AKA "Strip Poor Countries of Their Best and Brightest" Act

https://www.cato.org/blog/sen-pauls-believe-act-raises-skilled-migration-without-tradeoffs

As I've said before, I think we have enough people for now.  I think we need a moratorium on immigration in order to allow those here to assimilate.  The percentage of foreign born population is as high as it was 100 years ago.  In 1970 it had dropped to about 4% due to a moratorium that started in (I think) the twenties.

However, our needs aside, is it ethical to strip poor countries of their best and brightest?  Are they likely to become decent countries if we have hundreds of thousands of their motivated and smart people here?  Do I care?  Not particularly, I just wonder if the immigrationists have thought about that.

The correct amount of immigration

Riffing off my last post regarding the meaning of the word immigrant, I thought I'd throw out my argument for the correct level of immigration.

Approximately zero.

Yes.  Zero.  No temporary workers; no cousins, uncles, and aunts; no refugees; no lottery.  None.  Approximately means that I'm OK with someone marrying a non-American and bringing their new spouse and dependent children home.

Why Heresolong, you racist!

Nope.  I don't think we need more people.  We don't need more white people, we don't need more brown people, we don't need more yellow people.  I have nothing against foreigners or their cultures.  I have traveled the world, lived overseas, and enjoyed much of what I experienced and saw.  It's just that we already have plenty of people.  Forty  years ago we had 220 million people, today we have 325 million people.  I don't think this has been an improvement.  Forty years ago the city I grew up in had about a million and a half and it was a nice place to live. Now it has three and a half and it has become a somewhat less nice place to live, overcrowded and expensive.  Many of these people are immigrants so it hasn't just been a matter of the natives having children.  Again, what was the benefit to those of us who lived there already to the importation of millions of foreigners? 

What is the rational and scientific argument for more immigration?  We have high unemployment so it can't be for workers; we have plenty of diversity so clearly don't need more of that (as an aside I'd be interested in seeing the scientific studies that prove that diversity is better as that's what we are always being told to believe.  Not saying it isn't, just saying that I haven't seen the science); it can't be for productivity as there is no particular relationship between population and wealth. 

So what is it for?  I have my suspicions but perhaps I'll keep them to myself for now and just ask, "why do we need more people?".

The number one priority

of the United States government should be you and me, the United States citizen, should it not?  Providing for our security?

Why then, would we let in any Syrian refugees, some percentage of whom may be radicalized Muslims, without screening the crap out of them?  Why can't they stay in camps while we screen them?  Why can't we profile and say that military age single men are not welcome?  To the extent that we have any responsibility at all to people who are not Americans, it should be clear that this responsibility falls far below any obligation to protect ourselves first and foremost.

The Obama administration shut down a program where the Department of Homeland Security was checking the social media feeds of visa applicants who were from Muslim countries or who exhibited Muslim ties.  Meanwhile they continue to attempt to use the NSA to collect data on the phone records of American citizens and to pressure Apple and other companies to prevent us from having encrypted communications.  Looking at public information, posted publicly on Twitter and Facebook is racist, but American citizens can't have security in our private communications.

The Obama administration is sending fully automatic military rifles, twenty and thirty round magazines (standard military issue) and other military hardware to Muslim fighters around the world.  Meanwhile they don't want us to have rifles that look like military rifles, even though they operate just like civilian rifles, and don't want us to have magazines that hold more than ten or seven rounds ("high capacity" magazines), in spite of the fact that we have a Second Amendment.

25% of Muslims in this country think that it is OK to kill Americans in the service of jihad, 50% of Muslims in this country believe that they should be allowed to live under sharia law instead of American law if they want, and we are not allowed to express concerns that Islam, a political system with religious underpinnings, is not compatible with American values.

Who should the government be focused on?  First priority, anyone from abroad who wishes to come here and harm us (mostly Muslims at this point).  Second priority, anyone in the country who is not a citizen who wishes us harm (visitors and residents).  Instead this administration has spent the last seven years caterwauling about "homegrown terrorists" (who they don't define as American Muslims, and who don't kill nearly as many people as Muslim jihadists) and targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups, despite the complete lack of evidence that any of them have any violent inclinations at all.  Perhaps if they spent as much time researching the backgrounds of Muslims wishing to emigrate to the United States as they do the financial records of conservative groups in Wisconsin, for example, we wouldn't have nearly these problems.

Oh, and as a not insignificant side benefit, we wouldn't be having our Constitutional rights stripped away in the name of safety.

Birthright citizenship, setting the record straight

I am tired of my views and those of many other conservatives being misrepresented in an effort to taint our opinions.  In this case I am referring to the issue of illegal immigration and, most recently, the discussion of "birthright citizenship".  Conservatives are frequently accused of being anti-immigration due to our stance against illegal immigration in particular.  Commentators take the words of conservatives and eliminate the context of discussion of illegal immigration in order to taint our views.  We are then labeled as anti-immigrant and hypocrites given our own descent from immigrants.  Ignored in the accusations are the fact that most of our ancestors came to the United States legally under the laws in effect at the time of arrival.  My own great grandparents came from Germany around the turn of the 20th century, legally migrating with their children, including my grandfather.  To most conservatives illegal immigration, is a question of the rule of law rather than a question of the numbers and origination of who comes here.  

Legal immigration is a separate issue.  I have issues with our current legal immigration system, but not based on numbers or on country of origin.  My concerns relate more to family reunification laws that permit legal immigrants to bring significant family with them, family that is not necessarily productive or a benefit to our system; as well as the broad interpretation of the definition of "refugee" that is currently utilized.  My understanding and observation of current immigration law suggests that significant numbers of people are admitted based on the simple fact that their country is an unpleasant place to live.  In my opinion this actually prevents positive changes in those countries as it reduces the population of those with frustrations,  the kinds of people who might drive future change in their political systems.

However, the main issue at hand right now is birthright citizenship.  Birthright citizenship has been a topic of considerable discussion for many years.  The Constitution states that anyone born in the United States and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" shall be a citizen.  What it doesn't do is define the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".  Initially the specific exemptions listed as not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States included foreign dignitaries and members of Indian tribes.  These exemptions are been used to make the claim that the writers of the Constitution never intended that the children of undocumented or illegal immigrants be denied citizenship.  Current law, which assumes that anyone born in the United States (with the only current exception being the children of foreign dignitaries as Indians were granted citizenship early in the twentieth century) is based on a Supreme Court case from the late 1800s, Wong Kim Ark.  WKA was born to long term resident parents and the case, to give the abridged version, recognized that "subject to the jurisdiction" applied to the plaintiff as he had been born in the United States. 

The counter argument, however, is that there were, to the best of my knowledge, few immigration laws relating to who could legally migrate to the United States.  There were health and public impact exceptions and that was the primary purpose of the Ellis Island facility.  Apparently fewer than 2% of arriving immigrants were deported after their inspections, generally based on either health the possibility of public dependency.  Given that history, it is not unreasonable to assume that the grant of authority to Congress to regulate immigration would also include the authority to determine who was subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, including the right to assume that illegal immigrants, having entered the country without the permission of the government, have placed themselves outside the jurisdiction.  These illegal immigrants, despite their presence within the territory of the United States, still hold citizenship in their country of origin and therefore their children are citizens of that country.  This, by a reasonable definition, makes them subject to the jurisdiction of that country of origin and, therefore, not subject to the United States.  The phrase does not, contrary to recent argument, mean subject to the laws of the United States.  Anyone in the United States is subject to our laws, much like we would be subject to the laws of Japan while visiting.  A similar argument (which was the gist of the WKA decision described above) could be made that legal residents are also subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, having agreed to abide by and, presumably, not engage in subversive acts against the United States, therefore their children would have the opportunity to obtain citizenship.

Finally I wish to address the issue of the deportation of children born in the United States and therefore granted citizenship under existing legal precedent.  Although much has been made of the fact that Donald Trump apparently stated that he would revoke their citizenship if he were President, the reality is that the President does not have the authority to revoke anyone's citizenship.  Additionally I would make the argument that generally laws that apply retroactively are unjust and unfair.  Most rational arguments that I have heard in favor of rescinding the concept of birthright citizenship do not attempt to remove citizenship from current citizens, nor do they attempt to eliminate the granting of citizenship to anyone born here while their parents are legally present

For more interesting discussion check out this Federalist paper at http://www.federalistblog.us/2007/09/revisiting_subject_to_the_jurisdiction/

Meanwhile, an open comment to the media.  Stop misrepresenting what conservatives think about issues and stop conflating legal and illegal immigration. They aren't the same thing, we don't think they should be treated the same, and this BS where you accuse us of being racist because we are opposed to illegal behavior isn't going to stop us.

Prosecutorial Discretion and what it means

You are going to hear a lot in the next few weeks about prosecutorial discretion and how it allows the President to do whatever he wants.  I thought I'd throw a few dissenting opinions your way, just in case the news you are watching chooses not to expound.

Prosecutorial discretion means that given limited resources prosecutors at all levels have to prioritize their resources by deciding which crimes to prosecute.  Example, lots of people smoking a little pot, a few people driving vanloads of marijuana around to sell, you prosecute the vanload guy and you ignore the guy with a joint in his pocket.  Another example, eleven million illegal aliens in the country and some of them are picked up for being illegal aliens while some of them are arrested for murder, rape, assault, etc.  With a limited budget you prosecute and deport the rapists and murderers and you let the others be.  This is a legitimate and necessary act of discretion under our legal system.  There just isn't the money or time to prosecute everyone for every little violation so you prioritize.

What the President has just announced, however, goes far beyond prosecutorial discretion.  He is extending the concept of discretion to legalize the non-felony immigrants.  He is granting them work permits and other benefits that are only available to legal immigrants.  He has basically announced that prosecutorial discretion allows him to not only choose who to prosecute but also to change the legal status of millions of these immigrants.  It is as if choosing to only prosecute drug dealers meant that it was now legal to smoke pot.  It isn't.  The President does not have the power to decide what is legal versus illegal, only the power to decide who to prosecute.

This latest Executive Action of the President may be good policy (although I tend to think not, look for further discussion of immigration from a libertarian perspective later), and it may be what a significant portion of the country wants (although this is not what the polls necessarily show) but it is illegal and a violation of the separation of powers.  Only Congress can pass laws.  Only Congress can make something illegal and only Congress can make something that was previously illegal legal.  They have to pass a law changing the statute.  Absent this action by Congress the President has no authority whatsoever to decide that action made illegal by Congress is now perfectly legal.  This is not prosecutorial discretion, it is imperial dictate and should not stand. 

I would hope that Democrats who support the President's actions would stop and reflect on what could happen under this system when a Republican is president. This action has long term ramifications for how our country is governed and knee jerk support because it is a policy you support or a President you elected may not be the best in the long run.