Issue 706 Trump immigration plan: part 4 October 23, 2015

Ok, today we are going to look at probably the most powerful and tough part of the Trump plan on immigration.  It is the issue of birthright citizenship. Let us critique.

Ending Birthright citizenship:  Trump does not want to give automatic citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants if they were born in the United States.  He basically said that they go home with their parents no matter what, rather than have them get United States benefits with the newborns being used as tools to allow the parents to stay in the United States.  It should be noted that the United States is one of a select few countries in the world that have any version of birthright citizenship.  So should we agree that the kids get deported with the parents?  

Well it is not that simple.  The 14th amendment says that:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"

As such, many would interpret that as anyone simply born here can and will be a citizen.  But the amendment was put forth for former black slaves who were originally considered property.  It made sure that their children would be considered citizens.  It also insures that legal immigrants and their children and children adopted from overseas will be considered citizens too.  It really was never meant to be applied to people just visiting or here illegally.  However, court rulings and legal policy and law have applied it to them anyway.  As to whether this is good or bad, I do not really care.  I personally think that our immigration system should be set up to adjust for this interpretation, but I am a voice in the peanut gallery.  But Trump wants to subvert the constitution.  He will either ignore this interpretation, or try to force a vote to change the constitution which is nearly impossible based on the process (a very good thing).  However, we do not want the amendment changed as that could lead to a bad alteration which can cause issues with future immigrants where actual citizens can be deported like with the communist sympathizers who were kicked out of the United States in a flagrant disregard for the U.S. constitution back during the cold war.  As such, we should invest time, effort and money to do battle in court to settle the issue in the right way. A battle that will end up in the Supreme Court to hopefully settle the issue once and for all.

Conclusion:  It is a very bad idea to try to alter the constitution without some clear wording and that need not be re-interpreted by some judge in a courtroom.  Also, I do not trust congress to amend the constitution on just this one issue alone.  I want the court battle that will really settle the issue in the right way.  You cannot take the easy way out for we already discriminated against every immigrant minority in the country at one time or another, and we also discriminated against religions, ideology and race.  Adjusting the constitution in any way may give an open door, through the alterations wording, to racists and other people to kick out undesirables that they believe are harmful.  Obviously that is a dangerous proposition, and Trump saying he will willingly subvert the constitution (at least how I heard it) also is dangerous for the constitution then becomes meaningless leading to mass deportations anyway.  So I cannot support Trump on any part of his plan for the dangerous that arise from it.

Issue 705 Trump Immigration Plan: Part 3 October 22, 2015

Trump is not the most likable guy, but whoever is advising him is giving him some good ideas for the most part.  So let us continue on with some more of "his" plan.

Cutting Funding:  You have heard the term sanctuary cities.  These cities refuse to turn over illegal migrants to authorities and even go as far as providing benefits and government services to those who come to the United States without permission.  As a punishment, Trump would deny all federal aid to any city that violates the law in this way.  This would to a degree work initially, but as cities should not be getting money from the federal government in the first place and these sanctuary cities get used to doing things with less money, this method will be less effective over time.

Overstaying Visas:  Some illegals actually have come to the United States legally and have gotten a document allowing them to stay called a visa.  However, these visas expire and some either forget or refuse to leave.  Trump wants to have these people brought up on criminal penalties for overstaying.  If local police find such individuals, Trump would have them hold the individuals in question until ICE authorities arrive to take custody of them.  However, in my opinion the only part that is truly usable is the ability for authorities to hold people who have overstayed their visas, and even other illegal migrants for that matter.  Trump also wants to add a visa tracking system as well, but how that would work confuses me.  Save for having a NSA like entity spy on these individuals, I do not see how it will work.

Cooperating with Law Enforcement:  A number of illegals, at least the dangerous kind, are part of gangs like MS-13 and La Familia.  As such, Trump wants ICE to be able to work directly with anti-gang task forces on conducting raids against violent street gangs.  My question is, why are they not already doing this?  And how far does this cooperation go?  Are ICE agents going in with gang task force members on raids, or are they merely part of the process to deport gang members who are found to be here illegally?  I don't know why, but my feeling is that this should have and could be happening already.  Additionally, the FBI used to fight organized crime like gangs, so ICE as another federal police force should have an anti-gang intelligence section already or at least access to FBI intelligence documents.  If not, then they really are lacking and thus a complete reform of the federal police agencies may be needed over simply having ICE work with local police.

Conclusion:  These ideas while smart, fall short once you think about it a little.  As such, I need something better than this to help us solve the immigration problem.  The visa over stayers need to be treated better in my opinion as we let them in.  They were invited and people given visas are given the opportunity to stay and even become a citizen.  So something better needs to be done here.  The cutting funding to sanctuary cities is something I agree with, but for all cities as we should not give money out to anyone so long as there is a national debt to pay off.  As to cooperating with law enforcement.  Why are they not doing this already? That has me concerned, but I am going to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt here.  Any case see you tomorrow for part 4.

Issue 704 Trump's Immigration plan: part 2 October 21, 2015

Yippy, day two...of Trump.  Well let us see what part two of my critique has in store.

National E-Verify:  An accepted idea.  In this case, all people in the United States before they are hired will be checked to see if they are citizens or not.  Basically, this insures only people here legally and of course actual U.S. citizens (or legal residents) may be hired.  So more jobs for the 40% of Black teens, and 30% of Hispanic teens who are citizens but do not have jobs (his numbers, but how he got them, I am not sure).

Return of all Criminal aliens:  Basically, if the illegal has committed a crime in the United States like theft, rape and/or murder, they will be deported back to their home countries.  If the foreign government does not accept their citizens back, then the United States will suspend all visas for all of that country's legal residents in the United States and send them all back home.  While the enforcement mechanism is great, the idea is a little bit wacky.  Reason being is that these illegals who committed the crime will be sent home after a trial to be put in jail in their home countries.  Now, keywords here, "jail in their home countries".  Um, do we really think that the home country wants a citizen back who committed rape, or murder before they have done time. Do we really think they will honor another country's court system and place their citizen in jail?  Now if they served their time with hard labor and then were deported back, then I would say this would work.

Separate Offence:  Something I do not agree with, Trump wants to make it a separate and additional crime to commit an offence while here in the country illegally.  Last I checked, it was already a crime to cross the border illegally.  Also, theft is theft, murder is murder.  We do not need justice losing its blindfolds simply because the perpetrator is here illegally.  

End catch and release:  Trump also wants to make it so that if you are caught crossing here illegally, then you are detained and then deported.  No more releasing them.  This is in reaction to the almost 76,000 illegals who were released into the United States population and told to come back on a specific court date.  Of course, the majority never came in for their court dates.  While this makes sense, it will not work well for the people already here that already disappeared into the population.  Also, these people will be detained for long periods of time if done wrong.  At most currently 250,000 are deported each year out of the 11 million illegals here (source Fox News).  This is because they are hard to find in a country of 300 million people.  Also, Trump wants to be rid of all the illegals as he has stated in earlier statements.  But as the Supreme Court has ruled previously, all the illegals (individually) are entitled to a hearing for asylum or other purposes.  All those court cases, assuming the border is secure, would take 40 years and thus lots of money.  Hence why we either need a new Supreme Court ruling or we need to spend a lot of extra money to make a huge amount of courts to oversee each individual hearing at once.

Conclusion:  I will not say I disagree with the overall ideas that Trump and his team presents here.  However, some just do not seem practical.  As such, National E-verify and an alteration to catch and release where hearings are done almost immediately upon arrest for the new illegals coming in would work with respect to future illegals coming into the country.

Issue 703 Trump's Immigration plan: part 1 October 20, 2015

I do not want Donald Trump to be President, but he makes great press because of his mouth.  As such, I am going to dissect and critique his immigration plan.  It will be seven parts, so that is seven days of Trump.  May it begin!

The Wall:  Trump wants to build the wall between Mexico and the United States.  Something that can potentially work if it resembles the Berlin wall.  This means a double wall/fence with patrols going in-between the two barriers.  Basically it is designed to make it very hard to cross the border by slowing the illegal entrants down long enough for a patrol show up to make an arrest.  However, he wants Mexico to pay for it.  Short of annexing Mexico, the only thing that Trump could do if he became President would be to kick Mexico out of the North American Free Trade Agreement and thus tax goods coming in from Mexico.  Trump did not say we would partner with Mexico, so this change in the status quo for trade relations and thus would create economic issues.

More ICE officers:  ICE officers are the men and women who handle illegal migrants that make it through the border.  However, according to Trump's stats, there are only 5,000 such officers that have to deal with well over eleven million illegal migrants.  Trump wants to use money that comes from tax cheats and others who have defrauded the government to pay for their expansion.  Those people who are considered "defrauders" are illegals who obtained tax identification numbers and claimed tax credits (this is apparently legal to do in the United States).  As such, no more tax credits would go to illegal migrants who were allowed to stay in the United States.   This we all can agree with as with respect to increasing law enforcement and ending tax credits.

Conclusion:  These two parts of his plan are the least controversial.  And thus are supportable by most Americans on both sides of the political aisle.  The only real issue here though is who is going to pay for the wall, and I think it is us the tax payers.

Issue 702 Are we responsible? October 19, 2015

When we vote for our representatives and our President, are we responsible for sending our soldiers off to war?  That is the question I ask in today's issue.

I think we are:  We the voters get enamored with our politicians, and we like only our representatives because they give us stuff.  But then they send our soldiers off to war in foreign lands.  It was the politicians that chose to send our troops into Vietnam, Iraq in Gulf War one and then again in Gulf War two to finally be rid of Saddam.  However, that left us going to fight in Iraq longer and the war spreading with us conducting strategic strikes in other countries like Yemen, and Libya amongst others.  In those conflicts we sent our soldiers into harm's way because we elected representatives and Presidents that were willing to send men and women in uniform into battle.   Yes, the soldiers are proud to serve and they are honorable warriors and heroes.  But when they get killed in action and they leave families behind, it is our fault.  We had no need to fight in Iraq and now we got ISIS/ISIL and other terrorist groups to fight as a result.  It was us who elected these scummy politicians who willingly send our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and sons and daughters off to war to a fight we did not start.  It was us who let these representatives send them off to war.

Conclusion:  The thing about representatives is that they represent us and we chose them.  Thus, to a degree it is our fault.  We chose them and then they send us to war.  As such, we should always keep this in mind when we elect our officials, for what they do is a reflection of things we want.  What results is also partly our fault.  The blood is on our hands too.

Issue 701 Smart Immigration October 16, 2015

So we talked about immigration yesterday, but that was on which system worked and was simple enough that avoided discrimination.  But today we are going to discuss smart immigration that can be applied to any immigration system. Let us begin.

Smart Immigration:  For those coming into the country to live here, whether they be non-citizen or a newly naturalized citizen, we want to prevent them from falling into poverty.  We all agree we don't want immigrants and non-citizens on welfare.  But not because they are not citizens or that they just became citizens and we dislike them.  The reason we don't want them getting welfare is because they should not need to be on it in the first place.  As such the government and businesses of all sizes should be able to look at and see if any people coming into the country have the potential to be hired.  Basically if the family member finds a job before they come here then they will be better off.  That is stating the obvious, but a job does no good if the neighborhood has taxes that are so high that it is unaffordable.  So an investment into the immigration system must be made to look at all the communities to find the most livable based on what the skills set of the family coming in and if that job(s) will provide the income they need to be able to thrive in the United States.  Things such as on the job training or training classes would and should be taken into account.  Community support such as local networking, churches/charities and food pantries in case the family falters economically should also be examined. Even establishing early communication between the incoming immigrant/legal resident with their new neighbors would do wonders to aid in making the new arrivals feel welcome.  Basically any support or method to insure that the family member(s) who will be working can support their families and establishing a welcoming community will need to be established.   Of course, if all else fails and the legal resident wants to leave, or the immigrant ceases to want to live in the U.S. and they cannot afford a way home, it should be up to the United States to give them a ticket home as that is the right thing to do.

Conclusion:  Some of these ideas have been discussed and attempted in various ways and in various capacities (most commonly adoption cases).  As such, we know that it can work, but the initial investment may be expensive as the current immigration support systems and ideas here will need to be integrated.  However, the result will be new citizens who can fend for themselves and thrive as part of our national community.

Issue 700 Old Idea: Immigration October 15, 2015

At one point in American History, our immigration system was a bit different.  It relied on how long you lived in country as a guest without committing a crime.  After you lived in the country for the set amount of time, you became a citizen.  So could this idea work now?

Old School Immigration:  How the original immigration system worked was that you had to live in the United States for about ten years without getting into trouble before you became a citizen.  In order to even get into the country however you had to pass a screening exam for diseases, past crimes and if you were from a nation who was hostile to the United States.  Very simple right.  Today's system is more complex due to the politicians desire to have people of certain economic wealth and knowledge come into the country.  Which is understandable as we have a massive welfare apparatus that can be so overburdened that it would collapse under the pressure of population growth. This has resulted in the problems with our current system with respect to illegal immigration and why it leaves other good people who would be great as American citizens in the proverbial dust so to speak.  We have become too selective as opposed to the original systems quota system taking in a specified amount per year based on the country's ability to absorb the people into it at any given time.  But the old system made sense as it did not discriminate based on wealth (our current system is too expensive for people to immigrate by normal means), and you were screened prior to entry into the country to insure diseases were not present and that you were not there to kill us (past violent crimes, terrorists and enemy foreign agents).  Regardless though, both the old and new system were both abused to keep out undesirables. The old system was abused based on ethnic and racial discrimination and the new system we use discriminates based on poverty which to a certain degree also discriminates based on race and ethnicity as well.  However, the old system if followed in a way that does not discriminate such as just allowing a first come first serve based on immediate families during the application process would solve the entire issue of past and potential future racial and ethnic discrimination.  Basically a real line to decide when you could come and move in.  Also a set of rules that must never be broken must be established (basically specific crimes) that if violated would result in deportation.  Basically, do not commit theft, of a certain level, assault of a certain level, riot or murder.  If you can do that and last the full ten years living as a non-citizen who cannot vote and is denied a certain level of welfare (if that should be required) then you become a full-fledged citizen.

Conclusion:  The quota system works best as it ensures that the country can absorb the immigrants economically speaking which is a defining factor in any immigration system.  If the old system is modernized, it can ensure that entire families can come in all at once without each member having to apply separately as I have heard rumors of having to be done with the old and new system. No more separated families is a good thing (this may include grandparents too).  Also, as it is first come first serve, we have a real line for people to come in as opposed to our current systems economic and pseudo racial and ethnic discrimination.  It can work, but we need political will to do it.  So is it worth it to screen people who come in first, and then let them live here long enough to prove that they truly wish to be citizens? I certainly think so.