Posted on 06/22/2006 1:17:29 PM PDT by new yorker 77
The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a blow to some longtime illegal residents, upholding the deportation of a Mexican man who lived in the United States for 20 years.
By an 8-1 vote, justices said that Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, who was deported several times from the 1970s to 1981, is subject to a 1996 law Congress passed to streamline the legal process for expelling aliens who have been deported at least once before and returned.
After his last deportation in 1981, Fernandez-Vargas returned to the United States, fathered a child, started a trucking company in Utah and eventually married his longtime companion, a U.S. citizen.
But by the time he applied for legal status — after his marriage in 2001 — Congress had passed the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which revoked the right to appeal to an immigration judge an order of removal.
Fernandez-Vargas was sent back to Mexico in 2004, and wanted to return to his family in the United States. He argued that the 1996 law should not be applied to him because he last entered America more than a decade before Congress passed the statute.
"Fernandez-Vargas continued to violate the law by remaining in this country day after day and ... the United States was entitled to bring that continuing violation to an end," Justice David Souter wrote in the decision.
It was unclear how broad of an impact the ruling would have.
Souter said that unlawful immigrants like Fernandez-Vargas should have known about the 1996 law and taken "advantage of a grace period."
The case is Fernandez-Vargas v. Gonzales, 04-1376.
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Even Ginsburg is to the right of this guy!
2 weeks, maybe less...
Wonder how much this sucker ripped us off for?
Did he pay taxes?
How man ID's and SS no's did the creep have?
Using multiple phony SS #'s, forged documents, and multiple IDs he could have been collecting multiple $4500-$5400 EICs from the IRS by declaring several names/jobs - just by going $1 over the income limit.
He could also have collected EINs, ITINs, Child Tax Credit, Additional Child Tax Credit, welfare and food stamps. Not to mention free healthcare, education and so on.
Thats who I thought it was,LOL
It's official--Bush is to the far left of Souter on illegal immigration.
One can always hope!
Not only that, but here's the other thing. Remember when you're mama probably told you, "in the time you spent arguing with me over whether you should have to do the dishes, you could have done them by now"?
If this guy had gotten in line and done what he was supposed to do, he could probably have been a citizen by now...LEGALLY. Dude took the short cut to citizenship that wound up not being so short.
What!? You'd think those ingrates Alito and Roberts would have followed the
lead of Dubya and the US Senate and tried to give this hard-working illegal
"a pathway to citizenship!
Seeing an independent judiciary actually using their brains to arrive at a
common-sense conclusion is an awesome thing to behold.
Perhaps I should have worded my comment differently. I should have said "With the 14th Amendment, Congress never intended..." I understand what the current immigration laws say. My point is that the laws violate the 14th Amendment. The wording "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the States wherein they reside." is vague enough to be misinterpreted, but the authors were pretty clear that they didn't intend for it to cover foreigners. It wasn't until much later that this became the meaning du jour.
P.S. Interested in a Freeper in Congress? Keep in touch with me
Congressman Billybob
Certainly not. The most you can say is that they are not required by the 14th Amendment, but no one has ever claimed that Congress cannot grant citizenship to people other than those made citizens by the Constitution itself. See, for example, the statutes granting citizenship to Puerto Ricans.
The wording "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the States wherein they reside." is vague enough to be misinterpreted,
Most find it pretty clear.
but the authors were pretty clear that they didn't intend for it to cover foreigners.
The subject barely came up in the ratification debates-- the focus was obviously on former slaves-- but the few mentions of children born to foreigners are ambiguous at best. I don't think the authors' intentions were clear either way.
It wasn't until much later that this became the meaning du jour.
The definitive Supreme Court ruling was Wong Kim Ark, in 1886. Not quite contemporary with the 14th amendment, but not all that much later.
Just when I was beginning to lose faith in our justice system, this happens. Thank you Supremes..for upholding our laws.
sw
This guy has chosen to pass up 7 or 8 amnesties. He chose to break our laws and not pay taxes. Too bad. I can't feel sorry for him.
True enough. How about "the laws violate the intent of the authors of the 14th". This is made clear in the comments of the authors as captured in the Congressional Record.
Most find it pretty clear... I don't think the authors' intentions were clear either way.
To quote Sen. Jacob M. Howard, the author of this clause, "This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."
To further quote Sen. Lyman Trumbull, who authored the "Jurisdiction" clause, "It is only those persons who come completely within our jurisdiction, who are subject to our laws, that we think of making citizens"
definitive Supreme Court ruling was Wong Kim Ark, in 1886
Wong Kim Ark was decided in 1898, not 1886, and that case I believe was more influenced by the Chinese Exclusion Laws issue than the "jurisdiction" clause. Another difference is that he was born of parents who, while not US citizens, were here as permanent legal residents. This is a key difference. They remained in the US legally and raised him in the US. They left him, to go home to China, when he was an adult. Following a visit to them in China several years later, he was detained because he was Chinese. This case was as much about anti-Chinese racism as about citizenship.
Well, I guess if you and some of the other individuals who criticized me on this comment were to check my previous posts on illegal border invaders, you might be surprised.
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