I read that since the center was closed, the Herndon Police Deparment’s plan is to step up the enforcement of traffic and trespassing laws. What I read that as: Harassment.
So yeah, Herndon has more or less begun its deportation process.
What part of “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” are things that “clearly aren’t there?”
Things like explicitly stating that laws apply equally to all persons in a state, not citizens, despite having mentioned citizens as a separate and specific category earlier in that same amendment?
What about that isn’t in the 14th Amendment?
No, I have an answer to the assertion that “illegal immigration will turn the US into a balkanized third world country suffering the ravages of ethnic cleansing.”
My answer is “you might want to ask your doctor to change your prescription, since whatever you’re on now is making you crazy and paranoid.”
They may not have understood how bloody and protracted the war would end up being, but everyone most certainly understood that there would be conflict between the north and south, even violent conflict, and that very soon. ESPECIALLY by 1855.
Hell, Bloody Kansas was already going on by that point!
Ah, you’ve resorted to personal abuse. This is, of course, an admission that you can’t come up with a rational response. Buh-bye.
Irrationality deserves irrationality. Note I never said anything about your other arguments.
But if you honestly believe that illegal immigration will turn the US into Rwanda, then perhaps it’s best that you do exit this conversation.
Of the course the constitution prevents the government doing “whatever it takes.” That’s the whole damned point of enshrining rights in constitutions - to stop governments from deciding it is necessary to do “whatever it takes.”
Damn it, those are three of the scariest words in the world when combined with government power.
Is there any reason that the center can’t operate such that any day laborers must show proof of citizenship or legal resident status? Since the center is, in effect, acting as an employment broker, it seems to me they should be able to demand that only legal residents and citizens use it for that purpose.
The part where you interpret “due process of law” to mean “exactly the same process of law for everybody.”
When a convicted felon is released on parole, he can be sent back to prison without trial for violating the terms of his parole. It takes no more than a hearing, and sometimes no more than the word of his parole officer, to lock him up. Catch him with a quarter ounce of grass and he’s gone. He’s not entitled to a whole new trial and an almost endless series of appeals all over again–and he has not been deprived of due process. His rights, such as they are, simply are not those of an ordinary citizen. On ordinary citizen would be entitled to a trial and appeals.
An alien, legal or illegal, is in something of the same position. When an alien is caught using forged papers or stolen Social Security numbers, he should be given a simple hearing to determine the facts of the case, and if he has broken the law he should be immediately deported. Barring something on the order of a violent felony, he isn’t entitled to a trial. He does not have the same rights in the matter as a citizen any more than a paroled felon would.
Your misinterpretation of the 14th simply would simply create a legal and bureaucratic nightmare. You’re aware that illegals are often deported without trial, right?
Look, you’re just being childish here. Get back to me when you have some kind of actual point to make.
Okay, then.
My point is that you’re egregiously wrong about interpreting the constitution to apply US laws to noncitizens is “reading all sorts of things into it that clearly aren’t there”, you’re egregiously wrong about no one forseeing the Civil War in 1855, and you’re egregiously wrong bordering on delusional in claiming that illegal immigration will make the US a balkanized third world country suffering from ethnic cleansing.
You’re comparing apples to rutabagas. Equal protection doesn’t mean a convicted murderer’s parole hearing is the same as an illegal immigrant’s deportation hearing.
It means that a citizen accused of murder and an illegal immigrant accused of murder get the exact same rights and protections: speedy trial, facing the accuser, no deprivation of life liberty or property without said trial, a lawyer appointed if they cannot afford one, and the right to appeal after conviction.
In the matter of deportation, an illegal faces the same consequences and has the same rights as a citizen - a hearing to determine residency status. Anything that a citizen would get in terms of rights and benefits at such a hearing, a noncitizen would also get, and vice versa.
Or do you think that no citizens have ever been taken into custody by the INS barring such a hearing that determines that they are citizens, and thus can be released?
What on Earth ever gave you that idea? Avoiding a civil war was one of the primary concerns of the federal government for a good century before Fort Sumter. Everyone saw the Civil War coming. In terms of easily predictable military conflicts, it ranks just behind the Seven Day War.
Hi, Contrapuntal. It’s always good to “see” you.
I would not argue that there are no such things as illegal immigrants. But usually economies import things, not governments, and I think it’s fair to say that our actual attitudes toward them are…equivocal. It’s an odd law, beset not only with practical problems in its enforcement, but a certain reluctance thereof as well. Moreover, it’s an odd sort of law, one with which we don’t have a lot of experience: the kind which penalizes not a particular act but a state of being, and hinges not upon one’s character, but one’s parentage. But I’m not about to argue that it’s not a law. So we’ll say that there are some people in this country who constitute an illegal but widely tolerated import, largely for the benefit of entities we consider perfectly respctable. You know, like cocaine.
I don’t think I’m doing that. What I’m saying is that their status entitles the state to arrest and prosecute and (if proven) penalize them for immigration violations. It does not entitle a community to try to simply drive them out by selectively enforcing or failing to enforce other laws, or uniquely denying them certain first amendment protections. That is thuggery and any decent community would be ashamed of it.
The fact that they are “free” to leave strikes me as hollow. First of all, it just ain’t that easy: crossing the border illegally is often fatal, and for many, so is returning to their country of origin. Second, the right to liberty in this country has been called “inalienable,” meaning not only that it can’t be taken, it can’t even be freely given away. This is an important concept because it keeps the powerful from usurping the rights of the unfortunate. Third, the rights accorded certain persons under the Constitution is not a reflection of those persons, but of the Constitution, the government, and all of us.
I’m not going to drag my opinion on the national immigration debate into this discussion, which is much smaller. If you’re interested, and there’s no reason you should be, one of my louder posts on the subject is here. For purposes of this discussion, I’m just going to suggest that illegal immigration, even if it’s all 120 guys who need day labor jobs to get by, isn’t much of a problem for Herndon, VA. As noted, their population growth is unhealthily low, another poster mentioned that property values remain high, and their crime rates are about a quarter to half the national average. All of which make their shrillness on the subject of immigrants look even more like a solution in search of a problem.
John Mace, I’m only guessing, but I think the answer to your question goes like this: The WaPo article says that Reston Interfaith wouldn’t run it that way, either for philosophical reasons or because it was too much of a hassle, and that the town couldn’t find any other third party who would do it, either. I’m guessing that the town doesn’t want to run it because doing anything to benefit low-income immigrant labor isn’t a politically tenable position in Herndon – it’s the reason the previous administration got bounced. Plus, even after all that, it would still leave them with the problem that the First Amendment protects the right to solicit work, and that right extends to all persons, not just all citizens, and they’d be back at square one. If you ask me the right to solicit work isn’t worth much without the right to accept work if it’s offered, but there’s no reason you should ask me.
And you’re saying that someone hauled before an administrative board should not have access to a lawyer. If a citizen were wrongly taken to this board, do you think he deserves a lawyer?
I can understand the “hassle factor” argument, and I originally thought of putting that in my post, but didn’t. It would indeed be a hassle to do that.
However, I don’t buy the free speech argument. We regulate non-political speech in all kinds of ways, and you don’t have the right to solicit something that is illegal-- ie, hiring a person without legal status to work in this country. Even citizens, for example, don’t have the right to solicit sex for money. And the WaPo article says only that the judge ruled the law unconstitutional because “the town intended to bar illegal immigrants from the site.”
It would boggle the mind if a government run Employment Center was unable to check the legal status of those using its services. Employers themselves are able to do so-- in fact, aren’t they required to do so?
Now, I can think of certain techniques that might be unconstitutional. Let’s say the agency used a fluency test to accept or reject applicants. Or, if they just refused services to people who “looked” like they were in the country illegally. But asking all applicants to provide proof of legal residence? I don’t see how that violates any clause in the constitution.
I asked pretty much the same thing.
However, since he still hasn’t answered for his claim that equal protection for all persons is “reading things into” the constitution, or that no one knew the Civil War was coming in 1855, I’m not holding my breath.
The very large company I used to work for routinely required all new employees and consultants to prove that they were in the country legally. Birth certificate did nicely for most of us; the rest had to show naturalization papers, green card or whatever other appropriate document existed.
John Mace, the idea that soliciting work is protected under the first amendment is the courts’, not mine, though it seems reasonable to me. The center isn’t either an employer nor an agency: if it were, it could exclude illegal immigrants, drug addicts, ex-felons, and lots of other people.
The center can’t be those things, though, and at the same time satisfy the courts’ requirement that it be a public forum from which persons can’t be debarred because of their citizenship status. From the Post article: “At issue was an ordinance the council approved in 2005 as a legal companion to the day-laborer center, barring workers and motorists from striking deals for employment on the streets. The courts have generally required that communities barring public solicitation for work – a form of speech – must provide an alternative venue for that speech, such as a hiring site.” And you can’t deny civil rights (such as access to free-speech venues) based on citizenship.
The only alternative to maintaining such a forum is to give up the laws prohibiting public solicitation of employment, which the town wasn’t willing to do.
Clearly the 14th amendment does not grant aliens, legal or illegal, full status with citizens. Perhaps you should try to be more explicit about what the difference between the rights of a citizen and the rights of a non-citizen should be. If you’re saying that a non-citizen has all the rights of a citizen, except possibly the right to vote, then you are in effect abolishing the distinction between citizen and non-citizen. If you’re not, you need to be clearer about what the distinction should be.
Nobody in Ameica in 1855 saw the bloody nightmare that was coming. Many foresaw trouble, but nothing like that. And you’re ignoring my point that almost nobody in 1985 foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As for balkanization, you apparently just refuse to consider all the ramifications of the rapid population growth we’re undergoing, almost all of it due to immigration. Balkanization and ethnic cleansing was the worst case scenario. The best case scenario is that the United States will become basically a third world country with all the poverty, backwardness and brutishness that implies.
I’m basing that view on the impossibility of absorbing 100 to 200 million immigrants over the next four decades, most of them from non-Western countries, while still maintaining the quality of life and standard of living for ordinary Americans. How much additional infrastructure do you think that’s going to take? We’d be adding the equivalent of 25 to 50 cities the size of Los Angeles in about 40 years. You really think we can do that? Where will we even put all these people without seriously degrading the natural environment? Will we have jobs for all those people? If we don’t, will we have the resources to support them with charity? Where do we get the money for all the public services those people will need? How do you think it will affect the lives of low income Americans? What will adding all those people to the Social Security system do to its solvency? How will it affect low income housing or housing in general? How will it impact medical care and public health services? And how will all of this affect racial and ethnic tensions?
Where do we get the money to do this, considering how deeply in debt we already are?
You need to come up with a better counter-argument than simply accusing me of “bordering on delusional.” Abuse is not a subsitute for an argument.
The other issue is that it isn’t the state i.e The Commonwealth of Virginia that is going to be deporting these folks, it is the USCIS and eventually the federal court system. The state system really isn’t trained to handle these matters and would most likely be overwhelmed trying to.
The reason that your local police force usually isn’t looking to enforce immigration law, is that they may not have training to investigate a person’s immigration status, or the necessary resources to do so. More importantly, if they start to, those illegal immigrants will be far less likely to call the police if they witness a crime or to report crimes that have been committed against them, thus creating more lawlessness.
I would imagine that the best way to curb the immigration problem is to go after the employers. If a company faces harsher penalties for employing an illegal immigrant and they know that they are likely to be investigated, then they won’t and the demand for those illegal immigrants will decrease.