Tag Archives: immigration

The GOP, Andy Borowitz and Immigration

Predictably, Congressional Republicans and their faux constitutionalist echo chamber are screaming that the President’s recent immigration order exceeded his authority.

It didn’t.

Congress has given the Executive branch wide discretion over deportation priorities and as both conservative and liberal legal authorities have confirmed, the President  is exercising that discretion in a manner consistent with Congressionally-endorsed policies such as family unification. As legal scholar Walter Dellinger pointed out:

There are 11.3 million people in the United States who, for one reason or another, are deportable. The largest number that can be deported in any year under the resources provided by Congress is somewhere around 400,000. Congress has recognized this and in 6 U.S.C. 202 (5) it has directed the secretary of homeland security to establish “national immigration enforcement policies and priorities.” In the action announced tonight, the secretary has done just that, and the president has approved.

In other words, Congress has never supplied funding sufficient to deport more than a small number of the undocumented, and the President–every President–has been given the discretion to decide who among those living here illegally should be targeted. And every President has exercised that discretion. As a comment on Andrew Sullivan’s blog put it,

As there is an existing, bipartisan agreement that some 96.5% of the undocumented population will be allowed to remain here (i.e., the “how many” question), Obama’s executive action asks only: which undocumented immigrants should populate the 400,000 who are deported?

The question is not whether Obama should increase the number of undocumented immigrants (he isn’t), but whether he should apply severely limited resources in a targeted fashion (e.g., new arrivals, criminals, etc.) or indiscriminately (e.g., a law abiding mother of a U.S. citizen-child)? And, is Obama plausibly “tearing up the Constitution” if he deports the only number of people he can (about 400,000), but prioritizes who should be deported within such Congressionally imposed constraints?

The answer to that question is self-evident. The GOP should be embarrassed to be making the hysterical, ahistorical and factually-inaccurate assertions that are currently filling the airwaves–but this isn’t your father’s GOP and in case you haven’t noticed, this particular President is  (in the eyes of the Republican base) by definition illegitimate.

Sometimes, when logic and fair play are clearly not going to carry the day, satire is all we have left. (I’m laughing because otherwise, I’ll cry.)  Andy Borowitz has been on a roll lately, and with respect to our current kerfuffle over the President’s immigration Executive Action, he has hit a home run/touchdown/nerve. I’m quoting the whole thing, because it’s just too good–and too true– to truncate:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled his party’s long-awaited plan on immigration on Wednesday, telling reporters, “We must make America somewhere no one wants to live.”

Appearing with House Speaker John Boehner, McConnell said that, in contrast to President Obama’s “Band-Aid fixes,” the Republican plan would address “the root cause of immigration, which is that the United States is, for the most part, habitable.”

“For years, immigrants have looked to America as a place where their standard of living was bound to improve,” McConnell said. “We’re going to change that.”

Boehner said that the Republicans’ plan would reduce or eliminate “immigration magnets,” such as the social safety net, public education, clean air, and drinkable water.

The Speaker added that the plan would also include the repeal of Obamacare, calling healthcare “catnip for immigrants.”

Attempting, perhaps, to tamp down excitement about the plan, McConnell warned that turning America into a dystopian hellhole that repels immigrants “won’t happen overnight.”

“Our crumbling infrastructure and soaring gun violence are a good start, but much work still needs to be done,” he said. “When Americans start leaving the country, we’ll know that we’re on the right track.”

In closing, the two congressional leaders expressed pride in the immigration plan, noting that Republicans had been working to make it possible for the past thirty years.

As McConnell would say, “A-Yup.”

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About Those “Illegals”

The Economic Policy Institute recently released a comprehensive report on immigration and the economy. The report was massive, and it included reams of information on both legal immigrants and the undocumented persons often labeled “Illegal.”

In one section of the report, researchers addressed a common accusation–that undocumented workers are a burden on government, and a net cost to taxpayers.

Unauthorized immigrants are a net positive for public budgets because they contribute more to the system than they take out. Unauthorized immigrants generally cannot receive benefits from government programs, except in some cases, such as when unauthorized immigrant children receive public education, and in some states that allow unauthorized immigrants to attend state colleges at in-state tuition rates. Nevertheless, most of these unauthorized immigrants will still pay taxes. The vast majority pay sales taxes in states with sales taxes, and property taxes through properties that they own or rent. Additionally, most unauthorized immigrant workers also pay payroll and income taxes. The Social Security Administration estimates that 75 percent of unauthorized immigrants are actually on formal payrolls, either using fraudulent Social Security numbers or Social Security numbers of the deceased. Unauthorized immigrants pay into Social Security via automatic payroll deductions, but they can never claim Social Security benefits. In 2005, it was estimated that unauthorized immigrants paid about $7 billion per year in Social Security taxes that they will never be able to reclaim.

Unauthorized immigrants are also unlikely to receive any income credits available through the tax code, or to receive a tax refund if they overpaid in their regular payroll withholdings. The Tax Policy Center estimates that 78 percent of American households that earned less than $33,000 owed no federal income taxes in 2011.19 Many low-income taxpayers only paid marginal amounts if they did owe. Because of their low income levels, most unauthorized immigrants would likely fall into either of these categories. A significant portion of unauthorized immigrants file taxes using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs); however, many unauthorized immigrants don’t file because they fear deportation. If they don’t file, they are never refunded money that was automatically withheld from their paychecks.

The research also addressed another common belief: that unauthorized immigrants use (abuse?) public support programs like welfare, unemployment insurance, and food stamps. The data suggests otherwise.

While it is possible that an unauthorized immigrant could benefit from a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident family member receiving income support through a federal or state program, unauthorized immigrants themselves by and large are ineligible for such programs because of their immigration status.

In response to the repeated demands of our contemporary Nativists that we just deport the 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants, the report noted:

Aside from the astronomical costs it would impose and the fact that it’s likely to be a logistical impossibility, it would actually hurt, not help, the economy and the jobs situation…while unauthorized immigrant workers add to the supply of labor, they also consume goods and services, thereby generating economic activity and creating jobs. One way to think of this is to remember that the labor force is growing all the time due to both immigration and native-born population growth, and that’s okay, because the economy expands too. We all understand this intuitively; that’s why we don’t worry when a new graduate enters the labor force. We know those new graduates buy food and cars and clothes and pay rent. By the same token, unauthorized immigrants are not just workers, they are also consumers. We could remove them, which would indeed reduce the number of workers, but it would also reduce the jobs created by the economic activity they generate. So the right choice is to bring the unauthorized immigrants who are already here out of the shadows so they can help the country realize its economic potential.

Finally, the report also addressed the influx of unaccompanied children from Central America:

Tens of thousands of migrant children (or minors) from Mexico and Central America arrive at the Southwest border every year without a parent or guardian, but more recently, they have been arriving in increasing numbers from the Northern Triangle of Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras… some of the principal reasons for their arrival are violence and criminality in their home countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have some of the highest homicide rates in the world), including being forced to join criminal gangs under threat of violence or death; false rumors that children will receive some sort of legal status if they show up on the border and turn themselves in to immigration authorities; and the desire to reunite with family members living in the United States.

(What the dry language of a research report fails to note is that these are children–frightened, alone and desperate for safety, and that the vitriol with which they are being met is shameful, and should be a national embarrassment.)

Those of us who have a forlorn attachment to hard evidence and documented facts can continue to hope that eventually, reality will inform policy.

Eventually.

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Religious Liberty? Hardly.

Historians tell us that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment went through more than 20 drafts, with the Founders rejecting formulations like “there shall be no National Church.” The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” The courts have uniformly held that this language not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion or state Church, but also prohibits government actions that endorse or sponsor religion, favor one religion over another, or that prefer religion to non-religion, or non-religion over religion.

In other words, government is prohibited from playing favorites–from either benefitting or burdening citizens based upon their beliefs or lack thereof.

There’s constitutional principle, and then, of course, there’s real life.

A woman named Margaret Doughty, who has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, recently applied for US citizenship. One of the standard questions asked of applicants is  whether they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country. According to Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Doughty replied as follows:

“I am sure the law would never require a 64 year-old woman like myself to bear arms, but if I am required to answer this question, I cannot lie. I must be honest. The truth is that I would not be willing to bear arms. Since my youth I have had a firm, fixed and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or in the bearing of arms. I deeply and sincerely believe that it is not moral or ethical to take another person’s life, and my lifelong spiritual/religious beliefs impose on me a duty of conscience not to contribute to warfare by taking up arms…my beliefs are as strong and deeply held as those who possess traditional religious beliefs and who believe in God…I want to make clear, however, that I am willing to perform work of national importance under civilian direction or to perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States if and when required by the law to do so.”

Seems like a heartfelt and entirely acceptable position to me, but no. The immigration service responded by demanding that she “submit a letter on official church stationery, attesting to the fact that you are a member in good standing and the church’s official position on the bearing of arms.” In other words, unless she can demonstrate an affiliation with an established church with an established position on the bearing of arms, this 64-year-old woman cannot become a citizen.

The official position of the immigration service, evidently, is that atheists cannot have moral objections to killing other humans. (Nor, presumably, can members of churches without “official positions” against violence. If you are a Quaker, okay; if you are a Presbyterian or a Jew, not so much.)

When the U.S. still had a military draft, this same approach imposed a real burden on conscientious objectors who could not claim membership in a pacifist congregation. Eventually, the courts agreed that personal moral positions would be deemed adequate–but only if the individual claiming conscientious objector status could “prove” that he had long harbored such compunctions. Members of religious congregations could simply verify that membership; non-members and non-believers had to provide “clear and convincing” evidence of their beliefs, by bringing in people who would testify to past conversations, letters they’d written expressing pacifist sentiments, or the like.

You might think about that, and about Margaret Doughty, the next time some rightwing pundit whines about the advance of the secular hordes, or the (non-existent )”war on Christianity.”

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That Was Quick…..

Heritage Foundation analyst Jason Richwine, the co-author of a study claiming the immigration reform bill pending in the Senate would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, has decided to spend more time with his family. Or something. His departure from Heritage was hasty, to say the least.

Among other things, Richwine’s “study,” which was widely panned (even Paul Ryan has criticized its methodology) came to conclusions that were diametrically opposed to a previous study issued by Heritage just a couple of years ago. But that earlier effort was issued before Jim DeMint became Heritage’s new chief.

The study’s conclusions were based in large part upon Richwine’s assertion that today’s immigrants have low IQ’s that they will pass on to their children–a racist assumption for which there is no credible evidence. In the wake of the report, Richwine’s dissertation–in which he espoused similar theories–became public, as did the fact that he had written articles in 2010 for a website founded by Richard Spencer, a self-described “nationalist” who writes frequently about race and against “the abstract notion of human equality.”

Heritage could hardly have been unaware of Richwine’s history; evidently, they saw his beliefs as a feature, not a bug.

The think tank has always had an ideological agenda, but the organization has previously made a show, at least, of actual scholarship. This episode has badly damaged whatever credibility Heritage retained. Richwine’s abrupt departure only underscores the damage.

Ironically, had they issued a less “over the top” report, opponents of immigration reform would undoubtedly have accepted it unquestioningly and used it as ammunition to derail reform. This product was so flawed, however, that it has been left to Rush Limbaugh to defend it. As a Maddow Blog post put it “The irony is, Heritage produced this report for exactly one reason: to provide some semblance of political cover to Republicans who needed a credible excuse to reject a bipartisan reform plan. The goal was to help the GOP and the far-right cause. The extent to which this backfired is extraordinary.”

It’s hard not to wonder how long Jim DeMint–an anti-science zealot who wouldn’t know real scholarship if he fell over it–will last.

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Mississippi, Arizona, Ohio, Indiana

Another election day has come and gone, and while I’ve grown leery of predicting anything in an era when crazy is the most prominent characteristic of our political environment, the results may justify a cautious optimism.

Despite the constant references to the “gay agenda,” anyone sentient has long recognized that the group having the real “agenda” has been the extreme religious right—and it’s an agenda that doesn’t have much place for anyone who isn’t one of them. It’s anti-gay, obviously, but it is also anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-freethought….pretty much anti-modernity, actually.

So it was heartening to see results from a referendum in Mississippi, of all places, where the usual subjects were promoting a measure that would have given “personhood” to fertilized eggs—thus outlawing not only abortion, but several methods of birth control. This proved to be a bridge too far even for Mississippi voters, who are not generally considered pinko/socialist/liberal types.

It was also gratifying to see the recall of the Arizona State Senator who had spearheaded that state’s mean-spirited and draconian anti-immigration frenzy. There are legitimate arguments to made about immigration policy, but these sorts of punitive efforts are clearly based upon animosity toward people who “don’t look like us.” (As I have often noted, my own son-in-law is an immigrant who has been in the US for 30 years, and has never encountered any anti-immigrant sentiment. He’s never been asked whether he’s here legally. It’s hard not to attribute that to the fact that he’s a very fair-skinned white guy from England, with a cute British accent, rather than a brown-skinned person with a Spanish accent. But the anti-immigrant movement is all about the rule of law—not bigotry. Right?)

In Ohio, voters overwhelming rejected a mean-spirited effort to punish teachers, firefighters and other public employees for the perceived transgressions of “big” government.

And here in my hometown, we achieved a milestone of sorts with the election of an openly-gay candidate to the City-County Council.

Not only did Zach Adamson, the candidate in question, win election easily, his orientation never became an issue—not overtly, not covertly. If there was any sort of “whisper” campaign, the whisper was so soft no one heard it. Zach ran a close third among the four Democratic at-large candidates (and third among all ten running at large), and focused his campaign upon the issues most important to voters: infrastructure, business climate and other matters with which a municipal government must deal. He stressed his experience as a small business owner, and treated his orientation in the same matter-of-fact fashion he treated everything else. His partner was visible and involved.

Little by little, gay and lesbian candidates around the country have been running similar campaigns—not hiding their homosexuality, but placing sexual orientation in the same context that heterosexual candidates do. It’s one more piece of information about a particular, complex human being. Increasingly, out gay candidates are winning elective office—not just on the coasts, but in places like Indiana and even Texas, where Annise Parker, an out lesbian, just won her second term as Mayor. (Her campaign was successful despite significant anti-gay activity, however; here in Indianapolis, as I noted above, there was no such activity evident.)

I’d love to believe that these elections were a harbinger of a return to collective sanity, but I allowed myself to believe that in the wake of Obama’s victory and I’ve been forcibly reminded otherwise. On the other hand, it’s hard not to see the vicious backlash against Obama as the last gasp of people who “want their country back”—whether they are reacting against an African-American President or simply against the rapidity of social change. The November elections seem qualitatively different, and for that reason more promising.

But I’ve been wrong before.

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