RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/25/caged_in_democrats_border_security_hypocrisy.html

On the first night of the Democrat National Convention, Michelle Obama accused President Trump of placing children at the border in “cages.” As the former first lady knows, these “cages” – actually, holding areas made of chain link fences — were in fact built during her husband’s administration: the Obama-Biden administration. Many of the photos that were widely disseminated by the news media in efforts to excoriate the Trump administration were taken in 2014, two years prior to Trump’s election.

As a resident of a border state, I am more than willing to engage in this discussion with the other side of the aisle. Joe Biden and the Democrats are living in the past when it comes to our border. They dream of returning to an era of lax immigration policies that didn’t work then, and will assuredly not work now.

Border security is national security. We have seen the mass migrations that have occurred around the world in recent years and the trouble that inevitably follows. President Trump continues to deliver on building the border wall despite heavy opposition from Democratic Party leaders who previously supported building barriers on our southern border. Nearly 300 miles have already been built and a promising 400 miles will be completed by year’s end.

Since 2015, when Donald Trump promised to build his “big, beautiful wall” on the United States’ southern border, Democrats and the media have attacked the idea as xenophobic and unworkable. Here on the border, however, we can see that the progress on the wall, coupled with the president’s  threats to impose tariffs on Mexico, has finally produced action. For the first time in my memory, the Mexican military and law enforcement are properly patrolling their side of the border.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-make-this-nonnative-restless-11598035545?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

I watched all four nights of the Democratic National Convention. Huddled in front of my TV set, I was, by the end, yearning to breathe free. As an immigrant to the U.S., I found the Democrats’ obsession with immigrants grating. I’d like to tell Americans why.

Scarcely a speech or segment went by in which a fetish wasn’t made of immigrants. They were portrayed, almost uniformly, as victims—hapless people thwarted by “systemic racism” and American injustice, moored forever in a netherworld of murk and fear by President Trump’s refusal to be humane.

The Democrats are guilty of conflating the people who live in this country without authorization with those—a significant majority of immigrants—who are here legally. According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of America’s foreign-born immigrants are lawful permanent residents (like me) or naturalized citizens of the U.S.

With their relentless focus on the undocumented margins, the Democrats do an enormous disservice to the 35.2 million lawful immigrants who go about their dignified business away from the spotlight, getting on with such concerns as work, school and family, grateful for the opportunity to be in America—grateful, in fact, for the opportunity to be Americans.

Many immigrants have come to America from countries where the state interferes in people’s lives while pretending to help. What many of them really want—Democrats, please note—is for the state to step aside and let them carve out their own destinies. Which is why they came to America in the first place. Whether the left likes it or not, this is the primordial truth to which almost every immigrant subscribes.

No one suggests that the plight of the undocumented people in this country should be ignored. Yet the Democratic obsession with indigent illegal residents plays into the hands of racists and nativists, who, ironically, share the progressive caricature of immigrants as a brooding throng of people in perpetual limbo. (Nativists regard the foreign-born as inherently unassimilable, while progressives, for their own reasons, scoff at the very notion of “assimilation.”)

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/trump-heroically-defies-lawless-supreme-court-matthew-vadum/

President Donald Trump is quietly turning a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court over an illegal amnesty for hundreds of thousands of young illegal aliens into what could end up being a victory for the Constitution and the rule of law.

The Supreme Court, of course, has no authority to tell the president of the United States that he cannot rescind an illegal executive amnesty ordered by his predecessor in the same manner it was instituted.

Normally, presidents of both parties rush to raise their arms in surrender whenever the black-robed life-tenured politicians on the high court demand it.

Not Trump.

The president appears to be taking a stand against rampant judicial supremacism by drawing inspiration from President Andrew Jackson, whose portrait proudly hangs in the Oval Office.

After the chief justice of the day overreached in Jackson’s opinion, the 7th president allegedly uttered the following immortal words: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/23/president-trumps-case-for-excluding-illegal-aliens-from-the-census-is-stronger-than-you-think/

President Donald Trump has issued an executive memorandum to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to discount illegal aliens who are subject to legal removal from the U.S. Census.

Here, the president is invoking the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.”

From the president’s memorandum: “The Constitution does not specifically define which persons must be included in the apportionment base.  Although the Constitution requires the ‘persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed,’ to be enumerated in the census, that requirement has never been understood to include in the apportionment base every individual physically present within a State’s boundaries at the time of the census. Instead, the term ‘persons in each State’ has been interpreted to mean that only the ‘inhabitants’ of each State should be included.”

So, who are the inhabitants of each state? The president’s memorandum says it “requires the exercise of judgment.  For example, aliens who are only temporarily in the United States, such as for business or tourism, and certain foreign diplomatic personnel are ‘persons’ who have been excluded from the apportionment base in past censuses.”

Which, raises the question, if tourists — whose travel visas have certain expiration dates — can and have been excluded from the census, then why not illegal immigrants who are subject to removal upon discovery by federal authorities?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/it-doesnt-matter-whether-daca-is-popular/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

I understand that procedural arguments are boring, ineffective, and passe, and that fewer and fewer American are moved by them. But we might want pollsters and media outlets to understand the difference between policy outcomes and constitutional process.

Take a look at this non sequitur:

Neil G. Ruiz @neil_ruiz The Supreme Court’s rejection of Trump’s attempt to end the #DACA program aligns with findings from @Pewresearch survey showing that Americans broadly support legal status for immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children https://pewrsr.ch/3dhAzUs

As with the Supreme Court’s recent re-imagining of Title VII protections, the media are acting as if the recent decision preventing Trump from immediately ending DACA was a referendum on values, empathy, and the intrinsic value of “Dreamers,” rather than on the ability of the president to simply fabricate laws by fiat.

There are a number of persuasive economic and moral arguments for legalizing the children of illegal immigrants. Indeed, as it happens, I support the goals of DACA. But, if they are to become law, they need to . . . well, become law. I also support dropping the corporate income tax to zero. That doesn’t mean I would approve of Donald Trump asking the IRS to stop collecting certain revenue streams by decree.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/20/paying_illegal_immigrants_puts_america_last_143250.html

“Put your own mask on before assisting others.” Flight attendants repeat this wise instruction before every airline flight because, in an emergency situation, an incapacitated passenger cannot help anyone else and, in fact, becomes another person in need. In the current economic and health emergency, Democrats ignore this mandate and instead seek to exploit the crisis as an opportunity to fulfill long-held leftist policy aims like diminishing citizenship and destroying the efficacy of borders. By leveraging a time of pain for so many Americans, these demagogues prove that they put America last.

Two recent actions best showcase this agenda. First, in the mammoth $3 trillion boondoggle that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats passed last week, taxpayer handouts of up to $1,200 would flow to illegal migrants. Thankfully, her 1,815-page legislative monstrosity will never become law, but Pelosi’s home state took more immediate action, dispensing tens of millions of California taxpayer dollars to illegal immigrants, with direct cash payments to over 100,000 trespassers.

The appalling disconnect between these leftist politicians and the current angst among America’s citizenry underscores the distorted reality of an entitled political class operating in a sort of parallel universe, undeterred by the on-the-ground predicament of millions of Americans. Consider that 36 million people are newly jobless. Even among the still-employed, job anxiety is pervasive: A recent Associated Press poll showed that 55% of working Americans report a cut in either hours or pay during this pandemic.

The message of Democrats like Pelosi and Gov. Gavin Newsom to these worried Americans is clear: “Get in line, because we have other priorities, including catering to the needs of criminals who willfully violated our laws to enter the United States without permission.” Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden clearly agrees with this policy arc, as he publicly affirmed during his party’s primaries that he supports providing taxpayer-funded health care to illegal aliens.

“Put your own mask on before assisting others.” Flight attendants repeat this wise instruction before every airline flight because, in an emergency situation, an incapacitated passenger cannot help anyone else and, in fact, becomes another person in need. In the current economic and health emergency, Democrats ignore this mandate and instead seek to exploit the crisis as an opportunity to fulfill long-held leftist policy aims like diminishing citizenship and destroying the efficacy of borders. By leveraging a time of pain for so many Americans, these demagogues prove that they put America last.

Two recent actions best showcase this agenda. First, in the mammoth $3 trillion boondoggle that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats passed last week, taxpayer handouts of up to $1,200 would flow to illegal migrants. Thankfully, her 1,815-page legislative monstrosity will never become law, but Pelosi’s home state took more immediate action, dispensing tens of millions of California taxpayer dollars to illegal immigrants, with direct cash payments to over 100,000 trespassers.

The appalling disconnect between these leftist politicians and the current angst among America’s citizenry underscores the distorted reality of an entitled political class operating in a sort of parallel universe, undeterred by the on-the-ground predicament of millions of Americans. Consider that 36 million people are newly jobless. Even among the still-employed, job anxiety is pervasive: A recent Associated Press poll showed that 55% of working Americans report a cut in either hours or pay during this pandemic.