"Note that "refugee" doesn't include things like fear of gangs or having climate change make it impossible to farm. THOSE can be included or not included in the reasons for Asylum, according to the Homeland Security or AG procedures mentioned above."
If this is true, and these abuses are based on nothing more…
"Note that "refugee" doesn't include things like fear of gangs or having climate change make it impossible to farm. THOSE can be included or not included in the reasons for Asylum, according to the Homeland Security or AG procedures mentioned above."
If this is true, and these abuses are based on nothing more than discretionary decisions within the Executive Branch, then the President DOES have the authority to improve the situation on his own authority by changing those decisions to correspond to the law and no more, and Biden should have done that on Day One, or on any day since. None of this means that Trump would be a better choice for President -- he isn't -- but it certainly makes Biden's border non-policy even less defensible than I thought it was.
I think the regulations for "defining" require the APA notice and hearing procedure. They can’t just be done by executive order. Not that either trump or Biden under pressure is paying much attention to that
Like you, I think that a President who is basing his legitimacy on his respect for the Constitution and the rule of law can't afford to try to unilaterally junk the legal requirements for changing regulations (and in Biden's case, we can hope that he learned that lesson from when he tried to do it on student debt). I suppose that the best he can do is to publish a detailed immigration reform plan for his second term that is heavy on adequate funding for personnel to streamline the system, and has plenty of features that make it clear that he is not aligned with the Open Borders wing of his party. And anything that he CAN do between now and November to communicate that, he should do. It's frustrating not to see any of this from him.
Biden has spent his entire term between rocks and hard places and it’s amazing what he has been able to accomplish despite this.
I’m disappointed in his reaction to the ICC warrants: Presumably there is some evidence and a warrant just says one prosecutor thinks it is sufficient. But under a rule of law that’s just a step—the pudding needs proof, of course.
Ironically, Netanyahu’s position vis a vis war crimes is very like Trump’s vis a via changing of financial documents. The question is did HE do it or did he just encourage others in his cabinet who are encouraging the terrorism (that’s what it is) of the “settlers” on the West Bank and who have been pushing their own “final solution” to the residents of Gaza.
The discontent does not justify the Hamas terrorism, AND the Hamas terrorism does not justify the West Bank terrorism. Terrorism is simply not acceptable no matter who perpetrates it. It is the epitome of “minority rule.” But the current Israeli government hasn’t from the get go even TRIED to reach a political solution, which is what is needed to get Hamas out of the hair of both the Palestinians and the Israelis.
But the GOP is using “full support of Israel no matter what it does” as a political bludgeon.
As with the Gaza/West Bank war, the immigration issue puts Biden in a terrible position. The rule of law is not working, for lack of resources in this case, and the political impediments are a real danger to the task of keeping trump from doing everything he says in his Time interview, his speeches, and his embrace of Project 2025.
As the original post shows Dems are reintroducing the failed bipartisan border agreement. That is probably just political theater at this point, but it is really the best that can be done to keep the real reason for the border crisis in its current state in the public eye.
Whether or not the asylum regs allow migration for gang violence or climate change, the people are going to keep coming. We HAVE to come up with a way of dealing with it. One way that doesn’t violate the current laws is Biden’s agreements with Mexico; Mexico is taking a much sterner stance on those coming through ITS Southern border, and that (say many commentators) is one reason the border crossings are down even as the summer season progresses. More help for the countries where the gang violence is occurring is another approach but—geeze, The Deficit. Not sure the problem of climate change, by this time, is solvable by anyone.
"Whether or not the asylum regs allow migration for gang violence or climate change, the people are going to keep coming. We HAVE to come up with a way of dealing with it."
With all due respect, I'm tired of hearing this from the apostles of inaction. We HAVE a way of "dealing with it", the same way that every other sovereign nation has and that most of them - including some that are sending their people our way - follow: Send. Them. Back. Decide for ourselves what's the level and type of immigration that we want to support the continued development of our society, and exclude the rest.
Few people in the United States really seem prepared to have that discussion and make those determinations. What is much worse is that far too many people in the United States insist that we have no right to do so.
I don’t think we “have no right to do so” but the flood isn’t going to stop simply by sending them back. That’s kind of what happens with mass migrations. Maybe not in our lifetime, but if trends continue, particularly climate, they will keep coming.
After all even immigrant averse Hungary is the ethnicity it is because it got flooded with Magyars from outside in the 9th and 10th centuries. Not to mention Huns, Goths, Franks, and the Sea People. Or the subjection of what is now Russia by the armies of Genghis Khan. Or the Anglo Saxons. Pretty sure there were a lot of Romano-British families yowling about lack of protection from those folks who couldn’t even speak Latin or Celtic.
I disagree. Among other concerns, it absolutely IS a question of rights. You've never said that you deny our right to control our own borders, so I don't assume that you do. Nevertheless, I believe that a feeling of helplessness in the face of a seemingly inevitable new Dark Age has the same moral effect, and is not justified. A new Dark Age is far from inevitable.
All of the "mass migrations" that you mentioned took place long before the development of the modern state system, and most of them were preceded by the deterioration of whatever state structures did exist, as well as overall declines in communication, education, and technology. They also took place at a time when there were vast areas of uninhabited and unclaimed land on the planet. Even then, in places where proto-state systems struggled successfully to exist in some form -- the eastern Roman Empire, the Arab world, East and Southeast Asia -- the invasions were either repulsed, absorbed with a relatively rapid return to organized societies, or never reached the more remote lands at all.
I'm confident in the ability of the modern state system to prevent mass migrations that can be prevented, and to channel the ones that can't: I don't see a coming breakdown in technology, communications, or education, the pre-requisites for societal breakdown, unless we choose them for ourselves. Some small island nations probably will have to be completely evacuated, and the world will have to take measures for the support of those populations. Most unavoidable mass movement should be managed regionally. Bangladesh is probably going to present a special case that, like the Pacific islands, will require an international plan that may go beyond the resources of South Asia alone. But the simple statement "I want to live in your country, not mine." has never been accepted by any sovereign state as creating a right of admission to its own detriment if it had the ability to refuse, and I don't see that changing. I don't think that it SHOULD change, for the vast majority of people and countries.
I am not opposed to immigration. I am opposed to uncontrolled, unselective immigration. My position is very much in line with Mona Charen's, that we need MORE immigration, not less, but immigration that meets our developmental needs by people willing to assimilate to our culture. I think that Matt Yglesias's call for "One Billion Americans" is directionally correct, although probably not feasible in the near term. But we are no longer in the 19th Century when we needed armies of unskilled labor to staff thousands of new factories. The nostalgic Left still clings to the "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" mentality almost a century after it became obsolete. The anti-American Left despises our culture and, I believe, simply want to smother it. Most cynically, elements of the "pro-immigration" Right want to keep importing an underclass in order to maintain their farms and industries that can't turn a profit and lifestyles that can't be maintained without masses of underpaid sweat labor to exploit. That particular manifestation of "The Horseshoe" will be our undoing if we continue to ignore it.
I am certainly not an Open Borders proponent. I don’t actually know anyone who is, not one. If anyone is actually propounding it, as opposed to having people claim they are propounding it, I haven’t happened across their argument. And no, “I just want to live there” isn’t any more a basis for immigration, though it is how my ancestors and probably yours got here.
Nor am I saying we are in our current state helpless. Otherwise why advocate more funding to control what is happening, more judges, more border patrol. And your word “channel” seems to be the best tactic we have; we just need a way clearer view on how to do that.
I just don’t have the same faith as you that long term our world will actually be organized into nation states in the way we now think of them. Nor even the long term safety of our technological powers, for that matter—we are already fending off cyberattacks on power grids, for example. But that’s a side point. I’m not really worried about some sort of technological apocalypse, however, just wary of the possibility and hopeful that it can be avoided.
I don’t think my view of the (hopefully far) future makes me a doom-sayer, just a different-sayer. “Doom” for me is the total loss of social organization—anarchy. Even the mass influx that may occur despite our best efforts doesn’t have to lead to that. I’m not sure that the nation state is an inevitable form of social organization; I’m more concerned with the idea that there IS a form of social organization than that it take a particular form.
Obviously the idea of the nation state can cause its own particular forms of war—and no, I don’t think there wasn’t war before the rise of the nation state. Our exemplars right now are Ukraine and the Gaza war and the nationalism behind each. I would say that the thing that makes me think about “return to the Dark Ages” is the renewed rise of tribalism as a basis of political identity. And that same urge is destroying nation states as we watch: actual tribalism is tearing apart places in Africa and SE Asia.
I am definitely glad to have lived my 80 years in a democracy and am horrified at the apparent surge of preference for authoritarianism, world-wide as well as in the fevered visions of trumpites. I’m not long term convinced we will have the same political structures in say, 200 years. As long as any such new structures let people live under the stability of some form of rule of law applicable equally to everyone, I’m cool with the idea. That rule is, for me, the root aspiration we need to keep up hope for the future. The loss of that is what I am worried about far more than who comes under it.
"The anti-American Left despises our culture" strikes me as much an overstatement as anything on the Statue of Liberty. There are certainly things I despise about our "culture" but I don't see that as making me anti-American. What IS our "culture?" In what ways is it perfect? In what ways imperfect and in need of change? You can't make broad statements without looking at the devil in the details. I'm I guess center-left, in that I admire a lot of farther Left goals but don't think they can be forced onto the population any more than theocracy can, until the population is ready as a whole to accept them. And so many of what were once "Leftist" goals HAVE been accepted by the population as a whole.
People who argue in favor of Open Borders are always at pains to deny it, and it becomes tiresome. What's so scary about two words, if you support free entry into the United States for everyone who wants to live there? Please tell me the neutral term that you prefer to use, and I'll use it, as long as it represents what you're really arguing for.
It isn’t so much a neutral term. It is a concept that doesn’t apply to anyone I know or have read. WHO exactly advocates opening the country to anyone who wants to live here? Without actually seeing such advocacy it is hard to evaluate or refute the talking points.
Thanks for the clarifications.
"Note that "refugee" doesn't include things like fear of gangs or having climate change make it impossible to farm. THOSE can be included or not included in the reasons for Asylum, according to the Homeland Security or AG procedures mentioned above."
If this is true, and these abuses are based on nothing more than discretionary decisions within the Executive Branch, then the President DOES have the authority to improve the situation on his own authority by changing those decisions to correspond to the law and no more, and Biden should have done that on Day One, or on any day since. None of this means that Trump would be a better choice for President -- he isn't -- but it certainly makes Biden's border non-policy even less defensible than I thought it was.
I think the regulations for "defining" require the APA notice and hearing procedure. They can’t just be done by executive order. Not that either trump or Biden under pressure is paying much attention to that
Like you, I think that a President who is basing his legitimacy on his respect for the Constitution and the rule of law can't afford to try to unilaterally junk the legal requirements for changing regulations (and in Biden's case, we can hope that he learned that lesson from when he tried to do it on student debt). I suppose that the best he can do is to publish a detailed immigration reform plan for his second term that is heavy on adequate funding for personnel to streamline the system, and has plenty of features that make it clear that he is not aligned with the Open Borders wing of his party. And anything that he CAN do between now and November to communicate that, he should do. It's frustrating not to see any of this from him.
Biden has spent his entire term between rocks and hard places and it’s amazing what he has been able to accomplish despite this.
I’m disappointed in his reaction to the ICC warrants: Presumably there is some evidence and a warrant just says one prosecutor thinks it is sufficient. But under a rule of law that’s just a step—the pudding needs proof, of course.
Ironically, Netanyahu’s position vis a vis war crimes is very like Trump’s vis a via changing of financial documents. The question is did HE do it or did he just encourage others in his cabinet who are encouraging the terrorism (that’s what it is) of the “settlers” on the West Bank and who have been pushing their own “final solution” to the residents of Gaza.
(for more on the terrorism referenced read Haaretz for daily stories of attacks on Palestinians in their own areas of the West Bank. For the reason behind Palestinian discontent see the NY Times article that isn’t getting enough attention: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html
The discontent does not justify the Hamas terrorism, AND the Hamas terrorism does not justify the West Bank terrorism. Terrorism is simply not acceptable no matter who perpetrates it. It is the epitome of “minority rule.” But the current Israeli government hasn’t from the get go even TRIED to reach a political solution, which is what is needed to get Hamas out of the hair of both the Palestinians and the Israelis.
But the GOP is using “full support of Israel no matter what it does” as a political bludgeon.
As with the Gaza/West Bank war, the immigration issue puts Biden in a terrible position. The rule of law is not working, for lack of resources in this case, and the political impediments are a real danger to the task of keeping trump from doing everything he says in his Time interview, his speeches, and his embrace of Project 2025.
As the original post shows Dems are reintroducing the failed bipartisan border agreement. That is probably just political theater at this point, but it is really the best that can be done to keep the real reason for the border crisis in its current state in the public eye.
Whether or not the asylum regs allow migration for gang violence or climate change, the people are going to keep coming. We HAVE to come up with a way of dealing with it. One way that doesn’t violate the current laws is Biden’s agreements with Mexico; Mexico is taking a much sterner stance on those coming through ITS Southern border, and that (say many commentators) is one reason the border crossings are down even as the summer season progresses. More help for the countries where the gang violence is occurring is another approach but—geeze, The Deficit. Not sure the problem of climate change, by this time, is solvable by anyone.
"Whether or not the asylum regs allow migration for gang violence or climate change, the people are going to keep coming. We HAVE to come up with a way of dealing with it."
With all due respect, I'm tired of hearing this from the apostles of inaction. We HAVE a way of "dealing with it", the same way that every other sovereign nation has and that most of them - including some that are sending their people our way - follow: Send. Them. Back. Decide for ourselves what's the level and type of immigration that we want to support the continued development of our society, and exclude the rest.
Few people in the United States really seem prepared to have that discussion and make those determinations. What is much worse is that far too many people in the United States insist that we have no right to do so.
I don’t think we “have no right to do so” but the flood isn’t going to stop simply by sending them back. That’s kind of what happens with mass migrations. Maybe not in our lifetime, but if trends continue, particularly climate, they will keep coming.
After all even immigrant averse Hungary is the ethnicity it is because it got flooded with Magyars from outside in the 9th and 10th centuries. Not to mention Huns, Goths, Franks, and the Sea People. Or the subjection of what is now Russia by the armies of Genghis Khan. Or the Anglo Saxons. Pretty sure there were a lot of Romano-British families yowling about lack of protection from those folks who couldn’t even speak Latin or Celtic.
Isn’t a question of rights.
I disagree. Among other concerns, it absolutely IS a question of rights. You've never said that you deny our right to control our own borders, so I don't assume that you do. Nevertheless, I believe that a feeling of helplessness in the face of a seemingly inevitable new Dark Age has the same moral effect, and is not justified. A new Dark Age is far from inevitable.
All of the "mass migrations" that you mentioned took place long before the development of the modern state system, and most of them were preceded by the deterioration of whatever state structures did exist, as well as overall declines in communication, education, and technology. They also took place at a time when there were vast areas of uninhabited and unclaimed land on the planet. Even then, in places where proto-state systems struggled successfully to exist in some form -- the eastern Roman Empire, the Arab world, East and Southeast Asia -- the invasions were either repulsed, absorbed with a relatively rapid return to organized societies, or never reached the more remote lands at all.
I'm confident in the ability of the modern state system to prevent mass migrations that can be prevented, and to channel the ones that can't: I don't see a coming breakdown in technology, communications, or education, the pre-requisites for societal breakdown, unless we choose them for ourselves. Some small island nations probably will have to be completely evacuated, and the world will have to take measures for the support of those populations. Most unavoidable mass movement should be managed regionally. Bangladesh is probably going to present a special case that, like the Pacific islands, will require an international plan that may go beyond the resources of South Asia alone. But the simple statement "I want to live in your country, not mine." has never been accepted by any sovereign state as creating a right of admission to its own detriment if it had the ability to refuse, and I don't see that changing. I don't think that it SHOULD change, for the vast majority of people and countries.
I am not opposed to immigration. I am opposed to uncontrolled, unselective immigration. My position is very much in line with Mona Charen's, that we need MORE immigration, not less, but immigration that meets our developmental needs by people willing to assimilate to our culture. I think that Matt Yglesias's call for "One Billion Americans" is directionally correct, although probably not feasible in the near term. But we are no longer in the 19th Century when we needed armies of unskilled labor to staff thousands of new factories. The nostalgic Left still clings to the "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" mentality almost a century after it became obsolete. The anti-American Left despises our culture and, I believe, simply want to smother it. Most cynically, elements of the "pro-immigration" Right want to keep importing an underclass in order to maintain their farms and industries that can't turn a profit and lifestyles that can't be maintained without masses of underpaid sweat labor to exploit. That particular manifestation of "The Horseshoe" will be our undoing if we continue to ignore it.
I am certainly not an Open Borders proponent. I don’t actually know anyone who is, not one. If anyone is actually propounding it, as opposed to having people claim they are propounding it, I haven’t happened across their argument. And no, “I just want to live there” isn’t any more a basis for immigration, though it is how my ancestors and probably yours got here.
Nor am I saying we are in our current state helpless. Otherwise why advocate more funding to control what is happening, more judges, more border patrol. And your word “channel” seems to be the best tactic we have; we just need a way clearer view on how to do that.
I just don’t have the same faith as you that long term our world will actually be organized into nation states in the way we now think of them. Nor even the long term safety of our technological powers, for that matter—we are already fending off cyberattacks on power grids, for example. But that’s a side point. I’m not really worried about some sort of technological apocalypse, however, just wary of the possibility and hopeful that it can be avoided.
I don’t think my view of the (hopefully far) future makes me a doom-sayer, just a different-sayer. “Doom” for me is the total loss of social organization—anarchy. Even the mass influx that may occur despite our best efforts doesn’t have to lead to that. I’m not sure that the nation state is an inevitable form of social organization; I’m more concerned with the idea that there IS a form of social organization than that it take a particular form.
Obviously the idea of the nation state can cause its own particular forms of war—and no, I don’t think there wasn’t war before the rise of the nation state. Our exemplars right now are Ukraine and the Gaza war and the nationalism behind each. I would say that the thing that makes me think about “return to the Dark Ages” is the renewed rise of tribalism as a basis of political identity. And that same urge is destroying nation states as we watch: actual tribalism is tearing apart places in Africa and SE Asia.
I am definitely glad to have lived my 80 years in a democracy and am horrified at the apparent surge of preference for authoritarianism, world-wide as well as in the fevered visions of trumpites. I’m not long term convinced we will have the same political structures in say, 200 years. As long as any such new structures let people live under the stability of some form of rule of law applicable equally to everyone, I’m cool with the idea. That rule is, for me, the root aspiration we need to keep up hope for the future. The loss of that is what I am worried about far more than who comes under it.
"The anti-American Left despises our culture" strikes me as much an overstatement as anything on the Statue of Liberty. There are certainly things I despise about our "culture" but I don't see that as making me anti-American. What IS our "culture?" In what ways is it perfect? In what ways imperfect and in need of change? You can't make broad statements without looking at the devil in the details. I'm I guess center-left, in that I admire a lot of farther Left goals but don't think they can be forced onto the population any more than theocracy can, until the population is ready as a whole to accept them. And so many of what were once "Leftist" goals HAVE been accepted by the population as a whole.
People who argue in favor of Open Borders are always at pains to deny it, and it becomes tiresome. What's so scary about two words, if you support free entry into the United States for everyone who wants to live there? Please tell me the neutral term that you prefer to use, and I'll use it, as long as it represents what you're really arguing for.
It isn’t so much a neutral term. It is a concept that doesn’t apply to anyone I know or have read. WHO exactly advocates opening the country to anyone who wants to live here? Without actually seeing such advocacy it is hard to evaluate or refute the talking points.
What are the limitations that YOU think are appropriate for immigration into the United States?