An American Citizen Tries to Understand the Border Crisis

I feel like American citizens should be able to understand the problem at the Southern border and asylum law and stuff like that.
I hope that is true.
Let's give it a try and do the best we can!

The material in this blog post was written when it looked like there might be, just possibly, a deal for a new border law in Congress.
Later, of course, that deal fell through.
Anyway, that's when this was written, when it looked like there might be a deal.

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1

President Joe Biden has been negotiating for weeks with Senate Republicans about getting more tools to deal with the surge of migrants across the southern border.
One thing Biden wants is authority to shut down the border if more than 5000 migrants cross in one day.

Why is Biden asking for authority to shut down the border?
Because currently the law does NOT give the president that authority!
(By the way, states do not have any legal or Constitutional authority to shut down the border either.)
Most people don’t know this, but if anyone says the president should shut down the border now, they are actually saying the president should break the law.
Which is unacceptable.

I have many ideas about what I would try to do at the border if I were president, but in the current situation I hope the Congress will give Biden the tools he needs to manage the border more effectively WITHOUT breaking US asylum law.

Below I will give a reference to current US asylum law as I understand it.
If anyone thinks I am wrong, please give me a reference showing how I am wrong so I can learn.

Here is a link to an article about the border deal many people hoped would happen, until it didn't.

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/31/1228229591/senate-gop-split-risks-bipartisan-border-deal-as-trump-looms-large

2

Now, here is the law.
We should expect presidents to obey this law, or we should expect Congress to change it.
One or the other.
We should certainly NOT be asking a president, or a state, to break this law.

US Asylum Law: “Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.”

Here is the law for people who want to check it for themselves.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1158

3

And finally, here is some information about keeping asylum seekers in another country while they wait for their asylum hearing in the US.
US asylum law does allow us to have asylum seekers wait in another country, but there are three conditions:

1. The country they are going to stay in has to agree.
2. The country they are going to stay in has to be safe for asylum seekers.
3. The asylum seekers have to be able to get into the US when it is time for their asylum hearings.

Groups like the ACLU say that conditions 2 and 3 were never met, which would mean the remain in Mexico policy was never legal.
There were court cases about these issues since the policy began, but I don't believe these court cases were ever resolved.
Now, since February 2023, Mexico does not agree to keep asylum seekers in Mexico so that is another reason why the remain in Mexico policy would now be illegal, even if it was legal before.

Here is a link to information on Mexico not agreeing to keep asylum seekers in their country.

Mexico Will No Longer Hold Asylum Seekers

4

Personally, I think we should build shelters along the border where we can hold people seeking asylum in a safe and secure place.
Then we should increase the number of immigration judges and staff so the asylum claims can be quickly reviewed.
People who meet the conditions would come into the US and people who do not meet the conditions would go home.

To do this we need Congress to approve funding for the shelters and the additional judges and staff.

More long term, we should see if we can help improve conditions in the countries the migrants are coming from so they would rather stay home. I assume we could do this with mutually beneficial economic deals with those countries. That way, we make money, they make money, and people can have better lives without leaving home.

That’s what I would like to see.

***

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Copyright © 2024 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

Our Biggest Problem is not Left vs. Right, it is Lawful vs. Lawless

1

It looks like the Hawaii Supreme Court is coming close to defying the United States Supreme Court.
A guy was arrested for carrying a gun on someone else’s property.
This guy claimed he had a right to carry that gun based on recent Supreme Court decisions such as “New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen” (2022), and “District of Columbia v. Heller” (2008).

Now, I want to emphasize here that I don’t believe either Heller or Bruen say anybody has the right to carry a gun on someone else’s property. You don’t actually have the right to be on someone else’s property at all.

I don’t think either Heller or Bruen say that there is a right to carry a gun in public without a permit, either.
Bruen seems to say explicitly that a state can require that people have a permit to carry a gun in public, it just requires that the criteria for getting the permit has to be “objective” and not “arbitrary.”
Whatever that means….

Given the above, I think the Hawaii Supreme Court could have just said there is no right in Hawaii to carry a gun in public without a permit, and there is nothing in Heller or Bruen to say otherwise, so this man’s conviction stands, and there would not be any problem.

The problem is that the Hawaii Supreme Court, with 3 Democratic appointees and 2 Republican appointees, agreed unanimously to say that the United States Supreme Court was wrong in Heller and Bruen and they seem to be implying that Hawaii does not have to obey the Supreme court’s decisions in these opinions.

If that is what the Hawaii Supreme Court is saying, they are wrong, wrong, wrong!

In the United States of America, you don’t get to decide which laws or court decisions you will obey and which you will not obey, unless you are ready to go to jail - not even if you are a state supreme court. In this country, if you don’t like laws or court decisions, then you go and you VOTE! And while you are voting, you obey the law or you go to jail.

2

It looks like Texas Governor Greg Abott is coming close to defying the United States Supreme Court. Recently a lower court said that Federal officials could not remove razor wire placed along the border by Texas. The United States Supreme Court reversed that decision implying, without explanation, that Federal officials CAN remove razor wire to get to the border.

The Supreme Court did not explain, but it is not hard to understand this decision. After the American Revolution the states controlled their own borders with taxes and fees and rules about what could cross their borders and what could not. This caused so much trouble that it was disagreements about border rules that was the BIGGEST reason the Constitutional Convention was eventually called. I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that the BIGGEST reason the United States of America was formed was to STOP states from controlling their own borders.

It is the Federal government that controls “interstate commerce” and it is the Federal government that controls all matters involving foreign countries. Any state that interferes in these issues is violating the United States Constitution. That is why people now who say that states have a right to control their own borders are completely, 180 degrees, upside-down, wrong.

So far it looks like Greg Abbott is not in DIRECT violation of a Supreme Court decision. But if he does violate a Supreme Court decision, he will be wrong, wrong, wrong.

In the United States of America, you don’t get to decide which laws or court decisions you will obey and which you will not obey unless you are ready to go to jail – not even if you are a state governor. In this country, if you don’t like laws or court decisions, then you go and you VOTE! And while you are voting, you obey the law or you go to jail.

3

We need to come down hard on people who break the law or who advocate breaking the law. We have rights to speak and write and peacefully protest and VOTE about things we don’t like. (And if somebody says they want a revolution like we had in 1775 you remind them that what justified that revolution was that those Americans did NOT have the right to vote in their national government. We do!)

Hundreds of thousands of Americans died so we could have these rights. People who now want to throw these rights away by advocating lawlessness (like, maybe the Hawaii Supreme Court, or like, maybe Texas Governor Abbott) are betraying some of the most basic principles America stands for: like the rule of law, and the right of the people to make laws that everyone has to obey. People who oppose these principles need to be educated and corrected, or ridiculed and reviled, or arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, before they ruin this great country for those of us who are still responsible and sane.

If you don’t like what is happening in this country then you speak and you write and you VOTE! And if you don’t get the laws you want, then welcome to what it means to live in a free country where you don’t get to be the dictator.

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Copyright © 2024 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

Coffee Post - February 11, 2024

Many things I want to do today, but let’s start by drinking coffee, reading books, and watching the world to see what is happening.

I drank hazelnut coffee made by my Keurig machine.

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The American Revolution

I read from a wonderful big book called “The Glorious Cause.”
This is the volume about the American Revolution in the multi-volume set called The Oxford History of America.

The book describes English politics in the middle 1700s as extremely conservative, in the sense that it seemed to be the primary purpose of government to make sure that NOTHING CHANGES AT ALL!

This was probably a reaction to the tumultuous 1600s when there were civil wars and kings dethroned and one king beheaded… and so on.

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Art History for Dummies

I read from Art History for Dummies about the ancient period called “Hellenistic” which came after Alexander the Great died in 323 BC.

Before “Hellenism” was the “Classical” period, which was characterized by calm, elegant, confident works of art.
The Hellenistic period, especially known for architecture, portrayed more of the grittiness of life - pain, and suffering, and death.

One of the famous Hellenistic works is called “Laocoon and His Sons.”
This was based on the story of Laocoon, who warned the Trojans not to accept the giant horse brough by the Greeks.
The horse was, of course, a trick to conquer Troy, and Athena, who wanted the Greeks to win, was angry at Laocoon for warning the Trojans, so she sent two giant sea serpents to kill him and his sons.
The statue shows the snakes attacking the men and writhing around them and the men struggling and suffering in the coils of the serpents.
There is no classical calm in this statue!

The book calls classical art “self-deluded,” which seems a little harsh!
I think, just as Plato distinguished between a perfect and eternal world of Being and a flawed and changing world of Becoming, it might make sense to view classical art as trying to capture the world of Being while Hellenistic art turned its attention to the world of Becoming.

Classical art was not self-deluded, it was just looking at a different aspect of reality than Hellenistic art was.

There really is a world of Being after all.
Whether it is outside of us as Plato thought, or inside of us as Aristotle thought, there really is a world of Being.

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When the Going Gets Weird....

I read from a biography of Hunter S. Thompson who invented “gonzo” journalism in the 1960s.
During one period Hunter traveled through South America writing about everything he saw and heard and selling many of those pieces for $150 a pop back in the United States.

I would like to travel all along the U.S.-Mexican border writing about everything I see and hear there. I suspect there might be lots of good food along that border and lots of opportunities to brush up on my Spanish.
Lots of suffering too.
Lots to think about.
Lots to write about.
I wonder if I could do that next winter….

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Satanism in Iowa

I see in the news that a Christian destroyed a legally displayed Satanic statue in the Iowa state capital. I guess this Christian doesn’t believe in freedom of religion. I guess he doesn’t believe in keeping his hands off other people’s property either.

This Christian thinks he’s the good guy, but he’s not. He believes he should be able to take away other people’s religious freedom and destroy their property. There’s nothing more evil than that….

NOTE: This post was published on my Facebook February 1, 2024

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Creeping Dictatorship in the USA

In every free country there are people who would throw freedom away if it means they could be in power.
There are people in the United States right now who would like to live in a dictatorship if it means they could be in power.

I just heard my congressperson Elise Stefanik say she would not have done what Mike Pence did on January 6, 2021.
What did Mike Pence do on January 6?
He counted the electoral votes sent in by the states, as he was required to do BY LAW.

Elise Stefanik is saying she would have broken the law.

But how could Elise justify breaking the law?
She says she thinks there were illegal or unconstitutional violations committed during the 2020 election.
That sounds serious!
Could that be true?
And, if so, what should we do about it?

Obviously, if people think there were illegal or unconstitutional violations during an election they should go to court.
And that is exactly what happened.
The Trump campaign filed about 60 court cases after the 2020 election and NOT ONE of them found evidence of election violations that could have changed the outcome of the election.

Elise Stefanik is saying that she would have ignored 60 court cases that found no evidence of election wrongdoing that could have affected the outcome of the election, and THEN, based only on her wishes, she would have broken the law that requires electoral votes to be counted on Jan. 6.

But WHY would she have done something so extreme?

Because she knew Biden won the election - and she didn’t WANT Biden to win the election.
Trump and his supporters KNEW the electoral votes sent in by the states would give the presidency to Biden.
That’s why they didn’t want those electoral votes counted on January 6 in accordance with the law.
Trump and his supporters KNEW that 60 court cases had failed to find evidence of any outcome-changing fraud during the election.
That’s why they wanted people to ignore those court cases and act on their emotions and desires rather than on the law.

Elise Stefanik said she would not have done what Pence did.
She would have ignored the 60 court cases, she would have broken the law requiring the electoral votes be counted, and she would have done that just because she wanted to keep Trump in power even after she knew he lost the election…

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Recently Trump has “joked” about wanting to be a dictator and he has seriously argued in court that presidents should have immunity for crimes they commit in office, up to and including political assassinations!
This is not how the leaders of free countries talk.
This is how dictators talk.

Recently a Trump supporter, Senator J.D. Vance, said on TV that if Trump becomes president again, he does not have to obey the Supreme Court.
This would destroy one of the critical checks and balances at the heart of our American system of government.
This is not how honorable Senators of a free country talk.
This is how defenders of dictatorship talk.

Now Elise Stefanik is saying on TV that if she had been in Mike Pence’s place on Jan. 6, 2021, she would have ignored court decisions, ignored the will of the American people, and broken the law to keep Trump in power after he lost the election.
This is not how honorable representatives of a free country talk.
This is how defenders of dictatorship talk.

If the people of America want to preserve our free government, we have to go to the polls every chance we get and defeat dangerous people like Trump, J.D. Vance, and Elise Stefanik.

You can click here to read the article that inspired this blog post. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/02/09/elise-stefanik-vp-hopeful/72532143007/

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Copyright © 2024 by Joseph Wayne Gadway