Tag: border

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Fifth Amendment rights ideological culture national politics & policies

Whose Principles?

immigration, illegal immigration, border, citizenship, due process

Partisan contest! You may start with principles, but — if you are careless — end up fighting, instead, for the things your opponent only thinks you stand for. You become the strawman your enemies put up as the dumbed-​down version of your position.

This happens a lot: Democrats have long denied being socialists, but have accepted leadership from socialists; Republicans have long denied being authoritarian, but routinely act like authoritarians.

Case in point: the deportation of “criminal illegal aliens.”

This is not an authoritarian position as such; right or wrong, it can be done in a legally sane way.

But Donald Trump and Republicans have embraced an extremely authoritarian manner of deportation.

How? By denying the principle I defended in April: due process. Writing about the Abrego Garcia case, I made this simple point: “whether a dangerous criminal or an innocent, hard-​working family man, Garcia’s status is hardly the issue. This is about whether our government must follow its written Constitution.”

Now we are learning a lot more about who has been sent to El Salvadoran dungeons: the innocent. 

According to an informative Cato article, “of the 90 cases where the method of crossing is known, 50 men report that they came legally to the United States, with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point.”

This is important: “Dozens of legal immigrants were stripped of their status and imprisoned in El Salvador.”

We are, today, shocked to read of how the ancient Athenian democracy would expel citizens from the polis. But Trump’s deportations are much worse: they’re being done without constitutionally required due process … without any chance for the accused to defend themselves.

And the innocents are being sent to a hell-​hole prison, not merely banished.

Trump and his willing government functionaries are conforming not to their principles, but the ones imputed to them by Democrats.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

The State & Child Rape

kids in cages, immigration, border, trafficking,

Four billion bucks: That’s what Los Angeles County has confirmed it will pay “to settle nearly 7,000 claims of ‘horrific’ child sexual abuse related to their juvenile facilities and foster care homes over a period of decades,” according to a BBC report. “Survivors say they were abused and mistreated by staff in institutions meant to protect them — with many of the claims linked to MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter that permanently closed in 2003.”

A lawyer for the plaintiffs offered the perfectly apt cliché, of foxes and hen house: “they were raping boys and raping girls.”

Meanwhile, something odd’s going on with the “children in cages” issue.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., head of Health and Human Services, said, in a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, that “we have ended HHS as … the principal vector in this country for child trafficking.” He went on to say that “during the Biden administration, HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking and for sex and for slavery. And, we have ended that, and we are very aggressively going out and trying to find these children — 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration.”

Last year, a whistleblower claimed that the Biden-​Harris administration had “created a ‘white glove delivery service’” funneling migrant minors “into the hands of criminals, traffickers, and cartel members throughout the United States.” 

The federal government has failed worse than LA County.

Not so much by intention of politicians (we hope) but by abusive acts of government workers and contractors.

However, a major lawsuit against the worst contractor has been dropped, and the contractor re-​engaged in “servicing” migrant children.

On this issue, government failure has been massive.

So, maybe when we hear calls for taking kids away from parents at local and state levels, for, say, “gender acceptance” rationales, we should demand that proponents come up with guarantees that such interventions will make things better.

For the children.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets international affairs

The 51st State?!?!

Canada, United States, border, trade, economics

“What I’d like to see?” confessed the president. “Canada become our 51st state.”

Why?

“We give them military protection,” he offered. 

Then things got weird.

“We don’t need them to build our cars,” Donald Trump added. “We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need them for anything.”

Shocking? Yes. But not just for the disrespect shown to our northern neighbors. 

What’s most shocking is our president’s ignorance of economics. While we don’t “need” Canada for any of the things Trump mentioned, we’re better off trading with Canada than not. The sending of “billions of dollars” up north is neither charity nor waste; the gains both sides make are apparent in the voluntary trades themselves. 

It’s as if he thinks if “we” must pay anyone, it should be to ourselves, that is, to our fellow countrymen.

Behind this is that old crank notion, protectionism: “we have big deficits with Canada, like we have with all countries.”

Now, it’s true that Canadians send more raw materials to the U.S. than we send to them, and that we send them more dollars than they send us theirs: that’s what “trade deficit” means. 

But how is this bad for us? 

Trump doesn’t explain. “I look at some of the deals made and I say, ‘Who the hell made these deals?’ They’re so bad.”

Mr. Trump identifies no specific trade rules or agreement; he doesn’t say which are unfair, or why; nor does he say who made them. But the trades that pile up to that overall deficit, each was made by Americans and Canadians who thought the deal best for them.

Trump’s seemingly goofy idea of adding Canadian provinces to the U.S. as new states would have one great benefit: more trades with these good people than ever. This belies Trump’s far, far more troublesome notion that we need nothing from Canada. We need everything. As Canadians do.

That is, freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies Voting

The Non-​Citizen Dodge

After telling Meet the Press viewers that non-​citizen voting is “exceedingly rare” and “already against the law,” NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger what he thought about “efforts to prevent non-​citizens from voting.”

“I believe only American citizens should be voting in our elections,” replied Raffensperger. “I’m the first secretary of state in Georgia to ever do 100 percent citizenship verification,” adding that Georgia officials discovered “about 1600 people that attempted to register, but we couldn’t verify citizenship, so they weren’t put on the voter rolls.”

The Secretary also explained that his office “just won a court case which came from the left, the Coalition of the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project, which was founded by Stacey Abrams.”* Raffensperger points out that the lawsuit “tried to stop us from doing citizenship verification before people were put on the voter rolls.”

“Good news, good news for everyone,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson chided, dismissively. “All of us want to make sure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections. And all of us follow the law, ensure the federal provisions are protected, and that we’re ensuring that only valid votes are counted in our state.”

Democrat Benson reiterated that “regardless of our party affiliation, we’re doing all that we can and more to ensure, as the facts show, in all of our states, that only U.S. citizens are voting.”

“What you just said there was ‘federal provisions,’” responded Raffensperger, noting that non-​citizens have been given the vote — legally — at the local level in a number of states. 

He argued that states should place in their constitutions “that only American citizens are voting in any election in your state.”**

Still, Welker inquired, “Is it a red herring?”

No, Raffensperger answered, arguing that “already there’s the left-​wing groups trying to get noncitizens voting in local elections in Washington, D.C., New York City and in other places.” And he asked, “Why are we getting sued by the left to stop us from doing citizenship verification?”

Many Democrats and much of the media continue to dodge such questions. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

*In her first run for Governor, Abrams said her “blue wave” was “comprised of those who are documented and undocumented” and specifically acknowledged that she “wouldn’t oppose” allowing non-​citizens to vote at the local level. 

** Americans for Citizen Voting has worked closely with the Georgia Secretary of State to place such constitutional amendments on six state ballots this November: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. North Carolina may soon become the seventh state to do so. 

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crime and punishment folly national politics & policies

Don’t Fence Me In?

Joe Biden, border wall, immigration, NIMBY

“The Biden administration on Thursday said it would expand former President Donald Trump’s wall,” informs The Gray Lady, with a stiff upper lip. 

And do it lickety-​split: “Biden criticized for waiving 26 laws in Texas to allow border wall construction,” the UK Guardian headlines its report. 

In fiscal 2023, government data shows 245,000 people entered the United States from this Rio Grande Valley sector.

“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated in the federal registry.

“Well, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall,” quipped the American Economic Liberties Project’s Matt Stoller, “Biden did.”

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” the president had promised to the contrary during the 2020 campaign. Now Sleepy Joe’s administration has so awakened to the need for action on immigration that it argues for fencing off the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act from getting in the way … 

… of building that wall. 

Fast!

The New York Times notes “intensifying” complaints coming from “Democratic leaders in New York, Chicago and elsewhere who say the influx is overwhelming their ability to house and feed the migrants.” 

Want a nimble response to the border crisis? 

Instead, we see a NIMBY response — from big-​city politicians, as the buses arrive from down south.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war international affairs

New Red Map

China, map, borders, aggression

“China warns US Has Crossed Red Line” began Newsweek’s headline to a report that the Chinese state-​run Global Times threatens a “brewing and imminent storm of lethal consequences for Taiwan” in retribution for the U.S. recently providing $80 million in military assistance to the island nation. 

China claims Taiwan and its inhabitants, desiring their patriotic company so devoutly as to contemplate leveling much of the country in missile strikes, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of Taiwanese to achieve that glorious “national rejuvenation.”

Of course, when the U.S. provides defensive weapons to protect against just such a murderous military invasion, the Butchers of Beijing holler it is “provocative!”

Speaking of … the Chinazis were kind enough last week to remind us that Taiwan is hardly the only land they’ve got their eyes on. 

The Communist Party just drew a new map. 

India noticed first that the CCP’s penmanship pinched Indian territory. Japan objected to China’s claim of its Senkaku Islands (under U.S. military protection). 

Countries bordering the South China Sea — Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam — have long complained of China’s ridiculous nine-​dash-​line, claiming roughly 90 percent of the Sea and building militarized islands in the exclusive economic zones of other countries. 

In recent weeks, Chinese ships have used water cannons to block Filipino vessels attempting to resupply their countrymen on an island that international courts have ruled belongs to the Philippines. Two Vietnamese fishermen were injured last week in yet another water cannon attack by the Chinese Coast Guard around the disputed Paracel Islands.

Last week, Vietnam and the United States reached agreement on a “comprehensive strategic partnership” — something Vietnam has with only four other countries, one being China. Why? The Vietnamese see it, analysts tell The Washington Post, as “necessary given how aggressively China is flexing its military muscle in the region.”

This isn’t U.S. saber-​rattling, it’s China rattling its neighbors. 

The threat of war between China and the United States is real … and clearly, not just over Taiwan. The Chinazis marked red lines all over the map. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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