IN the months since President Obama first seem poised — as he now seems poised again — to issue a sweeping executive amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, we’ve learned two important things about how this administration approaches its constitutional obligations.
First, we now have a clear sense of the legal arguments that will be used to justify the kind of move Obama himself previously described as a betrayal of our political order. They are, as expected, lawyerly in the worst sense, persuasive only if abstracted from any sense of precedent or proportion or political normality.
Second, we now have a clearer sense of just how anti-democratically this president may be willing to proceed.
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I believe the US should grant asylum to women and children fleeing the escalating drug war in Mexico, but at the same time should immediately deport undocumented aliens from Mexico who appear to pose a sexurity risk or have any connection with the drugs trade. The surest way to stop illegal immigration is with laws based on those of Arizona, which hold employers accountable for employing illegal aliens, and to tax overseas wire transfers sent to Latin America.
ReplyDeleteOf course there are other geopolitical considerations. Mexico is increasingly becoming a failed state on the scope of Palistan or South Africa, at best, if not Afghanistan or Libya. The US also would benefit enormously if the Latin A,Erica's countries stopped being corrupt and became productive economies. One pernicious problem illegal immigration is causing is that people travel to the US, work, send money back to their relatives, and their relatives live off of that money, which has the effect of suppressing industry. The US has to figure out a way, both for our own national security and for the humanitarian considerations of these countries, whose populations are still predominantly Christian and share many of our cultural values, to wean these countries off of the economic narcotic of transfer payments from the US and to stimulate economic development that will allow for economic symbiosis with the United States.
We also must stop the flow of guns from the US into Mexico. I like the fact that the US as a rule is one of a handful of countries with no outbound passport control, however, there is a legitimate case for introducing comprehensive outbound screening on the Mexican border. Note that I am a strong supporter of second amendment rights; these rights are endangered as a result of people exploiting this traditional right of Americans to arm criminal death squads in Mexico. Of course, a lot of the military hardware of the drug lords comes from corrupt police forces in Mexico; I think a case could be made for an international arms embargo against the country. At the same time, Mexico has a surprisingly well equipped navy; it would be a nightmare scenario if their fleet of frigates fell I to the hands of the drug lords.
One interesting fact relating to religion: while the majority of Meixans are pious Roman Catholics, the narcos predominantly worship Santa Muerte or other disturbing religions,,which are syncretic blends of the dark side of folk Catholicism with remnants of the Aztec religion and theistic satanism.
while the majority of Mexicans are pious Roman Catholics
ReplyDeleteI doubt it. This is the same country that hosted Trotsky and all but outlawed the Catholic Church in the early 20th century.
I meet a lot of Mexican immigrants. Some are Catholic; most are Evangelical or areligious. Americans seem to have this vision of Mexico with pious old women in chapel veils, cooking food and arranging marriages. That remnant hidalgo culture may persist here and there but I don't think it's been majority Mexican culture for a long time. I'm open to correction.
I myself live in a predominantly Mexican Ameridan neighborhood that is fairly solidly Carholic. Anecdotal I reelize,mbut relevant. There has definitely bin a high degree of Pentecostal penetration.
ReplyDeleteThe harboring of Trotsky and the antics of Mexican politics revolve around the PRI, which has lamentably returned to power after the respite of the Fox / Calderon era. Calderon, who was a conservative technocrat, attempted to unify the federal security forces and attack the narcos head on, unfortunately, he underestimated their strength resulting in a huge escalation of the violence. Thus panicking Mexicans voted PRI for the first time since 1997 (in 2006, when Calderon was elected, his main opponent was Luis Obrador, a radical leftist from outside the PRI), presumably in the hopes that the notoriously corrupt PRI would be able to cut a deal with the narcos like it had in the 1980s and 90s and restore peace through looking the other way. That obviously failed.