Ooops, didn’t read it that way. Carry on.
I know that sounds reasonable enough to you, but too often I see this twisted into some bizarre doctrine that makes it virtually impossible to deport illegals who have clearly engaged in crimes and grants them privileges and benefits that are not rightfully theirs (e.g. granting them in-state tuition rates at state universities when citizens from other states are denied that benefit).
You guys apparently want to engage in some kind of metaphysical exegesis of the 14th amendment. I am much more deeply concerned about the practical, long term consequences of uncontrolled immigration and the way it undermines the quality of life in America.
By all means, we should certainly focus on the people who knowingly hire illegal aliens. But I am immensely skeptical that putting a stop to illegal immigration would somehow bring economic disaster upon us. I frankly think that’s just scare talk.
Where the hell did I suggest economic disaster would result? I said prices would go up. If you don’t think that is the case, then you have no grasp of economics whatsoever. I think that is the reason there won’t be significant action against illegal immigration, because too many people benefit from it, and those who benefit most are big donors and large corporations.
The constitution isn’t always a perfect fit. But it is a scary thought indeed when people suggest eviscerating it to deal with their particular button issues of the moment, whether it be illegal immigration, or torturing suspected terrorists, or poor quality education etc.
On that I agree. Australian and the US are alike in many ways, but one major way in which they differ is that Australia does not have a long land border with a third-world country, so that it finds it much easier to control immigration – though there still is immigration to Australia. Being able to control immigration so much more easily clearly is not an economic disaster for Australia.
But there’s another difference. Australia does encourage immigration, but it uses a points system (similar to Canada’s) to target immigration to young, well-educated, highly-skilled people. So the typical immigrant to Australia is not an unskilled labourer working below the minimum wage. And if you hire someone to do some building work, typically they will be earning a middle-class wage and living in the same kind of middle-class suburb as you do.
I don’t know the answers to any of those very good questions. I think there just so many illegals who live in the area that the cops have thrown their hands up in the air about it. It’s quite a mess here.
It is.
I live in the deep south. Not too long ago, we had this case. I also found this report, while looking up the details of the Tyson case. Here in Alabama, there was even a class-action lawsuit by legal Tyson employees against the company over their hiring of illegals.
Where I grew up in New Mexico, the big onion and lettuce companies mostly employed illegals. It was even a local joke at my high school.
If you’re looking to buy a house, that would be exactly what you want, right?
There is no “metaphysical exegesis” of the 14th Amendment necessary. It plainly makes the distinction between “citizens” and “persons” in the amendment itself, and says that all persons, not citizens, under a state’s jurisdiction are to be given equal protection under the law. Ergo, a plain reading of the 14th Amendment says that any law which applies to a citizen applies to a noncitizen.
Period.
If your view of the constitution somehow prohibits us from doing whatever it takes to control immigration, then either something is horribly wrong with the constitution or something is horribly wrong with your understanding of the constitution.
The two issues that concern me the most these days are America’s indebtedness and runaway immigration. Our economy is being hollowed out by debt, and runaway immigration compounds every social problem we have from racial tension to environmental degradation to crime to education to–well, almost any social issue you care to name.
If immigration and debt (both public and private) are not brought under control, I see bleak days ahead for the United States.
If those problems are not seriously addressed, then some time around the middle of this century America will have 400 to 500 million people. The average American will have a quality of life far below the one he enjoys today, racial and ethnic tensions will have greatly increased, and the United States will simply cease to be a major power. We will for all practical purposes have become a third world country. And that’s the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is a total Soviet-style collapse complete with Balkan style ethnic cleansings.
You may see this as alarmist. You may be right. But in 1855 how many Americans saw the Civil War coming? In 1985 how many people foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union? And I may be an optimist. Perhaps the United States won’t even make it until 2022.
I ask you in all sincerity to forgive me if I seem impatient or even hostile with you (and I ask the same of others on this thread; patience was never one of my virtues). But it looks an awful lot to me like you’re just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Regarding the fourteenth amendment, it is worth noting that it was ratified in 1868, when the US was comprised of only 37 states, a goodly portion of the west, northwest and southwest not yet being a part of the country. The former slaves, to which the benefits of the 14th were intended, descended from persons brought to this country against their will. To allege that the authors intended application of its provisions to a group which didn’t and wouldn’t exist for the next hundred years is foolish.
And what is this supposed to mean it practical terms? I think we should be able to deport without trial an alien, legal or not, who’s been caught using forged papers. A simple administrative hearing should suffice, and he should not be allowed endless appeals or even any appeal at all. He shouldn’t even be allowed a lawyer. I don’t see any inconsistency between this and the constitution. Do you?
If you don’t like what the constitution says, change the constitution. Trying to avoid a plain reading of it because it affects your ability to find easy solutions to hotbutton issues is a recipe for disaster.
Well, it’s good to see that you don’t go in for ridiculous hyperbole or anything.
Almost everyone who looked at the issue, actually.
Nobody here appears to be arguing that illegal aliens should have special rights to commit crimes and not be subject to punishment. We are simply saying that the Constitution grants certain basic rights to all people, citizens and non-citizens alike, that have to be respected, such as that the law must be fairly applied to everyone. Everyone but you seems to be saying that we can respect the Constitution and punish illegal immigration at the same time.
Who is alleging that the authors intended it to apply to illegal aliens? That would indeed be silly, since such immigration laws didn’t exist at the time. What we are saying is that the plain text of the amendment necessarily applies it to illegal aliens, and that to the extent that author intent matters, it is clear that the authors intended to apply it to all non-citizen persons. Since **LonesomePolecat **won’t answer, perhaps you will. Do you believe that illegal aliens are not persons, or that they are not in the jurisdiction of the US?
Yes. Because the 14th Amendment makes it clear that any benefits a citizen would get from the law, such as full due process and anything granted by Miranda, also apply to a noncitizen.
Therefore, unless you change the constitution or take away those rights from citizens, you have to give them to illegals also. That’s pretty much what “equal protection” MEANS.
Fun fact: since 2000, the population of Herndon has increased by 222. Not 222%, 222 persons. Stagnation isn’t the word for it: this is a town that any day could start evaporating. And still they’re tacking up the “keep out” signs.
Most communities of any size have a couple of day-labor centers, larger cities can have several. Like any other marketplace, they perform a vital function in the local economy. The first thing that struck me about the WaPo article was this:
120 people? This operation could be run out of a phone booth. The activities of 120 people couldn’t significantly impact the town if they suddenly all turned to crime, much less so if they’re just trying to work so they and their children can eat. I’d like someone to have asked the 7-11 manager what he thought – a hundred sales of coffee and bottled water and cigarettes and maybe something small for breakfast probably didn’t exactly ruin his day. For this to be seen as a problem, somebody’s got to have an awfully sensitive allergy to immigrants, is all.
The thing is, nobody’s saying you can’t enforce immigration laws, not even the evil Judge Alden. I would love to have the text of her opinion, which should be available here, but it looks like they omitted Fairfax County from the roster. But it looks to me as if what she’s saying is, if you’re not going to enforce immigration laws, you can’t use them as an excuse to violate people’s civil rights. She probably wouldn’t let us commit other crimes against them either, the spoilsport. Basically, we’re not going to be allowed to import a legally-defined underclass and then maltreat them, using their legal status as an excuse to create a caste system in the United States.
See, Herndon doesn’t want to enforce any immigration laws. That takes time and money and hard work and small-town police aren’t really equipped for it and then some of the immigrants turn out to be legal, which is annoying.
What Herndon wants is to be able to act under color of law to make itself inhospitable to a certain class of people. If it isn’t allowed to use a hiring hall as a stick to beat illegal immigrants, then it will get rid of the hiring hall and happily face the adverse impact on legal immigrant labor, because legal status isn’t really the point.
You’re treating the constitution like a deck of Tarot cards, reading all sorts of things into it that clearly aren’t there.
No, I don’t. Your sarcasm notwithstanding, that’s a sober assessment of our situation. The fact that you’re trying to sneer it away shows that you don’t really have an answer and you know it.
And yet the bloody catastrophe that was the War Between the States took almost everybody by surprise.
The authors of that amendment were fully capable of wording it so that it applied only to former slaves. They didn’t.
And the idea that they had no idea what immigration would mean is foolish, since the US had just absorbed vast portions of Mexico, and in any case American was certainly no stranger to people coming from overseas to work as noncitizen laborers, as the first waves of Chinese and Irish immigrants had already arrived by that point, and their numbers would only increase.
As usual, you argue well. I wonder about your statement above, however. Are we (the government) *importing *these illegal aliens? If so, is a caste system the goal? They are certainly free to go home. No one is forcing them to accept a caste system.
I understand that they are here because there is a demand for their services. Is that the same thing as saying that we import them? It seems that is tantamount to saying that they are not illegal.
Hell, change the laws if necessary. But ignoring their illegal status is simply wrong. And, not that you have done this, but pretending that they are not a huge problem is wrong, as well.