illegal aliens who commit additional crimes do.  Just ask the two women who were raped in Portland, OR, because the city’s councilmen considered the PC rights of a multiply-deported illegal alien were more important than the right to security of those two women.  Just ask Kate Steinle.  Oh, wait.   Just ask the victims of MS-13 barbarians.  Oh.  Keep waiting.

As a side note, Fox News insider has it wrong, too, as they demonstrate in the opening sentence of their piece:

The Justice Department began calling illegal immigrants “illegal aliens….”

Illegal aliens aren’t immigrants, either.  Immigrants are in our nation legally.

Sanctuary Cities

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For the Left it means sanctuary from inconvenient laws.  Nevertheless, the House has passed two bills aimed at eliminating such sanctuary by reducing the ability of local cities and counties to give sanctuary to illegal aliens.  One such is the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, which looks to persuade—notice that: not force, as many on the Left insist it does—locals to hold folks in jail who’ve already been arrested by locals for local violations for up to 48 hours in response to an ICE detainer.  Kate Steinle was murdered by an illegal alien who had just been released—deliberately in contradiction of an ICE request.  Opponents, though, insist that

cooperation [with ICE] would undermine trust in law enforcement in immigrant communities….

This is just cynical: requiring that laws be obeyed (NSCA, after all, only requires existing procedure be followed) undermines respect for law and law enforcement.  Sure.

The other bill, “Kate’s Law,” for the unfortunate Ms Steinle, whose murderer was a five-times deported and reentered illegally alien, would successively increase the price of repeatedly illegally reentering the US after deportation.  The protests from the Progressive-Democrats in Congress are just as loud and foolish on this one.

It’s stupid, it has nothing to do with the criminal act that was done against Kate Steinle, which was a terrible thing[.]

Except that it has everything to do with that “terrible thing.”  Had the law been in effect at the time, it’s possible—likely, even—that Steinle’s multiply-deported and reentered murderer would have been in jail at time and Steinle would be alive today.  Of course, maybe not, too, but as the Progressive-Democrats are wont to say, “If it saves just one life….”

Oh, wait….

Constituents

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Who are a Federal judge’s—at any level of the judicial hierarchy—constituents?  I asked this question of a number of folks, and the most cogent answer I got was this: “in order, the law and justice.”  Even that answer, though, is only about one-third right IMNSHO.

Here is the first oath of office Federal judge and Justice must take; it’s the same as any Congressman must take.

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Here is the additional oath of office that a Federal judge or Justice must take.  Notice that his prior oath does not expire (no oath can); this oath adds to it.

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [judicial position] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.

Here is what Article I, Section 1 of our Constitution says about legislative authority.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Thus, a Federal judge’s constituency begins and ends with the Constitution.  Full stop.  His constituency does not extend to “the law,” only to the supreme Law of the Land.  All other law, which can be enacted only by the people’s elected representatives in the legislative and executive branches under our system of governance, must be subordinate to and compatible with the Constitution.  A judge’s duty here is to reject a law that is not compatible, that is unconstitutional.  Or on its constitutionality, to apply it as it’s written.  His oaths of office demand he defend the Constitution, and that defense enjoins him to not write law, not modify law, only to apply it.  To this end, a judge’s interpretation of a law is only for the purpose of applying it as written, not to “interpret” it to his convenient end.

Not “justice,” either.  What is justice, what is just, are social and political determinations, and those determinations, too, can be made only by We the People, directly or through those elected representatives of ours.  A judge can only apply the law before him as it is written (or strike it); he cannot judge a case according to his own sense of justice or social mores.  He certainly can rail against the injustice (from his sense of it) of a ruling to which the law before him drives him—and he should—but he can rule in no other way but what the law itself requires.

This makes especially reprehensible the 4th Circuit’s ruling on President Donald Trump’s immigration Executive Order.

It is therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Fourth Circuit and the other courts that have stayed Mr Trump’s executive orders on immigration are engaged in the judicial equivalent of the “resistance” to his presidency. Judges are, in effect, punishing the American electorate for having chosen the wrong president. That is not the judiciary’s role. Every federal judge has an obligation to accept the limitations imposed by the Constitution on his power—to exercise “neither force nor will, but merely judgment,” as Hamilton put it in Federalist No 78.

Law and Trump’s EO Regarding Travel Delays

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The 4th Circuit Appellate Court is hearing the Trump administration’s appeal of Hawaii and Maryland Federal trial judges’ preliminary injunctions blocking implementation of the President Donald Trump’s second Executive Order imposing a temporary travel delay of its own on persons from six Middle East nations from entering the United States (with provisions for case-by-case exceptions).  Even though Hawaii is in the 9th Circuit and not the 4th, I’m using the Hawaii ruling as my example here since the Maryland ruling is substantially the same, the Hawaii ruling is more readily available, and I’m lazy.

Judge Derrick Watson’s Hawaii ruling can be read here, and from that ruling…[emphasis added]

Because a reasonable, objective observer—enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance—would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously-neutral purpose….

No truly reasonable, objective observer would read any of that into the EO’s stated, religiously-neutral purpose because no truly reasonable, objective observer would go beyond the plain meaning of the words to seek clearer understanding of them unless those words, as present, were unclear.  The word here are plainly clear; outside words are less than irrelevant; their importation here is inappropriate.  Judges must apply the law (here, the EO) as it is written and not in accordance with their personal moral precepts.  To do the latter is a blatant violation of their oaths of office.

To determine whether the Executive Order runs afoul of that command [the Establishment Clause], the Court is guided by the three-part test for Establishment Clause claims set forth in Lemon v Kurtzman….

The applicability of the Lemon test is nonexistent because the Establishment Clause is irrelevant to this case.  Aside from the fact that the EO, by design and declaration, has no religion-related purpose, the EO applies solely and strictly to foreign nationals who are outside the US.  That means they also are outside the United States’ jurisdiction.  That means the Constitution and its tenets and requirements do not apply to those foreign nationals.

For the court to assert that our Constitution reaches beyond our borders, for this court to claim our government has jurisdiction over persons (and by extension, to nations?) outside our borders runs contrary to our nation’s policies, contrary to international law, contrary to the very principles of what it means to be a citizen of a nation—especially for those persons who are citizens of a nation other than our own.

The 4th Circuit should overrule.

Syrian Refugees

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One Syrian, Kassem Eid an erstwhile media activist in Syria, and a victim of the gas attack that was Bashar al-Assad’s calling of then-President Barack Obama’s (D) bluff of a “red” line and that exposed Obama has being too timid to back his words, had a thought about aid and support to Syria’s refugees in a recent Wall Street Journal.  Here’s the money quote.

America, if you really care about refugees, then take to the streets, call your representatives, and ask for even further action against the murderer who displaced us. President Trump could order strikes to fully ground Assad’s air force, whose bombing forces civilians to flee. The Assad regime still has more than a dozen operational military airports from which to continue its attacks. Help civilians by creating safe zones and no-fly zones.

If you really care about human rights, work to remove Assad, the tyrant who has killed, raped, gassed, burned, tortured and displaced millions of civilians. If you really care about eliminating Islamic State, oust the dictator who for years has supported extremist terrorist groups like al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah and who buys oil from ISIS.

Because, as Eid emphasized at the start of his piece,

Syrians—like the people in the other Arab Spring countries—didn’t rebel against the dictatorship as a way to gain entry to the US as refugees. We rebelled because we wanted to live for the first time as equal citizens in our own nation. We wanted to stay home and make Syria a better place.

What he said.