Chaos Manor View, Monday, September 5, 2016
Labor Day Part Two
Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.
James Burnham
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983
Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Illegal Immigrants and what to do with them.
Does anyone talking about this subject have any sense of reality? There are said to be 11 million undocumented illegal immigrants in the United States. Some of them want nothing more than invisibility; to be left alone, do their work as nannies, housekeepers, gardeners, day laborers, small business operators, pushcart sales persons, and the myriad other activities they engage in. They send some money back home, but most don’t send a lot because they don’t have a lot to send. Many are the parents of “anchor babies”, US citizens under existing law.
At the other end of the spectrum are the career criminals, some in Federal prisons, others in city and county jails.
With only these facts we can draw some conclusions. First, it would be difficult to find and apprehend all 11 million. It would also be very expensive. We’ll assume it is possible for the sake of discussion, but can we all agree that it will be very difficult and expensive to deport them all, and the benefits of deporting all 11 million are likely to be lower than the costs?
One conclusion seems obvious: we should immediately deport any illegal alien – undocumented migrant – upon the end of a jail or prison term for any felony. Exceptional cases can plead for clemency. I say this to cover the usual cases presented in fiction but rare in reality, the illegal whom we ought to welcome who got caught up in some legal technicality and deserves mercy. Those cases generally stand out, and we can rely on citizen volunteers to find them and make pleas. The usual fate of a illegal alien convicted of felony should be instant deportation, and there can’t be much Constitutional argument that Congress has not the power to make that legal and binding. Aliens have no rights under the US Constitution unless those rights are granted by law.
Another exception would be those who have already been through this process and then return are apprehended during the commission of a criminal act. A possible way of dealing with such cases is obvious. They have no rights as citizens. They can be confined in low cost conditions, not expensive prisons in which the courts have power to grant various rights they discern in emanations from penumbras in the Constitution. They deserve neither emanations nor penumbras, nor bail.
Meanwhile. Close the borders; get back in control of the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States.
If we could stop the incoming flood while deporting the felons, we’d be miles ahead. One of the Presidential candidates would at least attempt to do that much; would both?
As we begin to take control of the influx and deport the felons, we can attack another problem, the expenses associated with illegal immigrants. That too is fairly simple. We explicitly deny them all rights to entitlements: welfare benefits, health care, food stamps; etc., may be rights for citizens, but they are not rights for illegal aliens. Mercy, charity, and social stability may require giving illegal aliens some of these benefits. Some may be ignored, but it must be understood that these are gifts, not matters of right and not entitlements. Cutting back on these “entitlements” will not only save money, but also lower the expected value of illegal entry. Some of those already here may decide the game is not worth the candle and turn themselves in for deportation.
That still leaves millions of illegal aliens, most striving for invisibility. If we simply declare that a legal change in their status requires that they register, deport themselves, and seek legal reentry before they can apply for citizenship, I suspect that solves the problem. Most won’t deport themselves, in which case they are eligible for deportation upon coming to the attention of the authorities – an event they will make every effort to avoid. Many will assimilate over time, which is an outcome devoutly to be wished. Legally they remain deportable, and on conviction of crimes of violence or other felonies they certainly will be deported. Meanwhile, your gardeners, housekeepers, and nannies remain outside the active scrutiny of the law. They will never be citizens, but why should they become citizens? If that’s what they want they can deport themselves and apply for legal entry.
As to protecting American jobs, we already have the laws against hiring illegal aliens. How vigorously we enforce those laws would, I suppose, depend on local conditions and local sentiments; local politics. Not the concern of the federal government in most places.
Obviously the above is not the end of discussion. On the other hand, it’s a beginning. Controlling the borders, deporting felon illegal aliens, and curtailing entitlements for non-citizens would almost certainly produce a better society than we have now, and just that much will not be simple or easy or cheap; surely it is a good start?
Of course it’s a pipe dream. There are too many political interests in the present situation, which is why only one candidate, the outsider, raised the immigration question when the others would as soon have avoided it as too difficult. Much easier to make grand talk about comprehensive immigration reform and Dream Acts on so forth. Much easier to go with the flow, and accuse anyone actually facing the problem of being too hard, too soft, flip-flopping, and un-Presidential.
It’s late and time for bed.
ATT
We had our ATT land line go out a week or so ago. As with yours, it was a street problem, not a house problem. It took two techs (two trucks!) several hours to pull open at least three street boxes, unwrap the incredible rats nests of wires inside them, and finally track the problem to a broken line under the street.
Fortunately, they run several spare wires, so all they had to do was disconnect the broken wire and connect up a spare.
The techs did good work, and didn’t seem to be just going through the motions.
I’m getting the impression from my aging wiring that our land line system is falling into neglect under the onslaught of cell phones. How much real innovation and infrastructure update is going into these systems? How much is just companies like ATT supporting a shrinking group of land line users while focusing on other communication markets?
There’s a chart at this website:
https://www.statista.com/chart/2072/landline-phones-in-the-united-states/Tom Brosz
Phyllis Schlafly, RIP.
<http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2016/09/05/longtime-conservative-icon-phyllis-schlafly-dies-at-92/>
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Roland Dobbins
To paraphrase Jerry, I don’t agree with all of Fred’s arguments at his article linked below, but I have to agree with the conclusion.
The worst time to get into war with Russia or China is after 8 years of Obama doing his damndest to destroy the military, and the RINOs walking to the drumbeat to keep the (domestic political) peace.
The above is not intended to imply that there is any BEST time to get into such a war. But if current Russian hacking is being conducted with the intent of either weakening the US or getting us into a shooting war (I submit that there is less doubt about China’s current maritime adventuring), the best we can do at present is fall back to “a well regulated militia, being necessary to a secure state…” (and the appropriate cyber variants necessary to today’s technology) and bide our time (expensively) until we can once again mount a good offense. Of course, Obama has spent 8 years railing against part A, and Hillary has promised to complete the job…
J
Paul & Galations 3:28 /buffy willow
Dear Jerry,
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
“St. Paul may have been an optimist.”
Or Galatians 3:28 is being grotesquely and disingenuously wrenched out of context to attempt to justify secular social and political goals and ideas it never had the slightest connection with. Coincidentally enough this verse and a few others before and after were the Epistle reading a few Sundays ago at our church. Since you appear to be using the Berean Literal Bible I’ll continue with it:
Galatians 3:26 teaches, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”
Galatians 3:27 continues, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
And Galatians 3:29 followed up with, “Now if you are of Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.”
Taken together this very clearly refers to a fellowship of all Christian believers. It certainly can never be used under any circumstances to justify an unlimited influx of non-Christians into any Christian land. And it can’t even be used at all unless a theocracy is set up.
Alternately we could go ahead and add numerical references to each word in the Bible, or even each letter. This will make it still easier for people to indulge that favorite pass time of using the Bible to justify their personal positions. As the late Sam Francis observed on the occasion of the Southern Baptist Convention’s apology for slavery, the Bible endorses human slavery and does not prohibit it. Even John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul advised slaves to be content in their situations.
But this being Sunday, I’ll quote one another applicable Bible teaching, this one on the question of the extremely wealthy welcoming strangers while imposing all the costs of their hospitality involuntarily on their poor neighbors:
2 Samuel 12:1-6
12 The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
4 “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”
5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
This seems appropriate for the many persons who enjoy the large profits of low cost immigrant labor – frequently illegals – while involuntarily imposing all the social costs onto the broader community. Mark Zuckerberg and his H1B programmers come to mind here.
Best Wishes,
Mark
I agree. My context was different and I should have been more careful in the way I said it.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
