Tag Archives: immigration

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.

Obama and our Border

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Howard Kurtz has said,

Would a presidential visit solve anything? Not really.

Not by itself, no (and that’s the thrust of his piece—not by itself, but it would help).

However, it’s always important—overtly useful, even—for the guy in charge to go to the scene and see with his own eyes, hear with his own ears, smell with his own nose, touch with his own hands, the situation that’s of such grave concern, like the children’s humanitarian crisis currently expanding along our border with Mexico.

For President Barack Obama not merely to avoid this necessity here but actively to refuse it is to raise a question: of what is he so terrified that he might see, hear, smell, touch? The reality of the situation?

Obama says that members of his staff have been to the border many times, and they keep him closely informed. Recall, though, that this is the same staff that have been keeping him so closely informed that he usually doesn’t find out about this or that until he reads it in the newspapers.

Obama also says that he didn’t go because he didn’t want just another photo opportunity. He’s only projecting his own failing here, though; no one else who wanted him to go—not Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), not Congressman Henry Cuellar (D, TX)—were interested in that; they were interested only that Obama go see for himself, go speak with the personnel on scene for himself, go talk to the children himself.

Obama’s not interested, though.

Another Thought on Immigration

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Gordon Crovitz, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, pointed out some statistics.

The Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that legalizing the 11 million undocumented immigrants would boost federal revenues by $48 billion over 10 years while costing $23 billion in public services. Adding more skilled workers would bring in $100 billion over a decade, mostly from increased income taxes.

In addition to this, I add (and reiterate) immigrants start more businesses than Americans who’ve been here for two or three or more generations. Those businesses employ people, and more so than “just” immediate family members.

There’s also the demographic question: the Unites States has only just returned to a birth rate that even barely replaces our death rate. We need immigration for continued population growth; we don’t want to face the population implosion risk from aging that Russia, the People’s Republic of China, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and lots of other nations are facing. When Social Security was enacted, there were seven workers to contribute to the SS payments for every retiree, and that retiree had a retired life expectancy of some five to seven years. Today there are three workers per retiree, and that retiree has a retired life expectancy of nearly fifteen years. If we don’t intend to change the structure of Social Security, we need immigration.

Federal Immigration Hypocrisy

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[Cateret, NJ, Mayor Daniel] Reiman said yesterday that although he assured officials from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services that the prayer would be nondenominational, the agency declined to allow the prayer.

“They refused to budge on that.”

And, on refusing to allow any prayer at all, Reiman had no choice but to not allow the Federal ceremony to use city facilities.

Ironically, the whole thing came to a head just a day after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Town of Greece v Galloway that it was entirely appropriate that a local government open a ceremony with a prayer.

A spokeswoman for the federal agency, Katie Tichacek Kaplan, told The Associated Press that the agency has a long-standing policy to ensure that naturalization ceremonies are “conducted in a meaningful manner which is welcoming and inclusive and excludes political, commercial and religious statements.”

Never mind that this is a time to welcome our new citizens into our heritage—into their new nation’s heritage—as a Judeo-Christian nation, into our society with its Judeo-Christian underpinnings, into our culture, the benefits of which are what drew these immigrants in the first place and which encouraged them to take the five-year march toward citizenship. That’s the true meaning of the manner of welcome.

It’s not a time to encourage fractionation of our culture by discouraging their assimilation.

Reiman added

The irony is it’s in the Pledge [of Allegiance] and it’s in the oath [of citizenship]. It didn’t really make sense. They acknowledge that prayer is part of many, many services.

Here is the oath of citizenship that newly naturalized immigrants take on achieving citizenship [emphasis added]:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

And here is that nasty Pledge of Allegiance (which too many circles are trying to purge from our schools and public ceremonies, and too many others have simply allowed to lapse) [emphasis added]:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

But the Feds don’t want even a nondenominational prayer uttered at a ceremony celebrating the naturalization of new American citizens.

Hmm….