Tag Archives: immigration

A Thought from the Border Crisis and Immigration Generally

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…it’s not limited to those topics, but it was triggered by a quote by Dr Manny Alvarez in his piece about the bias of the Latino press in its coverage of the current children border crisis. What Alvarez said was this:

The crisis reminds me of that old saying: “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”

Alvarez offered this aphorism in the context of needing to address the root cause of the crisis, not merely treat the symptom that is what the crisis is.

Let me modify the aphorism slightly; it’ll illustrate another part of the root cause.

Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime and deny the donor man the opportunity to maintain the dependency of the recipient on him.

What is this Administration Trying to Hide?

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Or, of what is this administration so terrified?

Nebraska’s governor says 200 children who entered the country illegally were sent to his state this week without warning and that federal officials are refusing to identify them or their locations.

Governor Dave Heineman (R) said federal officials also wouldn’t answer questions about public school attendance by the children and the potential costs to taxpayers.

“Governors and mayors have the right to know when the federal government is transporting a large group of individuals, in this case illegal immigrants, into your state,” Mr Heineman told The Wall Street Journal in an interview on Saturday. “We need to know who they are, and so far, they are saying they’re not going to give us that information.”

An Obama administration official on Saturday said the Central American children now in Nebraska aren’t at a facility but are being housed with family members and sponsors while they await immigration proceedings.

“There are concerns that this type of activity—placing children in locations across the country—is occurring throughout the United States, and information is not being shared appropriately with states,” the Republican Governors Association policy director, Marie Thomas Sanderson, wrote in an email to members on Friday….

Why is this administration so reluctant to tell anyone what they’re doing with these children? Why do they think the receiving state governments have no need to know who these kids are or the housing arrangements being made for them? About school attendance expectations? About the health status of these children? About the costs these moves will impose and who’s expected to cover those costs? What else is this administration doing with these children that it won’t say anything about their disposition?

A Thought on $3.7 Billion

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President Barack Obama thinks it’ll take $3.7 billion to handle the explosive flood of unaccompanied children pouring over our border as a result of his decision not to enforce our existing immigration laws. Obama wants the money to plus up existing border security, illegal alien housing in the border area and elsewhere, dealing with the health problems these children are unavoidably bringing with them, transportation, handling legal matters, and so on.

Assuming the money should be spent (a position I don’t endorse, but stay with me), I have a thought on how the money should be allocated. I’d pass a $3.7 billion appropriation that allocates the money in this way:

  • $3.5 billion as block grants to go directly to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, the border states most affected, for use in plussing up existing border security, illegal alien housing in the border area, dealing with the health problems these children are unavoidably bringing with them, and so on. Notice that this money does not through Federal hands; it completely bypasses the Feds and goes directly to the states.
  • $0.2 billion allocated 80:20 between the states (the 80) and the Federal government for the express purpose of handling transportation back to the children’s home country. This is a generous sum of money, and it gives the states the wherewithal to transport the children, if the Feds are too reluctant to do so.

Notice that there’s not a dime for “handling legal matters.” There aren’t any; existing law makes clear that these children are eligible for immediate transport to their country of origin. To those who cry these children are running from gangs and violence: there has been no surge in any of that in the last few months; the gangs and violence have been extant for years. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the children’s plight today; it does mean claimed urgency is wholly a cynical political ploy by the Left.

These children and others like them should, indeed, get the benefit of American help and largesse—as part of a proper reform of our immigration system.

The EU, Immigration, and National Sovereignty

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Germany can’t require the spouses of Turkish immigrants to show a basic knowledge of the German language before granting them visas, the European Union’s top court ruled on Thursday, overturning a condition aimed at preventing forced marriages and at promoting integration.

Foreigners, after all, shouldn’t be expected to assimilate into the culture and country to which they emigrate; they should continue to live apart from their new community, leading in the aggregate to the fractionation of their new “country.”

There are complications in this particular case (there always are when law is involved), but that’s the thrust of this ruling. The court went on:

A new restriction might be permitted if it were justified by an overriding public interest, and didn’t “go beyond what is necessary in order to attain it,” the court said.

However, Germany’s language requirement didn’t meet those conditions, the court said.

Because assimilation and integration into the host society, the host and sovereign nation, isn’t an overriding public interest. But then, the EU doesn’t want its constituent members to be unified and sovereign countries, anyway—fractionation facilitates the current push for political union of the European Union into one nation by weakening government’s ability to resist the push.

It’s Not Me, It’s Them

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Regarding the current children’s crisis on our border with Mexico, and following a private meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) which President Barack Obama is masquerading as a suitable sub for him personally visiting that border area, President Obama had some comments.

I urged the Governor to talk to the Texas delegation, which is obviously at the heart of the Republican caucus both in the House and has great influence in the caucus in the Senate. …if the Texas delegation is prepared to move, this thing can get done next week.

And

[T]he only question at this point is why wouldn’t the Texas delegation or any of the other Republicans who are concerned about this not want to put this [Obama’s request for nearly $4 billion] on a fast track and get this on my desk…?

And

I suggested to the Governor he has, I suspect, some influence over the Texas delegation….

And

One of the suggestions I had for Governor Perry was that it would be useful for my Republican friends to rediscover the concept of negotiation and compromise.

And so on.

It’s never Obama’s fault. He’s just a helpless pawn of a pernicious House of Representatives and of Evil Republicans.