Citizenship is a Gift Eileen F. Toplansky
NO URL ORIGINAL ESSAY
Judge Learned Hand was a political progressive, and an advocate of judicial restraint, who stated he could not “frame any definition that will explain when the Court will assume the role of a third legislative chamber and when it will limit its authority.”
In light of the partisan actions by Judge Boasberg and other judges who have worked overtime to stop Trump from deporting alleged members of Tren deAragua (a Foreign Terrorist organization), Boasberg should be vigorously reminded that “his court does not have jurisdiction over the president’s exercise of powers [.]” Boasberg has also forgotten Judge Hand’s reminder that a judge’s
“…utterances must be greater than any which his personal reputation and character can command, if it is to do the work assigned to it — if it is to stand against the passionate resentments arising out of the interests he must frustrate — for while a judge must discover some composition with the dominant trends of his times, he must preserve his authority by cloaking himself in the majesty of an overshadowing past.”
In fact, in Dennis v. United States, a plurality of Supreme Court Justices adopted Judge Hand’s view that “Eugene Dennis, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, did not have a First Amendment right to free speech if his goal in organizing Antifa-style protestors was to overthrow the Constitution and set up a government which would not allow free speech.”
Moreover, those who defend the establishment of a sharia-compliant community in Plano, Texas in order to establish a totalitarian Islamic caliphate are embracing the very antithesis of American Constitutional law.
Meir Y. Soloveichik has written “What to do with a Bad Guest” and cogently explains why the arguments coming from the Left are baseless.
“We are hearing from many that [deporting Mahmoud Khalil] amounts to a criminalization of free speech solely for his views regarding Israel. The problem with this description is that it is doubly incorrect.
“First: To deport a radical pro-Hamas activist is to do so in the knowledge that those representing such positions on college quads not only dislike Israel. They also hate America. Indeed, the very organization Khalil represented, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, has openly stated that it seeks ‘the total eradication of Western civilization. The sympathy with Hamas is the symptom; hatred of the West is the disease.”
Moreover, “Khalil—like all others fighting deportation relating to these statutes—has issued many public declamations through his lawyers, but he has never, as part and parcel of their public defense, put forward two simple statements: that he hates Hamas and that he loves America. The refusal to state the former, of course, is linked to his inability to express the latter [.]”
Thus, “[f]or the Secretary of State to cite statutes allowing deportation of those who espouse support for terror, and who pose a threat to America’s foreign policy, is to emphasize the fact that individuals like Khalil seek the end of America itself.”
In addition, “[t]he second mistake—that deportation is a criminalization of speech—follows from the first. Khalil is being detained only because he has been told to leave these shores and he has refused.”
“As the Supreme Court has clarified, ordering a noncitizen to leave your country is not a criminal punishment. This was made clear by Justice Robert Jackson in 1952, in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, a case about an individual deported on the grounds of being ‘a member of an organization which advocates overthrow of the government by force.’
“Jackson asserted that ‘[i]t is thoroughly established that Congress has [the] power to order the deportation of aliens whose presence in the country it deems hurtful. The determination by facts that might constitute a crime under local law is not a conviction of crime, nor is the deportation a punishment; it is simply a refusal by the government to harbor persons whom it does not want.
Consequently, “[h[ow is it a punishment to order a guest in your country—or a green-card holder like Khalil, who is here because of the graciousness of the United States—to leave a land he hates? Indeed, how is such an order anything other than a country reflecting basic self-respect and self-preservation for its own future?”
In fact, citizenship is a gift and under President Harry S. Truman, “the third Sunday in May each year has been set aside as Citizenship Day. It is a reminder
“WHEREAS our numerous citizens of foreign birth have shown loyalty and fidelity to their new citizenship in the performance of all the tasks which helped to bring the final and complete victory over the enemies of the country which these citizens have made their own by naturalization;
In a nutshell, to become a United States citizen, immigrants have to study and honor the Constitution.
To those politicians, NGOs, judges, lawyers, and activists who shelter illegals, I say “hold your heads in shame”. Despite illegal immigration’s terrifying cost, and the sheer insanity
of illegal immigration, you have forgotten or are simply indifferent to the oath an immigrant must declare.” You reflect the Western spiritual sickness afflicting our nation.
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;
“that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
“that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law;
“that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law;
“and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”
Since illegals broke American immigration law, that should suffice for their deportation. That they engage in the most egregious of crimes against Americans, only cements the fact that they need to be ejected from the country. In essence, as Judge Hand asserted
“If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era; and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.
Our legislators and judges need to be reminded of Judge Learned Hand’s 1944 speech titled “I Am an American” wherein he wrote
We have gathered here to affirm a faith, a faith in a common purpose, a common conviction, a common devotion. Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption; the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought liberty; freedoms from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves [and] in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty and of America I ask you to rise and with me pledge our faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved country.
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