Yes, because expelling citizens is illegal, and separating children from their families is tragic. Just being sarcastic and cynical about it doesn't change this.
This gets at another portion of the answer to the "what's your alternative suggestion?" question: I'd suggest Congress pass laws, rather than presidents making stuff up, illegally. This is clearly not a partisan point! Every president in my voting lifetime - Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden - has made up immigration law while Congress sat on its thumbs.
There have been many laws passed by Congress addressing immigration. It is against law to cross the border without authorization. This particular case exists as a result of not enforcing those laws. Pretty simple.
Despite past congresses passing laws, the system is not good. A major contributor to the problem of people immigrating illegally is that our legal immigration system is a total mess. This is why there have been a number of efforts at reforms over the past few decades. But none of them have worked, leaving us in this situation where presidents from both parties do all this illegal stuff by executive action.
It's not quite that Congress has sat on its thumbs. Individual Congressmen have been (figuratively) screaming at each other. Committees are at each other's throats trying to get some sort of legislation to the table. Nobody can stand the possibility of giving the other side what they want -- at the insistence of their constituents.
The net result, of course, is identical to if they had all stayed home.
I think there has to be a reasonable solution that gives legal status to the guy who's been here for 20 years and is making a positive contribution to society, but doesn't allow someone to show up and exploit loopholes to stay forever.
I think a reasonable compromise would look something like this:
* Make it much easier for people to get temporary visas for the kinds of jobs where we need migrant workers.
* Provide a pathway to citizenship for people who have been in this country for a very long time and are contributing to society.
* Make it very difficult for people to come to the US without a visa - e.g. make people apply for asylum outside of the US. Stop issuing temporary protected status to huge blocks of migrants.
Unfortunately, political polarization has basically made it impossible for Congress to solve real problems.
Yep, the solution is pretty clear in broad strokes, as you described, but the bases of both parties advocate for radically opposed policy through executive action, which just makes the situation worse.
> the children's citizenship was solely one of birthright
Under the US Constitution, this is not a distinction. What you're looking for is just "the children's citizenship" without this qualifier that signifies nothing under the law.
The better alternative is to aggressively enforce employment laws against employers. Immigrants come here and stay here to work.
And then, what? Are citizens beating down the doors to do these jobs but getting out-competed by migrants? Are these the same citizens who are lining up to do sweatshop labor when manufacturing “returns” to the US?
If undocumented workers are finding productive work in an economy with low unemployment then the problem is that the government is not facilitating them gaining legal status.
The problem would be minimum wage and insurance requirements for employing citizens. There are plenty of citizens that would work those jobs but nobody would hire them because they cost too much. What you are arguing for is to continue allowing people to come here so employers can pay them less than a citizen is legally required to be paid. Once they become legal employers no longer want to employ them for the same reason they don't want to hire citizens.
US citizens by and large don't want to go work in tobacco fields for $15/hr, in a state with $7/hr min wage. But mexican workers coming over legally, getting the work visas and all that... will.
We do have a chicken and egg problem. I think the idea here is that it's a systemic issue and the enforcement is focussed on individuals. This is analogous to the concept of getting everyday people to recycle when the companies creating the products have greater control over how much garbage is produced.
Employers need to stop taking advantage of undocumented workers at artificially suppressed wages. This has acted like a subsidy keeping these poor business models afloat. This has led us to the situation we are in now, where we've become dependent on undocumented migrants (food production etc), who we are being taking advantage of (lower wages, less rights), and also trying to villanize & deport them (the article above). All simultaneously.
It's possible with careful coordination of industry, legislation, and immagration, we wouldn't be here. But now that we are, we need to either find a way to improve the situation or reverse it.
I don't think it's chicken and egg at all. I think lots of employers employ immigrants illegally, and then the immigrants take all the political heat. Anyone pissed about "all these illegals" should be at least just as pissed about all the businesses illegally employing them.
We should stop letting employers do this, and then we all discover that we still really want to employ immigrants, we should enable that, legally.
or alternatively that the US doesn't have a guest worker program similar in scope to most of the developed world, and this is at least partially due to political concerns around birthright.
The data seem to show that at the end of Biden's term, ICE enforcement actions were very low. But for some reason, the stats page doesn't show Trump's previous term. https://www.ice.gov/statistics
Looking at the most recent DHS yearbook (apples and oranges, but the best I can find so far) at https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook and scaling to match the curve at the ICE stats page, it looks like illegal immigration was way down at the end of Biden's term.
So maybe the influx was already slowed dramatically. I don't think it's possible to stop people from wanting to go to the US, except by making it worse that the places people are leaving. I don't think that's a worthy goal.
The question we have to ask ourselves is why was ICE not empowered to conduct enforcement ? Why were border crossings up over Biden’s term and then when Trump is elected and comes into office they drop dramatically ?
I'm in favor of that too, but I think this insistence on it being step 1 is actually just a resistance to solving the real problem. (Which is that employers are happy to pay below market wages to illegally employ immigrants who are here unlawfully.)
We should go after it all to include implementing E-Verify for all. Republicans are also in favor of the guest worker program to legally meet the demand. But we have to stop the flow
I agree that we should do those things. But what I've seen for the past couple decades that I've been voting is that Republican politicians pretend to want to do those things, but refuse to do them "until we've stopped the flow" or "but the border has to be step 1".
This is a classic political tactic to be able to say you want to do something, but never actually have to do it. Politicians use this tactic when they don't actually want to do the thing for some reason. In this case, it's because it's really unpopular with business owners, who like to employ illegal immigrants.
It's perfectly reasonable to say "we need to crack down on employers in conjunction with aggressive border and deportation enforcement". But I'm very skeptical of anyone saying "stopping the flow is step 1". I've heard that story before!
The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens, or the stronger form, that they are invaders and thus enemy combatants.
The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here unlawfully. And then the populace is going to have to make sure that the president doesn't conclude that he can ignore that ruling if he doesn't like it.
> The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here unlawfully.
I'm not a lawyer, but... they already have for decades or centuries, and not in the direction that MAGA wants.
> “Yes, without question,” said Cristina Rodriguez, a professor at Yale Law School. “Most of the provisions of the Constitution apply on the basis of personhood and jurisdiction in the United States.”
> Many parts of the Constitution use the term “people” or “person” rather than “citizen.” Rodriguez said those laws apply to everyone physically on U.S. soil, whether or not they are a citizen.
[...]
> In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”
Granted, only that last one is actually the Supreme Court. Perhaps there are hundreds of Supreme Court cases testing individual pieces of the constitution, but as the professor said, for the most part they give all the same rights. MAGA has managed to make everyone doubt and argue over it. The party of "Constitution-lovers" flagrantly violating both the plain wording and decades of legal rulings on the Constitution.
Yeah I don't doubt any of this myself. But the Court is still going to have to rule on it. Which isn't so weird. The Court has to reiterate rulings sometimes.
The thing that is unusual is that I have some genuine uncertainty around whether the current Justices will try to give the executive more leeway here than they should, as "compliance in advance" out of concern about their rulings being ignored by this administration.
On that basis tourists have no constitutional rights either. I find it hard to believe anyone would want to visit the US now, but surely that has an even further chilling effect.
To be clear, I agree. It's a dangerous thesis, but also just idiotic. They're doing a speed run of turning the US into North Korea, where nobody will want to travel here or trade with us.
> The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens...
The constitution is quite clear on this issue and it has been affirmed repeatedly over the last 100+ years by the high courts. Anyone and everyone in the world who is on US soil and subject to US jurisdiction is considered a "US Person". This status is regardless of their nationality/nation of origin, the manner by which they arrived on US soil, or any other circumstance.
As a 'US Person' they are protected by the US Constitution with only minimal exceptions; the right to bear arms[1], ability to run for public office, or vote in federal elections[2]
This is by intent and design and is a necessary cornerstone of US democracy!
This is laid out in - Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 "Aliens in the United States"
> The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, the Court determined, even one whose presence in this country is unlawful, involuntary, or transitory is entitled to that constitutional protection
[1] Only citizens and permanent residents are allowed unrestricted access to firearms.
[2] Some districts allow pr visa holders to vote in local and state elections
Yeah this is a silly argument. The check on the actions of independent agencies is the same as the check on the actions of all agencies. The executive obviously isn't a check on the actions of executive agencies...
Nah, people have got to stop buying into this unitary executive stuff! Independent agencies have oversight and accountability. Congress can do whatever they want with them whenever they want.
I think it's imminently reasonable to say that agencies shouldn't be independent of the executive, and that's the default if the legislation passed by Congress (and signed by the current executive!) doesn't specify otherwise. But Congress should, and I believe does, have the power to set things up otherwise.
I agree but only to the point that an independent agency setup by Congress exercises powers granted Congress by the Constitution and does not conflict with powers explicitly granted to other branches.
(And it's pretty unclear to me how the NSF, which is ultimately a method for Congress to spend money, could relate to any Executive powers)
Yeah that's the thing, what powers are even granted directly to the executive by the text? It seems to me that the whole unitary executive theory is based on the clause "The executive Power shall be vested in a President", where "the executive power" is never well defined.
The President commands the military, negotiates treaties, nominates various officials for confirmation. Probably the most leeway relates to being called to ensure laws are faithfully executed.
So it seems reasonable the Executive can police independent agencies to ensure they operate as authorized by law, but I don't see how that challenges the establishment or existence of lawful independent agencies.
NSF is one thing but say an independent agency that does things like negotiate treaties or command the military or nominate Supreme Court justices should be off the table
(But on the other hand, theoretically the Executive should be able to voluntarily authorize legislation that enables those things if they wanted to. Just saying I can see cooperation possible but a veto override probably won't work to force it on an unwilling Executive).
I meant my question to be a rhetorical question, but that was totally unclear in what I wrote. What I meant was to imply "the executive isn't even granted very many powers directly in the text".
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