FACT: Immigration Is About The Law, Not Justice

Immigration is a contentious issue, not just in the United States but throughout the Western world. Immigration is a central theme of Hungarian President Viktor Orban's re-election campaign. Immigration is a major divide within the American polity, with states such as Texas and Arizona enthusiastically supporting President Trump's call for National Guard troops to protect the US border with Mexico, while states such as California applaud the efforts of state and local officials to thwart enforcement and deportation actions by ICE.

Amazingly, despite all the rhetoric coming from all sides of the immigration debate, very little attention is given to what should be the core of the debate--the state of immigration law.  More than any other public policy question, immigration is almost exclusively a matter of law, of what the law is, and what the law should be.

What the law is:

• Article I, Section 8, Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the United States Constitution explicitly charges the Congress with drafting immigration laws.
  
  
• The body of US Immigration Law is codefied under Title 8, Chapter 12 of the US Code.
  
  
• Every President, upon inauguration, swears an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States", as mandated in Article 2 Section 1 of the Constitution. Every President is explicitly named as Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces in Article 2 Section 2.
  
  
• The Constitution is the supreme law of the United States. Article 6 of the Constitution makes this explicit, and explicitly binds all public officials to respect that supremacy.

Americans can--and should--debate what the substance of immigration law should be. That is our right and our duty as citizens.  Yet it is absurd and even asinine to ignore or deny what the substance of immigration law is. 8 USC §1151 establishes explicit numerical limits on immigration. 8 USC §1182(f) specifically empowers the President to bar certain classes of aliens "by proclamation" (meaning no Congressional involvement is required or even allowed). Whether these laws are good or bad, wise or unwise, just or unjust is immaterial. These are the laws we have. These are the laws government officials take an oath to enforce. On this point there can be no debate, there is no argument.

Nor can there be any debate that every US President has the right and responsibility to secure the borders of the United States. Every President is duty bound from his oath to defend the Constitution, and that necessarily includes defending the territory of the United States. Every President is explicitly named as Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces in order to secure that defense.

No immigrant has any right or expectation of admission into the United States. 8 USC §1361 explicitly assigns to the immigrant the burden of proving he or she is eligible for admission. Lacking such proof, the mandate of the law is that said immigrant be denied entry into the United States. Congress has the power to alter that mandate, but thus far it has declined to do so.

No immigrant can simply cross the border into the United States, but must enter through established checkpoints. 8 USC §1325 makes it a crime to enter the United States but through established checkpoints. 8 USC §1326 enhances the sanctions for repeat violations of this statute. Congress can alter these statutes but thus far has declined to do so.

Laws can be changed. Where laws are seen as unjust one hopes they will be changed. Yet until they are changed, the laws on the books are the laws of this land, and, as such, they must be enforced. If we are to remain a nation of laws, these laws must be enforced until they are changed.

On this, there can be no debate.

The Parkland Shooting: Failure By Design

The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was a barbarity. The wanton slaughter of 17 people was--and is--an outrage.  If you are not angry reading about it, you are either mentally ill or not really paying attention.

As our minds grapple with the sheer inhumanity of such an act, we seek to bring order and structure to the madness.  We want to know who did what, who did nothing, who had a hand in the commission of this crime. We point fingers, because as human beings that is what we do.

There is but one person to blame for this shooting, and that is the shooter himself. He alone opened fire on defenseless high school teens.  He alone decided to take human life.

But while the shooter is to blame for the shooting, let us not fail to note that, regardless of the choices the shooter made or did not make, this tragedy was absolutely preventable. This tragedy should have been prevented. That it was not is every bit as horrific as the shooting itself.

The most galling aspect of the failure to prevent this shooting is that the steps needed to prevent the shooting are uncontroversial and not terribly expensive. No curtailment of civil liberties are needed to stop school shootings, no problematic gun laws that inevitably run afoul of the Second Amendment need be enacted. We need not rely on law enforcement to diligently follow protocols, and investigate every tip and warning given. Had the school been properly secured, this shooting would never have happened.

Consider the timeline that has developed of the shooting itself:

• 2:19 -- The shooter exits an Uber car and walks into the school
• 2:21 -- The shooter opens fire in several classrooms.
• 2:28 -- The shooter drops his weapon and exits the building.

How does someone--someone not even a student at the school--simply walk into the school unimpeded? How is any person able to carry a firearm through the front door of the school without being stopped?

That is the real horror in this: that the shooter had easy access not to firearms, but to the school. With or without a weapon, he should never have gotten through the front door, or even on school grounds. There is no reason that should be allowed in any school anywhere.

Yet Marjory Stoneman Douglas is a typical high school in the United States. And--unsurprisingly--this was a typical high school shooting. By some measures, Parkland was the 208th school shooting since the 1999 Columbine tragedy. In every single one of these incidents, the same galling questions must be asked: how does someone merely walk into a school unimpeded, and how are they able to carry a firearm onto school grounds? In every single one of these incidents, there are no good answers to be had.

Add to those questions this further damning interrogation: how is it that, after more than 200 such events, almost nothing has been done to make schools more secure? 

It is true that some schools, such as Southwestern High School in Shelbyville, Indiana, have implemented strong security systems, but they are by far the exception and not the rule. By and large, America's schools are as unprotected and vulnerable as they were two decades (and 200 shootings) ago.

Nor is it necessary to have a state of the art security system to stop the would-be shooter.  A few basic security elements, such as a "man trap" at the main entrance to the school, make unauthorized access far more difficult. Nearly every courthouse in the nation has metal detectors at their main entrances, as do all airports as well as most concert venues--yet security "experts" argue that their use in schools is a bad idea!

In his classic treatise on strategy and tactics, Sun Tzu wrote "You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked." This is the goal of all security: invulnerability to attack. It should be the goal of school security--and it has not been.

Yet hardening schools, and making them invulnerable to these attacks, has not been at the forefront of the media coverage of this event.  We have heard of the evils of guns, and the need to shred the Second Amendment to confiscate guns. We have heard of the multiple failings of law enforcement, from the FBI on down to the Broward County Sheriff's Office. We have heard of the wisdom or unwisdom of arming teachers. We have not heard much of man traps, nor of metal detectors, nor other basic security mechanisms that would impede the miscreant and make doing mischief within a school that much more difficult.

The horror of Parkland that every parent in America must now face is this: our schools are not safe--by design. Our schools are not built to keep our children free from harm during the school day. Our schools are not built to thwart attacks by evildoers. Our schools are the antithesis of secure--they are vulnerable when they should be invulnerable.

Tragically, even after Parkland, there is no indication that will ever change.

The DACA Trap: Donald Trump And The Demise Of The Democrats.

The current immigration debate in this country centers on four broad topics: 1) amnesty for the "Dreamers", 2) a border wall and border security, 3) ending chain migration, and 4) ending the visa diversity lottery.

The Democrats want #1, the Republicans want (or claim to want) #2, #3, and #4. Donald Trump proffers a compromise where both sides give the other side their ask. Democrats get #1, Republicans get #2, #3, and #4.

As a matter of political pragmatism, it is highly likely some form of amnesty provision will be needed to secure Democrat votes for the Republican ask. As a matter of historical appraisal, legislation with bipartisan elements is more successful and more enduring than purely partisan legislation (and one should note that Democrats had ample opportunities to participate in the tax reform legislation, but that their "Resist!" strategy overpowered any impulse to compromise on the substantive issues).

As a matter of political pragmatism, one achieves legislative success by accepting what is possible today, without categorical insistence on what is ideal. For Democrats especially, this would mean accepting the conditional amnesty offered by Trump to at least remove the threat of deportation from the Dreamers.

Why, then, are Democrats so hostile to this compromise? Why is it that when Donald Trump expands the amnesty offer the Democrats expand their hostility?

I suspect it is because the Democrats' self-interest lies more in preventing the Republicans gaining #2, #3, and #4 than in gaining for themselves #1. Amnesty might regularize those who are already here--but border security and moving to a merit based immigration system will change the political dynamics of immigration for decades to come. Merit-based immigration is fundamentally what Milton Friedman termed "immigration to jobs"; the Democrats are unequivocal champions of "immigration to welfare". While Democrats cynically hyperventilate about the travesty of deporting "Dreamers", if they take the deal that is being offered they must surrender all hope of sustaining immigration to welfare (by which they seek to import and otherwise buy votes from the electorate).

What the Democrats have done with their derisive dismissals of President Trump's compromise is admit to wanting more immigration to welfare. What they have made clear is that amnesty is not half as important as perpetuating the current broken immigration system which encourages immigration to welfare and prioritizes immigration to welfare over immigration to jobs. One need not hold a PhD in economics to realize that such a stance is a stance against the economic interest of both America and the American worker--indeed, that's a very easy case to make.

By accident or by design, Donald Trump is steadily branding the Democrats as the party of illegal immigration, the party of immigration to welfare, the party that stands explicitly against obvious American interests and those of American workers--long a traditional bastion of Democratic strength. This can only weaken them heading into the midterm elections, and could do permanent damage to their credibility as a major political party.

It is too soon to tell, but if this debate continues in this fashion, Donald Trump come November could be presiding over the complete dismantling of the Democratic Party, and completely eviscerating progressivism as a political force in this country.

Leftist Thought Means Intellectual Suicide

When Donald Trump speaks, leftist "thinkers" wet themselves. That is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from leftist commentators' overwrought reactions to President Trump's speech in Warsaw, Poland, on 6 July 2017.

Leading the lunatic charge is Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic:

The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white.

Following close on his heels is Jeet Heer bloviating in The New Republic:

Here, Trump is defining the West not based on ideals like democracy and liberty, but atavistic loyalties to territory and shared kinship. 

Not to be left out, the reliably pretentious Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post concluded:

...President Trump's understanding of history [is] as a zero-sum clash of civilizations in which "the West" can triumph by imposing its will.

This "intellectual" nonsense exposes the fundamental illiteracy and ignorance of the left.

To begin with, the entire construct of "race" is a fiction. One only need look at just a handful of human horrors over time--Rwanda, Culloden, Drogheda, Srebrenica--to know that the human capacity to hate is not bounded by mere skin color. 

There is but one race, and that is the human race. There is none other.

Further, what fosters and fuels human divisions are the same building blocks that form our various communities--tradition, custom, and culture. Ideals such as democracy and liberty are elemental to a full understanding of "the West", but they exist only in the communities we form in adherence to and appreciation of those ideals. Communities by dint of sheer physical reality are invariably defined both by territory and shared kinship (which is itself an anodyne term for what sensible people call "family"). Defending the West geographically is not an atavistic loyalty to some animalistic urge, but is the practical reality of preserving and promoting the ideals we hold most dear.

There are other communities in the world--and Trump does not hesitate to call out those he quite reasonably identifies as adversaries of the community of nations known as "the West", principally Islam ("radical Islam", more precisely, although the extent to which the fundamentalist Islamic creeds of ISIS and Al Qaeda are "radical" is debatable at best). Islam is many things--false religious ideology, extremist political ideology, encapsulation of Arab and Bedouin traditions and customs--but "race" is most assuredly not one of them.

The statist authoritarian nations who reject democratic governance and the rule of law are another community that attracts Trump's wrath. Yet these also are neither religions nor races, but real places, inhabited by real people, with whom we must contend if we wish our community of nations to endure.

Messrs Beinart, Heer, and Robinson are using terms they clearly do not understand to comment on concepts they clearly do not comprehend.

Donald Trump offered up a stirring defense of Western civilization. He champions the notion that our culture, our history, our customs and our values are worth preserving. He enthusiastically argues that our culture, history, customs and values warrant not just robust apology but stirring advocacy. He notes the many real successes and achievements within our culture and our history--achievements of technology, of law, of basic notions of justice and human worth--and reminds one and all that these are not just good things, but great things. 

The uncontestable historical reality of Western culture is the Internet, the empowerment of women, the emancipation of slaves and the proposition that all men are created equal. Democracy exists because Western nations have endured, and freedom has expanded because Western ideals have taken root in realms far beyond the cradles of Western civilization.

The uncontestable historical reality of Islam is hundreds of millions of dead, the subjugation of women, the promotion of slavery, and the presupposition that only the select few deserve all that society offers. The uncontestable historical reality of statist authoritarianism--of Communism, of Fascism, and of Socialism--is likewise violence, death, destruction, and human degradation. 

The uncontestable present reality is that the left rejects the successes of Western culture and embraces the ideologies--and communities--that oppose Western culture.

Messrs Beinart, Heer, and Robinson, in their idiocy, encapsulate why leftist thought invariably fails: despite being a product of Western thought, it is implacably opposed to Western thought. Leftist thought opposes the very culture, history, customs and values that created it. Invariably, leftist thought espouses intellectual suicide.

The tragedy of the leftist "intellectual" is that to be leftist is to concede the debate before it even begins.

WARNING: Special Counsel Investigations Have A Long Tradition Of Failure.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller

When former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel to pursue the investigation of alleged ties between Donald Trump's Presidential campaign staff and the Russian government, Democrats were elated. The headline in Politico summed the liberal sentiment succinctly: "Trump’s Worst Nightmare Comes True". In the Democrat universe, Robert Mueller is the Beowulf come to slay the Trumpian Grendel, something the Democrats (Geats) under Chuck Schumer (Hrothgar) are too weak and timid to do themselves.

Just as Beowulf is great epic poetry, the Democrat view of "Russiagate" is great political drama--at least to the Democrats.  Alas for the poor Democrats, the history of Special Counsels and the actual facts of Russiagate tells a much different--and much less gripping--tale.

Invariably, all Special Counsels are compared to the archetypes of the office, Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, the attorneys who ran the Watergate investigations that toppled President Richard Nixon in 1974. Arguably, all Special Counsels have visions (or delusions) of grandeur whereby they achieve results as monumental and historic as Cox and Jaworski.  Unfortunately, for both Special Counsel and Democrat in Congress alike, Special Counsels since Watergate have spent much, proved little, and accomplished less.

Moreover, Cox and Jaworski had perhaps the easiest mandate to fulfill, as that scandal's timeline of events makes clear.

Watergate began with a burglary--a mundane crime but indisputably a crime--and also an arrest, as the "Plumbers" were caught in the middle of the break-in. That Nixon specifically and explicitly attempted to thwart investigation into this burglary was the malfeasance that ultimately drove him from office. In Watergate, the answer to the imperative first question for all Special Counsel was simple and straightforward: burglary and obstruction of justice.

Watergate was made an even easier task for Cox and Jaworski due to the Plumbers themselves having been indicted (in September, 1972) and convicted (in January, 1973) for the break-in. Crimes were not merely alleged, but positively proven.

The scope of the Watergate scandal was also amply demonstrated prior to the Cox' initial appointment. L. Patrick Gray, who succeeded J. Edgar Hoover as FBI Director in 1972 and was confirmed in 1973, testified during his confirmation hearings that White House Counsel John Dean has "probably lied" to FBI investigators. Gray also was forced to resign in April of 1973 after acknowledging that he had destroyed files (arguably evidence) from Plumber operative E. Howard Hunt's safe.

All of these events occurred before Archibald Cox' appointment as Special Prosecutor on May 19, 1973. The shape and even scope of the scandal were thus well defined long before his investigation could even begin.

In the Iran-Contra scandal of Ronald Reagan's second term, the first reporting of the events occurred in November of 1986, While the public recitation of the matter was both salacious and scandalous--with United States selling arms to the same Iranian government that had seized the American embassy in Tehran not ten years prior, the proceeds of which were used to lend aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels despite a Congressional ban on such aid--the outlines of any actual criminal offense were at best imprecise and at worst nonexistent. In addition, the Democrats wasted no time in appointing a Special Counsel, with Lawrence Walsh receiving his mandate in December of 1986, while the essential events themselves were still being learned.

It comes as no real surprise that Lawrence Walsh secured no convictions on the substantive issues of Iran-Contra, with most of the guilty pleas being for either perjury or withholding information from his investigation.  The biggest convictions in that scandal were almost all overturned on appeal.

As murky and confusing as Iran-Contra was, Whitewater was murkier still. While the core of the scandal read as run-of-the-mill real-estate, bank, and wire fraud, which was caught up in the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s, the extent of President Bill Clinton's involvement was and is a matter of debate and conjecture.  A report on Whitewater and the related failure of Madison Guaranty Saving and Loan prepared for the Resolution Trust Corporation described Bill Clinton as a "passive" investor, which is to say the Clinton's invested money but were not involved in the decision-making; as they lost money on the venture, this would make them more victim than perpetrator.  Yet the swirl of questions and confusion surrounding the matter did not stop Congress for pushing for an independent counsel even as Bill Clinton was taking office--Robert Fiske was appointed by Clinton Attorney General in 1993, and was replaced by Ken Starr shortly afterward to remove any possible conflict of interest taint.

The failed real-estate venture itself produced a number of convictions, including that of then-governor of Arkansas Jim Guy Tucker, Madison Guaranty owner Jim McDougal and his wife Susan. However, the major accomplishments of the Ken Starr investigation were securing a guilty plea from Webster Hubbell, one-time Associate Attorney General and law partner of Hillary Clinton, for overbilling clients--a matter wholly unrelated to Whitewater itself--and the impeachment show trial of President Bill Clinton for his perjured testimony in relation to his extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The impeachment proceedings were demonstrably more damaging to Republicans than to either the Democrats or Bill Clinton, being seen publicly as petty and vindictive.

The Valerie Plame Affair, a presumed national security brouhaha arising from the potentially unlawful disclosure of the name of a CIA employee, is perhaps the murkiest and most confusing scandal for which special counsel was named. To this day, it is by no means certain that a criminal act even occurred; the only conviction secured by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was that of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury committed during Fitzgerald's investigation.

Russiagate shares more in common with the Plame Affair than it does Watergate. When a proud Hillary Clinton supporter such as noted law professor Alan Dershowitz states repeatedly that any interaction between Donald Trump and Russia was not criminal, when former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Senator Dianne Feinstein state publicly there is "no evidence" of collusion between President Trump and the Russian government to win the election, the obvious question must be asked: "where is the crime?" So far, as Dershowitz reminds us, there is no provable crime even alleged, much less proven.

A review of these histories of Special Counsel investigation also highlights their epic failure to bring substantive prosecutions, or even to meaningfully impair a Presidency. Watergate did end in Richard Nixon's resignation, but Iran-Contra did not stop Ronald Reagan from meeting with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavic, nor from completing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1987. Iran-Contra did not stop President George H. W. Bush from bringing the Cold War to an end with a strategic alliance with Russia in 1991 (coming on the heels of the dissolution of the Soviet Union), nor from assembling the multi-national coalition to push Iraq out of Kuwait in Desert Storm. Whitewater did not prevent President Bill Clinton from signing the North American Free Trade Agreement, his signature Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994, nor the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. The Plame Affair did not prevent President George W. Bush from completing a transition to representative government in Iraq, nor from executing the "surge" strategy in 2007 under General Petraeus.

Far from imperiling or even damaging a Presidential term of office, the existence of a Special Counsel is a curious harbinger of Presidential success.  Every President between 1981 and 2009 endured a special counsel investigation; each had significant policy successes during and after the Special Counsel's investigation. Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush won reelection despite the presence of a Special Counsel. Contrast that with the tenure of Barack Obama, whose signature domestic achievement, "Obamacare", is already being undone by the GOP Congress even as it collapses in a death spiral of ever increasingly unaffordable insurance premiums and deductibles, and whose signature foreign policy achievements--the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and the controversial nuclear arms deal with Iran--seem to have exacerbated Middle East tensions rather than ameliorated them.

It is always possible that Robert Mueller will unearth some damning bit of evidence that will topple President Trump. It is always possible that he will at last prove the Trump-Russia "collusion" narrative that Democrats continue to push despite a complete lack of evidence. It is far more likely, however, that Robert Mueller will either exonerate Donald Trump completely, or at worse indict a few people close to him for perjury, withholding information, and other arbitrary offenses arising more from the investigation itself than the underlying scandal.

Special Counsel do a lot of investigating, a lot of chasing after suspects, a lot of issuing of subpoenas. What they do not do a lot of is winning. That is the history of Special Counsel in this country.