Immigration reform

[Libertarian666]

I can't believe there's nothing on the board about this!
Anyway, the results of this poll should be interesting. I'll withhold my personal opinion until a few others have weighed in.

[Pointedstick]

I don't expect it to really have much of an effect, to be honest, since the people targeted were already here, competing for jobs and influencing the culture. And it doesn't really give them anything substantial, since this "deferred action" only lasts 3 years and could easily be reversed by congress which is soon to be full of angry Republicans eager to deliver a bruising to the president. Even if not explicitly reversed, the enforcement amnesty drops in 3 years. Not a lot to bank on if you're an illegal immigrant. Let's say you register, start paying your taxes, etc, and then 3 years elapses and no other bill passes. Now the IRS and many other government agencies have all your info, making it trivially easy to deport you if the political winds blow in that direction.

[Benko]

I don't expect it to really have much of an effect, to be honest, since the people targeted were already here, competing for jobs and influencing the culture.

So you don't think it is an invitation to everyone south of the border (and people who can travel to south of the border) that all they have to do is make it across the border and they will get amnesty sooner or later?

[Pointedstick]

I don't expect it to really have much of an effect, to be honest, since the people targeted were already here, competing for jobs and influencing the culture.

So you don't think it is an invitation to everyone south of the border (and people who can travel to south of the border) that all they have to do is make it across the border and they will get amnesty sooner or later?

Do they really need to be invited?

But yes, I see your point. I maintain that if we want to prevent immigration, it will be through border control, not deportation.

[MachineGhost]

I'm not really happy with any of the answers provided.  I "like" the results, but it didn't go far enough simply because Obama can't (though not for lack of trying, I'm sure!). Implyng that Obama didn't go to Congress is B.S..  The bi-partisan immigration reform bill passed the Senate; its those extremist Tea Party yahoos that refused to even consider it in the HOR (because they have their panties all twisted in a knot over Texas going Democrat via amnesty).  So frack them!  The Tea Party fiddles while the USA burns.  Is this how the end of the empire begins? 

The brain drain from this dysfunctional skilled-immigrant policy has begun. Some of the most thoughtful alarms have been raised by Vivek Wadhwa, the author of “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent”? (Wharton, 2012).

Mr. Wadhwa, who teaches at Duke and Stanford, is particularly worried about the so-called STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “Companies like Alibaba and Tencent are a warning signal that it is almost too late,”? he tells me. “Either we get back to picking off the best and brightest STEM talent in the world, or someone else will.”?

The first step in solving the skilled-immigrant crisis is to be honest about the real problem—and the motives of the players involved.

http://acalliance.org/american-competit ... ain-drain/

[MachineGhost]

i question if this action, or any "reform bill" ever voted on, passed or not, has anything to do with fixing the countless and systemic problems with american immigration law, the hopeless bureaucracy, or border enforcement. I think it is all little more than political theater to rile up the base on both sides for votes, and crony payback to the big donators to both parties..

i suspect that in the long run the democrats may come to regret using the executive order, and setting a precedent for presidents writing law (almost kinda but not exactly writing law) without congress, eventually the republicans will use the precedent for some big government idea of their own like banning abortion or some other platform that is appalling to their side of the aisle..

Sometimes you got to cut off an arm or a leg to save the patient.  I hate politics.  Its everything about nothing.  Pure B.S..

[Benko]

PUG,

That bar graph is wonderful propaganda (see Obama is not that bad) but irrelevant.  It is not the number of executive actions that are relevant, but their content that matters.

For anyone that thinks what O did was legal, explain to me this:  no matter how you slice selective prosecution, explain to me where the ability to issue work permits comes from?

[Pointedstick]

For anyone that thinks what O did was legal, explain to me this:  no matter how you slice selective prosecution, explain to me where the ability to issue work permits comes from?

I would imagine by directing an executive-branch agency like the ICE. The door to these kinds of shenanigans were opened long ago when congress delegated enormous amounts of power to federal agencies organized under the executive branch.

[MachineGhost]

For anyone that thinks what O did was legal, explain to me this:  no matter how you slice selective prosecution, explain to me where the ability to issue work permits comes from?

Executive Orders are legal so long as they're not unconstitutional; if they are suspected to be or disagree with those that don't like the Order, then they will be challenged in the judicial branch.  This is by design.  In any case, Obama is just trying to implement the provisions in the bi-partisan immigration reform bill that doesn't need legislative approval, as far as practical.  That's why it doesn't go far enough to solve any of the real problems.  This is also by design.

But the real problem is there are no work permits being issued.  Did you read all of the article I linked to?  There's almost 2 million people in limbo that can't get work permits.  So if you want to blame Obama yet again, blame him for not issuing work permits, not issuing them ad infinitum to unskilled immigrants (as seems to be the xenophobic inference).  It's almost as if Republicans work in the executive branch or ICE the way it grinds so slowly.  What's up with that?

i am not sure how the number of available work permits gets determined, there should be some common sense logical method but i doubt there is..
it is all written in bureaucratic legalese, submit the same information over and over in multuplicate on government forms, spend hours on websites and help lines, waited months/years to get reply's/progress/confirmation/completion, and paid through the nose for the privilege... to get a LEGAL permit... the incompetence level of ICE is so extraordinarily high that suspecting malice is probably unnecessary..

[Pointedstick]

Politico has a thought-provoking article on the subject of how Obama's executive order was shaped:

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/h ... ml?hp=t4_r

Throughout, I see evidence of classic Obama: the man who wants so desperately to be perceived as reasonable even as he does something radical. He and his team are hemming and hawing about what might be going too far--is 8 million people too much? Is 3.5 million too few?--seemingly oblivious to the fact that anything like what they're doing is inherently radical and will have precisely zero chance of placating those who think it's an awful idea. In that respect, it also shows Obama's typical political naiveté: an unwillingness to take actions that are as bold as they could be, given what he and his allies clearly want. He continuously waters down his own proposals and gets no support from the opposition anyway. It's perplexing to me how he can fail to see this.

My amateur psychoanalysis is that Obama has a strong self-image as a reasonable person that is butting up against the reality that a reasonable politician is a weak politician. In the end, radicalism always wins, satisfying the slightly stronger narcissistic part of him that wants to be perceived as a great man, but the part of him that wants to feel like the reasonable adult in the room always manages to torpedo it by diluting the result to the point where it fails to truly excite his allies and still outrages his enemies.

[Libertarian666]

My answer, in which I am so far unique, is "Love it!"
I have two reasons.

First, the less important one: because I'm against any restrictions on immigration (or emigration) as a matter of principle, being a "self-governmentalist" who believes that everyone has a natural right to move wherever they like.

But by far the more important reason is that it demonstrates to any sentient observer that my analysis of the US government was right (not that I had any doubt).

That analysis is that the president can do ANYTHING he wants to, subject only to the limitation that 34 senators will vote against removing him from office via impeachment.

This action demonstrates that all of the "limitations" placed on the office of the President by the Constitution are meaningless in the face of one man who decides to do whatever he wants (so long as he gets the passive support of a few unindicted co-conspirators in Congress).

Of course the same analysis applies to the rest of the government: they can do whatever they want, regardless of paper limitations supposedly limiting them, and we just have to lump it.

Accordingly, any project of trying to limit the government by paper restrictions is hopeless.

Thanks a million, Obama!

[MachineGhost]

My amateur psychoanalysis is that Obama has a strong self-image as a reasonable person that is butting up against the reality that a reasonable politician is a weak politician. In the end, radicalism always wins, satisfying the slightly stronger narcissistic part of him that wants to be perceived as a great man, but the part of him that wants to feel like the reasonable adult in the room always manages to torpedo it by diluting the result to the point where it fails to truly excite his allies and still outrages his enemies.

Yep!  Our Founding Fathers were very wise, weren't they?

[MachineGhost]

Accordingly, any project of trying to limit the government by paper restrictions is hopeless.

Who are you and are you related to KShartle?

[Pointedstick]

That analysis is that the president can do ANYTHING he wants to, subject only to the limitation that 34 senators will vote against removing him from office via impeachment.

This action demonstrates that all of the "limitations" placed on the office of the President by the Constitution are meaningless in the face of one man who decides to do whatever he wants (so long as he gets the passive support of a few unindicted co-conspirators in Congress).

Of course the same analysis applies to the rest of the government: they can do whatever they want, regardless of paper limitations supposedly limiting them, and we just have to lump it.

Accordingly, any project of trying to limit the government by paper restrictions is hopeless.

Bingo. The only thing really constraining the government short of armed resistance (law of the jungle, baby) is the social culture of politicians. In former times, politicians tended to like each other, for example. No longer. Once their culture evolves to include the realization that the paper restraints on their power are meaningless, they'll enter the phase where the government comes more and more to resemble a big organized gang. The concept of "checks and balances" is just a propagandistic farce seeing as how the branches of government are increasingly divided by partisan loyalties rather than fidelity to their supposed roles. One party that controls all three branches of the American government should be functionally indistinguishable from a dictatorship.

[Ad Orientem]

Saturday Night Live's take on this...
http://youtu.be/dEYlwE9M668

On a more serious note, there is this...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

My own view: We are in a slow motion constitutional crisis, that began during the Cold War, gained dangerous speed under George W Bush and is reaching what Turley and Johnson rightly describe as a tipping point. Congress seems utterly oblivious to the fact that they are in serious danger of becoming permanently subordinate to the presidency.

[WiseOne]

It doesn't help that Congress has devolved from a legislative body to a group of self-promoting grandstanders who all happen to be operating from one location.  Since they've virtually abandoned the responsibility of running the legislative branch, it's quite natural that the executive branch will begin to take over some of those functions.

Totally agree that "constitutional crisis" describes that situation quite nicely.  I didn't take that option in the poll, though, because the immigration order itself doesn't create that crisis.  It actually will accomplish almost nothing besides pandering to Hispanics and encouraging another wave of people trying to cross the desert - agree with Benko on that one.  It's fortunate that we're heading into winter, so at least people won't be dying in the desert by the hundreds again.

[Benko]

Interesting reading:

The Next Prez and the Obama Way
Prosecutorial discretion? OK, how about not enforcing the 73,954 pages of tax code?

http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-stra ... 1416528052

[Libertarian666]

Interesting reading:

The Next Prez and the Obama Way
Prosecutorial discretion? OK, how about not enforcing the 73,954 pages of tax code?

http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-stra ... 1416528052

Works for me. Also, pardoning all those convicted solely of drug offenses. But that, of course, wouldn't be exceeding the supposed bounds of Presidential power, so it hardly counts!

[MachineGhost]

This really does feel like the beginning of The End.  And no one really cares except weirdos like us, scholarly academics or maybe Tea Party types when they're not being intransigent.

But hey, at least the U.K. seems to be doing fine, all things considered.  There's hope.

just read a (hopefully propaganda or satire) article about how England was now asking its people to turn in their knives..
i am sure they will feel safer once all those dangerous sharp instruments are gone [/sarc] ...if its true....

[Benko]

This really does feel like the beginning of The End.

Organisms including people have life cycles birth, maturation, death. 

Perhaps countries/societies do as well.

[Mountaineer]

This really does feel like the beginning of The End.

Organisms including people have life cycles birth, maturation, death. 

Perhaps countries/societies do as well.

Yes, they do, at least to this point in the space-time continuum. 

... Mountaineer

[Ad Orientem]

This really does feel like the beginning of The End.

Organisms including people have life cycles birth, maturation, death. 

Perhaps countries/societies do as well.

Yes, they do, at least to this point in the space-time continuum. 

... Mountaineer

Republics historically have rather short life expectencies before self destructing.

[dualstow]

just read a (hopefully propaganda or satire) article about how England was now asking its people to turn in their knives..
i am sure they will feel safer once all those dangerous sharp instruments  are gone [/sarc] ...if its true....

It's real.

[gizmo_rat]

just read a (hopefully propaganda or satire) article about how England was now asking its people to turn in their knives..
i am sure they will feel safer once all those dangerous sharp instruments are gone [/sarc] ...if its true....

It's real.

LA LA LA LA.... i can't hear you.... and i absolutely cant bring my self to believe it...

I was just getting ready to turn in my scissors and letter opener, but I can't find any references to this at all.
It sounds like one of those periodic knife amnesties where teenage 'shoguns' get dragged into police stations by their mums to hand in the samurai sword and throwing stars that she found under the bed with the jazz mags.
It can otherwise be a bit tricky to dispose of them without causing an incident.

[PP67]

While we are on the subject of immigration reform, it seems as late as 2009, there was political support from both parties to remove the "anchor baby" qualification for US citizenry...

"In the late 1990s opposition arose over the longstanding practice of granting automatic citizenship on a jus soli basis[56] as fears grew in some circles that the existing law encouraged parents-to-be to come to the United States to have children in order to improve the parents' chances of attaining legal residency themselves.[57][58] Some media correspondents[59][60] and public leaders, including former congressman Virgil Goode, have controversially dubbed this the "anchor baby" situation,[61][62] and politicians have proposed legislation on this basis that might alter how birthright citizenship is awarded.[63]

The Pew Hispanic Center determined that according to an analysis of Census Bureau data about 8 percent of children born in the United States in 2008 — about 340,000 — were offspring of unauthorized immigrants. In total, about four million American-born children of unauthorized immigrant parents resided in this country in 2009, along with about 1.1 million foreign-born children of unauthorized immigrant parents.[64] The Center for Immigration Studies—a think tank which favors stricter controls on immigration—claims that between 300,000 and 400,000 children are born each year to illegal immigrants in the U.S.[65][66]

Bills have been introduced from time to time in Congress which have sought to declare American-born children of foreign nationals not to be "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States", and thus not entitled to citizenship via the 14th Amendment, unless at least one parent was an American citizen or a lawful permanent resident.

Both Democrats and Republicans have introduced legislation aimed at narrowing the application of the Citizenship Clause. In 1993, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced legislation that would limit birthright citizenship to the children of U.S. citizens and legally resident aliens, and similar bills have been introduced by other legislators in every Congress since.[66] For example, U.S. Representative Nathan Deal, a Republican from the State of Georgia, introduced the "Citizenship Reform Act of 2005" (H.R. 698) in the 109th Congress,[67] the "Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007" (H.R. 1940)[68] in the 110th Congress, and the "Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009" (H.R. 1868)[69] in the 111th Congress. However, neither these nor any similar bill has ever been passed by Congress.

Some legislators, unsure whether such Acts of Congress would survive court challenges, have proposed that the Citizenship Clause be changed through a constitutional amendment.[70] Senate Joint Resolution 6, introduced on January 16, 2009 in the 111th Congress, proposes such an amendment;[71] however, neither this, nor any other proposed amendment, has yet been approved by Congress for ratification by the states."