Immigration and Constittutional Crisis

Raven Post 13

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”.   Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Patriotism means standing by your country. It does not mean standing by your President or any other public official.” Teddy Roosevelt

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”   Abraham Lincoln

“Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.” George Orwell

 I got the idea for this article on Immigration and Constitutional Crisis from an article written by Heather McDonald called “Practical Thoughts On Immigration” in the February 2015 issue of Imprimis, the monthly publication of Hillsdale College.  She is a very talented person with a JD from Stanford Law. She understands the problem and is eloquent in her statements. I recommend her article.

I have written about this before, but it is occurring again. We happen to be in a period where philosophical relativism seems to be the vogue for our politicians. If it feels right to them that it must be okay. Their actions show that they do not understand, have never studied or do not care about the Constitution.  For me this is atrocious. I feel strongly that you cannot have a society unless you have rules. I also feel strongly that all people in society, including our presidents need to abide by these rules. An individual because of his positional power such as the president does not have the authority nor the right or the obligation to rewrite the Constitution if he does not agree with it.

President Obama is in disagreement with the Constitution. He decided unilaterally that since Congress per our Constitution has not granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants living in the United States, then he would do it himself with an executive order.

Article 2, section 3, of the Constitution mandates that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed”. The Constitution does not provide the power to the president nor anyone else in the absence of the law to create one. In this instance, Obama is making up the law – taking upon himself a function that the Constitution specifically allocates to the Congress. This is a clear constitutional power grab by the executive branch to displace the Congress and the legislative branch.  If this ruling by Obama via executive order stands then this nation will have taken a giant step toward dictatorship.

On February 16, US District Judge Andrew Hanen halted President Obama’s illegal amnesty with a temporary injunction. As a counter to the court ruling, the Department of Homeland Security (I call DHS the “Praetorian Guard” because they only take an oath to the President – not the Constitution) has created a new concept known as “legal presence.” However, the Congress has not granted the Department of Homeland Security the power to create and bestow legal status on illegal aliens. This amnesty program is a complete abdication of the Department of Homeland Security’s responsibility to enforce the law as written in the Constitution and by the Congress.

The executive branch will likely fight the ruling through the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and then all the way to the Supreme Court. All Americans, both Democrats and Republicans should hope that the executive branch loses. If Obama wins in this power grab, then virtually nothing can stop him and he becomes a de-facto dictator threw executive orders.

Secure Communities Program

The secure communities program has embedded common sense. It works like this. Whenever an illegal alien is booked into a local jail on suspicion of a crime, an alert is sent to the federal authorities in the immigration and customs enforcement (ICE). The purpose of the law was to allow ICE to pick the alien up and start deportation procedures. Advocates of illegal aliens have targeted this program since its beginning. The advocates hold:

• It is unfair to remove an illegal alien who commits other crimes
• Unbelievably, 300 jurisdictions agree with them, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
• In 2012, the agency was notified of 400,000 illegal entries who had committed other crimes.
• ICE picked up 19% of them but deported only 50% of those. This means that only 38,000 or less than 9.5% were deported for crimes ranging from theft, rape to murder. Who pays for the 362,000 that remain in jail? We do at a cost of $32K /year or $11.6 billion / year. This is insane.

There is major hypocrisy in the federal government. In 2012, Arizona passed a law called SB 1070 , which was written to aid ICE in the deportation process. Obama sued the state and said it was unconstitutional state usurpation of the federal government’s power over immigration matters. They won an injunction against the law.

The advocates are still not happy. They want local government to define and tell the federal government when it requests immigration assistance. As a result, we now have local sanctuary zones. Last year the federal government completely gave up and said to the activists that it was unfair to worry illegal alien criminals about deportation.

Policing and Police Chiefs

Policing in the last 20 to 30 years has shown that it is important to enforce the law even to low-level misdemeanor theft offenses. Enforcing misdemeanor offenses is an effective way of incapacitating criminals that are more serious. Police Chiefs know this yet you have New York, Los Angeles and Chicago that oppose cooperating with the federal government on “secure communities” on the ground that misdemeanor offenses are too trivial.

This is hypocrisy.  The ultimate goal of the campaign against secure communities is to remove deportation entirely as an alternative to illegals who have committed crimes in this nation.  They now have two crimes against them and we cannot deport them.  This is morally reprehensible and economically stupid. Why should we incarcerate these individuals at a cost of $32,000 per year? We can send them back for a small portion of that.

The results of the Obama administration actions are that deportation has effectively disappeared as an alternative in the interior of this country. In 2014, only one-half of 1% was sent back. To lose deportation as an alternative as the United States is doing because of the Obama administration policies, seeds control of the immigration policy from the United States to nations living beyond its borders.

Social Consequences

There are major consequences for these type of policies. To find out what they are is easy. Just look at California. It is a generation ahead of the rest of the country. Let us look at the specifics

• Hispanics are now 50% of the population
• In the 1950s/60s, California led educational achievement in this country. Today, California is at the bottom of the heap
  • 33% of California eighth-graders lack even the most rudimentary math skills.
  • 28% of California eighth-graders are deficient in reading
  • The gap between Hispanic and white eighth-graders has not changed since 1990
  • The majority of the English learners are born here, but their cognitive skills are so bad that they are deemed non-native English speakers.
  • 30% of all English learners are third-generation Americans
  • The Hispanic out of wedlock birth rates in California is 53%. They are viewed family oriented. Yet, our government policies with food stamps, aid to dependent children encourage out of wedlock relationships.
  • Welfare use among Hispanics is very high and they are the biggest users and supporters of Obama care

Conclusion

To offer an amnesty to those who have voluntarily chosen to violate the law creates more illegal immigration. This has been proven before in the United States and in Europe. People who come to this country and overstay their visas do so knowingly. It is not our moral responsibility to aid them. Children born by these illegals are automatically American citizens.  This law should be changed. This is the only country on earth that provides that privilege and we can no longer afford it.  The Obama amnesty incentivizes the use of birthright citizenship since it rewards the illegal status aliens who have Americans children.

America should consider its immigration policy that has one thing in mind and only one thing in my. It should consider America’s economic self-interest. Today, we have a policy that rewards the illegals and non-performers.  Concurrently, we do not allow those who go through normal immigration rules enter even when they are trained professionals.  We are currently putting a “lottery” in place for these people.

The current policy only serves the interest of the Democratic Party who believes that they can make these illegals become voting citizens and they will vote democrat since the democrats have given them so many “freebies”

Immigration cannot be used as a service to the rest of the world because frankly we cannot afford it. No other country welcomes anywhere near as many immigrants as we do, but rewarding illegal immigration is wrong because it hurts the legal immigrants who played by the law to get here and those of us who live under the law. It is time for a change in philosophy of how this problem is handled.  Reality and respect for the existing laws must enter into the problem resolution.