The Federal Government Has No Immigration Powers
While flagging off my stalker tonight, I came across a great article. I wish I knew the author so I could give him or her the credit they deserve. Like my posts, this author states the truth, and then backs it up with facts, quotes from our founders, well-reasoned and articulate arguments with solid logic, etc.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
The other day, I did a bit of reading. It was getting lonely out there on the Texas border patrol. It had been days since I had chased or shot at anyone. After finishing some road kill, I decided to do a bit of reading before turning in. Since the primary, or secondary, politicians had just been in town, there was a copy of the Constitution, trampled and tattered, lying on the ground. I picked it up and perused it, looking for that part where Congress is authorized to restrict immigration. Much to my surprise, I could not find any such provision. I came to some radical conclusions. Here is what I learned.
Immigration is not a federal matter. It was left to the individual States to regulate.
The Constitution contains no provision authorizing the Federal Government to close the borders to immigration. The tenth amendment provides that the powers not delegated to the Federal Government are reserved to the States or to the People, respectively. Thus, the Federal Government has no power to restrict immigration. The Federal laws restricting immigration are unconstitutional.
THE POWER TO RESTRICT IMMIGRATION IS NOT TO BE FOUND WITHIN THE CONSTITUTION
Try as one might, one will not find any provision in the constitution that authorizes the Feds to close the borders. We must abjure penumbras. We must demand the words that confer upon the government the power to put up a Berlin wall. We must keep the Tenth amendment in mind. The powers not delegated to the Feds are reserved to the states or to the people, respectively. "[A]lien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens." Thomas Jefferson, Draft, Kentucky resolutions, Section 4, 1798. (See comment 135, above, in this thread).
Now to the specific powers granted.
The closest one may come is the harmless congressional power "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" Section 8, Clause 4, US Const. This argument works only if one confuses naturalization with immigration. The power to set standards for naturalization does not include the power to shut down the borders, because the meaning of the term "naturalization" does not include the concept of immigration. The latter refers to the act of entering a new country for the purpose of permanently settling. "Naturalization" refers to the process of conferring the rights of citizenship upon aliens. Immigration can occur without any grant of citizenship. Citizenship may be granted or withheld without affecting immigration, and without resorting to deportation. In other words, it is not necessary to deport those who fail a citizenship test! When the Constitution was ratified, citizenship was not so widespread as it is now. If the FedGov had then deported all those aliens who failed to attain citizenship, America's population would have become depleted.
The Congressional power to establish an uniform rule of Naturalization does not now, and did not then, embrace the power to deport, because the definition of Naturalization does not now, and did not then, include the idea of deportation. The Tenth Amendment declares that the powers not delegated to the Federal Government are reserved to the States or to the people, respectively. "Naturalization" and "immigration" are not the same thing, and they never have been. One may immigrate without becoming naturalized. To immigrate means to enter a country to take up permanent residence. To naturalize means to confer rights of citizenship upon an alien. A clause that confers powers to prescribe rules of naturalization but never mentions immigration cannot be construed to include powers over immigration, without doing violence to the Tenth Amendment.
The power to regulate commerce between nations does not include the power to prohibit either commerce or immigration. All of the early treatises on the Constitutional law recognize the limits of the powers conferred by the Commerce Clause. However, the commerce clause has lately become the most abused provision in the Constitution. It was intended only to provide Congress with the power to prevent the States from erecting trade barriers, so as create a free trade zone, but since 1937, the Supreme Court has twisted its meaning, to authorize Congressional legislation on any activity which might affect interstate commerce.
INVASION
It is sometimes suggested that the power to restrict immigration is to be found within the Congressional power to call out the militia to repel invasions. The power to repel invasions, or armed, hostile entries, does not include the power to prohibit peaceful immigration, because the meaning of the term "invasion" does not include peaceful immigration. However, since when is peaceful immigration to be equated with an invasion? Mexicans don't enter as enemies, but as job-seekers. Wealth, land, and natural resources won't make us any wealthier. Labor will. Are you willing to do the work that they are?
It is not proper to ask the question, what is the meaning of the word, “invasion”? That question could be answered with a definition from the internet. If only the founders had had the internet. The proper question, to determine the original understanding of the Constitution, is what was the meaning of that term, at the time the Constitution was ratified? By asking the former question, one camps out with those who advocate a “living constitution,” which changes its meaning over time, whenever judges wish for such a change, without formal amendment, under Art. V. This is the road to despotism.
He who asks the proper question finds himself in need of an eighteenth century dictionary. They are not hard to find. Giles Jacob’s Law Dictionary (1797) defines “invasion” as an attack by foreign enemies, at war. The Oxford English Dictionary cites numerous such uses of the term, stretching back to 1494.
Another clue to the meaning of “invasion” lies in Art. 1 section 10, which forbids the States from conducting wars, “unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.” Here we find the familiar distinction between ordinary defensive war and pre-emptive war. The important thing to note is that, at least in this context, when the Constitution refers to “invasion,” it contemplates war. Even Art. 1 Section 8 Clause 15 authorizes Congress to call out the militia to repel invasion. Does anyone really think the Founders, anxious to encourage immigration, would ever have thought of authorizing the Feds to make war upon peaceful immigrants?
(To be continued)
THE ELASTIC CLAUSE
It is sometimes argued that the power to restrict immigration may be implied from other powers, through the use of that clause which confers upon Congress the power to make all laws necessary and proper for caring into effect the enumerated powers. However, the necessary and proper clause does not expand the scope of the powers, as the Federalists repeatedly said, in response to complaints from the Anti-federalist s. The best sources on these issues are Elliot's Debates, The Anti-federalist Papers, and the Federalist Papers. They are all available in bookstores and on ABEBooks, on line, for cheap. As an example, here are the words of Spencer Roane, a Virginian, writing in 1819:
“I come now, to ascertain, more particularly, the meaning of the terms “necessary and proper,” used in the constitution. I have, before me, Johnson’s Dictionary, which is believed to be the best in the English language. By it I find that “necessary” means “needful,” “indispensably requisite:” and that “proper” means “peculiar,” “not common or belonging to more.” — To justify a measure under the constitution it must therefore, be either “necessary and proper,” or which is the same thing “indispensably requisite” and “peculiar” to the execution of a given power.” [Spencer Roane, writing as Hampden, 15 June 1819, letter to the editor of the Richmond Enquirer, reprinted in John Marshall’s Defense of McCulloch v. Maryland, pg. 133 (Stanford University Press: Stanford, 1969)].
Since it is not necessary to authorize the FedGov to restrict immigration of, or to deport, aliens who fail to qualify for Naturalization, the Necessary and Proper clause does not somehow combine with the Naturalization clause to produce a power to deport or to restrict immigration.
In general, the Necessary and Proper clause cannot be used to increase the powers of the FedGov. During the ratification debates (which you can access online now, in Elliot's Debates, at
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html), the Anti-federalists repeatedly raised the specter of the future use of the Necessary and Proper Clause to increase the powers of the FedGov beyond those constitutionally delegated, and at every turn, the Federalists assured them that no such construction would be used. It was on that promise, and others, that the Constitution was ratified. Less than a decade after ratification, of course, Hamilton and his Federalists began a legislative program (including, for example, the National Bank and the Alien and Sedition Acts) that exceeded the powers of Congress, and sometimes cited the Necessary and Proper Clause as a justification for the assumption of new powers. In Congressional Debates, which you can read in the Annals of Congress, at the same website, those who eventually became aligned with the Jeffersonian Republicans reproached the Federalists for their lack of good faith, and reaffirmed the Founding principles of limited government. One can see an example of the Republican side of the argument in Jefferson's draft of the 1798 Kentucky Resolution:
"That the construction applied by the General Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution: that words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument: . . . ."
Madison's 1798 Virginia Resolution also made the same complaint:
“That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them. That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret, that a spirit has in sundry instances, been manifested by the federal government, to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them; and that implications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases (which having been copied from the very limited grant of power, in the former articles of confederation were the less liable to be misconstrued) so as to destroy the meaning and effect, of the particular enumeration which necessarily explains and limits the general phrases . . . . "
IMPLIED POWERS
It is sometimes asserted that the Constitution does confer upon the Federal government the power to restrict immigration, because that power is implied, either by the terms of the Constitution, or by other ideas somehow inherent in the idea of a government.
This must be recognized as a Hamiltonian argument, resting upon the notion of the implied powers doctrine, which holds that specific powers can be deduced from vague generalities such as the "authority to maintain a nation." The tenth amendment is a rule of construction (ignored for the last seventy years by Congress and the Supremes, of course) that instructs the reader how to interpret the Constitution. The powers not delegated to the Feds are reserved to the States and the people.
Here are the words of Governor Randolph, a proponent of the Constitution, at the Virginia Ratifying Convention: “Let me say that, in my opinion, the adversaries of the Constitution wander equally from the true meaning .... in the general Constitution, its powers are enumerated. Is it not, then, fairly deducible, that it has no power but what is expressly given it? — for if its powers were to be general, an enumeration would be needless.” Elliot’s debates, Vol III, @464-65.
It is sometimes argued that the entire constitution could not be carried into effect, without implying powers, because the words of the Constitution are not broad enough. For example, it has been argued that even though Congress has been granted the power to coin money, that power does not include the power to imprint on them any design, since, its is argued, the meaning of the term “coin” excludes a “design”. To the contrary, coins have always been struck with designs that identify their weight or value and their issuing authority. Even the earliest coins, from seventh century B.C. Lydia, bore such stamps. The English word “coin” comes from a French word, “coin,” which meant “wedge”. The die used to strike coins once was shaped like a wedge. For centuries, the English verb “coin” has meant to make money by stamping pieces of metal of specific weight or value with marks or symbols. The O.E.D contains, as examples of this use of the word “coin”, quotations from English literature as early as 1330. Thus, the term "coin" includes the concept of a design stamped upon it, and it was not necessary to include "design" as a separate power of Congress, as it was already subsumed by the power "to coin." No one would dispute, however, that the meaning of the term “coin” included the idea of paper money. This is an example of how the meanings of the words in the Constitution, if given their ascertainable original values, confer enough power upon the FedGov to carry out its Constitutional duties, but no more.
(To be continued) POLICE POWERS
It is sometimes argued that the Alleged Federal power to restrict immigration comes from the police powers that all governments supposedly have. Yet the Federal Government was not by the Constitution endowed with general police powers.
While the State governments possess general police powers, the Federal government does not, at least not according to the original meaning of the pertinent Constitutional provisions. The Federal government is a limited government, with enumerated powers. The State governments are plenary governments, whose powers are limited only by the Constitution. An important watershed between the Federal and State powers lies roughly along the fault line between State police powers and the Federal power to regulate commerce among the states. That which belongs to commerce among the states is within the jurisdiction of the United States, but that which does not belong to commerce is within the jurisdiction of the police power of the State. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 189, 210; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419, 448; The License Cases, 5 How. 504, 599; Mobile v. Kimball, 102 U.S. 691; Bowman v. Chicago & N.W. Railway, 125 U.S. 465; Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100; In re Rahrer, 140 U.S. 545, 555.
Take a close look at Article 1 Section 8. Note that the Feds are given specific powers to define and punish crimes in only two clauses, namely:
Clause 6: "To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;"
Clause 10: "To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations"
Remember that the Tenth Amendment reserves to the States and to the People those powers not delegated to the Feds. Thus, since the Feds have not been delegated the power to punish any crimes other than those listed in Art. 1 Section 8, the Constitution does not confer general police powers upon the Federal government.
One might argue that the general police power arises from the specific powers that are granted, plus the "necessary and proper" clause, Clause 18, which grants Congress the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers." One would be wrong. Take a closer look at those clauses, quoted above, that authorize the Feds to punish crimes. Clause 6 authorizes Federal punishments for counterfeiting U.S. coins. Congress is also authorized to coin money, in Clause 5. If the "necessary and proper" clause allowed the Feds to derive criminal jurisdiction from other defined powers, then the counterfeiting clause would have been unnecessary. Likewise, if the Feds could, from the power to " regulate Commerce with foreign Nations", in Clause 3, derive the power to punish felonies committed on the high seas, then Clause 10 would have been unnecessary. Madison's notes from the Federal Constitutional Convention reveal that the Framers took great care in defining the powers of the Federal government, and excluded many proposed powers that have since been assumed by Congress, in blatant disregard for the limits set in the Constitution (such as aid to education, social security, Medicaid, etc.). The pages of Eliot's debates, containing the records of the ratifying conventions, contain many assurances from the Federalists to the complaining Anti-federalists that the "necessary and proper" clause would not be used to expand Federal powers beyond what were enumerated. How then, you may ask, did the Framers and Ratifiers expect the new Federal Government to carry out its powers, without the power to criminalize defiance? For example, how were the Feds supposed to regulate commerce, without the ability to punish transgressions of the Congressional laws laid down in that field? The answer is deceptively simple. In our own times, when Congress assumes the right to criminalize nearly every form of misconduct, we have forgotten that civil penalties can be highly effective. The Swiss, for example, traditionally have punished tax evasion with civil fines and forfeitures. In the U.S., we have added unnecessary criminal penalties to a civil fine and forfeiture scheme that would have sufficed without those nasty criminal penalties.
How, then, did Congress come to assume the power to criminalize everything we do? It is a long, sordid story. Here are a few highlights.
The growth of the Federal Government in the second half of the twentieth century, and the growth of Federal criminal law, during the same period, can be blamed squarely upon one source: the deliberate, fraudulent misconstruction of the Commerce Clause (Clause 3, of Article 1, Section 8 ).
Until 1937, The Supreme Court held fast to two bedrock principles of Commerce Clause law: the power to regulate commerce (trade) did not carry with it the power to regulate productive activities (such as manufacturing); and the power to regulate commerce among the states (interstate commerce) did not carry with it the power to regulate commerce within the states (intrastate commerce). The power to regulate intrastate commerce, and the power to regulate productive activities, were routinely held to lie within the states' police powers.
The issue came to the fore when, in 1887, Congress enacted the Interstate Commerce Act, and, in 1890, Congress enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act. . When cases involving these laws first reached the Supreme Court, it reaffirmed the doctrine, from older Commerce Clause cases, that Congress could not regulate activities such as "production," "manufacturing," and "mining." See, e.g., United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U. S. 1, 12 (1895) ("Commerce succeeds to manufacture, and is not part of it"); Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U. S. 238, 304 (1936) ("Mining brings the subject matter of commerce into existence. Commerce disposes of it"). In A. L. A. Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495, 550 (1935), the Supreme Court struck down regulations that fixed the hours and wages of individuals employed by an intrastate business, because the regulated activity related to interstate commerce only indirectly. The Court characterized this distinction between direct and indirect effects of intrastate transactions upon interstate commerce as "a fundamental one, essential to the maintenance of our constitutional system." Id., at 548. Activities that affected interstate commerce directly were within Congressional power; but activities that indirectly affected interstate commerce were beyond the powers of Congress. Id., at 546. Otherwise, the Supreme Court recognized, "there would be virtually no limit to the federal power and for all practical purposes we should have a completely centralized government." Id., at 548. Two years later, in the watershed case of NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1 (1937), the Court, threatened by Roosevelt with packing and salary reductions (!), abandoned the distinction between "direct" and "indirect" effects on interstate commerce, and upheld the National Labor Relations Act against a Commerce Clause challenge. Id., at 36-38 The Court held that intrastate activities that "have such a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce that their control is essential or appropriate to protect that commerce from burdens and obstructions" are within Congress' power to regulate. Id., at 37. In United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100 (1941), the Supreme Court upheld the Fair Labor Standards Act, and came close to demolishing the distinction between Federal powers and State police powers, when it stated: "The power of Congress over interstate commerce is not confined to the regulation of commerce among the states. It extends to those activities intrastate which so affect interstate commerce or the exercise of the power of Congress over it as to make regulation of them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end, the exercise of the granted power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce." Id., at 118. In United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315 U. S. 110, 119 (1942), the Supreme Court held that the commerce power "extends to those intrastate activities which in a substantial way interfere with or obstruct the exercise of the granted power". Thus, out of whole cloth, the Supreme Court invented a "substantial effects" test, which left the Feds with unbridled discretion in the exercise of powers never granted by the Constitution. This process reached its absurd conclusion in the case of Wickard v. Filburn, where the Court upheld the application of amendments to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 to the production and at-home consumption of home-grown wheat. 317 U. S., at 128-129. The Wickard Court explicitly rejected earlier distinctions between direct and indirect effects on interstate commerce, and stated: "[E]ven if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as `direct' or `indirect.' " Id., at 125. The Wickard court reasoned that the grain Wickard raised on his own land and fed to his own livestock could reduce the market price for grain, since every acre of wheat he grew and consumed represented another acre of wheat he did not need to buy on the open market! The Wickard Court emphasized that although Filburn's own contribution to the demand for wheat may have been trivial by itself, that was not "enough to remove him from the scope of federal regulation where, as here, his contribution, taken together with that of many others similarly situated, is far from trivial." Id., at 127-128.
(To be continued)
Ever since, the Federal criminal code has grown with leaps and bounds, and every challenge to Federal criminal laws has been met with the argument that, under Darby and Wickard, the laws are authorized by the Commerce Clause. Drug laws, banking laws, and hazardous waste laws have all been justified in this way.
There you have it. That is the ugly story of how the Supreme Court fraudulently gave the Feds, their paymasters, police powers over you and me and the rest of us serfs.
(To be continued)
THE LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
Federal closing of borders is unconstitutional, according to the original meaning of the terms of the Constitution, because Congress has no power to close the borders against peaceful immigration. To illustrate the point that the early and original understanding of Congressional powers did not include that power, the earliest example of a congressional enactment assuming such power dates from 1862, a full 73 years after the Founding. So from the inception of the Republic, until the Civil War, Congress passed no law restricting immigration. This is strong evidence that it was originally understood that the Federal Government possessed no power to do so. Until the passage of an 1862 act to prohibit immigration of Chinese "Coolie" slave labor, Congress had passed only several acts to encourage (!) immigration. In the 38th through 43rd Congresses, dozens of bills were introduced to encourage (!) immigration. The index for the Statutes At Large from 1789 to 1845, reveals no entries for "immigration." From 1845 to 1875, the individual indices for each congress reveal no entries for "immigration" other than the1862 act mentioned above, and the 1875 Page Act, forbidding the immigration of slave labor from the Orient.
What can be learned from this legislative history? For the first 73 years of our nation's history, Congress passed no laws restricting immigration. For the first 73 years of this nation's existence, hostility towards immigration was a concept foreign to the Framers, as was the idea that the Constitution conferred upon the Feds the power to preclude peaceful immigration. In short, for the first 73 years of our nation's history, restrictions on Immigration were considered Un-American and unconstitutional.
It is sometimes asserted, incorrectly, that the Alien act and the Alien Enemies act, both of 1798, were, in fact, examples of a Congressional enactment exercising power over immigration. Such is not the case, however, because A) neither act contained any provision authorizing restrictions on immigration; and B) at the time of their passage, they were so widely recognized to be unconstitutional that they inspired the Revolution of 1800 that brought Jefferson to power. So, even assuming arguendo that the Alien Act and the Alien Enemies act assumed any power over immigration, the history of the widespread opposition to them, on the grounds that they were unconstitutional, serves rather to prove the point that the Founders did not, as a whole, believe that, under the Constitution, Congress was granted the power to restrict peaceful immigration.
Some have argued that the congress did pass a law restricting immigration, in the form of the Aliens Act of June 25, 1798 (1 Statutes-at-Large 570). However, the Aliens Act did not restrict the immigration of aliens. It merely authorized the deportation of aliens considered dangerous. Congress received many complaints from the States regarding the unconstitutionality of the act. The complaints included the argument that no provision of the Constitution authorized the deportation of Aliens. A committee of Congress filed a report, answering those objections. The committee argued that the Alien Act did not generally restrict immigration, and that there was a difference between a general restriction on immigration and the removal of dangerous aliens. 5th Congress, 3rd Session, Volume 1, pg.181-2. The distinction was important to Congress then, and it should be obvious to us now.
It is also important to note that, in the field of Constitutional history, it is very bad form to cite the Alien Act as an example of constitutional powers. Its passage was greeted with widespread disdain, as it was almost universally decried as unconstitutional, and it ignited a political firestorm that swept Jefferson into power. An American of 1800 would be shocked to hear anyone cite any of the Alien and Sedition Acts as precedent, for most Americans of that day considered those acts to be unconstitutional. The public outcry against the Alien and Sedition Acts was so great that they helped elect Thomas Jefferson to the presidency in 1800. Jefferson pardoned all those convicted under the Sedition Act, and Congress restored all fines paid with interest. The Alien Act itself expired after two years.
In addition to the Aliens Act of June 25, 1798 (1 Statutes-at- Large 570), the Alien Enemy Act of July 6, 1798 (1 Statutes-at-Large 577) gave the President the power to restrain or remove alien enemy males of fourteen years and upwards.
The full text of the Alien Enemy Act can be found at:
http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/sedition/a-text.html
The pertinent text of the Alien Act is as follows:
"whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government, and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies . . ."
Please not that, while the Act permits the FedGov to deport aliens affiliated with enemy governments, it does not mention any restrictions on immigration, general or otherwise. The act simply did not restrict the immigration of aliens. It merely authorized the deportation of aliens considered enemies. Congress received many complaints from the States regarding the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts. The complaints included the argument that no provision of the Constitution authorized the deportation of Aliens. A committee of Congress filed a report, answering those objections. The committee argued that the Alien Act did not generally restrict immigration, and that there was a difference between a general restriction on immigration and the removal of aliens. 5th Congress, 3rd Session, Volume 1, pg.181-2. The distinction was important to Congress then, and it should be obvious now.
The fact that the act authorized deportation of certain aliens can mislead the careless reader into believing that the act touched upon immigration. Since immigration laws also today concern deportation, isn’t the reader warranted in concluding that they are substantially the same? No. Banking laws and tax laws both deal with money. Does that mean that all banking laws are tax laws? A law prohibiting immigration concerns aliens, and a law authorizing deportation of dangerous aliens also concern aliens; yet that does not mean that both laws involve Congressional power over immigration. The INS may deport for offenses committed by an alien after immigration, or it can deport for illegal entry. Only the latter involves the power to restrict immigration.
(To be continued) The Alien Act of 1798 does not prohibit entry into the U.S. by anyone, and hence does not involve any alleged Congressional power over immigration. It thus does not serve as a counterexample to the thesis that early Congresses passed no laws respecting immigration. The earliest such law we have found was in 1862, leaving a 73 year period during which the Founders and their successors gave no legislative sign that they believed the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to restrict immigration.
A glance at Madison's and Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, quoted in Comment 135 above, will reveal that one reason opponents of the Alien and Sedition Acts believed them to be unconstitutional was that they allowed deportation for being labeled "dangerous" by the government, without a trial and the full panoply of rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
But how can Madison and Jefferson have thought that the bill of rights applied to aliens? Because it does, according to the original understanding. Madison drafted the Bill of Rights, and he was careful to use the word "person", and not "citizen," throughout.
But is this line of reasoning vulnerable to the following reductio ad absurdum? Our analysis of the Alien Act logically entails the conclusion that INS deportations do not constitute restrictions on immigration. If such a conclusion would be absurd, then our analysis of the Alien Act must be false. However, the pertinent claim is a non-sequitur. In other words, it is not true that our analysis of the Alien Act logically entails the conclusion that INS deportations do not constitute restrictions on immigration. A simple exposition of the terms in question will reveal why this is so.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service may deport for at least two reasons: offenses committed by aliens after immigration has occurred, and illegal immigration. Only one of these powers involves restrictions on immigration. Immigration is the act of entering a new country with the intent of taking up permanent residence. The act of immigration is complete when the act of entry has been completed (as long as the requisite intent has accompanied the entry). Deportation for acts committed after entry does not restrict immigration, since it does not prevent the entry which is the essence of the act of immigration. Think of the difference between making a deposit and a withdrawal, in an ordinary bank account. A law which might prohibit an unauthorized withdrawal could be drafted without any reference to or restrictions upon the making of deposits.
In other words, some INS deportations are part of the Federal scheme to restrict immigration, and some are not. An example of the former would be a re- entry by a previously deported individual. An example of the latter would be a deportation of an alien for a drug conviction.
The Alien Act contained no terms by which entry was prohibited. It simply permitted the Feds to deport aliens which were determined to be "dangerous." Thus, the Alien Act attempted to confer upon the Feds powers which were similar to the modern INS power to deport for offenses committed by aliens after entry. Neither power involves the power to restrict immigration.
Since INS deportations fall into two classes, one involving power to restrict immigration, and one not involving that power, it does not logically follow that my analysis of the Alien Act logically entails the conclusion that all INS deportations do not constitute restrictions on immigration. To put it another way, while our analysis of the Alien Act does logically entail the conclusion that some INS deportations do not constitute restrictions on immigration, the same is not true with respect to all INS deportations. Yet this was the premise of the reductio ad absurdum. The attempt at a reductio has failed.
(To be continued)
SUPREME COURT RULINGS
Today’s Supreme Court would never admit that Congress lacks the power to restrict peaceful immigration. But then, the modern Supreme Court finds it excruciatingly difficult to deny the Feds any powers at all.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never found any grant of authority to restrict immigration within the terms of the constitution. They looked, but couldn't find it. While the modern court would never admit that no Constitutional provision authorizes Congress to restrict peaceful immigration, all of the modern Court’s decisions rest upon a few fragile precedents from the end of the nineteenth century. These precedents were incorrect when decided, and time has not corrected their defects. In the 1880's and 1890's, a series of decisions came down from the Supremes, holding that Congress did indeed have the power to restrict immigration. What is remarkable about those decisions, however, is that they assume what they set out to prove. They were incorrectly decided because they were based upon incorrect assumptions about the nature of the Federal Union. Their faults are explained below.
The Supreme Court first took up the question of Congressional power to restrict immigration in PING v. U.S., 9 S. Ct. 623, 130 U.S. 581 (1889). In that case, the appellant had already once entered the U.S., had lived here a dozen years, had left, and come back again. His attorney argued that since he had first come here under protection of a treaty, he had a vested right to return. However, in making his argument to the court, the attorney gave away the farm to save the barn. For strategic reasons, attorneys will try to save their clients by arguing that they present a special case, and an exception to a general rule. They then often concede the general rule, when it is not necessary to do so. This often results in the erosion of rights and liberties, and this case is a good example. In Ping, the first case argued before the Supreme Court on the Federal power to restrict immigration, the appellant's attorney conceded that power in Congress. The Supreme Court was only too happy to accept that concession on behalf of Congress, and so, 100 years after the ratification of the Constitution, Congress acquired a power not in the constitution, by judicial fiat. The Ping decision became ensconced in the law, and was cited as precedent by the next and all subsequent immigration cases. The Ping Court held as follows: "The power of exclusion of foreigners being an incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States, as a part of those sovereign powers delegated by the Constitution, the right to its exercise at any time when, in the judgment of the government, the interests of the country require it, cannot be granted away or restrained on behalf of any one."
There it is. That’s the whole of the “argument.” A glance would tell a reasonable person that it is not an argument at all, but a mere assertion. To the extent that it is cited as a “proof” of the existence of Congressional power to restrict immigration, it must be admitted that it is not a proof at all, because it assumes what is to be proved. Apparently the Court felt comfortable with the unadorned, unbuttressed assertion, since appellant’s counsel conceded it.
Several things must be noted about the Supreme Court's holding. First of all, no specific provision of the Constitution is cited as the source of the Federal authority to restrict immigration. Second, the Supreme Court alleges that the source of that authority lies in the "sovereignty" of the Federal government.
Thus, this holding depends upon the notion that the Federal Government is Sovereign. However, as the Founders originally understood the Constitution, it did not create a sovereign Federal Government. The FedGov was merely the agent of the States, which retained their sovereignty, except where limited by the contract known as the Constitution. There is a voluminous literature, in Elliot’s debates, Benton’s Debates, the Annals of Congress, and in the works of various commentators during the Antebellum era, all demonstrating that the Federal Government was the result of a compact between the states, but the best summary of this position can be found in the Virginia Resolutions, drafted by Madison and passed by the Virginia General Assembly in the same year. It contained interesting observations upon the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts:
“That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them. That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret, that a spirit has in sundry instances, been manifested by the federal government, to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them; and that implications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases (which having been copied from the very limited grant of power, in the former articles of confederation were the less liable to be misconstrued) so as to destroy the meaning and effect, of the particular enumeration which necessarily explains and limits the general phrases; and so as to consolidate the states by degrees, into one sovereignty, the obvious tendency and inevitable consequence of which would be, to transform the present republican system of the United States, into an absolute, or at best a mixed monarchy. That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution, in the two late cases of the "Alien and Sedition Acts" passed at the last session of Congress; the first of which exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government, and which by uniting legislative and judicial powers to those of executive, subverts the general principles of free government; as well as the particular organization, and positive provisions of the federal constitution; and the other of which acts, exercises in like manner, a power not delegated by the constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is leveled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.”
The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, and passed by the legislature of that state, also expressed the same constitutional theory, and also criticized the Alien and Sedition Acts, as unconstitutional:
“RESOLVED, . . . . That if those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by that compact, by a total disregard to the special delegations of power therein contained, annihilation of the state governments, and the erection upon their ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers: That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy: That this commonwealth does upon the most deliberate reconsideration declare, that the said alien and sedition laws, are in their opinion, palpable violations of the said constitution; and however cheerfully it may be disposed to surrender its opinion to a majority of its sister states in matters of ordinary or doubtful policy; yet, in momentous regulations like the present, which so vitally wound the best rights of the citizen, it would consider a silent acquiescence as highly criminal: That although this commonwealth as a party to the federal compact; will bow to the laws of the Union, yet it does at the same time declare, that it will not now, nor ever hereafter, cease to oppose in a constitutional manner, every attempt from what quarter soever offered, to violate that compact. . . .”
(To be continued)
Jefferson’s original draft of the Kentucky Resolutions was even more explicit: Draft of the Kentucky Resolutions October, 1798 1. Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress. 2. Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," therefore the act of Congress, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, and entitled "An Act in addition to the act entitled An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States," as also the act passed by them on the __ day of June, 1798, entitled "An Act to punish frauds committed on the bank of the United States," (and all their other acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory.
(To be continued)
4. Resolved, That alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens. And it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," the act of the Congress of the United States, passed on the __ day of July, 1798, entitled "An Act concerning aliens," which assumes powers over alien friends, not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force.
5. Resolved, That in addition to the general principle, as well as the express declaration, that powers not delegated are reserved, another and more special provision, inserted in the Constitution from abundant caution, has declared that "the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808;" that this commonwealth does admit the migration of alien friends, described as the subject of the said act concerning aliens: that a provision against prohibiting their migration, is a provision against all acts equivalent thereto, or it would be nugatory: that to remove them when migrated, is equivalent to a prohibition of their migration, and is, therefore, contrary to the said provision of the Constitution, and void.
6. Resolved, That the imprisonment of a person under the protection of the laws of this commonwealth, on his failure to obey the simple order of the President to depart out of the United States, as is undertaken by said act entitled "An Act concerning aliens," is contrary to the Constitution, one amendment to which has provided that "no person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law;" and that another having provided that "in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to public trial by an impartial jury, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense," the same act, undertaking to authorize the President to remove a person out of the United States, who is under the protection of the law, on his own suspicion, without accusation, without jury, without public trial, without confrontation of the witnesses against him, without hearing witnesses in his favor, without defense, without counsel, is contrary to the provision also of the Constitution, is therefore not law, but utterly void, and of no force: that transferring the power of judging any person, who is under the protection of the laws, from the courts to the President of the United States, as is undertaken by the same act concerning aliens, is against the article of the Constitution which provides that "the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in courts, the judges of which shall hold their offices during good behavior;" and that the said act is void for that reason also. And it is further to be noted, that this transfer of judiciary power is to that magistrate of the General Government who already possesses all the Executive, and a negative on all legislative powers.
7. Resolved, That the construction applied by the General Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution: that words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument: that the proceedings of the General Government under color of these articles, will be a fit and necessary subject of revisal and correction, at a time of greater tranquility, while those specified in the preceding resolutions call for immediate redress.
8th. Resolved,. . . . that it does also believe, that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States; and that therefore this commonwealth is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth: that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non foederis,) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them: that nevertheless, this commonwealth, from motives of regard and respect for its co- States, has wished to communicate with them on the subject: that with them alone it is proper to communicate, they alone being parties to the compact, and solely authorized to judge in the last resort of the powers exercised under it, Congress being not a party, but merely the creature of the compact, and subject as to its assumptions of power to the final judgment of those by whom, and for whose use itself and its powers were all created and modified: that if the acts before specified should stand, these conclusions would flow from them; that the General Government may place any act they think proper on the list of crimes, and punish it themselves whether enumerated or not enumerated by the Constitution as cognizable by them: that they may transfer its cognizance to the President, or any other person, who may himself be the accuser, counsel, judge and jury, whose suspicions may be the evidence, his order the sentence, his officer the executioner, and his breast the sole record of the transaction: that a very numerous and valuable description of the inhabitants of these States being, by this precedent, reduced, as outlaws, to the absolute dominion of one man, and the barrier of the Constitution thus swept away from us all, no rampart now remains against the passions and the powers of a majority in Congress to protect from a like exportation, or other more grievous punishment, the minority of the same body, the legislatures, judges, governors, and counselors of the States, nor their other peaceable inhabitants, who may venture to reclaim the constitutional rights and liberties of the States and people, or who for other causes, good or bad, may be obnoxious to the views, or marked by the suspicions of the President, or be thought dangerous to his or their election, or other interests, public or personal: that the friendless alien has indeed been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment; but the citizen will soon follow, or rather, has already followed, for already has a sedition act marked him as its prey: that these and successive acts of the same character, unless arrested at the threshold, necessarily drive these States into revolution and blood, and will furnish new calumnies against republican government, and new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed that man cannot be governed but by a rod of iron: that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go; and let the honest advocate of confidence read the alien and sedition acts, and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits. Let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on our President, and the President of our choice has assented to, and accepted over the friendly strangers to whom the mild spirit of our country and its laws have pledged hospitality and protection: that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the President, than the solid right of innocence, the claims of justification, the sacred force of truth, and the forms and substance of law and justice. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. . . . .”
Jefferson and Adams made it clear, in 1798, that the FedGov was the creature and the agent of the sovereign States, whose compact, the Constitution, did not make the FedGov a sovereign. Thus, any chain of reasoning built upon the idea that the FedGov was sovereign was a house of cards built upon a foundation of sand castles, to mix metaphors. This did not, however, prevent the Supreme Court from proceeding upon just such a faulty chain of reasoning.
The next immigration cases to come before the Supreme Court were EKIU v. U.S., 12 S. Ct. 336, 142 U.S. 651 (1892), and TING v. U.S., 13 S. Ct. 1016, 149 U.S. 698 (1893) In these opinions, the Supreme Court cited the earlier Ping decision as authority on the question: As the Ting court put it, "The general principles of public law which lie at the foundation of these cases are clearly established by previous judgments. of this court, and by the authorities therein referred to." This is a prime example of how courts genuflect before older precedents, without reexamining the grounds for those earlier decisions. This is especially problematic in constitutional law, where, if errors are allowed to creep in during early decisions, those errors shape later decisions in ways at variance with the original significance of the terms of the Constitution. In effect, the errors are allowed to amend the terms of the Constitution, without resort to the formal amendment process.
Why would courts slavishly adhere to erroneous precedents? Because that is the method of the Common Law, which the Atlantic states inherited from their colonial master’s legal system. In Britain, judges were allowed to develop commercial law in this way, building from precedent to precedent, using reason as their guide, and they found it to be a fairly stable system. Results in new cases followed precedents in a predictable fashion. When the law ventured into unknown territory, and it was impossible to answer the question, “what is the law,” or the question, “what was the law,” judges would ask “what must the law be, to be consistent with prior rulings?” American judges adopted these methods, and law schools taught these methods, and, gradually, these Common Law methods were imported into Constitutional law. The early Supreme Court did not use the methods of the Common Law. It correctly and merely asked, “what did the Constitution mean, at the time of Ratification?.” The question was usually answered with a long series of citations to the Annals of Congress, letters written by the Founders, papers written by Federalist and Anti-Federalists alike, the records of the Constitutional Convention, and the various State Ratifying conventions. Today, only Justice Thomas consistently favors this method. The others on the Supreme Court usually fall in line with those who, for over a century, have followed precedent in the Common Law tradition.
Apparently, though, the Ting Court perceived that the Ping opinion was an empty vessel, because it paraded quotes on the concept of sovereignty from a host of European commentators on international law, as authority for the position that sovereignty entails power over immigration. The Ting Court never once cited anything written by any of the Founding Fathers.
In the most fascinating part of the Ting opinion, the Court gave up on the effort to find a single constitutional provision granting the Congress power over immigration, threw up its collective hands, and listed every provision it could find, dealing with foreign affairs, in the hopes that the citation of so many powers in that field would give rise to the impression that the power to restrict immigration must be somewhere in the list:
The logic in Ting may be summarized as follows: The Feds have many powers in the field of foreign affairs; immigration restriction lies within the field of foreign affairs; ergo immigration restriction must be among the powers of Congress. One might as well reason that since Greeks are human, and I am human, then I must be a Greek. If I am, it’s not as a consequence of this line of reasoning. This particular logical fallacy even has a name: the Fallacy of Composition.
So what happened between the Founding in 1789, and the Ping opinion in 1889, that would account for the judicial attribution of sovereignty to the Federal government, in derogation of founding principles announced by Madison and Jefferson? The Civil War happened. That war answered all questions regarding the sovereignty of the states, in the negative. However, it is important to ask how it settled those questions. Was it by reason, or logic, or a clever reading of the Constitution? No, it was by force, and
No, it was by force, and force alone, that it decided those questions. Anyone who accepts that method of deciding constitutional questions, or accepts its results, has abandoned reason as a guide, and is thereby consigned to an Orwellian world, where truth, logic, and reason have no value, and language is only a tool of power. .
The USSC in several rulings has held "that the right to regulate immigration laws belonged to U.S. government" But is the US Supreme Court today a reliable authority on the original significance of the Constitution? Should the reader trust his or her own sound judgment, or that of nine adults dressed in mu-mus? Should the reader trust the judgment of the modern Supreme Court, or the words of the Founders? Should the reader exhibit a slavish adherence to their opinions du jour, or a healthy skepticism of the decisions of those robed bobbleheads? The reader would be right to question the Court’s decisions, to carefully examine them, and to judge them for yourself, rather than to blindly follow their authority, for, to quote St. Thomas Aquinas, “As Isidore said, ‘the argument from authority is the weakest argument.’ ” What have we just done, in that last paragraph? We have quoted an authority, himself citing an authority, for the proposition that the weakest argument is the citation of authority.
The prospects for convincing the Supreme Court to recognize the unconstitutionality of Federal immigration laws are not good. The Supreme Court is not an open debating society. They carefully select the cases they hear, and reject more than 95% of all requests. The country is divided into twelve judicial circuits, each headed by a Court of Appeals. Each circuit is divided into many districts, each headed by a District Court. Trials are held at the District level, and appeals at the Circuit level. The Circuit Courts rarely deviate from the latest precedent announced by the Supremes, and whenever they do, they are quickly slapped down ("reversed"). There is no automatic right of appeal from the Circuit courts.
It must have been Gibson.;)
I think we need an animation of someone beating a dead horse
11 posts in a row and all of them that long.... puh and people complain about t-dub - lol.
Shit. Is there gonna be a test? Are there Cliff's notes?
It really drives the point home and backs everything up. :)
You know what I really love about this article..(ok, it's more of a research paper than an article) other than the fact that it is 100% accurate and backs up everything it says and proves once and for all that the federal government has absolutely zero authority over immigration?
I really love the fact that I didn't write it. It means that there is hope for the world and that someone out there has actually read and understood the meaning of the U.S. Constitution. I know there are thousands of us who realize that the federal government has zero authority over immigration and we are right while all who disagree are wrong.
It's just nice to see someone else writing about it for a change.
As long as they kick out all the illegals and mine our Southern border, I'm cool with it.
Freaking Ireland is everywhere.
Ya, Gibson too. Everywhere.
As long as they kick out all the illegals and mine our Southern border, I'm cool with it.
There are no illegals to kick out, and we aren't at war with Mexico, so putting minefields on our border is out of the question.
There are no illegals to kick out, and we aren't at war with Mexico, so putting minefields on our border is out of the question.
Can just use them as target practice then as they cross the border and break our laws? They are all illegal.
Good idea Merc. Here, hold this sombrero, woudja?
[sar]Could we grind them up and feed them to the poor?[casm]
lol...Soylent Verde
:lol2: good one. :D
I think we need an animation of someone beating a dead horse
We have two, already. :dedhorse: :dedhors2:
This one is my fav:
Can just use them as target practice then as they cross the border and break our laws? They are all illegal.
They aren't breaking any Constitutional laws. They aren't illegal. And you can't use them for target practice, unless I can use you for it first.
We have two, already. :dedhorse: :dedhors2:
Sry Bruce didn't take the time to look
Yeah, I know. Instead of looking, you cast wild, unfounded, aspersions on UT's failure to provide the necessary smilies to express yourself, when the failure is clearly yours and not UT's. Oh, the humanity. :lol2:
They are all illegal. They broke our laws by entering illegally and sucking off the teet of our social system.
http://illegal.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
Staggering Cost Of Illegal
Aliens In America
Taxpayers Taken To The Cleaners
By Frosty Wooldridge
4-10-8
Illegal alien migration into the United States costs American taxpayers $346 billion annually reported by the National Research Council. While employers of illegal aliens rake-in billions of dollars, the US citizens subsidize what may be called organized "Slavery in 21st Century America."
While Congress facilitates outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring of American jobs by the thousands weekly, that same Congress imports 182,000 legal immigrant monthly who need jobs. Another estimated 100,000 illegal aliens arrive each month without jobs. All those immigrants seize jobs from American citizens at slave wages.
What happens to the American taxpayer?
"Immigrants are poorer, pay less tax, and are more likely to receive public benefits than American citizens," said Edwin Rubenstein, reporting on the National Research Council's new book: "The New Americans: Economic, Demographics and Fiscal Effects of Immigration." The Social Contract Winter 2007-08. <http://www.thesoicalcontract.com/>www.thesoicalcontract.com
The NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal welfare and pays $10,664.00 in federal taxes. Thus, American taxpayers shell out $2,682.00 for each immigrant household.
In addition, the report showed that immigrants affect 15 different executive agencies of the U.S. government.
Earned Income Tax Credit-fraud is rampant and IRS does little to verify existence of children. Clean Air and Climate Change-these goals are unattainable as long as US population grows-driven by unending immigration. Emergency medical treatment-US taxpayer money provides $250 million a year to help hospitals defray costs for illegal aliens. Bureau of Land Management-the Interior Department spends $1 million to mitigate environmental damage done by illegals crossing US southern border. Migrant educational grants-intended to help states educate children of illegal workers. More fraud from over-counting. Office of Foreign Labor Certification-immigrant workers depress wages for US citizens resulting in declines in federal revenues at $100 billion annually.
As shown on CBS with Katie Couric this past week, 300,000 pregnant Mexican women cross the border to birth their babies, known as 'anchor babies', in American hospitals at an average cost of $6,000.00 per birth with no complications. If the child suffers heart defects, Downs Syndrome, Autism or any other problems, the costs jump to $500,000.00 with long term care into the millions of dollars. All footed by the America taxpayer!
Not mentioned in Couric's report, that child enjoys free breakfasts and lunches through 13 years of publicly funded education at an average cost of $7,000.00 per year. Additionally, American taxpayers foot the bill for all medical and housing assistance for the child and mother. More hidden costs add up with ESL classes to teach the child English. Connecticut alone suffers 120 languages in their schools while Colorado suffers over 40 foreign languages that cripple their classrooms.
The list of expenses paid for by American taxpayer soars with time and numbers of illegal aliens. Additionally, legal immigrants sponsor their relatives in chain migration and family reunification at US taxpayer expense.
These immigrants take American jobs while they burn American taxpayer funds for immigrant welfare. This all happens while the US national debt approaches $10 trillion. Immigrants flood into this country while jobs cascade out to China where we owe $1 trillion in T-bills as of 2008. Additionally, we suffer a $700 billion annual trade deficit.
Once those illegal aliens hit this country, half of them work off the books and do not pay $401 billion dollars annually according to the 2005 Bear Stearns Report. Additionally, they form the second largest underground economy in the world. Both legal and illegal immigrants send $80 billion back to their home countries in cash transfers on untaxed money.
When does it end? Not any time soon! Who pays? You do! Like the proverbial golden calf, the United States taxpayer bleeds to death daily while our president and Congress fiddle, faddle and scratch their generous rear ends while they facilitate the death of America's middle class.
Our politicians create the problems they campaign to solve; but once in office, as John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have proven with their time in the U.S. Senate-they work more against Americans than for them. The proof in the aforementioned report is, as they say, "in the pudding!" Yeah, I know. Instead of looking, you cast wild, unfounded, aspersions on UT's failure to provide the necessary smilies to express yourself, when the failure is clearly yours and not UT's. Oh, the humanity. :lol2:
Ahem. Take a pill, wouldja?
They are all illegal. They broke our laws by entering illegally and sucking off the teet of our social system.
Nope. They aren't illegal. They haven't broken any constitutionally legitimate laws, and they are not costing American tax payers a single penny because they contribute BILLIONS of dollars more to the economy and tax base than they use in services.
[LIST]
[*]They aren't breaking the law because all federal immigration laws are unconstitutional and therefore null and void.
[*]They aren't here illegally because any federal laws against them entering the country freely and anonymously are unconstitutional and therefore null and void.
[*]They aren't draining our social system...which happens to be unconstitutional anyway because they are putting more into it than they take from it.
[/LIST]
Nope. They aren't illegal. They haven't broken any constitutionally legitimate laws, and they are not costing American tax payers a single penny because they contribute BILLIONS of dollars more to the economy and tax base than they use in services.
[LIST]
[*]They aren't breaking the law because all federal immigration laws are unconstitutional and therefore null and void.
[*]They aren't here illegally because any federal laws against them entering the country freely and anonymously are unconstitutional and therefore null and void.
[*]They aren't draining our social system...which happens to be unconstitutional anyway because they are putting more into it than they take from it.
[/LIST]
Bull shit. They reap all the rewards and contribute little. They fill our prisons and birth their spawn on our dime. The facts speak for themselves. You can call them "constitutionally legitimate laws" but hey will still and do throw your ass in jail for it. Thank God we are finally seeing the light on this issue and have started to toss all these illegal scum bags out of the country.
"Between 1999 and 2006, the 24 U.S. counties bordering Mexico spent $1.23 billion on illegal immigrants in their local criminal justice systems, according to the report.
Ruiz said his county can ill afford to deal with the illegal immigrant crime problem considering that the average per capita income in the county is $13,278.
Between 10 percent and 25 percent of the inmates in the local jail are illegal aliens, and $2.2 million of the $22 million in annual local general-fund taxes are spent dealing with criminal aliens, Ruiz said."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200803/NAT20080307b.htmlLet's see, Rice University economics professor or Radar? Hmmmm... My money is on the Rice University economics professor.
Because the number of illegal aliens can only be estimated, similarly the fiscal cost (government budget outlays) for those aliens can only be estimated. Dr. Donald Huddle, a Rice University economics professor, published a systematic analysis of those costs as of 1996 (see table below). The study also estimated the tax payments of those same aliens.
At that time, the illegal alien population was estimated to be about five million persons. The estimated fiscal cost of those illegal aliens to the federal, state and local governments was about $33 billion. This impact was partially offset by an estimated $12.6 billion in taxes paid to the federal, state and local governments, resulting in a net cost to the American taxpayer of about $20 billion every year. This estimate did not include indirect costs that result from unemployment payments to Americans who lost their jobs to illegal aliens willing to work for lower wages. Nor did it include lost tax collections from those American workers who became unemployed. The study estimated those indirect costs from illegal immigration at an additional $4.3 billion annually.
During the years since that estimate, the illegal alien population is estimated to have roughly doubled, so the estimated fiscal costs also will have at least doubled. Furthermore, the passage of time is accompanied by inflation in the costs of services, e.g., school budgets continue to climb. Therefore, what was estimated to be a cost to the American taxpayer of $33 billion in 1996 today would be at least $70 billion. Similarly, tax collections would have increased — sales taxes at least — so that the net expense to the taxpayer from illegal immigration would currently be at least $45 billion. The indirect fiscal costs would have also increased, especially during a period of already high unemployment, to perhaps and additional $10 billion annually.
1996 Costs Table from the Huddle Study 1
Programs
(billions)
Public Education K-12 $5.85
Public Higher Education $0.71
ESL and Bilingual Education $1.22
Food Stamps $0.85
AFDC $0.50
Housing $0.61
Social Security $3.61
Earned Income Tax Credit $0.68
Medicaid $3.12
Medicare A and B $0.58
Criminal Justice and Corrections $0.76
Local Government $5.00
Other Programs $9.25
Total Costs
$32.74
Less Taxes Paid
$12.59
Net Costs of Direct Services
$20.16
Displacement Costs
$4.28
All Net Costs
$24.44
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecentersf134 Bull shit. They reap all the rewards and contribute little. They fill our prisons and birth their spawn on our dime. The facts speak for themselves. You can call them "constitutionally legitimate laws" but hey will still and do throw your ass in jail for it. Thank God we are finally seeing the light on this issue and have started to toss all these illegal scum bags out of the country.
They fill our prisons yet make up less than 4% of our prisons. The government doesn't even keep track of those who are undocumented immigrants in prisons. They only list "non-citizens" and they make up about 7%. Most of these are documented immigrants who have visas and who came here going through the unconstitutional federal immigration department.
They don't close down hospitals. They don't get on welfare or collect social security, yet they pay into social security. All unconstitutional laws are illegal and I'm within my rights to physically defend anyone who is attacked in an effort to enforce unconstitutional laws. I only wish the racist and xenophobic 'tards who support these illegal laws and attack Mexican immigrants would be stupid enough to launch a race war against Mexican undocumented immigrants. They would be destroyed.
Mexico is only part of the problem. It is not Mexicans, it is all the illegal aliens who are destroying and taking advantage of our social system. Pretty sad when working legal citizens can't get health care and the illegal scumbags roll in and drop their nasty spawn on our door and on our dime. They need to scoope them up and send the bastards packing.
Well this is a start.
Illegal Alien Deportations on the Rise
By Penny Starr
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
April 10, 2008
(CNSNews.com) - A fence has yet to be built along the U.S. border with Mexico, and Congress has failed to come up with a comprehensive immigration policy. Although foreigners continue to sneak into this country, the U.S. government is doing a better job of finding them and sending them back.
According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, a growing number of illegal aliens -- many of them with criminal records -- are being deported to their native homelands.
More than 280,500 individuals were deported last year by ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, according to the immigration agency's annual report for fiscal year 2007, which ended on Sept. 30, 2007. (The report, released in January 2008, has been adjusted to reflect the actual numbers.)
The number of deportations has steadily increased since fiscal year 2003, when some 150,000 people were sent back to their place of origin, according to Pat Reilly, public affairs officer with ICE. Approximately 175,000 illegal immigrants were deported in fiscal years 2004 and 2005. Fiscal year 2006 saw more than 200,000 people forced out of the country.
Reilly said the number of deportations for the current fiscal year is expected to be even more dramatic.
"In the first quarter of fiscal year 2008 -- 94,237 people were removed," Riley told Cybercast News Service . If that trend continues, close to 500,000 illegal aliens could be sent out of the country by the end of this year.
Am estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens are in the United States, but Riley said it's impossible to give an accurate number. "There's no viable way to tell how many people get in illegally."
Riley said there are several reasons for the increasing deportation numbers. One is a policy change made by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to end the "catch and release" policy on the U.S. border.
Previously, suspected illegal immigrants detained at the border were given a "notice to appear" in court for a deportation hearing. "We called it a notice to disappear," Reilly said.
Individuals who are stopped at the border for illegal entry are now taken into custody by ICE instead of being released on a promise to appear in court.
In previous years, many individuals failed to show up for their deportation hearings, and they became fugitives in the eyes of federal law. "There's a very large fugitive population in this country," Reilly said.
Recently, ICE has been more successful in finding fugitive illegal aliens and forcing them to leave the country, Reilly said.
In 2005, there were only 15 ICE teams canvassing the country for individuals who had been ordered to appear in court for deportation hearings but failed to show up. In 2007, 75 teams were on the job, and Reilly said ICE hopes to have 100 teams in place by the end of this year.
In 2006, ICE closed 23,356 "fugitive alien" cases, and that number quadrupled to 102,777 fugitive arrests last year, according to ICE's annual report.
That fiscal 2007 annual report credits the agency's high-tech DEPORT Center in Chicago, formed in 2006, with expediting cases of criminal illegal aliens serving time in prison.
DEPORT uses video teleconference equipment to screen, interview and launch removal proceedings against criminal aliens serving time in prisons across the nation.
Since its inception, ICE says DEPORT has screened over 33,000 cases, issued more than 17,000 charging documents to begin removal proceedings, and lodged more than 11,000 orders for continued detentions. (See ICE Fact Sheet)
Some of the criminal illegal aliens are serving time for murder, predatory sexual offenses, drug trafficking, and smuggling people into the United States.
Reilly said ICE also has expanded its partnership with state and local law enforcement in a program that trains and authorizes police officers to operate as federal immigration agents.
Reilly said at least 30 U.S. cities have signed on to the program, which involves checking the legal status of individuals who are arrested for various offenses. [See related story: Unheralded Program Speeds Up Expulsion of Criminal Aliens From US (May 16, 2007)]
For fiscal year 2008, the U.S. Congress has given ICE a budget of more than $5.5 billion, including $32.8 million for fugitive operations and $26.4 for supporting and training state and local police.
Reilly noted that not all deportations are related to crime. Under the Volunteer Repatriation program, individuals with no criminal record can leave the country of their own accord. In fiscal year 2007, 41,428 of the 280,500 deportation cases were voluntary.
Immigration Law, Illegal Aliens and Crime
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Under Title 8 Section 1325 of the U.S. Code, "Improper Entry by Alien," any citizen of any country other than the United States who:
* Enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers; or Eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers; or
* Attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact; has committed a federal crime.
"Any alien who is present in the United States in violation of this Act or any other law of the United States is deportable." Nationality Act Section 237 (a)(1)(B)
Violations are punishable by criminal fines and imprisonment for up to six months. Repeat offenses can bring up to two years in prison. Additional civil fines may be imposed at the discretion of immigration judges, but civil fines do not negate the criminal sanctions or nature of the offense.
Violations are punishable by criminal fines and imprisonment for up to six months. Repeat offenses can bring up to two years in prison. Additional civil fines may be imposed at the discretion of immigration judges, but civil fines do not negate the criminal sanctions or nature of the offense.
In addition to sneaking into the country in violation of the immigration law that requires that aliens be documented for legal entry (referred to as "entry without inspection -- EWI"), others enter with legal documentation and then violate the terms on which they have been admitted by taking jobs that are not authorized or overstaying the authorized period of stay in the country.
The list below are all crimes involving illegal immigration:
(1) Violating the immigration law is a FEDERAL CRIME
(2) Forging documents is a FEDERAL FELONY CRIME
(3) Passing forged documents is a FEDERAL FELONY CRIME
(4) Stealing ID is a FEDERAL FELONY CRIME
(5) Using stolen ID is a FEDERAL FELONY CRIME
Here are just a few studies that put illegal alien crime in focus:
A US GAO study found in a study population of 55,322 illegal aliens incarcerated, on average, each had been arrested 8 times for a total arrest figure of at least 459,614 times. If that isn't astounding enough, these 55,322 illegals in the study population had been arrested for committing 700,000 criminal offenses, which averages 13 crimes per illegal alien. So, each illegal alien incarcerated had been arrested 8 times and had committed at least 13 crimes.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, in 2005, 25% of prisoners in federal prisons were illegal aliens, and 4% were legal aliens. This proportion has not gone down; if anything, it has gone up markedly. Bill O'Reilly is on record more recently stating that illegal aliens account for 32% of the federal and state prison population.
According to the well-respected U.S. Center for Immigration Studies (
www.cis.org), incarcerated convicted illegal aliens make up 29 percent of federal, state and local prisons at a cost of more than $1.6 billion annually. This number doubles when the costs for apprehension, the justice system, public defenders, interpreters, prosecutors and the courts add to the total.
Illegals represent about 8 percent of Arizona's population and the Arizona Department of Corrections reports that Mexican nationals make up 12 percent of the state's 37,200-inmate prison population.
Undocumented aliens, mostly from Mexico and Central America, now total 1953 inmates in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s jail system. That number represents 21 percent of the overall inmate population of men and women housed in the nation’s third largest jail system. Sheriff Joe Arpaio says that is just small part of the story about those incarcerated in his jails. He says that recent figures show that serious crime (class four felonies and above) are committed substantially by illegal aliens. During two recent surveys, between 27 and 53 percent of all suspects booked into the jail on serious felonies had immigration holds placed on them. The vast majority of those with holds were in the United States illegally. According to the Sheriff’s figures, illegal alien inmate population numbers have grown steadily in Arizona and other border states over the last several years. In March 2005, the illegal alien population in Arpaio’s jails totaled approximately 700. (Borderfire Report 2/28/07)
A new study shows one in five inmates in North Carolina metropolitan jails was not born in this country. The Sheriff’s Association believes a large number of those inmates are here illegally as well. (News 14 Carolina 2/21/07)
The conservative Federation for Immigration Reform contends that while illegal immigrants made up 3 percent of the total U.S. population in 2003 they made up 5 percent of the total prison population.
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_illegalsandcrime
Illegal aliens are killing more Americans than the Iraq war, says a report from Family Security Matters that estimates some 2,158 murders are committed every year by illegal aliens in the U.S. The group says that number is more than 15 percent of all the murders reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. and about three times the representation of illegal aliens in the general population. The report from FSM estimates that the 267,000 illegal aliens currently incarcerated in the nation are responsible for nearly 1,300,000 crimes, ranging from drug arrests to rape and murder. Such statistics debunk the claim that illegal immigration is a victimless crime.
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2007/february/0222_illegals_report.shtml
In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens. (The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave: City Journal, winter 2004)
One thing that is never even mentioned by the champions of the illegal aliens nor is factored into any crime studies is the fact that ALL illegal aliens have a 3 – 5 crimes committed head start on American citizens (see the 5 point list above).
Do you ever hear an acknowledgement from the illegal alien facilitators of the more than 50,000 Americans that have been killed by illegal aliens through murder, manslaughter and drunk driving just since 9/11/01? Of course not, that doesn't fit within their pre-determined conclusion that illegals are economically displaced hard workers and innocents who come to America for a better life.
Legalizing an illegal alien’s presence in America by rewarding their illegal behavior through amnesty is not the way to build a good system of law and order. It only invites more criminal activity and non-compliance with our laws.
The central question for everyone, including the facilitators, illegal alien advocates and the ‘no human being is illegal’ compassion crowd is this…Why should even ONE American suffer a crime OF ANY SORT at the hands of an illegal alien? With border security and zero tolerance for illegal immigration, these crimes against our citizens are 100% preventable.
Isn’t it about time that we engage in Comprehensive Immigration Enforcement rather than allow amnesty with Comprehensive Immigration Reform?
Post a million articles. All of them are false. Each and every one of them is a lie spread by idiots and hate groups like Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, Save our State, the so-called Minuteman project, etc.
U.S. Code is irrelevant. The Constitution is the highest law in the land and it PROHIBITS the federal government from creating or enforcing immigration laws so the U.S. code dealing with immigration is UNCONSTITUTIONAL and ILLEGAL.
Coming across the border without documentation IS NOT A CRIME. It's not a misdemeanor, it's not a felony, it's not even as much as jay walking.
Undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in America. They make up less than 3.5% of our jails and the "Center for immigration studies" is not well-respected and spreads lies.
All of the stats Bill 'O Reilly and these guys have repeated are bold-faced lies and O'Reilly himself got caught on his show spreading them and he tried to backpedal. Your laughably stupid claim that 95% of outstanding warrants for homicide in Los angeles are for undocumented immigrants is an outright lie. So are all the other stats you listed. There isn't one government source to back up any of it.
Undocumented immigrants don't come here for handouts and don't cost American tax payers a single cent, and anyone from any source that denies this is a liar.
Radar, take a breath. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an inbred idiot. You have an interpretation of the constitution that you have built your whole view on. That's cool. But it isn't nearly as black and white as you like to believe. If it was you would find more people who agree with you. Your constitutional support for the argument is ambiguous at best. Saying it isn't over and over and calling the opposition stupid doesn't make it more black and white.
Ahem. Take a pill, wouldja?
Uh, bink, that's what he sounds like when he's taken a Silly Pill. But yes, this site
is well equipped with smilies. Though the Flying Spaghetti Monster's utility rather stretches the imagination until it's in danger of a sprain.
But to topic: there's very little the United States can do that will have any effect one way or another, by way of immigration laws. They aren't addressing the root of the problem, which is why it's not susceptible of solution by U.S. law. It won't be resolved until Mexico, and with it the rest of Central America, develops a strong, numerous middle class. Right now this
clase media is barely visible under strong magnification, and it has to become visible to the naked eye.
Radar, take a breath. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an inbred idiot. You have an interpretation of the constitution that you have built your whole view on. That's cool. But it isn't nearly as black and white as you like to believe. If it was you would find more people who agree with you. Your constitutional support for the argument is ambiguous at best. Saying it isn't over and over and calling the opposition stupid doesn't make it more black and white.
It actually is a black and white issue. The Constitution is written in black and white and it means what it says, not what the Supreme Court wants it to say, or what anti-immigrant crowds want it to say. Those who can't comprehend the very straightforward and simple words in the Constitution or worse yet, try to find a way around it or who attempt to confuse the issue by debating the meaning of a punctuation mark or a single word.
The Constitution NEVER granted any authority whatsoever to the federal government to create or enforce immigration laws. All federal immigration laws are unconstitutional. There is no gray area. It's a fact and all who deny it are doing so either because they are too stupid to comprehend the meaning of the Constitution or because they are dishonest scumbags who want to try grant government unlimited powers as long as those powers are used to satisfy their own personal agenda such as racism or xenophobia.
The Constitution is written in black and white
Really, I'd say it's more of a charcoal grey, on somewhere between oatmeal and manila.
The Constitution is written in black and white and it means what it says
I don't disagree with that statement. I disagree with your assumption that your understanding of the words might, just might, not be the only possible interpetation. But go ahead, respond with some statement about how you are more highly educated than 99.9% of all living human beings and how the writers of the constitution sent you an email explaining what they meant, an email that no one less intelligent than you can read. It's all good.
Fact: Congress can make laws that the population must adhere to.
Fact: Congress made laws that make undocumented immigration illegal, therefore those that enter the country illegally are breaking our laws and are afforded no rights under our Constitution.
Fact: Congress can only make laws pertaining to the 18 specific areas in which they have been granted power to legislate and is PROHIBITED from creating or enforcing laws dealing with anything not specifically enumerated in the Constitution.
Fact: Congress was never granted any power over immigration so all federal laws pertaining to immigration are unconstitutional.
Fact: There are no illegal immigrants in the United States of America.
Fact: There are no illegal immigrants in the United States of America.
Really?
April 30, 2003
U.S. Can Hold Immigrants Set To Be Deported
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The government can imprison immigrants it is seeking to deport without first giving them a chance to show that they present neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, a divided Supreme Court ruled today.
The 5-to-4 decision upheld the mandatory-detention provisions of a 1996 immigration law as applied to a substantial category of aliens who are lawful permanent residents of the United States and who have been convicted of any of a number of drug crimes and other ''aggravated'' offenses. [Excerpts, Page A20.]
The provision does not deal with terrorism, and the decision today has no direct application to the legal issues involving the detention and treatment of suspects under the USA Patriot Act that Congress passed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. But the decision was nonetheless notable for the degree of deference the majority showed to the judgments Congress made in 1996 about the desirability of detaining immigrants before deporting them.
Tens of thousands of these so-called ''criminal aliens'' have been imprisoned before deportation under the statute, which replaced a law giving the attorney general the discretion to release individuals on bond while their deportation cases went forward as long as they presented neither flight nor security risk.
Four federal appeals courts, including the San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in this case, have declared the mandatory-detention provision unconstitutional at least as applied to lawful permanent residents, who have more rights than aliens who have not been lawfully admitted into the country.
In addition to overturning the Ninth Circuit today, the court next week will almost certainly vacate the other decisions, from the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia, the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., and the 10th Circuit in Denver.
The appeals courts had relied in part on a Supreme Court decision of two years ago, Zadvydas v. Davis, in which the court interpreted another provision of the immigration law and ruled that the government could not indefinitely detain a deportable alien whose country of origin refused to take him back.
In his opinion for the court today, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist -- who had dissented from the earlier decision -- said the two cases were substantially different, the first dealing with an open-ended, perhaps lifetime detention, while the case today concerned detentions that last only weeks or months, until the conclusion of deportation proceedings.
The result was to turn the Zadvydas decision into a narrower ruling in retrospect than it appeared to be to immigrants'-rights advocates when it was issued in June 2001; it had appeared then to establish a significant floor of constitutional protection even for aliens who had been adjudged deportable.
The immigrant in the case today, a Korean-born Californian named Hyung Joon Kim, is still contesting his deportability and is not yet subject to a final order of removal.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had joined the majority in the Zadvydas decision, which was also decided by a 5-to-4 vote. Her vote with Chief Justice Rehnquist today determined the different outcome.
The only federal appeals court to have upheld the mandatory-detention provision at issue today was the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, which, unlike the other appeals courts, issued its ruling before the Supreme Court decided the Zadvydas case.
Mr. Kim came to the United States from Korea with his family at the age of 6 and became a permanent resident two years later. After two criminal convictions in California as a teenager, one for burglary and one for theft, he was placed in deportation proceedings and imprisoned under the new law. After three months in detention, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus arguing that he was constitutionally eligible for release while challenging his deportation.
His case raised two questions: whether habeas corpus review was available despite language in the law suggesting that it was not, and whether the mandatory-detention provision violated the constitutional guarantee of due process.
Six justices agreed today that habeas corpus was available, thus giving the court jurisdiction over the case and reiterating the need for Congress to be extremely clear if it intended to strip the courts of jurisdiction over a category of cases. Reaching the merits of the case, five then found no constitutional requirement for a hearing at which a detained immigrant could demonstrate eligibility for release on bond.
The two questions were answered by separate coalitions of justices. Those who agreed that the court had jurisdiction were, in addition to Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and the four who dissented on the detention issue: Justices David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Those who agreed with the chief justice on the constitutionality of mandatory detention were Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.
Chief Justice Rehnquist said that ''against a backdrop of wholesale failure'' by immigration authorities under the old law to deal with rising rates of crime by aliens, Congress had adequately demonstrated a need to imprison aliens awaiting deportation for past crimes to keep them from committing new crimes.
While Congress might have permitted ''individualized bail determinations,'' he said, ''when the government deals with deportable aliens, the Due Process Clause does not require it to employ the least burdensome means to accomplish its goal.''
After the federal district court in San Francisco ruled in favor of Mr. Kim in 1999, the Immigration and Naturalization Service granted him a hearing, found him eligible for release and released him on $5,000 bond. He has been free since then, working and attending college. His lawyer, Judy Rabinovitz of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Mr. Kim would now challenge his eligibility for deportation on the ground that the property crimes for which he was convicted were not the ''aggravated'' crimes of ''moral turpitude'' to which the law refers.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Souter said the decision was ''at odds with the settled standard of liberty,'' under which the government has to justify the detention of individuals on a case-by-case basis, not of entire classes of people. ''Due process calls for an individual determination before someone is locked away,'' Justice Souter said. He read his dissent from the bench this morning, a step he has taken only rarely to emphasize a particularly deep disagreement. Justices Stevens and Ginsburg signed his opinion.
Justice Breyer, who wrote the majority opinion in the Zadvydas case, dissented separately on narrower grounds. He said the 1996 law, properly interpreted, made bail available to an alien who raised a substantial legal challenge to deportability.
An unconstitutional court ruling in favor of an unconstitutional governmental group like immigration is irrelevant. The fact remains that the highest law in the land (higher than the courts) PROHIBITS the federal government from creating or enforcing immigration laws so they are null and void and all immigrants who come here are legal immigrants.
The courts routinely make unconstitutional rulings when it is in favor of expanding or protecting illegitimate governmental powers. Keep in mind, judges get their paycheck from the government.
O.K. here we go again. I humbly submit the following:
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Congress has the power to provide for the common welfare of the United States.
and...
Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.
I do believe that section two of the Constitution contains the word ALL, as in, every one of the cases in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States.
Congress passes laws for the general welfare of the United States. The Judicial powers extend to the laws of the United States.
I know the next argument. It's not what the frames MEANT, then we talk about what they meant, and then we argue that it's what is written...blah..blah..blah.
I can read. The framers are dead. It is our interpretation of this document that counts. Right now, the current majority is that Radar is wrong. Hence, we have a large body of immigration law. Laws of the United States which according to the Constitution can plainly be decided upon by the Judiciary, or as we call them The Supreme Court.
Common welfare does not grant any authority to Congress to do anything other than the specific enumerated powers. Congress is PROHIBITED from having "implied powers".
Judicial power does not grant power to judges to create laws or to allow the government to do anything other than what is specified by the Constitution. Judicial power extends (covers) all cases arising UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.
This doesn't mean Judges can extend the powers of government. It means their limited judicial powers cover all of the things that government is allowed to do by the Constitution in its enumerated powers.
Interpretations of the Constitution do not count. The Constitution is written in English. It doesn't require interpretation. It means what it says and it says that the federal government has absolutely no authority to create or enforce immigration laws, PERIOD.
I read what it says. Nothing implied in what I read, It meant exactly what I read. You are the one telling us what it means. I'd repeat myself, but, just refer to my last post. Exactly what the constitution says, is that you are wrong.
I am yer illegal alien scum bag...
I read what it says. Nothing implied in what I read, It meant exactly what I read. You are the one telling us what it means. I'd repeat myself, but, just refer to my last post. Exactly what the constitution says, is that you are wrong.
The Constitution says that the federal government has absolutely zero powers over immigration and zero implied powers. It does not grant any authority to the government with the phrases like "general welfare".
The article I posted proves 100% that I am right, and you are wrong. It proves that the founders agreed with me, and not with you. It proves without any doubt that all federal immigration laws are unconstitutional.
So, the phrase "general welfare" has no meaning? Wow, those dummies who pit there must have been pretty stupid. :rolleyes: knowing that that phrase could only be interpreted one way, and one way only, thank God that radar has come along to explain that meaning 230+ years later. Whew.
Perhaps the founders did agree with you. Perhaps. The fact is that they are dead. The document they wrote is open to interpretation by the people of today. It is not as black and white as you would have us think. Ah, I know you tell me that it is black and white, just read the constitution....very clear there. I for one have quoted the exact words of the constitution, you have quoted an article. I'm going to stick with the constitution. You can stick with your article about the constitution.
So, the phrase "general welfare" has no meaning? Wow, those dummies who pit there must have been pretty stupid. :rolleyes: knowing that that phrase could only be interpreted one way, and one way only, thank God that radar has come along to explain that meaning 230+ years later. Whew.
Perhaps the founders did agree with you. Perhaps. The fact is that they are dead. The document they wrote is open to interpretation by the people of today. It is not as black and white as you would have us think. Ah, I know you tell me that it is black and white, just read the constitution....very clear there. I for one have quoted the exact words of the constitution, you have quoted an article. I'm going to stick with the constitution. You can stick with your article about the constitution.
:lol2:
So, the phrase "general welfare" has no meaning?
The phrase "General Welfare" does have a meaning. It just doesn't grant any powers to the government outside of the enumerated powers they are explicitly given.
The exact words of the Constitution say that the federal government may have no powers other than those enumerated. Nowhere is the federal government given authority over immigration and the phrase "general welfare" doesn't grant such power to the fed.
Since you have no comprehension of what the phrase "general welfare" actually means, or what it meant at the time our founders created the Constitution, I'll borrow from a site that explains it very clearly and includes the legal definition of the phrase "general welfare" found in the 1828 version of Black's Law Dictionary
(The most widely used dictionary of legal terms and phrases)
=======================================
AN EXAMINATION OF THE 'GENERAL WELFARE' CLAUSE
by Alan Chapman (March 7, 2001)
The meaning of the phrase 'general welfare', with respect to its use in the Constitution, is the focus of much debate. The 'general welfare' clause is often cited as justification for government social services. This essay will attempt to discover the true meaning of the phrase 'general welfare' by examining various sources on the subject.
The phrase 'general welfare' appears twice in the Constitution. Once in the preamble and again in Article 1, Section 8.
The preamble to the Constitution states that:
[INDENT]"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."[/INDENT]
The preamble is not a delegation of power to the federal government. It simply states a purpose.
Article 1, Section 8 states that:
[INDENT]The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;[/INDENT]
The meaning of words often change over time. To more accurately assess the meaning of the word 'welfare', with respect to its use in the Constitution, it is necessary to consult a source from the period during which the Constitution was written. According to the 1828 edition of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language the word "welfare" was defined as such:
A clear distinction is made with respect to welfare as applied to persons and states. In the Constitution the word 'welfare' is used in the context of states and not persons. The "welfare of the United States" is not congruous with the welfare of individuals, people, or citizens.
James Madison is considered by many to be the father of the Constitution. Madison wrote a letter in 1817 in which he discussed the proper role of the federal government and the limits placed on it by the Constitution.
[INDENT]Veto of federal public works bill
March 3, 1817
To the House of Representatives of the United States: Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled "An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," and which sets apart and pledges funds "for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense," I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.
"The power to regulate commerce among the several States" can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce with a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared "that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.
A restriction of the power "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.
If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.
James Madison,
President of the United States[/INDENT]
Other quotes regarding this issue:
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."
- James Madison
Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 _Madison_ 1865, I, page 546
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
- James Madison (regarding an appropriations bill for French refugees, 1794)
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."
- James Madison
Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831 _Madison_ 1865, IV, pages 171-172
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
- Thomas Jefferson
It would seem that, contrary to the claims of those demanding government pursuits beyond the purview of the enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution, the 'general welfare' clause does not give Congress broad and sweeping powers. Nor was it the intention of the founders to give Congress any.
Radar, the Constitution is but an instrument of "We the People" and regardless as to whether or not the Constitution grants the federal government authority to regulate immigration, we the people have.
The Constitution is not like documents purported to be derived from a higher power (e.g. the Bible representing the word of God), it is acknowledged to be a product of people and people are known to be fallible and to have their limitations. The Constitution will continually be subjected to trial by fire in order to determine its current relevancy in part; or, as a whole. To promote its survivability, it was created as a living document which is why a fundamental reading will never supplant interpretation for the times. That which is now unconstitutional may become constitutional in the future and vice versa. It is essentially the burden of pundits against change to demonstrate that "We the People" are better served by strictly adhering to the Constitution in its present form; because, if push comes to shove, we the people can modify or rescind it.
You'll have to come up with a better rationale for why the federal government shouldn't regulate immigration other than because the Constitution doesn't provide for it. The Constitution works for the people, not the other way around.
You claim that "We the People" have granted the federal authority to regulate immigration even if it's not in the Constitution. This is false. We the people have given the federal government certain powers and We the people have limited those powers to being only what is enumerated in the Constitution. We the people have prohibited the federal government from creating or enforcing any laws which do not pertain to those specific powers enumerated in the Constitution.
The only way for "We the People" to grant such power to the federal government (which violates every principle America was built upon) is to amend the Constitution. This has not been done yet.
The Constitution isn't a "living document". It's the highest law in our land. It's higher than all 3 branches of government, and it's the foundation of freedom and peaceful society in America. Yes, it was created by men. And luckily for us, it was created by men who knew they didn't know everything. This is why they allowed it to be changed, but not changed easily.
No part of government that was unconstitutional in 1790 is Constitutional now unless the Constitution has been amended to allow it. That which is unconstitutional now, may only become Constitutional later through an amendment to the Constitution and NOT an act of Congress that is ignored by the Supreme Court.
The Constitution was created to put chains on the federal government and to keep most power in the hands of the states and in the people themselves.
I most certainly do not have to come up with a "better rationale" for why the government shouldn't regulate immigration other than it being a direct violation of the highest law in our land. The Constitution works for the people by limiting the powers of our federal government. Limiting immigration when the Constitution prohibits it is not working for the people.
The Constitution isn't to be ignored or thought of as some quaint old relic of our past. It's the foundation of our entire society and it is what makes America more free than other nations. It locks down our government and keeps real power in the hands of the people. It's what makes us citizens rather than subjects. The Constitution doesn't require interpretation. It's meaning and intent are clear and are in simple English, not Swahili. No interpretation is needed, and those who try to interpret it are usually looking for loopholes or ways around it, or to destroy it.
Ah hell, we've been through all this before. You and I don't agree on this. I have to do more constructive things with my time, like study Russian. It's been a nice discussion, again.
Have a good one.
If the constitution is the be all and end all of every rule in your society, why then do you need to have elections or a government at all? Surely if everyone just read the constitution there'd be no need for any of that expensive stuff. Everyone would just 'get it' like Radar does and the world would be full of Radars and no one would pay income taxes either, which would be great I'm sure.
The sorts of things I'm not clear on though, is if there's no government etc, then who's going to regulate the people who don't 'get it' like Radar does? And surely if there were such a body somehow, and they tried to 'make sure' everyone 'gets it', then wouldn't that just be another form of...hmmm...gee, what's the word? Oppression?
The federal government should do very little. It should be here to settle disputes among other states, and to do those things listed in the Constitution and nothing else. Everything else is up to the state. We do still need elected people to do the exact things mentioned by the Constitution, but nothing else.
Americans didn't pay taxes for the first 137 years of America's existence. We did pretty damn good at becoming one of the world's greatest powers during that time.
I'm certainly not an anarchist. I merely insist on the government adhering to the limitations on its powers and that it do nothing outside of those enumerated powers.
All elected officials should fear for their lives if they step outside the bounds of the Constitution.
Crap, I can't believe I"m still here. When was the 16th amendment ratified?
Crap, I can't believe I"m still here. When was the 16th amendment ratified?
In 1894 an income tax was created and struck down by the Supreme Court. On July 2nd 1909 Congress passed what would later become the 16th amendment. It was never legally ratified, but it was fraudulently ratified by Philander Knox on February 3, 1913
(The same year the Federal reserve was created).
Both the Federal Reserve, and Income taxes have wrecked America and both were created under the Taft administration. Taft is widely accepted as the single most corrupt President of all time...with the possible exception of George W. Bush.
Technically the Federal Reserve Act
(blatantly unconstitutional) was created under Taft, but was enacted under Woodrow Wilson's administration. It was enacted on December 23, 1913 right before Christmas with barely enough people to make up a quorum. Woodrow Wilson signed it into Law because his adviser (Colonel Edward Mandell House) told him too.
Later, Woodrow Wilson realized what he did and said...
[quote=Woodrow Wilson]"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
- Woodrow WilsonYou claim that "We the People" have granted the federal authority to regulate immigration even if it's not in the Constitution. This is false. We the people have given the federal government certain powers and We the people have limited those powers to being only what is enumerated in the Constitution. We the people have prohibited the federal government from creating or enforcing any laws which do not pertain to those specific powers enumerated in the Constitution.
My statement stands as factual since this practice is in practical application. The part of your statement that I've placed in bold type is the defect in your position. The federal government already has immigration regulatory effect under the "law" (figuratively speaking) of implied consent. We the People have chosen not to stop it from happening at this time. The Constitution is just a piece of paper with writing on it: it requires people to make it happen.
The only way for "We the People" to grant such power to the federal government (which violates every principle America was built upon) is to amend the Constitution. This has not been done yet.
Which is not to say that it won't be done in consonance with every principle America will build a successful future upon.
The Constitution isn't a "living document". It's the highest law in our land. It's higher than all 3 branches of government, and it's the foundation of freedom and peaceful society in America. Yes, it was created by men. And luckily for us, it was created by men who knew they didn't know everything. This is why they allowed it to be changed, but not changed easily.
You're playing with the semantics of the terms "living document" and
[COLOR="blue"]"Living Constitution."[/COLOR] My point is that the Constitution was created with a provision for changes and you acknowledge
above that it was.
No part of government that was unconstitutional in 1790 is Constitutional now unless the Constitution has been amended to allow it. That which is unconstitutional now, may only become Constitutional later through an amendment to the Constitution and NOT an act of Congress that is ignored by the Supreme Court.
There's room for agreement on this point among proponents for both the Living Constitution and Originalism. See the Judicial Activism paragraph in the above linked web page.
The Constitution was created to put chains on the federal government and to keep most power in the hands of the states and in the people themselves.
The Constitution, as created, also put chains on categories of We the People.
I most certainly do not have to come up with a "better rationale" for why the government shouldn't regulate immigration other than it being a direct violation of the highest law in our land. The Constitution works for the people by limiting the powers of our federal government. Limiting immigration when the Constitution prohibits it is not working for the people.
Yes, it is. Furthermore, your reluctance "to come up with a 'better rationale' for why the government shouldn't regulate immigration" is why We the People are allowing it to happen.
The Constitution isn't to be ignored or thought of as some quaint old relic of our past. It's the foundation of our entire society and it is what makes America more free than other nations. It locks down our government and keeps real power in the hands of the people. It's what makes us citizens rather than subjects. The Constitution doesn't require interpretation. It's meaning and intent are clear and are in simple English, not Swahili. No interpretation is needed, and those who try to interpret it are usually looking for loopholes or ways around it, or to destroy it.
Those who try to interpret the Constitution for the times we live in are striving to maintain it as the foundation of our
evolving society. Those who claim that no interpretation is needed undermine the evolution of this great society by favoring stagnation in pursuit of their own agendas.
Those who wish to read about the Living Constitution theory of constitutional interpretation versus Originalism can get the gist of the matter from
[COLOR="blue"]Wikipedia[/COLOR].
My statement stands as factual since this practice is in practical application. The part of your statement that I've placed in bold type is the defect in your position.
There is no defect in my position. The defect in your position is that you don't recognize the indisputable fact that the powers of the government are limited strictly by the U.S. Constitution.
My position is practical in its application and was used successfully in practice for the first 100 years of America's existence before the government started routinely violating it and America started going down the toilet.
The federal government already has immigration regulatory effect under the "law" (figuratively speaking) of implied consent. We the People have chosen not to stop it from happening at this time. The Constitution is just a piece of paper with writing on it: it requires people to make it happen.
The Federal Government has absolutely zero implied powers and is in fact PROHIBITED from having implied powers by the 10th amendment.
You are saying that because the people haven't stopped it, this means they consent to it. This is like saying a woman who didn't struggle to your satisfaction while being raped, really wanted it.
The Constitution isn't merely a "piece of paper" and isn't a "living document". The Constitution is the foundation of all our government. Without strict limits on the powers of our government, America is no better than Nazi Germany.
Which is not to say that it won't be done in consonance with every principle America will build a successful future upon.
Not at all. The timeless principles which built America are as true and practical today as they were at the time the founders created the Constitution. Violating those principles will not build a successful future. It will bury any chance for a successful future.
The Constitution, as created, also put chains on categories of We the People.
No, it actually doesn't. The Constitution does nothing to limit or infringe upon our rights. The Constitution (as created) includes all amendments that were legally ratified throughout America's history. They are part of the creation.
Yes, it is. Furthermore, your reluctance "to come up with a 'better rationale' for why the government shouldn't regulate immigration" is why We the People are allowing it to happen.
No, it isn't. No violation of the Constitution on the part of the government is working for the people. If the people want the federal government to have authority over immigration, it takes nothing less than a Constitutional amendment. Stopping the government from violating the Constitution is the highest of all rationales. There are none better.
Those who try to interpret the Constitution for the times we live in are striving to maintain it as the foundation of our [B]evolving
society. Those who claim that no interpretation is needed undermine the evolution of this great society by favoring stagnation in pursuit of their own agendas.
Those who wish to read about the Living Constitution theory of constitutional interpretation versus Originalism can get the gist of the matter from
[COLOR="blue"]Wikipedia[/COLOR].
Those who try to "interpret" the Constitution are trying to find ways around it or to violate it. If they want to change it, there is one and only one way to allow government to have powers outside the scope of the Constitution and that is through a Constitutional amendment. The "living document" nonsense you keep linking to means that the Constitution can be changed by amendments.
You don't "interpret" the Constitution to mean what you want. You amend it to say what you want, and you need 3/4 of both houses to do this. Nothing else is acceptable, and nothing else is working for the people. All violations of the Constitution by government are wrong regardless of someone's intentions.
When you allow the government to violate the Constitution for even the best reason, you open the door to abuse and for people to violate it for the most heinous, racist, xenophobic, and evil reasons....like restricting immigration.
True, but since there are no illegals, we don't have to worry much about them voting. All non-citizen immigrants can't vote.
One thing that should be changed is that everyone convicted of a crime should have 100% of their rights restored to them when released from prison. That includes owning a gun, voting, etc.
In fact, they should be allowed to vote while still in prison. Voting booths should be setup for prisoners.
In fact, they should be allowed to vote while still in prison. Voting booths should be setup for prisoners.
Or we could just tell them they are voting booths and then turn on the gas.:eek:
I would like to offer, "The Federal Government Has No Imagination Powers".
Ok carry on.
:)
I would like to offer, "The Federal Government Has No Imagination Powers".
Ok carry on.
:)
That goes without saying.
Or we could just tell them they are voting booths and then turn on the gas.:eek:
Kinda harsh for non-violent pot smokers or growers don't you think?
Ohoh, I get it! You're saying that anyone who doesn't support illegal immigration is a racist! Good argument, sir.
:headshake
Thanks lookout. I didn't want to be the first to disagree again.
I only got it because I'm white. and shave my head. and am strongly against illegal immigration. so obviously i'm racist.
Ohoh, I get it! You're saying that anyone who doesn't support illegal immigration is a racist! Good argument, sir.
:headshake
I didn't say that, but a huge percentage are, if not most. Those are photos from actual minuteman and SOS gatherings.
and if i posted a picture of a fat, drunk mexican stealing hubcaps would i be more or less guilty of stereotyping than you?
I didn't say that, but a huge percentage are, if not most.
ORLY?!?
Where are your statistics?
New poll!
:D
and if i posted a picture of a fat, drunk mexican stealing hubcaps would i be more or less guilty of stereotyping than you?
How about we just post pictures of illegal immigrants filling prisons.
Immigration Issue Centers : Immigration & Society
Criminal Aliens
The criminal alien problem is growing.
Criminal aliens—non-citizens who commit crimes—are a growing threat to public safety and national security, as well as a drain on our scarce criminal justice resources. In 1980, our federal and state prisons housed fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. By the end of 1999, these same prisons housed over 68,000 criminal aliens.1 Today, criminal aliens account for over 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a higher share of all federal prison inmates.2 These prisoners represent the fastest growing segment of the federal prison population. Over the past five years, an average of more than 72,000 aliens have been arrested annually on drug charges alone. New issue paper.
Continued illegal immigration aggravates the problem.
Despite the Border Patrol making over one million apprehensions last year, they estimate they miss two or more illegal bordercrossers for every apprehension. Most enter for short periods, but there is an estimated net increase of about 300,000 a year from illegal bordercrossers who stay. An additional net increase of 200,000 comes from people who enter legally as nonimmigrants and then violate their status. Among the alien federal prisoners, over half (55 percent) were illegally in the United States at the time of their conviction.
Administering justice to criminal aliens costs the taxpayer dearly.
Incarceration of criminal aliens cost an estimated $624 million to state prisons (1999) and $891 million to federal prisons (2002), according to the most recent available figure from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The New York State Senate Committee on Cities estimates that the annual criminal justice costs for criminal aliens in New York is $270 million. The Committee has called for a national moratorium on immigration to help alleviate this problem.3 According to the Illinois Governor’s Office, Illinois spends over $40 million just on the incarceration of criminal aliens. The cost to Florida’s judicial and correction system for criminal aliens was $73 million in 1993. 4 In 1988, there were 5,500 illegal immigrants in California’s prisons. By fiscal year 1994- 1995, that is estimated to have increased to more than 18,000 illegal immigrants in state prisons—a three-fold increase. California taxpayers have spent over a billion dollars in the last five years to keep these convicted felons in prison, and the FY 9495 cost of incarcerating these offenders exceeded $375 million.5 The federal government has begun to reimburse heavily alien-impacted states for some of the costs of illegal alien prisoners in their state prisons. For 1996, Congress appropriated $300 million for this program.
Many criminal aliens are released into our society to commit crimes again.
Too often, criminal aliens are not identified in local and state jails, the INS is not informed of their presence, detention facilities are not available when they are released, they fail to report for deportation, or they return to the United States after deportation. In March 2000, Congress made public Department of Justice statistics showing that, over the previous five years, the INS had released over 35,000 criminal aliens instead of deporting them. Over 11,000 of those released went on to commit serious crimes, over 1,800 of which were violent ones (including 98 homicides, 142 sexual assaults, and 44 kidnappings). In 2001, thanks to a decision by the Supreme Court, the INS was forced to release into our society over 3,000 criminal aliens (who collectively had been convicted of 125 homicides, 387 sex offenses, and 772 assault charges).6
What can be done?
We must secure our borders. Denying jobs to illegal aliens through a centralized secure identity verification system is important to that effort.
We must assure that the criminal conviction of an alien leads to deportation and permanent exclusion from the United States.
Asylum applicants should be screened expeditiously and excluded if their claims are not credible. Even if they appear to have credible claims, they should be detained until background checks are done.
Other corrective measures include greater INS and local government cooperation to identify criminal aliens, additional detention facilities for those in deportation proceedings, and improved databases and screening procedures to identify deported aliens if they try to return here either overtly or surreptitiously.
Other aliens not included in this total include immigrants who have become U.S. citizens (not included in the federal prison data), aliens being held for trial and some awaiting deportation but not convicted in the United States, e.g., the Cuban Marielitos.
National Institute of Corrections, Federal Bureau of Prisons, June 2003.
“Our Teeming Shore,” New York State Senate Committee on Cities, Sen. Frank Padavan, Chr.; Jan. 1994.
“The Unfair Burden: Immigration’s Impact on Florida,” Executive Office of the Governor; March 1994.
“California’s Illegal Immigration Costs: A Call for Federal Leadership,” Office of the Governor; 1994.
Zadvydas v. Davis (U.S. 2001).
Updated 10/02
http://www.fairus.org/If you look at all three photos, it's the same fringe group of racists.....I don't base my stats. on one group do I?
I know a lot of people that don't agree with illegal immigration. And I don't know any racists...
From the GAO (Full Report here:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05337r.pdf )
How many incarcerated: • Criminal aliens incarcerated increased from about 42,000 at year-end 2001 to about 49,000 at year-end 2004. Country of citizenship: • For 2004, the majority of incarcerated criminal aliens were identified as citizens of Mexico. Costs of incarceration: • We estimate the federal cost of incarcerating criminal aliens totaled about $5.8 billion from 2001 through 2004: • direct federal costs ($4.2 billion) and • federal reimbursements to state and local governments ($1.6 billion).
How many incarcerated: • Fiscal year 2002—SCAAP reimbursed all 50 states for incarcerating about 77,000 criminal aliens. • Fiscal year 2003—SCAAP reimbursed 47 states for incarcerating about 74,000 criminal aliens. • 5 state prison systems incarcerated about 80 percent of these criminal aliens in fiscal year 2003—Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and Texas. Country of citizenship: • Data on citizenship of criminal aliens reimbursed through SCAAP not available. • In mid-2004, most of the foreign-born inmates for the 5 state prison systems with the most criminal aliens were born in Mexico (60 percent). Costs of incarceration: • We estimate that 4 of these 5 states spent a total of $1.6 billion in fiscal years 2002 and 2003 to incarcerate SCAAP criminal aliens and were reimbursed about $233 million through SCAAP.
How many incarcerated: • Fiscal year 2002—SCAAP reimbursed 752 local jurisdictions for incarcerating about 138,000 criminal aliens. • Fiscal year 2003—SCAAP reimbursed 698 local jurisdictions for about 147,000 criminal aliens. • 5 municipal and county jails incarcerated about 30 percent of these criminal aliens in fiscal year 2003—Los Angeles County, California; New York City, New York; Orange County, California; Harris County, Texas; and, Maricopa County, Arizona. Country of citizenship: • Data on citizenship of criminal aliens reimbursed through SCAAP not available. • In fiscal year 2003, most of the foreign-born inmates from these 5 jails were born in Mexico (65 percent). Costs of incarceration: • We estimate that 4 of these 5 local jails spent a total of $390 million in fiscal years 2002 and 2003 to incarcerate SCAAP criminal aliens and were reimbursed about $73 million through SCAAP
The above GAO report also contains statistics for the specific crimes committed.
If you look at all three photos, it's the same fringe group of racists.....I don't base my stats. on one group do I?
I know a lot of people that don't agree with illegal immigration. And I don't know any racists...
If you can't find the racist in the room, it's probably you. Also, there is no illegal immigration in America. That's not an opinion, it's a fact.
I don't think anyone wants illegal immigration in America, not even the undocumented and legal immigrants who are accused of being "illegals" by racists, idiots, and xenophobes.
Federation for American Immigration Reform
Washington, D.C.
www.fairus.org
Founded in 1978 by John H. Tanton, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is one of the country's best-established anti-immigration groups — and the richest beneficiary among them of the largesse of the infamous Pioneer Fund.
The Fund, which has long subsidized dubious studies of the alleged links between race and intelligence, awarded FAIR $1.2 million between 1985 and 1994, according to the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism. FAIR now says that it has severed its links to the controversial Fund.
Today, FAIR claims a staggering 70,000 members, although that number is almost certainly inflated. Tanton remains on FAIR's board and also is the publisher of The Social Contract Press, which sells racist anti-immigrant tracts.
Dan Stein, the group's executive director, has warned that certain immigrant groups are engaged in "competitive breeding" aimed at diminishing white power. Rick Oltman, FAIR's western representative, has spoken before and worked with the racist Council of Conservative Citizens.
Garrett Hardin, a FAIR board member, has argued that aiding starving Africans is counterproductive and will only "encourage population growth." Overall, FAIR blames immigrants for crime, poverty, disease, urban sprawl and increasing racial tensions in America, and calls for a drastic cut in the numbers of those allowed in.
If you can't find the racist in the room, it's probably you.
No,
'dar, I don't spend my time "finding" racists. Maybe if you spend your time finding racists in rooms, it's probably you. Being a maniac. Obssessed with the idea that all whiteys are racists.
Oh illegal immigration does exist my dear, to your chagrin!
;)
Oh, and try to insinuate that I am a racist again, and see what happens, you ***-**** ****-****.
That makes me angry. As you can see. Not because "because it's true" kind of angry. The angry that says that "you don't know what the fuck you are talking about" kind of angry.
Federation for American Immigration Reform
Washington, D.C.
www.fairus.org
The problem with your whine is that the majority of things they post are well footnoted and referenced. For example:
Information on Criminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons and Local Jails
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05337r.pdfNo, 'dar, I don't spend my time "finding" racists. Maybe if you spend your time finding racists in rooms, it's probably you. Being a maniac. Obssessed with the idea that all whiteys are racists.
That's a racist comment. I have never said that "all" of anyone are anything. I've said that a large percentage (perhaps the majority) of those who support the blatantly unconstitutional federal immigration laws in America are racist...and yes, they absolutely are without any doubt, 100% unconstitutional and anyone who says otherwise is a liar or an idiot.
Oh illegal immigration does exist my dear, to your chagrin!
Yes, illegal immigration does exist, just not in America where our founders didn't grant the federal government any authority to create or enforce immigration laws and where they actually prohibited the federal government from doing so.
Oh, and try to insinuate that I am a racist again, and see what happens, you ***-**** ****-****.
You'll cry?
The fact remains that all federal immigration laws and the departments who enforce them are 100% unconstitutional...PERIOD. This means that those who accuse undocumented and completely legal immigrants who come here of being "illegals", they are doing so because they are...
A) Stupid
B) Racist
or
C) Liars
You are one of these. If I was wrong with racist, you're probably just stupid or a liar, or hell, you could be all three.
That makes me angry. As you can see. Not because "because it's true" kind of angry. The angry that says that "you don't know what the fuck you are talking about" kind of angry.
I know how you feel. I am used to seeing that every time some idiot claims undocumented immigration is illegal or posts bogus statistics from fake or racist organizations like fairus.org or loudobbs.com, etc
None of these people has any fucking clue what they are talking about.
This discussion has certainly taken a strange turn.
This discussion has certainly taken a strange turn.
Hardly a discussion. We are all just waiting for him to blow up. He will be on the news one day after conducting a mass shooting in his local post office.:rolleyes:
The problem with your whine is that the majority of things they post are well footnoted and referenced. For example:
Information on Criminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons and Local Jails
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05337r.pdf
The problem with your stupidity and intellectual dishonesty
(assuming you've even got enough brain cells to use the word "intellectual" to describe you) is you don't even read your own posts.
In GAO document you posted, they define criminal alien as...
[INDENT]Noncitizens who are residing in the United States LEGALLY or illegally and convicted of a crime.[/INDENT]
As I stated earlier, prisons don't keep track of the number of undocumented immigrants. They only keep track of non-citizens who have committed crimes. While I contend that over half of these crimes are committed by those who are here with papers, we can divide by half the number you posted.
This means in all U.S. Prisons there were 38,500 undocumented immigrants in all of America's prisons. According to most of the racist, lying, xenophobic, and retarded sites that your ilk use there are over 20 million undocumented immigrants in America. This means less than a quarter of 1 percent of undocumented immigrants are convicted of crimes.
According to this New York Times Article from 5 days ago, the U.S. has 2,258,983 criminals behind bars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Let's subtract the 38,500 undocumented immigrants from this number to get 2,220,483. The U.S. Population is 301,139,947. Subtract 20 million for undocumented immigrants so you have 281,139,947. This means we have 789 American citizens per 1000 in the population who are criminals. There are 193 undocumented immigrants per 1000 in the population of undocumented immigrants who are criminals.
American citizens are more than 4 times as likely to be criminals than undocumented immigrants.
If you realize that 11% of our federal prisoners are there for not complying with unconstitutional federal immigration laws (aka non-criminals) that number becomes significantly higher.
Undocumented immigrants are overwhelmingly less likely to commit crimes than American citizens and they most certainly are not the ones filling our jails.
You'll cry?
The fact remains that all federal immigration laws and the departments who enforce them are 100% unconstitutional...PERIOD. This means that those who accuse undocumented and completely legal immigrants who come here of being "illegals", they are doing so because they are...
A) Stupid
B) Racist
or
C) Liars
You are one of these. If I was wrong with racist, you're probably just stupid or a liar, or hell, you could be all three.
What's that you
whining little bitch? You forgot the third option:
D) Not stupid enough, liar enough, or racist enough to fall for any of your shit.
You are sitting there with your thumb directly up your ass. That doesn't make me any of those choices.
The problem with your stupidity and intellectual dishonesty (assuming you've even got enough brain cells to use the word "intellectual" to describe you) is you don't even read your own posts.
In GAO document you posted, they define criminal alien as...
[INDENT]Noncitizens who are residing in the United States LEGALLY or illegally and convicted of a crime.[/INDENT]
As I stated earlier, prisons don't keep track of the number of undocumented immigrants. They only keep track of non-citizens who have committed crimes. While I contend that over half of these crimes are committed by those who are here with papers, we can divide by half the number you posted.
This means in all U.S. Prisons there were 38,500 undocumented immigrants in all of America's prisons. According to most of the racist, lying, xenophobic, and retarded sites that your ilk use there are over 20 million undocumented immigrants in America. This means less than a quarter of 1 percent of undocumented immigrants are convicted of crimes.
According to this New York Times Article from 5 days ago, the U.S. has 2,258,983 criminals behind bars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Let's subtract the 38,500 undocumented immigrants from this number to get 2,220,483. The U.S. Population is 301,139,947. Subtract 20 million for undocumented immigrants so you have 281,139,947. This means we have 789 American citizens per 1000 in the population who are criminals. There are 193 undocumented immigrants per 1000 in the population of undocumented immigrants who are criminals.
American citizens are more than 4 times as likely to be criminals than undocumented immigrants.
If you realize that 11% of our federal prisoners are there for not complying with unconstitutional federal immigration laws (aka non-criminals) that number becomes significantly higher.
Undocumented immigrants are overwhelmingly less likely to commit crimes than American citizens and they most certainly are not the ones filling our jails.
Does not change the fact that illegal aliens cost this country billions more than they contribute. It would not matter if they were a mere 10% of the prison population. How many they are is less of an issue than how much they are costing us.
From the GAO report:
Data represent only a portion of the total population of criminal aliens who may be incarcerated at the local level, since SCAAP does not reimburse localities for all criminal aliens.
And yes they do keep track of the numbers, page 13:
State and local jurisdictions voluntarily submit data annually on inmates they suspect to be criminal aliens for possible reimbursement. The program reimburses these jurisdictions for criminal aliens who
• were convicted of a felony or two misdemeanors and incarcerated for a minimum of 4 days and
• entered the U.S. without inspection, or were in immigration removal proceedings at the time they were taken into custody; or were admitted as a nonimmigrant and failed to maintain nonimmigrant status.1 {Illegal Aliens}
Hate to burst your bubble again but they do keep track of the data on Illegal Aliens:
ILLEGAL ALIENS
Assessing Estimates of
Financial Burden on
California
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1995/he95022.pdf
360 MILLION DOLLARS and that was in 1994! {just for prisons}
Medicade took a bigger hit.
The Wall Street Journal:
The Underground Economy
Illegal Immigrants and Others Working Off the Books Cost the U.S. Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Unpaid Taxes
http://wsjclassroom.com/archive/05apr/econ_underground.htmDo they keep any stats on how many get under the table jobs and send the money home versus how many join gangs and sell drugs?
Do they keep any stats on how many get under the table jobs and send the money home versus how many join gangs and sell drugs?
Or the ones that do both?
The funniest thing I have seen: A woman paid under her ex-husband's name and social. (all of it was fake however)
For 17 years.
Any stats on that?
Not that it's funny. Because fraud isn't f'ing funny.
Do they keep any stats on how many get under the table jobs and send the money home versus how many join gangs and sell drugs?
That would be a bit hard to track. There is information about how much money goes out vs stays here to be taxed.
"It was not uncommon for the illegal aliens to make it clear that they were here for one purpose and one purpose alone, to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible and send it all home."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Cutler/michael23.htm
On Gangs:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/world-in-numbers"looter mentality".......I like that. That's true sometimes. Not all the time. But definately sometimes...
As I stated earlier, prisons don't keep track of the number of undocumented immigrants. They only keep track of non-citizens who have committed crimes. While I contend that over half of these crimes are committed by those who are here with papers, we can divide by half the number you posted.
This means in all U.S. Prisons there were 38,500 undocumented immigrants in all of America's prisons.
The problem with your thinking is that you pulle the number 38,500 out of your ass. You can't support your numbers with real data.
This study from NY completely puts your numbers to shame. 36% were illegal.
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/Research/Reports/Impact_of_Foreign-Born_Inmates.pdfDamn Radar who you think you are TW?
Do they keep any stats on how many get under the table jobs and send the money home versus how many join gangs and sell drugs?
Jinx, about half way down. The money trail with refernces for the data:
http://immigrationcounters.com/datasource.htmlLet's subtract the 38,500 undocumented immigrants from this number to get 2,220,483. The U.S. Population is 301,139,947. Subtract 20 million for undocumented immigrants so you have 281,139,947. This means we have 789 American citizens per 1000 in the population who are criminals. There are 193 undocumented immigrants per 1000 in the population of undocumented immigrants who are criminals.
I doubt that 78.9% of the population are criminals - just sayin.....
Originally Posted by Radar
Let's subtract the 38,500 undocumented immigrants from this number to get 2,220,483. The U.S. Population is 301,139,947. Subtract 20 million for undocumented immigrants so you have 281,139,947. This means we have 789 American citizens per 1000 in the population who are criminals. There are 193 undocumented immigrants per 1000 in the population of undocumented immigrants who are criminals.
I doubt that 78.9% of the population are criminals - just sayin.....
Yea, he has a problem with math.
Does not change the fact that illegal aliens cost this country billions more than they contribute.
Like most things you post, that is the exact opposite of the truth. Undocumented immigrants contribute BILLIONS more in taxes than they cost us in services.
They are not costing American tax payers a single penny. They are a net gain to the economy and the tax base. And no, the prison system does not keep stats of legal vs. illegal immigrants. The only classify non-citizens (both documented and undocumented) as "criminal aliens"
Yea, he has a problem with math.
No, just missing a couple of zeros. It's per hundred thousand.
The problem with your thinking is that you pulle the number 38,500 out of your ass. You can't support your numbers with real data.
This study from NY completely puts your numbers to shame. 36% were illegal.
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/Research/Reports/Impact_of_Foreign-Born_Inmates.pdf
I used national statistics, not state statistics numbnuts.
Like most things you post, that is the exact opposite of the truth. Undocumented immigrants contribute BILLIONS more in taxes than they cost us in services.
They are not costing American tax payers a single penny. They are a net gain to the economy and the tax base. And no, the prison system does not keep stats of legal vs. illegal immigrants. The only classify non-citizens (both documented and undocumented) as "criminal aliens"
Some illegal aliens contribute. Most do not.
Most of the ones that used to work where I worked in the past aren't contributing because they can't. Their only documents are fake. This means that they got a hold of someone's legitimate record and are paying in under someone elses tax id. Or what they are giving is completely fake and giving out a random number. Most of them aren't dumb enough to do that. Then there are the ones working under the table. This makes statistics for the documented workers null and void. I used to go to work knowing that I didn't know any of the staffs real names. I am glad they weren't all the same name because that would have sucked.
I find working under an assumed name and number to be highly criminal because that is how I was raised. I can't tell you how much shit has been pulled that I have seen, but it's a lot. If we turned the tables and I started to do any of that, the authorities would be all over my ass for fraud. Being undocumented forces people to do criminal acts to try to be practical and get jobs, cars etc...
That puts people like me that have a responsibility to maintain the books when you have a boss with this kind of hiring practice in place, at odds. And you have several moral questions for yourself when you go home at night, after you find out exactly what you have been doing.
Gathering statistics using documents that are faked or don't exist is crazy-making. I really liked some of the people that were on my team that were "documented". Heh but after being there for awhile I asked and "documented" was true. Just not the whole truth. Sure I have documents. Not mine..but I have them. Well fuc**. Lots of the documented paid for them...not sure where or how.
Some illegal aliens contribute. Most do not.
Most of them work and they buy things. Most do not collect any kind of public assistance. Whatever the number is of those who contribute, it amounts to billions and billions more paid in taxes than they use in services.
Most of the ones that used to work where I worked in the past aren't contributing because they can't. Their only documents are fake. This means that they got a hold of someone's legitimate record and are paying in under someone elses tax id. Or what they are giving is completely fake and giving out a random number. Most of them aren't dumb enough to do that. Then there are the ones working under the table. This makes statistics for the documented workers null and void. I used to go to work knowing that I didn't know any of the staffs real names. I am glad they weren't all the same name because that would have sucked.
I find working under an assumed name and number to be highly criminal because that is how I was raised. I can't tell you how much shit has been pulled that I have seen, but it's a lot. If we turned the tables and I started to do any of that, the authorities would be all over my ass for fraud. Being undocumented forces people to do criminal acts to try to be practical and get jobs, cars etc...
That puts people like me that have a responsibility to maintain the books when you have a boss with this kind of hiring practice in place, at odds. And you have several moral questions for yourself when you go home at night, after you find out exactly what you have been doing.
Gathering statistics using documents that are faked or don't exist is crazy-making. I really liked some of the people that were on my team that were "documented". Heh but after being there for awhile I asked and "documented" was true. Just not the whole truth. Sure I have documents. Not mine..but I have them. Well fuc**. Lots of the documented paid for them...not sure where or how.
It doesn't matter if they are contributing to the tax base under someone else's social security #. They pay income taxes into the system and they rarely if ever collect from any social programs (other than public education...which they help pay for). Those taxes are used just like anyone who is a natural born citizen, or a documented immigrant. These people never collect from social security either, yet they pay billions into it.
Working under an assumed name or number is most certainly not criminal. If you believe it to be, you must have been raise poorly.
I have a right to work anonymously. I have a right to travel anonymously. If I want to call myself Uncle Sam and work for lemonade rather than money, or I want to work for cash, I have a right to do so and no other person or government has any right to any of what I've earned.
Unlike you, I was raised to know that stealing what others earn is wrong. Income taxes are theft.
It's funny that you are all about being patriotic, and you still feel defrauding the government overtly, thereby defrauding the state, and your co-workers, and new country is ok.
As long as someone is paying in, the criminal act isn't criminal? I'm done talking to you. You are a completely illogical nut-bag.
Using someone elses name for documentation is criminal no matter how you slice it, in this country. Using their designated number is also criminal.
You are starting to seem like an advocate of criminality, and fraud, more than just an insane asshole. I have met a lot of undocumented advocates..you are the worst however, because you don't give a shit about breaking the systems in place or the law.
I really can't even entertain a flame war with someone that is so far out there.
Get your metal hat on as I think the aliens have melted your brain. Too insane for me. I'm out.
I'm with Cic on this one - but my parting shot is on this statement
It doesn't matter if they are contributing to the tax base under someone else's social security #.
Not if they work under the table...
It's funny that you are all about being patriotic, and you still feel defrauding the government overtly, thereby defrauding the state, and your co-workers, and new country is ok.
Your reasoning also proves that prohibition failed only because we did not enforce the laws. Reality - the only problem was the law.
What happens if we successfully enforce current immigration laws? Economic damage to America. It is already ongoing in the Silicon Valley where not enough immigrants (legal and illegal) can be obtained. Many of those who demand more immigration enforcement are also the reason why we need more immigrants. Those many did not bother to get better educated. As a result, we need more immigrants.
The solution advocated by those many? More of what did not work for prohibition.
What happens where immigration laws are more strongly enforced? As demonstrated in Nebraska and the northern dairy regions of NY State - the economy turned down so greatly that business owners even asked immigration enforcement agents to leave.
How to solve the immigration problem? Increase immigration visa numbers from a few hundred thousand to the millions we need to keep America productive.
It's funny that you are all about being patriotic, and you still feel defrauding the government overtly, thereby defrauding the state, and your co-workers, and new country is ok.
None of the undocumented immigrants is defrauding the state or co-workers, or the country. The American government on the other hand is defrauding the American people, the immigrants who come here with or without papers, and countries all over the world.
The American government is exercising powers it does not legitimately have. It is writing and enforcing laws that are a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution.
As long as someone is paying in, the criminal act isn't criminal? I'm done talking to you. You are a completely illogical nut-bag.
In this case, the criminal act is on the part of the government violating the Constitution and illegally deporting people. You are a complete idiot who knows nothing whatsoever about the Constitution or what it means to be an American. You just run your mouth off about shit you have no clue about and make outrageous claims that you can't back up.
Using someone elses name for documentation is criminal no matter how you slice it, in this country. Using their designated number is also criminal.
Deporting undocumented immigrants from America is a criminal act no matter how you slice it. They are not violating any legitimate laws by coming here, and are forced into using someone else's social security number to get work. They are still paying income taxes (another illegal part of government) and are paying billions more than they use in services. If the government commits a criminal act against someone, they have a take whatever steps they must to defend against that illegal action. For instance, if the government sends people to my house to take my guns away from me, I have the right to kill those who come to do it. Normally killing another person is wrong, but if they are violating my rights, it's no longer a crime. If the government is violating the rights of undocumented immigrants, preventing them from getting legal identification, preventing them from working without that documentation, illegally deporting people, etc. these people are within their rights to avoid such illegal action on the part of the government by putting someone else's number on their paperwork. The fault lies with the government, not with these people and only an idiot would even hint otherwise. This of course includes you.
You are starting to seem like an advocate of criminality, and fraud, more than just an insane asshole.
I could say the same thing about you. You support fraud, violence, and treason on the part of the government. You support illegal laws and illegal organizations to enforce them. You're not only an insane asshole, but a pathetic moron too.
I have met a lot of undocumented advocates..you are the worst however, because you don't give a shit about breaking the systems in place or the law.
I really can't even entertain a flame war with someone that is so far out there.
You are correct. I have absolutely no problem in violating illegal laws that the government has absolutely zero authority to create or enforce. But it is you who are "out there". I'm right here with the founders of America who prohibited the federal government from creating or enforcing immigration laws. I've just got common sense, education, reason, logic, the founders, and the U.S. Constitution on my side and you've got a bunch of redneck, racist, dickheads on yours.
Get your metal hat on as I think the aliens have melted your brain. Too insane for me. I'm out.
They tried to melt your brain, but there was nothing to melt.
I'm with Cic on this one - but my parting shot is on this statement
Not if they work under the table...
Most do not. And those that do, don't do it for long.
Your reasoning also proves that prohibition failed only because we did not enforce the laws. Reality - the only problem was the law.
What happens if we successfully enforce current immigration laws? Economic damage to America. It is already ongoing in the Silicon Valley where not enough immigrants (legal and illegal) can be obtained. Many of those who demand more immigration enforcement are also the reason why we need more immigrants. Those many did not bother to get better educated. As a result, we need more immigrants.
The solution advocated by those many? More of what did not work for prohibition.
What happens where immigration laws are more strongly enforced? As demonstrated in Nebraska and the northern dairy regions of NY State - the economy turned down so greatly that business owners even asked immigration enforcement agents to leave.
How to solve the immigration problem? Increase immigration visa numbers from a few hundred thousand to the millions we need to keep America productive.
TW is correct. If we simply did the right thing and allowed a free flow of immigrants to come here as easily as the Irish, German, Dutch, French, English, Italian, etc. immigrants did...
(just show up, sign your name, and make sure you don't have small pox) We wouldn't have any immigrants sneaking over the border. They'd walk right through the front door, get legal id's, get auto insurance, use their own social security numbers, and pay even more taxes.
The only thing preventing these people from using their own social security numbers or getting legal identification are the same idiots who complain about them not having any. They demand that government not allow them to get ID, but at the same time whine when they use someone else's.
... The American government is exercising powers it does not legitimately have. It is writing and enforcing laws that are a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution. ...
Since the American government continues to do this, it is self evident that you are impotent to do anything significant about it. You've effectively been reduced to complaining in an internet forum.
... Deporting undocumented immigrants from America is a criminal act no matter how you slice it. They are not violating any legitimate laws by coming here, and are forced into using someone else's social security number to get work. ... If the government commits a criminal act against someone, they have a take whatever steps they must to defend against that illegal action. For instance, if the government sends people to my house to take my guns away from me, I have the right to kill those who come to do it. Normally killing another person is wrong, but if they are violating my rights, it's no longer a crime. ...
Does
this mean that undocumented immigrants have the right to kill U.S. citizens sent by the American government to deport them? It would make a fine loophole for terrorists.
... If the government is violating the rights of undocumented immigrants, preventing them from getting legal identification, preventing them from working without that documentation, ...
Does something's not being illegal always mean that a
right exists? Even if it is not illegal for undocumented immigrants to be here, does that mean they have a
right to these things? What about the convention of public policy (e.g. there are no laws preventing females from serving in front line ground combat units; however, it has been public policy not to put them there)? Where in the Constitution are those
rights of undocumented immigrants specifically enumerated?
... I have absolutely no problem in violating illegal laws that the government has absolutely zero authority to create or enforce. ...
That's not a problem, the problem is with extending your position to undocumented immigrants; because, there is no reasonable expectation that they know the basics of the U.S. Constitution and laws derived thereof which are current citizenship requirements. Additionally, there's more to any country than its Constitution (or other) and its body of laws. When someone gives overwhelming weight to just one aspect of a self governing body and prognosticates doomsday if there's any deviation, it is seen as fanaticism by many. Bad things
could happen; but, as any psychologist can tell you, past human behavior is not necessarily a reliable indicator of future human behavior.
That my friend is why I relegate you to the category of For Entertainment Use Only even though you are very knowledgeable on the Constitution and I have learned from you. Thanks for sharing. :)
Since the American government continues to do this, it is self evident that you are impotent to do anything significant about it. You've effectively been reduced to complaining in an internet forum.
Hardly. I live near the border. I could help bring people here. I can make sure I hire them when I get a chance. I can call or write my legislature. I can continue a campaign of educating ignorant people about the fact that the U.S. Government has no authority over immigration. This is a very divisive issue and I'm on the right side of it.
Does this mean that undocumented immigrants have the right to kill U.S. citizens sent by the American government to deport them? It would make a fine loophole for terrorists.
Immigrants are not terrorists. If the government suddenly made a law that said all children under the age of 10 had to be turned into soilent green, and government people showed up at my door to collect my daughter, I'd be within my rights to kill those people. Government has no legitimate powers that each of us as individuals don't have to grant to it. Even then, government only has the specific powers that have been explicitly granted to it by the people. The federal government has not been given any power over immigration.
When government steps out of line and uses powers not granted to it, or when it works against the rights of people rather than defending them, we have a right to destroy that government by force and to replace it with one that respects our rights and doesn't step beyond the limitations on its powers.
Does something's not being illegal always mean that a right exists?
Our rights don't come from government.
Even if it is not illegal for undocumented immigrants to be here, does that mean they have a right to these things?
Every human being is born with the right to work for anyone willing to hire them, and every business owner has the right to hire whomever they choose. The government, on the other hand, has no authority to deport people, to require identification to work, to tax income, etc.
What about the convention of public policy (e.g. there are no laws preventing females from serving in front line ground combat units; however, it has been public policy not to put them there)?
That is a flawed policy. The government has no legitimate authority to create a draft, and since we are all supposed to be equal under the law, anyone who serves (straight, gay, male, female, catholic, jew, muslim, etc.) should have an equal chance of serving on the front line.
Where in the Constitution are those rights of undocumented immigrants specifically enumerated?
Rights don't have to be enumerated. That's what it says in the 9th amendment. Governmental powers must be enumerated. That's what it says in the 10th.
[QUOTE=NoBoxes;449736]That's not a problem, the problem is with extending your position to undocumented immigrants; because, there is no reasonable expectation that they know the basics of the U.S. Constitution and laws derived thereof which are current citizenship requirements.
The federal government has the authority to create laws pertaining to citizenship, but not immigration. Most of the undocumented immigrants don't want to become citizens. They want to come to America, work to send money home, and then retire back home. There are no requirements about knowing the Constitution for immigrants, but they are still protected by it, and so are all people living within the borders of the United States of America regardless of their citizenship. Unfortunately, there are no requirements for American born citizens to understand the Constitution either. This is why so many are clueless about it and think the government has unlimited powers.
Additionally, there's more to any country than its Constitution (or other) and its body of laws. When someone gives overwhelming weight to just one aspect of a self governing body and prognosticates doomsday if there's any deviation, it is seen as fanaticism by many. Bad things could happen; but, as any psychologist can tell you, past human behavior is not necessarily a reliable indicator of future human behavior.
People are self governing bodies. The Constitution isn't everything, but it is the HIGHEST LAW IN THE LAND. It supersedes all other laws, courts, congress, the president, etc. These aren't the words of a fanatic. They are factual and reasonable.
That my friend is why I relegate you to the category of For Entertainment Use Only even though you are very knowledgeable on the Constitution and I have learned from you. Thanks for sharing. :)
Your opinion of me is just that...yours. You have every right to it. I'd be willing to bet most people don't find me as entertaining as you. Most people are probably bothered by me or aggravated by me. But then again most people are assholes so I wear their hatred as a badge of honor.
That looks fun. Let's give it a try.
[SIZE="5"]Top 10 Immigration Myths and Facts[/SIZE]
National Immigration Forum
=================================
MYTH #1 - Immigrants don't pay taxes
FACT - All immigrants pay taxes, whether income, property, sales, or other. As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 and $140 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes.
Even undocumented immigrants pay income taxes, as evidenced by the Social Security Administration's "suspense file" (taxes that cannot be matched to workers' names and social security numbers), which grew $20 billion between 1990 and 1998.
SOURCE - National Academy of Sciences, Cato Institute, Urban Institute, Social Security Administration
=================================
MYTH #2 - Immigrants come here to take welfare*
FACT - Immigrants come to work and reunite with family members. Immigrant labor force participation is consistently higher than native-born, and immigrant workers make up a larger share of the U.S. labor force (12.4%) than they do the U.S. population (11.5%). Moreover, the ratio between immigrant use of public benefits and the amount of taxes they pay is consistently favorable to the U.S., unless the "study" was undertaken by an anti-immigrant group. In one estimate, immigrants earn about $240 billion a year, pay about $90 billion a year in taxes, and use about $5 billion in public benefits. In another cut of the data, immigrant tax payments total $20 to $30 billion more than the amount of government services they use.
SOURCE - American Immigration Lawyers Association, Urban Institute
* Due to welfare reform, legal immigrants are severely restricted from accessing public benefits, and undocumented immigrants are even further precluded from anything other than emergency services. Anti-immigrant groups skew these figures by including programs used by U.S. citizen children of immigrants in their definition of immigrant welfare use, among other tactics.
=================================
MYTH #3 - Immigrants send all their money back to their home countries
FACT - In addition to the consumer spending of immigrant households, immigrants and their businesses contribute $162 billion in tax revenue to U.S. federal, state, and local governments. While it is true that immigrants remit billions of dollars a year to their home countries, this is one of the most targeted and effective forms of direct foreign investment.
SOURCE - Cato Institute, Inter-American Development Bank
[COLOR="Red"]Side Note: When people in other countries have money, they can afford to buy American made products, or to travel to America as a tourist to spend more money here.[/COLOR]
=================================
MYTH #4 - Immigrants take jobs and opportunity away from Americans
FACT - The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth. Immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs for U.S. and foreign workers, and foreign-born students allow many U.S. graduate programs to keep their doors open. While there has been no comprehensive study done of immigrant-owned businesses, we have countless examples: in Silicon Valley, companies begun by Chinese and Indian immigrants generated more than $19.5 billion in sales and nearly 73,000 jobs in 2000.
SOURCE - Brookings Institution
=================================
MYTH #5 - Immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy
FACT - During the 1990s, half of all new workers were foreign-born, filling gaps left by native-born workers in both the high- and low-skill ends of the spectrum. Immigrants fill jobs in key sectors, start their own businesses, and contribute to a thriving economy. The net benefit of immigration to the U.S. is nearly $10 billion annually. As Alan Greenspan points out, 70% of immigrants arrive in prime working age. That means we haven't spent a penny on their education, yet they aretransplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years.
SOURCE - National Academy of Sciences, Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, Federal Reserve
=================================
MYTH #6 - Immigrants don't want to learn English or become Americans
FACT - Within ten years of arrival, more than 75% of immigrants speak English well; moreover, demand for English classes at the adult level far exceeds supply. Greater than 33% of immigrants are naturalized citizens; given increased immigration in the 1990s, this figure will rise as more legal permanent residents become eligible for naturalization in the coming years. The number of immigrants naturalizing spiked sharply after two events: enactment of immigration and welfare reform laws in 1996, and the terrorist attacks in 2001.
SOURCE - U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services)
=================================
MYTH #7 - Today's immigrants are different than those of 100 years ago
FACT - The percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born now stands at 11.5%; in the early 20th century it was approximately 15%. Similar to accusations about today's immigrants, those of 100 years ago initially often settled in mono-ethnic neighborhoods, spoke their native languages, and built up newspapers and businesses that catered to their fellow émigrés. They also experienced the same types of discrimination that today's immigrants face, and integrated within American culture at a similar rate. If we view history objectively, we remember that every new wave of immigrants has been met with suspicion and doubt and yet, ultimately, every past wave of immigrants has been vindicated and saluted.
SOURCE - U.S. Census Bureau
=================================
MYTH #8 - Most immigrants cross the border illegally
FACT - Around 75% have legal permanent (immigrant) visas; of the 25% that are undocumented, 40% overstayed temporary (nonimmigrant) visas.
SOURCE - INS Statistical Yearbook
=================================
MYTH #9 - Weak U.S. border enforcement has lead to high undocumented immigration
FACT - From 1986 to 1998, the Border Patrol's budget increased sixfold and the number of agents stationed on our southwest border doubled to 8,500. The Border Patrol also toughened its enforcement strategy, heavily fortifying typical urban entry points and pushing migrants into dangerous desert areas, in hopes of deterring crossings. Instead, the undocumented immigrant population doubled in that timeframe, to 8 million—despite the legalization of nearly 3 million immigrants after the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. Insufficient legal avenues for immigrants to enter the U.S., compared with the number of jobs available to them, have created this current conundrum.
SOURCE - Cato Institute
=================================
MYTH #10 - The war on terrorism can be won through immigration restrictions
FACT - No security expert since September 11th, 2001 has said that restrictive immigration measures would have prevented the terrorist attacks—instead, they key is good use of good intelligence. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were here on legal visas. Since 9/11, the myriad of measures targeting immigrants in the name of national security have netted no terrorism prosecutions. In fact, several of these measures could have the opposite effect and actually make us less safe, as targeted communities of immigrants are afraid to come forward with information.
SOURCE - Newspaper articles, various security experts, and think tanks
Your opinion of me is just that...yours. You have every right to it. I'd be willing to bet most people don't find me entertaining as you. Most people are probably bothered by me or aggravated by me. But then again most people are assholes so I wear their hatred as a badge of honor.
Anyone who has not been accused of being an asshole, stand up.
Thought so. Radar is right. Everyone is an asshole.
I'm sure there are some genuinely super terrific uber-nice people who never get pissed. I've just never met one yet.
Radar you are one wacked out mofo.
This country will never be right until we get a handle on all these illegal aliens who have invaded our country and continue to drain our social services.
This is the most comical thread going right now and neither of you are even trying
Fortunately we are studying assholes and nobody is passing gas.
When the smoking lamp gets lit, then run.
And again, illegal immigrants don't create any of this.
Radar you are one wacked out mofo.
This country will never be right until we get a handle on all these illegal aliens who have invaded our country and continue to drain our social services.
The country would be a lot closer to being right if we abolished all federal immigration laws which are 100% unconstitutional and the organization that illegally enforce those illegal laws. It would be a lot closer to being right if we kept the undocumented immigrants and got rid of scumbags like you.
Guarding our border from illegal aliens.
The guy in that photo couldn't guard his depends underwear from being soiled twice a day.
Target practice!!!
Civilians have set up sensors and cameras at locations along the U.S./Mexican border to capture illegals and contraband—every day—as it comes across the border. This photo was taken January 17, 2007 and "netted" 23 illegals and 150 pounds of contraband, probably drugs.
The American Patrol (
www.americanpatrol.com) is a handful of citizens dedicating their lives to protecting the southern border. They have even placed cameras and censors near the border to catch illegals entering the country. It is estimated that between 15 and 40 million illegals are in the U.S. Three million are expected to arrive this year—and the U.S. government has made no plans to address what a reasonable person would infer is a dire threat to national security. The U.S. government is, however, imprisoning border patrol agents who attempt to prevent illegals from entering.
The Bush plan for illegal immigration: Imprison those trying to stop it
It gets a little overwhelming when you realize that, when you count the different ways the American people are under attack from their own government, it is all of them—including the very lines that define our national boundaries are under attack. The truth has been best stated by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO): The Democrats want millions of Mexicans so they can buy their votes with entitlement programs; the Republicans want millions of Mexicans for the cheap labor. Then Walter Burien comes along and says, "Qualify the motive—it’s the money." To the leaders in government and industry who have promoted this migratory disaster and all the people who have been "just doing their jobs," there is no conscious, long-range plan to enslave mankind, its just the money. How pathetic.
Take all the photos you want. Just don't let me catch you, or anyone of the other scumbags in American Patrol, Minuteman Project, Save our State, or any of the other Nazi and racist infested hate groups do anything to physically stop them or I'll be there to defend them with force...and by force I mean deadly force.
Tom Tancredo is an idiot and so is Steve King and Lou Dobbs. It's no wonder you like them. They speak at a level 'tards like you can understand.
Except for when an illegal alien does something really horrific, such as when illegal aliens killed Denver Police Officer Don Young and Los Angeles County Deputy David March, or when one dragged his girlfriend to death behind his car, we rarely hear about the crime being committed specifically by illegal aliens.
There are a number of reasons why. A large part of the reason is that the overwhelming majority of the MSM generally believe that illegal immigration is a "victimless crime" and, as such, it is not worthy to do any real reporting on. Some more is due to the fact that illegal aliens are often silent on family violence and afraid to report crime within their communities leaving much of the crime totally unreported. It is also due to the fact that the MSM rarely make any distinction between crimes committed by US citizen perpetrators and illegal alien perpetrators. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to not let us know. Then too, the FBI and Justice Dept. just don't track it.
As much as I do not like siding with the MSM, in their defense, establishing the residency of a perpetrator often takes much longer and with the ever decreasing news cycles there is just no time to check and get it confirmed. The end result is that most crimes being committed by illegal aliens are simply not reported as being committed by an illegal alien because by the time the perpetrator's residency is actually identified it is usually "old news." However, that does not excuse the MSM from reporting the facts in high profile cases where there are numerous follow-on stories. Nor does it excuse them from doing investigative reporting on the collective number of crimes being committed.
While the murders of Officer Young and Deputy March and the recent horrific dragging death were national news, few know about illegal alien Cornelio Rivera Zamites molesting and then strangling to death four year old Esmerelda Nava. Yet such horrible things are fairly common and are happening more and more frequently.
the rest of the story:
http://www.usillegalaliens.com/impacts_of_illegal_immigration_crime.htmlTake all the photos you want. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....
You couldn't get out of a paper bag.:rolleyes:
Hard numbers: Illegal alien drunk drivers in North Carolina
michellemalkin.com ^ | April 19, 2008 | Michelle Malkin
Posted on Saturday, April 19, 2008 4:30:35 PM by Free ThinkerNY
Hard numbers: Illegal alien drunk drivers in North Carolina
By Michelle Malkin • April 19, 2008
WRAL reports on a new statistical breakdown of illegal alien drunk drivers in North Carolina. It’s a blood-pressure-raising look at the deadly revolving door, catch-and-release, the deportation abyss, and the danger of sanctuary policies embraced by those sworn to defend and protect the public:
Seven-year-old Marcus Lassiter won’t see his eighth birthday. George Smith was on his morning commute to Duke University but never made it to work. Betty Coates might struggle with daily tasks for the rest of her life.
Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell sees a pattern among the cases of these victims of drunken driving: Each accused driver was in the United States illegally.
Bizzell pointed to Hipolito Hernandez, an illegal immigrant who faces second-degree murder charges in the hit-and-run that killed Marcus last Sunday.
“This case here is a prime example of the justice system letting the people down,” Bizzell said.
Nearly 300 illegal immigrants were convicted on driving-while-impaired charges and placed in North Carolina prisons in 2007.
Hispanics also account for 18 percent of drunken-driving arrests, while making up less than 7 percent of the state’s population, according to a study from the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center aired in WRAL’s documentary “Focal Point: Crossing the Line.”
The study also showed that Hispanics involved in car crashes were 2.5 times more likely to be drunk than white drivers and three times more likely to be drunk than black drivers.
In the three cases listed above, each of the accused drunken drivers had extensive contact with the judicial system – but had managed to elude the immigration system until these incidents.
Johnston County is lucky to have a law enforcement leader who refuses to capitulate to open-borders hectoring and propaganda. He gets it:
Latino advocacy groups often urge the public to step back from the emotion over immigration and focus on the individual crimes.
Advocates admit that drunk driving is a problem within the Hispanic community and have aired public-service ads to combat the problem.
Drunk driving is also the No. 1 killer of young Hispanic men, according to the UNC study.
Bizzell said the tragedy is that deaths such as Marcus’ and debilitating injuries such as Coates’ are preventable.
“This isn’t about race. This isn’t about Mexico versus the United States,” Bizzell said. “It’s about a drunk Mexican that’s illegal, driving drunk, no operator’s license, stolen vehicle, killing a little 7-year-old boy.”
None of them is an illegal immigrant, but even if they were, their immigration status has nothing to do with any drunk driving or other crimes. Would it make you feel better if the drunk drivers were citizens?
Undocumented immigrants are more than 4 times less likely to commit any crimes than American citizens.
I asked the Miami Police Department’s spokesman, Detective Delrish Moss, about his employer’s policy on lawbreaking illegals. In September, the force
arrested a Honduran visa violator for seven vicious rapes. The previous year, Miami cops had had the suspect in custody for lewd and lascivious molestation, without checking his immigration status. Had they done so, they would have discovered his visa overstay, a deportable offense, and so could have forestalled the rapes. “We have shied away from unnecessary involvement dealing with immigration issues,” explains Moss, choosing his words carefully, “because of our large immigrant population.”
Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:
• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.
• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
• The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.
The rest of the story:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.htmlA great link you all can read about illegal aliens screwing this country:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.htmlIllegal Aliens' Unstoppable
Third World Crime Wave In US
By Frosty Wooldridge
2-1-4
Last summer, in Boulder, Colorado, eight illegal aliens raped eight American women. The aliens fled back to Mexico. One was caught. In a nearby city of Longmont, a used car dealer was driven out of business because he suffered so much theft from his lot that he bankrupted. An illegal alien killed a California cop, John Marsh, last year. Robberies and break-ins have become the norm in California. They've become the pattern in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and dozens of other states. But the sobering realities concerning these crimes point to one fact--they are illegal aliens. They are importing themselves into this country with a vengeance. They are deadly, pernicious and organized. They represent the worst of what is common in the Third World.
In her recent scathing report, 'THE ILLEGAL ALIEN CRIME WAVE' by brilliant investigative reporter, Heather MacDonald, our country is being assaulted by a crime wave that grows steadily and viciously.
A full 95% of all outstanding warrants for homicide, which totaled 1,500 last year in Los Angeles, pointed to illegal aliens. Soberingly, two thirds of all fugitive felony warrants, totaling a horrifying 17,000, were for illegal aliens. To make matters worse, in 1995 a report showed that 60% of the 20,000-strong 18th Street gang in southern California was composed of illegal aliens. That gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia on drug distribution schemes, extortion and drive-by assassinations. They commit assault and robberies every day of the week. A night of crime to them is like a day of work for American citizens.
How did it come about and why is it spreading? In 1979, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Daryl Gates enacted Special Order 40. Astoundingly, as if insanity took the front row seat in their minds, leaders of dozens of cities from San Francisco to Miami and New York City adopted this special order. This law prohibits police officers from arresting illegal aliens. In reality, it?s a carte blanche invitation for crime to grow in our country, putting citizens at risk for their lives.
"If I see a deportee from the Mara Salvatrucha prison in El Salvador crossing the street in LA, I can't touch him," said a Los Angeles police officer. "I can't arrest him for an immigration felony."
Boulder, Colorado practices the same 'sanctuary' policy for illegal aliens. The mayor of the city openly encourages illegal aliens by making sure the police chief does not arrest illegals. Some of Boulder's immigration lawyers were so bold as to offer publicly announced classes for illegal aliens on how to avoid arrest, detention and deportation by immigration agents. The result in that town shows a tripling of the illegal alien population as well as jobs taken away from citizens and the eight violent rapes.
Not far away in Denver last week, an illegal alien, Javier Cruz-Caballero, purposely ran down police officer, Robert Bryant, while the officer operated a radar gun in a school walk zone. Witnesses saw the Mexican national rev up his engine while taking dead-aim at the officer. Bryant flew 30 feet through the air while suffering a broken leg and head lacerations. He could have easily been killed.
At a greater level, New York's Mayor Bloomberg supports illegal alien crime by maintaining a 'sanctuary policy' in that city. Last year, four illegals raped and killed a New York jogger. That crime was one of thousands of crimes committed by illegal aliens who are protected from the law. But more horrific in impact of this loss of the rule-of-law, former Mayor Guiliana practiced Special Order 40. Several illegal aliens protected by the Order participated in 9/11. The death toll reached 2,800, but the impact on our nation reverberates today. Yet, Special Order 40 continues full force in protecting the estimated 10 million illegal aliens in our country.
However, thousands of them are killing, raping, robbing and driving illegally in our country. Over 400,000 deportees continue walking around free in our country. The ones that commit crimes and are caught make up a full 29% of our prison populations. They cost American taxpayers nearly $1 billion annually to feed, house and care for them in our prisons. And, yet, Special Order 40, continues as if it was a fig leaf for welcoming hardened alien criminals.
These examples of illegal immigrant crime depict a growing menace to our functioning society. While a sleepy American public watches idly and a Congress refuses to enforce our borders while mayors adopt the 'sanctuary policy', we citizens receive an average of 2,200 illegals every 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days per year. Since the Amnesty policy was announced, the invasion intensifies with greater numbers.
Where does that leave you? If you're in California, you're planning on moving to Idaho or Montana because it's already too late. With over 3.5 million illegals, the crime wave is beyond stopping. If you're in Georgia, you're probably stewing under your breath, but you don't have a clue that it's going to get worse. In Chicago, they either take jobs or rob banks or set up drug, prostitution and theft rings. If you're in Florida, it is no longer an American city. Houston is just as bad. It grows worse in every city in America.
It's called THIRD WORLD MOMENTUM.
The key is to understand that in the Third World--corruption, crime, child prostitution, bashing in peoples' heads, torture and worse is the NORM. Why? Because the rule-of-law no longer applies. Today, in America, concerning illegal immigration, our public officials who were sworn to uphold the Constitution have abstained from their oaths of office. We're forced NOT to talk about it via being politically correct, yet we are the victims of our own silence. Because the American public still hasn't figured this crisis out or keeps thinking it will go away on its own.IT IS GOING TO GET WORSE and you or your loved ones will become victims given enough time. With Special Order 40 in your city, another 9/11 can't be far off!
Source: Heather MacDonald, City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute, January 15, 2004, THE ILLEGAL ALIEN CRIME WAVE.
Frosty Wooldridge (frostyw@juno.com), (
www.frostywooldridge.com) is a teacher and author who has bicycled 100,000 miles on six continents to see overpopulation up close and ugly. Next book: 'INCURSION INTO AMERICA: IMMIGRATION'S UNARMED INVASION - DEADLY CONSEQUENCES' If you have been affected by illegal immigration, write as much of your story as you like and submit it to the author for inclusion into the book. All names and places will remain private.
http://www.rense.com/general48/comp.htm100% of those so-called statistics is false. It makes sense that you'd quote them since you're a dishonest prick who is so stupid he couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map. I pity gutless, brainless, pussies who don't know shit about freedom, who aren't patriotic, and who are pussies and internet trolls. Your sad little life is so empty, you post lies and stupidity in an effort to get a rise out of me.
I don't get mad. I just post the truth and invite you to come to L.A. to talk your shit.
UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 35
Failed run on Luberwacko ticket????
The beauty of the internet is I can post the facts about illegal immigration all the way to LA and never have to leave home!!! :lol2:
The beauty of the internet is that even insane whackos and jackasses like you are free to post all the disinformation, propaganda, and lies you want about so-called illegal immigration which gives me the chance to prove how stupid you are, and to set the facts straight.
Looks like your racist propaganda photos are on a site that doesn't like hotlinking.
Great set of links about illegal immigration as well:
http://www.immigrationwatchdog.com/?page_id=1998Looks like your racist propaganda photos are on a site that doesn't like hotlinking.
But Paully I can see them just fine.
100% of those so-called statistics is false. It makes sense that you'd quote them since you're a dishonest prick who is so stupid he couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map. I pity gutless, brainless, pussies who don't know shit about freedom, who aren't patriotic, and who are pussies and internet trolls. Your sad little life is so empty, you post lies and stupidity in an effort to get a rise out of me.
I don't get mad. I just post the truth and invite you to come to L.A. to talk your shit.
FTR.
by Matthew Quirk
How to Grow a Gang
With anti-immigrant sentiment rising, mass deportation is making a comeback. During fiscal 2006 and 2007, the number of deportation proceedings jumped from 64,000 to 164,000. This fiscal year, it is expected to hit 200,000, an all-time high.
Latino gang members have been targeted for particularly aggressive action. Since 2005, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dragnets have swept up more than 6,000 suspected gangsters. From 2005 to 2007, arrests—usually preludes to deportation—increased more than fivefold.
The United States has been down this road before; the mid-1990s saw a similar wave of criminal deportations. That one helped turn a small gang from Los Angeles, Mara Salvatrucha (better known as MS-13), into an international menace and what Customs and Border Protection now calls America’s “most dangerous gang.” It’s not clear that this one will turn out much better.
MS-13 formed in the Rampart area of Los Angeles in 1988 or 1989. A civil war in El Salvador had displaced a fifth of that country’s population, and a small number of the roughly 300,000 Salvadorans living in L.A. banded together to form the gang. But MS-13 didn’t really take off until several years later, in El Salvador, after the U.S. adopted a get-tough policy on crime and immigration and began deporting first thousands, and then tens of thousands, of Central Americans each year, including many gang members.
Introduced into war-ravaged El Salvador, the gang spread quickly among demobilized soldiers and a younger generation accustomed to violence. Many deportees who had been only loosely affiliated with MS-13 in the U.S. became hard-core members after being stranded in a country they did not know, with only other gang members to rely on. As the gang proliferated and El Salvador tried to crack down on it, some deportees began finding their way back into the U.S.—in many cases bringing other, newly recruited gangsters with them. Deportation, incubation, and return: it’s a cycle we’ve been caught in ever since.
Today, MS-13 has perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 members in the United States. It has grown moderately in recent years and now has a presence in 43 states (up from 32 in 2003 and 15 in 1996). Most members of the gang are foreign-born. Since 2005, ICE has arrested about 2,000 of them; 13 percent have been deported before.
Salvadoran police report that 90 percent of deported gang members return to the U.S. After several spins through the deportation-and-return cycle, MS-13 members now control many of the “coyote” services that bring aliens up from Central America. Deportation—a free trip south—can be quite profitable for those gang members who bring others back with them upon their return.
The surge in arrests and deportations in the past three years coincides with a serious U.S. effort to improve coordination with Central American governments—the better to track gang members wherever they go. But states like El Salvador have a lot to keep track of these days. MS-13 and other gangs born in the United States now have 70,000 to 100,000 members in Central America, concentrated mostly in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The murder rate in each of these countries is now higher than that of Colombia, long the murder capital of Latin America.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to repeat the mistakes it made in the ’90s. Most ICE arrests have been for immigration-related offenses, not criminal offenses. Suspected “associates” are lumped in with gang members, which only reinforces gang ties; with dabblers and minor offenders, experts agree that anti-gang intervention programs are better at preventing gangs’ growth. For hard-core gang members, quickie deportations on immigration charges are often no more than short-term fixes; lengthy American prison sentences would be more effective.
Only the U.S. has the law-enforcement personnel, the criminal-justice system, and the money to deal with the problem. Although the idea is poison in the current political climate, the way to get rid of these gangs, paradoxically, may involve keeping them here.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/world-in-numbersWell, let's see now... Radar's losing his argument on this thread and the Hillary v. McCain thread and in both he's offering to try and win with his fists.
Damn, what an evidence of a vauntedly superior mind.:rolleyes:
Paul, you're going to have to accept that other people get it right, and for the right reasons. Failure to do so is immature and beneath you. At least it should be.
First, I've never been remotely near losing any argument to you in any thread ever. Next, I didn't offer to try to win an argument with my fists. I invited you to prove your point where you accused me of being a "pussy".
I do accept that other people get things right and for the right reasons. None of the people who get things right support federal immigration laws or the unconstitutional organizations who enforce them.
Yeah? Then how about you start sounding like you do?
And you did offer to win the argument by beating up Merc. That is plain to any objective reader of those threads.
I do accept that other people get things right and for the right reasons. None of the people who get things right support federal immigration laws or the unconstitutional organizations who enforce them.
Radar, since the Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional, as the constitution gave the federal government no authority to purchase land, it would seem that by your argument the Unites States does not extend west of the Mississippi. Please discuss.
The Louisiana Purchase was indeed unconstitutional. If we hadn't made that purchase, we could have avoided the civil war. Also, we wouldn't have so many rednecks fucking up our elections. Even though I loved Jefferson, he was wrong to use government money to purchase this land....despite it being a really good deal.
They'd have been better off as a different country. My guess is by now, if we hadn't have purchased the land, it would still belong to America because France would have been lost in WWII. After Germany lost, we'd have gotten that land.
We wanted New Orleans, and those cheese eating surrender monkeys would have handed it over to us when (not if) we attempted to take it by force - but they probably would not have given us the rest of the territory. Who knows for sure how that would have affected us later as far as allegiences, but I doubt we'd have beaten Germany under a confederacy with fewer resources...
Regardless, the purchase was unconstitutional so it simply does not exist right? Just like immigration laws.
Let's also not forget that constitutionally,
Texas is still an independent republic.
The Louisiana Purchase was indeed unconstitutional. If we hadn't made that purchase, we could have avoided the civil war. Also, we wouldn't have so many rednecks fucking up our elections. Even though I loved Jefferson, he was wrong to use government money to purchase this land....despite it being a really good deal.
They'd have been better off as a different country. My guess is by now, if we hadn't have purchased the land, it would still belong to America because France would have been lost in WWII. After Germany lost, we'd have gotten that land.
Now that is some funny shit. What a fucking idiot. Yea, you tell that to all the people West of the Mississippi. In this case you should give up your house and all your belongings to some illegal alien family. What a bunch of convoluted thinking. You have no idea what would have happened if we had not purchased the land.
With you in Georgia, I can be certain America would be better off if all of the Louisiana Purchase were another country.
With you in Georgia, I can be certain America would be better off if all of the Louisiana Purchase were another country.
Then that would put you in another country right?
That would put me in the United States of America, and him in redneck bible-thumping, anti-evolution, global warming denying, racist, sister-fucking, land. That's sort of a long name. Maybe they could just call themselves The Confederate States of America.
... or call you an a-hole, but that wouldn't be nice now would it? And what would it accomplish?
Awww, it looks like the poor little fella got his feelings hurt. Maybe your sister can kiss it all better for ya.
nope, Honestly radar - you don't mean enough to to me for my feelings to be hurt by you. As usual, you missed the point.
That would put me in the United States of America, and him in redneck bible-thumping, anti-evolution, global warming denying, racist, sister-fucking, land. That's sort of a long name. Maybe they could just call themselves The Confederate States of America.
Well you can't be talking about me.
I was born in the Northern states.
I don't go to church or read the bible, never did.
I fully support evolution.
Global warming? it's a toss. Maybe.
My sister is dead.
I am no more a racist than you are anti-white.
But you are a cocksucker.:D
...Texas is still an independent republic.
Note: the "location" I have specified.
Maybe they could just call themselves The Confederate States of America.
IMDB page for
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America.
[SIZE=3]San Francisco: Sanctuary City Gone Awry[/SIZE]
San Francisco's political establishment has long prided itself on providing a haven for illegal immigrants. Mayor Gavin Newsom even launched a taxpayer-funded $83,000 "public awareness campaign" earlier this year assuring illegal immigrants that the "sanctuary city" by the bay was in their court.
The brutal and senseless murder last month of Tony Bologna and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, at the hands of Edwin Ramos, a native of El Salvador and known member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang, was a reminder that inviting illegal activity can turn deadly. The Bolognas were on their way back from a family picnic when they inadvertently blocked Ramos' car from making a left turn in the Excelsior district. When Bologna politely backed up to let the other car past, Ramos responded by opening fire and killing all three passengers. Ramos has been charged with three counts of murder, with the added penalty of street-gang involvement.
This certainly wasn't Ramos' first brush with the law. He was booked both on felony weapons charges and for being a member of a criminal street gang earlier this year, but escaped prosecution for lack of evidence. However, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Police Department "cited 'numerous documented contacts' that officers had with Ramos and [his companion] Lopez, and said both were active members of the MS-13 street gang.'" But thanks to San Francisco's sanctuary city status, instead of being reported to federal immigration authorities and deported, Ramos was allowed continue to roam the streets of San Francisco until his arrest for the Bologna killings.
Earlier this month, San Bernardino County officials threatened to sue the city of San Francisco for sending a group of Honduran, illegal immigrant, juvenile crack dealers to group homes in the city of Yucaipa without notification. Eight of them simply walked away from the unsecured group homes and only one has been recaptured. Officials later acknowledged that this wasn't the first time San Francisco had unloaded criminal illegal immigrants onto San Bernardino County. In fact, Yucaipa has seen a rise in violent crime in accordance with the influx of foreign offenders to its group homes in recent years.
well, just don't forget they contribute billions more than they take.:right:
I never do forget that. It's an indisputable fact.
It's an indisputable fact.
Wow, for an indisputable fact it sure is open to a lot of debate and analysis. There are quite a few studies on each side of the issue.
well, just don't forget they contribute billions more than they take.:right:
Why yes, "they" do. Ask the IRS.
By the way, most immigrants aren't MS-13 members and/or crack dealers.
i'll ask the IRS while you run to the hospitals, police departments, and prisons, mmmkay? don't forget to make sure you have your seat belt on tight and your insurance up to date to, because while you're driving around if one of them runs into you they sure as hell won't be paying for the damages.
Ohhhkay. And what exactly would I be looking for at those institutions?
If one of "them" runs into me? I guess that would apply to anyone without car insurance (including myself). :rolleyes:
Clearly he's dumb enough to buy into the lies being spread by Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, and other idiots. They think "hispanic" means "illegal"...not that we have any illegal immigrants in America. There are none.
This is top-and-tail posting .... I read the first page (and thought, oh, Radar has made a thread to play in all by himself) and the last page (and thought, are we still #$%&ing arguing about this? We had this #$%&ing topic last year!)
[searches for broken record smiley]
The immigration status of this homicidal maniac shouldn't enter into the equation. Whether he was living here or in Honduras, or wherever, he was more likely to commit this sort of crime than the average Joe. The lives of innocent people in $random_country are every bit as valuable (perhaps not economically*) as those in any other.
It would be nice if we could eliminate or suppress all dangerous nutjobs, wherever they are in the world.
* It's sort of crass to think about it this way, and I don't have the numbers to back it up, but I think the expected lifetime economic contribution of the average person in the United States is going to be much greater than that of the average person in a developing country.
(...are we still #$%&ing arguing about this? We had this #$%&ing topic last year!)
[searches for broken record smiley]
Yeah, I think the same thing whenever this crap pops up here. And then I let myself get sucked into it. :yeldead:
me three... but hey everyone knew the world was flat too.
It would be nice if we could eliminate or suppress all dangerous nutjobs, wherever they are in the world.
I thought you guys hated Bush. :lol2:
