Morning Reads for Tuesday, June 19

The Washington Examiner has the best take on this.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/compassion-and-the-rule-of-law-at-the-border

“Current federal law leaves the nation choosing between these two bad options and inevitably finding the other side’s stance repugnant. Behind the raging policy debate about “children being torn from their parents’ arms” are differing philosophies of national sovereignty and differing attitudes toward lawbreaking and mercy. There is no quick fix, but clearly the Trump administration can handle things better.

Under President Trump’s new “zero tolerance” rules, immigrants caught entering the country illegally are charged, either with a misdemeanor or, in the case of repeat offenders, with a felony. Arrested immigrant adults are put in detention facilities. Children can’t be sent to jail, so the children of adults charged with illegal entry are separated from their parents, just as throughout the country children are separated from parents arrested and detained for other offenses, such as robbing a bank or making straw donations to a congressional candidate.

If the adults admit they were sneaking into the U.S. illegally and plead guilty, the family is reunited quickly, and they are all deported together. The process is more drawn out for illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico, which are not contiguous to the U.S.

But many illegal immigrants, after being caught, claim asylum, often on poor grounds. Asylum seekers are supposed to present themselves openly at an official border crossing, but some still try to sneak in. Once someone has claimed asylum, federal law requires a lengthier process before they can be deported. The children of these adults are the ones separated from them for much longer stretches.

This is not a good way to treat people when it can be avoided. Previous administrations did avoid it, but only by shrugging at immigration enforcement and granting extra leeway to illegal immigrant families with children. These families were released from detention quickly because of laws and court rulings prohibiting lengthy detention of children.

This gentler treatment of families reflects either a good and charitable disposition, and a desire to keep children and parents together, or a cynical laxity in the administration’s constitutional duty to uphold the law, probably both. It also created a moral hazard and bad incentives.

“Some migrants have admitted they brought their children not only to remove them from danger in such places as Central America and Africa,” the New York Times has reported, “but because they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner.

“Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing.””

Anyone who has a better solution to the last portion, please provide it. But of course, that would require actually believing that it is appropriate to have a country with borders and enforce them by preventing people who attempt to enter said country without proper legal authorization to do so by removing them. In recent years, “no borders, no deportations, anyone who wants to come is free to do so and can stay” has become the de facto position of the Democratic Party, and the left worldwide. A good example: see Merkel in Germany, before electoral losses forced her to “moderate” her stance, and for which she was named Time Magazine’s woman of the year, which of course indicates that the mainstream media wishes for the United States to adopt the same policy.

If that’s the policy that Democrats want to have, then let them introduce a bill and Congress can vote on it. If you do not like the results of Congress voting against either a de jure or de facto (via “decrimininalization where the laws are on the books for whatever reason but we have an official, codified policy not to enforce them) then vote them out and elect someone who will. But contriving all of these ways to attack law enforcement officials – the president and his cabinet ARE the executive branch – for enforcing the laws as written are going to be losing battles in red and swing states.

Also, having an open-borders philosophy but being unwilling to openly admit and defend it, and instead calling people “cruel” or “racist” for opposing the policies that you aren’t even willing to openly promote through legislation because you know that it is unpopular is unethical, cowardly and does real damage to the political system and the same concept of the rule of law that progressives otherwise cherish when it comes to areas as environmental and wage protections and civil rights laws. Make law enforcement some a la carte grab bag where each person can pick and choose in accordance with their own beliefs and convenience and that will threaten progressive legislative victories too. Lots of folks out there aren’t going to be shamed and goaded by searing opeds by Buzzfeed, Vox and the New York Times editorial page into being only willing to go along with laws designed to protect the interests of the unprivileged. They’ll just stop obeying laws, period. We don’t have enough jails, judges, police etc. to stop, punish or deter every potential lawbreaker. What usually works is the sense that general obesieance to the law – even when you disagree with it and are personally inconvenienced by it – is basically what determines the difference between a good person and a bad person. Throw that out the window with “I am not going to obey any law that is unfair and I get to decide what is unfair” and what kind of society do you want to have?

The same people who would cheer our border enforcement apparatus being dismantled rightfully freaked out over the antics of Cliven Bundy and his band of right wing scofflaws during the Obama administration. Ever consider what would happen were right wingers to start behaving that way writ large? It would take only 10% – forget that 1% – of those people emulating the “civil disobedience” tactics of the left for total chaos to break out.