Restore the original immigration policy: an open door
by Jeff Jacoby
Jeff is normally quite a conservative writer generally but he makes a characteristic Leftist mistake below -- thinking in terms of big groups instead of looking inside those groups.
It is true that America benefited for a long time from open immigration. But the immigrants concerned were almost entirely from Europe and the British Isles. And because of their large similarites to the existing population, very good assimilation and adaptation from them was usually complete within one generatoion.
But not all of today's imigrants are like that. Immigrants in general may adapt well to American ways and customs but some subgroups do not, people with African ancestry particularly, but Hispanics and Muslims also to some extent. Excluding all individuals from those populations would hugely benefit the safety and civility of American life
THE FRAMERS of the Constitution gave the federal government no authority to restrict peaceful immigration. For the first century or so of US history, most foreigners wishing to move to the United States were legally free to do so. The Constitution delegates many specific powers to the federal government, but a general right to bar or expel immigrants is conspicuously not among them. During the national debate over the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 — which (among other provisions) allowed President John Adams to unilaterally deport immigrants he deemed dangerous — James Madison and the Virginia General Assembly denounced the laws for investing the president with "a power nowhere delegated to the federal government."
Not until 1882 was there a significant federal law curbing immigration: the unabashedly racist Chinese Exclusion Act, which effectively slammed the door on immigration from China. Instead of striking down the law as unconstitutional, the Supreme Court upheld it on the grounds that the right to exclude foreigners for any reason was an "incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States." That decision — by the same court that a few years later endorsed racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson — erased a core human right that the authors of the Constitution had never intended to curtail: freedom of immigration.
Plessy was eventually repudiated. But the assumption that the government has plenary power over immigration hardened into conventional wisdom. Today, the courts defer to virtually any restriction on immigration, including those based on national origin, political viewpoint, or religion; those based on family connections; and those based on numerical quotas.
To restore the freedom to immigrate intended by the Founders, a brief amendment should be added to the Constitution:
Neither the United States, nor any State, shall restrict immigration from nations with which the United States is not in a state of war, unless such restrictions are narrowly tailored to the advancement of a compelling government interest.
Under such an amendment, explains Ilya Somin, a professor of law at George Mason University and the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, federal immigration restrictions would be presumed unconstitutional, much like laws that discriminate by race or silence political speech. That presumption could be overcome when necessary to keep out foreigners posing a genuine threat to public safety, public health, or national security, each of which is a "compelling government interest." By and large, however, peaceful individuals from any country would be free to move to the United States without impediment — just as individuals from one state may move freely to any other state.
To anti-immigration hardliners, such a change would be unthinkable. "A nation without borders is not a nation," former president Donald Trump declared dramatically to justify construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico. It's a common claim among those who want foreign migrants kept out, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
A return to the "open door" policy of America's first 100 years would not mean that the nation's borders no longer had meaning, nor would it be tantamount to a surrender of US sovereignty. Washington would continue to have full authority to repel foreign armies from those borders, and to enforce its laws and collect taxes within them. As an analogy, consider supermarkets, public libraries, or churches: They are generally open to all comers, yet no one disputes that they have full authority over their own premises. Anyone may enter a supermarket, so long as they do so during business hours and through the front door. That doesn't give thieves a right to enter the supermarket in the dead of night, or by breaking in through the loading dock. Similarly, even with a freedom-to-immigrate amendment, newcomers would still be obliged to enter the country through lawful ports of entry and to comply with all border and immigration regulations.
Who would gain from such an amendment? The entire nation. Immigration is the great growth hormone of American history. More immigrants mean more economic development, more innovation, more cultural richness. Contrary to nativist shibboleths, immigrants are more law-abiding than US-born residents, they rapidly assimilate and acquire English proficiency, and they are highly patriotic.
"America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger," wrote George Washington in 1783, "but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions, whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights & privileges." That was the right policy when the United States was small and weak. It remains the right policy for a nation that has grown into history's most influential superpower. An immigration freedom amendment would restore the vision of the Founders by permanently opening the door to virtually all would-be Americans, whoever and wherever they are.
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/25888/restore-the-original-immigration-policy-an-open
*******************************************Roe v. Wade blocked a democratic solution for our abortion debate – It needs to go
The Supreme Court’s pending verdict on Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks could upend Roe v. Wade — heating up the abortion wars across the country.
But why do we never hear about abortion protests — for or against — in other countries? Where are the mass marches in India or Brazil or Morocco? They happen, once in a while, but it’s nothing like the constant frenzy the issue provokes in the United States.
Some history. Abortion wasn’t legal anywhere until North Korea legalized it in 1950, soon followed by the Soviet Union, Cuba and other communist nations. The first Western countries to allow it were the Netherlands and the United States in 1973 (though several US states had legalized it in the previous decade, including California and New York).
Today, abortion is widely available worldwide. In fact, only five countries out of 199 bar abortions in all circumstances: Abkhazia, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Vatican City.
Here’s where it gets interesting: Only four nations have full abortion-on-demand, regardless of circumstances: Canada, North Korea, South Korea and the United States.
Virtually every other country allows abortions, but with gestation limits. Liberal Denmark, that other early-’70s abortion pioneer, is 12 weeks. France, 14 weeks; Sweden, 18. The world average is about 13 weeks.
The global consensus seems to be: The later a pregnancy is terminated, the bigger the tragedy. Of course, there’s no celestial arbiter that can say this is true, at least not one we can speak to. It’s just how most nations feel about the issue and have crafted their laws through democratic consensus. The message to women: Our societies will allow it, but do it early in your term.
These countries represent every conceivable religion and political system, yet arrived at remarkably similar positions. The majority are democratic, so they got there through democratic consensus.
America did not, and that’s the problem. We got where we are through judicial fiat: Roe v. Wade.
That Roe was a horrible decision, constitutionally speaking, is understood by all serious judicial observers. Justice Harry Blackmun made up a constitutional right to privacy out of whole cloth — in this case, the 14th Amendment — because he needed some thin reed on which to achieve a desired policy outcome. (Roe superficially allowed abortion only in the first two trimesters, about 23 weeks, but loopholes allowed some up all the way up to birth.)
In reality, the Constitution is silent on the issue, which means our 50 states should be able to decide the issue for themselves.
Sure, many were quite happy with the outcome. But legalizing abortion via judicial fiat, rather than the ballot box, had consequences. Once abortion became the province of the courts, it could no longer be addressed via democratic negotiation. It became an all-or-nothing proposition: You had to be for unlimited abortion-on-demand, or against any abortion, anytime.
Each side viewed even the slightest concession as a slippery slope. Nuance and compromise became impossible. Many people became one-issue voters.
Roe, more than almost anything else, caused today’s highly polarized culture. Every new Supreme Court nomination brings high-stakes dramas — though it was never like that before Roe.
Most Americans likely have a view on abortion closer to the Swedes and the French. The problem is, the court took away their power to decide for themselves.
Roe should be overturned not because abortion is evil, but because it’s bad law. But what happens then? The hysterical left suggests a nightmare, with no woman able to terminate a pregnancy. That won’t happen. Even pre-Roe, 20 states permitted abortions (under varying circumstances). That was 50 years ago, in a far more culturally conservative era.
Most states would quickly pass legal-abortion legislation. (New York and others already have.) Around half would continue with the current no-limits policy; nearly all the rest would have gestation limits.
I doubt any would opt for a complete ban. Mississippi, one of our most conservative states, went with a 15-week limit, actually longer than most countries (though it might go earlier if Roe was truly gone). And what if you’re a woman, and your state’s laws don’t work for you? Well, it’s far from convenient, but you can always drive a few hours to the next state.
Ultimately, things would calm down. My evidence? The rest of the world.
The problem is, many don’t want this. A lot of money is raised on the back of the abortion wars. The issue may well dominate the 2022 midterms. This is unfortunate, because there are so many other things we need to be talking about.
But the bottom line remains: Roe wasn’t just a horrible decision, constitutionally, it was a significant progenitor of today’s culture wars. Time for it to go.
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Texas Governor Confirms Border Wall Construction Has Officially Started
Texas has officially started building its own state-funded border wall, confirmed Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday.
“Texas has officially started building its own border wall,” he wrote Friday, while asserting that President Joe Biden’s immigration policies allow for an “open border” since he took office in January.
Biden, the Republican governor added, also “refuses to enforce laws passed by Congress to secure the border and enforce immigration laws” and that “Texas is stepping up to do the federal government’s job.”
A reporter with Fox News captured images of the first Texas-commissioned border wall panels going up in Starr County, Texas, located in the Rio Grande Valley.
Earlier this year, amid near-record numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Abbott announced that he would try to secure funding for the state to construct its own border barrier after Biden signed an executive order that scrapped federal construction of the wall.
Texas’s wall construction, which would not obtain federal funding, has been favored by Abbott as a means of cracking down on illegal immigration and drug trafficking. In June, the governor started a private donation campaign that has raised about $54 million.
According to records, Wyoming-based billionaire Timothy Mellon, the grandson of banking tycoon and former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, donated $53.1 million of those dollars to the private wall fund.
About 450 miles of the larger border barrier was constructed under President Donald Trump, who had championed the construction of the wall during his 2016 presidential campaign.
“Three billion dollars of Texas taxpayer money has been devoted to this cause of Texas securing the border, and so we have a lot of money available to us to continue to build the wall,” Abbott told Fox News in an interview on Friday.
Abbott then asserted that the Texas wall will “cost less than it did for the Trump administration” because the “state of Texas owns [land] on the border itself” and will not have to acquire the land—as the federal government had to do under the Trump administration.
“There are property owners of massive acreage on the border who are fed up with Biden’s open border policies,” he continued, “and they are donating their land to Texas for us to be able to use that land for free to build a wall on their property.”
One of the first orders Biden signed was to pause wall construction and called for a review of projects and funds. In a statement released on Jan. 20 just after Biden’s inauguration, the president claimed the wall construction “is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.”
Since then, Biden’s order—as well as other immigration-related orders—has fueled Republican criticism of the president’s immigration policies, denouncing it as part of an “open borders” agenda.
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Healthcare Gone Racist
This isn’t America anymore. This is the leftist “woke” version of America created by Democrats and their liberal policies. As such, radically racist policies are permitted, as long as it’s in the name of retaliation against the white folks.
For example, two Boston doctors called for medical resources to be allocated on the basis or race.
Favoring black patients over whites would be in addition to the much anticipated federal reparations. And get this, the doctors who came up with this idea both teach at Harvard Medical School. Thus, an ivy league education produced two heaping globs of ignorance and wrapped them in a set of scrubs.
As the Boston Review shared:
Dr. Bram Wispelwey, and Dr. Michelle Morse, both of whom teach at Harvard Medical School, wrote that their mission was to “comprehensively confront structural racism.” To go about this, they plan to enlist the tools of critical race theory (CRT). They slam what they call “colorblind policies,” or the concept of equality for individuals of all races and ethnicities under the law, saying that it is not achieving their desired ends with enough speed.
Federal reparations, they write, are only the beginning of addressing structural racism, which they define in a medical context as: “Ability to pay,” “inequities in uninsurance and insurance type,” “employment status,” “institutional racism,” “persistent housing inequality and racial segregation,” “redlining, blockbusting, and contract buying,” and “wealth inequality.”
For their part, and to create “antiracist institutional change,” which they say “is essential to supplement federal reparations,” they have created a pilot program that will undertake “institutional action.” The basis for this institutional action is the concept of “‘applicative justice’—’applying justice to those who don’t now receive it.'” This, they say, is “as opposed to more idealistic conceptions of justice…”
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But the ignorance doesn’t stop there. Covid, apparently, inspired race-based medical treatments in Vermont.
https://theblacksphere.net/2021/12/healthcare-officially-declared-racist/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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