Nice take on this by Jack Kinsella today. Thanks to blackie!
Chertoff’s Immigration “Options”
Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff testified before Congress about the problem of illegal immigration. When asked about the problem of so-called ‘sanctuary cities’ Chertoff told lawmakers, “I don’t know that I have the authority to cut off all Homeland Security funds if I disagree with the city’s policy on immigration. . . We’re exploring our legal options.”
Sanctuary cities are those that have adopted policies banning police officers or other city employees from asking about immigration status. Some sanctuary cities have gone further: The city of New Haven, Conn., now issues identification cards regardless of legal status.
Other “sanctuary cities” include the District, Baltimore, New York City, San Francisco, Dallas, Minneapolis, Miami and Denver.
Since Secretary Chertoff is a busy man, I thought I’d save him all that exploration time and lay out the ‘legal options’ for him. First off, if the Secretary of Homeland Security doesn’t have the authority to cut off Homeland Security funds from scofflaw cities, who does?
In the second place, it isn’t an issue of whether or not Chertoff ‘agrees’ with a ‘city’s policy on immigration. Either that policy is lawful, or it is unlawful.
In the US legal system, criminal behavior is divided into two main classes of offense; felonies and misdemeanors.
In general, misdemeanor crimes are crimes for which the maximum punishment is short enough to serve in a county jail — in most jurisdictions, one year or less. Misdemeanor crimes range from jaywalking to first-offense drunk driving.
Felonies, on the other hand, are crimes for which the maximum punishment is confinement in a long-term state or federal penitentiary. Historically, a felony conviction resulted in a forfeiture of property, dismemberment or death.
A state or federal felony conviction today can lead to prison time, probation, fines, restitution, community service, mandatory drug or other rehabilitative treatment, and forfeiture of various legal rights (including the right to vote, serve on a jury, hold government positions, bear arms, and serve in the Armed Forces).
US federal immigration law makes it a felony to aid or abet an illegal alien or to shield or hide an illegal alien from federal immigration authorities.
So, here are Secretary Chertoff’s “legal options.”
City officials who knowingly offer sanctuary to illegal aliens in violation of federal law can be arrested, tried and convicted as felons. Employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens can be arrested, tried and convicted as felons.
As a matter of fact, Chertoff doesn’t really have legal ‘options’ — as a sworn federal official and a Cabinet member of the Executive Branch, what Chertoff has are legal obligations. Law (for it to BE law, rather than guidelines) is not optional.
I don’t have the option of deciding not to obey seat belt laws just because I disagree with the government’s right to impose them. And the police can’t arbitrarily decide not to enforce them. Neither can a city declare itself a ‘seat-belt free’ city in violation of state law.
Back in the 70’s when Jimmy Carter declared a national speed limit of 55 mph, there were a number of states, like Texas, who at first refused to enforce it. (When I was in traffic school, the maximum state speed limit on the books was still 70 mph).
But all the speed limit signs statewide still said 55 mph — and Texas police wrote speeding tickets for 70 in a 55 zone even though state law still set the speed limit at 70 — because Carter announced he would enforce federal law by withholding federal funds for any state who refused to obey it.
But according to the Congressional Research Service, there are more than thirty cites and counties in America who have openly defied federal immigration law by officially declaring themselves sanctuary cities.
Chertoff’s options are too limited to need exploring.
Assessment:
It is worth noting that, even though the administration itself is reluctant to enforce existing immigration laws, the majority of sanctuary cities are also bastions of liberal politics.
When I was growing up in the Sixties, I used to wonder what would happen to the slogan, “never trust anybody over thirty” when those chanting it turned thirty-one. I don’t wonder anymore.
The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)
Nowhere is that Biblical truth more evident than in liberal politics. In the Sixties, we called them ‘hippies’. But ‘hippie’ sounds kind of juvenile when applied to people in their fifties and sixties and so now we call them ‘liberals’.
But they are the same people, with the same ideas.
They are still rebelling against the “military-industrial complex” — only now its George Bush and Iraq and the CIA, instead of Nixon and Vietnam and the CIA. Instead of staging civil disobedience demonstrations on college campuses, the setting has moved to city council chambers. And instead of occupying them, they preside over them.
The Marxist hippies of the Sixties became the Marxists teachers and professors of the 70’s and 80’s. Now their students are the ones teaching advanced Marxism, and the old hippies have graduated to politics.
Senate Amendment 1183 failed to pass the Senate by a margin of 53 to 44. That amendment would have significantly increased legal immigration by adding an unlimited number of spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents to the uncapped immediate relative category that currently is for the spouses, minor children and parents of U.S. citizens only.
The method for increasing legal immigration proposed is simply to expand the categories until almost everybody is legal. The amendment, (called the “Clinton Amendment” after its sponsor, Hillary Clinton) failed along party lines; Establishment 53, and Old Hippies 44.
The immigration amnesty bill, disguised as a ‘guest worker’ bill, failed by almost the identical margin, when the Old Hippies in the Senate could only muster 45 votes.
Pat Buchanan noted in a recent column, accurately, I believe, that when it comes to the issue of US immigration, America has already passed the point of no return.
“Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies projects – using official Census Bureau figures of 1.25 million legal and illegal immigrants entering and staying in the United States every year – a U.S. population of 468 million by 2060.
We will add as many people – 167 million – in the next half-century as the entire population of the United States when JFK was elected.
Some 105 million of these folks will be immigrants and their children. That 105 million is equal to the entire population of Mexico, whence most of these folks will be coming. . . . They know the gringos can’t stop it, for they have the American establishment on their side.”
Buchanan concludes grimly, “Buenas noches, America.”
Still wondering if all the dark rumors about an SPP conspiracy to create a North American Union are true?
~~ by Jack Kinsella
The North American Union is not far off!