Sovereignty – immigrationcourtside.com

⚖️🗽PROFESSOR JILL FAMILY IN YALE JOURNAL ON REGULATION — Puncturing The Sovereignty Myth — “The failure to provide fair process affects more than just the noncitizen; in fact, it degrades our democracy and affects us all.”

https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/we-have-nothing-to-fear-but-sovereignty-fear-itself/

. . . .

Additionally, the status quo does not guarantee that no one will be present in the United States without permission. In fact, with the plenary power doctrine in place, there are approximately 10 million individuals living in the United States without permission. (And most of them crossed the border legally, entering the territory with legal authorization for some period that expired.) Despite this, the United States continues to exist. Noncitizens, however, are denied more independent adjudicators under the false idea that by denying them we somehow protect the nation’s sovereignty. These are complex lives interwoven with our communities, businesses, schools, and the lives of US citizens. The failure to provide fair process affects more than just the noncitizen; in fact, it degrades our democracy and affects us all.

Perhaps the sovereignty fear is shorthand for something else? Is it an objection to multiculturalism? The reflection of a desire to give the president power to thwart statutory immigration law? Or perhaps courts and policymakers have been invoking the phrase “plenary power” for so long that it has become an out of date, knee-jerk reaction.

Sovereignty and foreign policy will remain intact even with more independent immigration adjudication. The sovereignty fear is a distraction from what really needs our attention; we should not let it stop us from providing fair process.

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The threat to our democracy hardly comes from those seeking legal refuge to save their lives or to find meaningful work to support their families and contribute to society. A more robust and fair legal immigration system would assist in identifying the relatively small percentage of migrants who seek to do us harm.

No, the bigger threat comes from GOP neo-fascist insurrectionists and their spineless political enablers who actively seek to undermine our democracy with lies and White Nationalist racism.

In a more functional system, Professor Family and those like her who understand and are committed to the “big picture” of American democracy and equal justice for all would be the Appellate Immigration Judges and Article III Judges — jurists ready and willing to stand up to Executive abuses of authority! The Immigration Courts should be the “starting place” for restoring and reinforcing American democracy. Does the Biden Administration have the vision and guts to make it happen?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-06-21

NOLAN RAPPAPORT AND ALINA INAYEH WITH DIFFERENT TAKES ON TRUMP’S VIEWS ON SOVEREIGNTY AND NATIONALISM!

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/397952-trump-was-right-to-ditch-uns-plan-for-handling-refugees-and-migrants

Noan writes in The Hill:

The U.S. is the only member of the United Nations (UN) that did not participate in the entire 18-month process for the development of a , which is supposed to be formally adopted in December.

The process began when the UN hosted a summit in New York on September 19, 2016, to discuss a more humane way to handle large movements of migrants. Barack Obama was the president then. At the end of the summit, all 193 member states signed the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, a 24-page document that provided a blueprint for the establishment of the compact for migrants (and a separate compact for refugees).

The declaration included numerous provisions that were inconsistent with U.S. immigration policy and the Trump administration’s immigration principles. Consequently, the Trump administration ended U.S. participation.

Ambassador Nikki Haley, the U.S. representative to the UN, explained in a press release that, “The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.” America decides how best to control its borders and who will be allowed to enter.

The Trump administration was right. The compact is a collective commitment to achieve 23 objectives for safe, orderly, and regular migration. Although it addresses problems that need to be resolved, some its proposed solutions would weaken U.S. border security and others would usurp congressional control over the nation’s immigration laws.

. . . .

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Alina Inayeh-Trump-Putin Summit

Meanwhile, Alina Inayeh, Director of the Bucharest Office, German Marshall Fund of the United States. writes in a Facebook post:

. . . .

This ideology of authoritarian patriarchy rejects any constraint on the ruler at home or the state abroad. Mr Trump and Mr Putin support a return to an era of unfettered state sovereignty. They would dismantle international and supranational organisations of all kinds and return to multipolar “Great Power” politics, in which alliances shift and are transactional. As Mr Trump has said, America’s allies can be “foes” on some issues and “friends” on others, without any overarching loyalties based on niceties like a shared commitment to liberal democracy.
Above all, nations would not be subject to globalist dictates about how they should treat the people within their borders. They would control and protect their definition of national purity.
From this vantage point, Nato and the EU are intolerable exemplars of the “liberal international order” — an order built in support of a set of anti-nationalist values that were encapsulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The preamble to the North Atlantic Treaty reaffirms the parties’ “faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,” including the universal principles of “democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law”.
Similarly, the EU proclaims as “fundamental values”, and indeed requirements for membership in the union, “respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law”. Not national dignity and rights, but human.
The Russian president may indeed have some kind of hold over Mr Trump, as former CIA director John Brennan has suggested. But opposition to the current international order does not require a scene out of a spy novel. The extreme right of the Republican party has been exaggerating the danger of the UN for decades. Mr Trump is only taking their views mainstream.
A 2017 poll shows more than half of Republicans say the US and Russia should work more closely together. That is still less than 20 per cent of the population, but they are “America first-ers”, the would-be architects of a new world. And they are reaching out to Britain-firsters, Hungary-firsters, France-firsters, Israel-firsters — wherever nationalists are to be found. They seek a return to the rules of the 19th century.
And why not? The post-second-world-war order is just 70 years old — a blip in the history of multi-polar diplomacy. The Soviet Union lasted 70 years. It collapsed but Russia endures. The EU could collapse and European countries would endure. Nato could collapse and transatlantic relations would endure, on a bilateral and plurilateral basis.
It is incumbent upon those of us who see an arc of progress bending towards peace and universal human rights to appreciate the full scope of the threat posed to our 20th-century global architecture. Our response has to be more than defending the status quo. We must begin sketching an affirmative counter-vision of state and non-state institutions that empower their members more than they constrain them and solve problems effectively together.

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Read the complete articles at the respective links above.

PWS

07-23-18

President Trump Might find That Mexico Has More Leverage Than He Anticipated — Beating Up On Your Friends & Neighbors To Score Political Points At Home Is Likely To Backfire!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mexico-may-strike-back-heres-how/2017/02/22/5d1e8f56-f949-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.12282059b

WashPost Editorial:

“PRESIDENT TRUMP has a good idea of the power the United States wields over Mexico, and the pain it may inflict — the construction of a wall Mexico fiercely opposes; taxes that could be slapped on Mexican imports, wreaking havoc on its economy; deportations of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States, who would be thrust back into a country that would struggle to absorb them. Mr. Trump might have a fuzzier idea of the pain Mexico, its people furious and its pride wounded by his taunts and contempt, might inflict on the United States.

Start with those deportations. At least half of America’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants are Mexican, but many have no documents proving their nationality. For the Trump administration to deport them, it would need cooperation from Mexico, which cannot be forced to accept deportees without certifying that they are Mexicans. As former Mexican foreign minister Jorge G. Castañeda has already warned, Mr. Trump can round up hundreds of thousands or millions of migrants, but without Mexico’s cooperation, they could clog U.S. detention centers and immigration courts — at enormous cost and, conceivably, for years.

Consider, too, the effect on America’s southern border if Mexico were to loosen immigration controls on its own southern border — the one over which Central American refugees are already streaming north in near-record numbers. Even with what U.S. officials say are aggressive interdiction efforts by Mexican authorities, the Border Patrol detained more than 220,000 mainly Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans crossing from Mexico into the United States in the fiscal year ending last fall, exceeding the number of Mexicans apprehended, which has fallen to a 45-year low. If you think the Border Patrol is swamped now, as Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly insists, imagine if Mexico, which last year sent home more than 140,000 Central Americans, simply stepped aside.”

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Predictably, other countries take “sovereignty” just as seriously as we do.

PWS

02/22/17

Professor Jill Family: “Disrupting Immigration Sovereignty”

http://yalejreg.com/nc/disrupting-immigration-sovereignty-by-jill-e-family/

From Yale Law’s “Notice & Comment:”

“This plenary power narrative stifles our ability to think rationally about immigration law policy and to build consensus. The narrative should not be that of a zero-sum game. The choice is not between absolute, unchecked authority and no government power over immigration. There is middle ground. The plenary power doctrine has been weakened over the last 128 years, and many immigrants are subject to constitutional protection today. In terms of facts, immigration is not inherently a threat. Immigration has done wonderful things for our country and immigrants have contributed in a variety of important ways.

We need a new immigration narrative that more accurately reflects law and fact. This narrative acknowledges that there is space for both government interests and individual rights in immigration law. To make progress, we need to disrupt the mindset that does not allow immigration and security to comfortably occupy the same space. It is possible to be secure and to welcome immigrants while promoting individual rights. This new narrative promotes the idea that the sovereignty of the United States incorporates our exceptional dedication to individual rights. It recognizes that allowing for powers not supervised by the Constitution is its own threat to our sovereignty.

The new narrative recognizes that both individual rights and government interests are important in immigration law. The government has an important role to play in fashioning immigration law policy for the country. Security is an important consideration. But so is protecting individual rights. Preserving the United States includes uplifting its most fundamental values, including the principle that absolute government power is not desirable. Allowing for individual rights to be considered in immigration law does not weaken sovereignty; it strengthens our sovereignty by helping to define who we are. It also sends even unsuccessful immigrants home with an experience to relay that reflects American values.”

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The Administration neither satisfactorily justified nor specifically explained the need for the “Travel Ban Executive Order.” The Obama Administration thoroughly vetted refugees. I have no doubt that they also carefully vetted visa applicants from all countries in the Middle East, North Africa, or any country in the world where terrorist movements are known to flourish. That’s probably why there were no known deaths from terrorist attacks by refugees in the U.S. for the past eight years.

There is no actual emergency to explain the type of “extraordinary measures” the Administration wants to put in place. That’s why most Federal Courts have been skeptical of the Administration’s motives.

The controversial Executive Order is also unnecessary. To date, no court has questioned the President’s authority to reduce FY 2017 refugee admissions to 50,000 (although arguably changes in the number of refugee admissions, either increases or decreases, should have been accompanied by statutory advance “consultation” with Congress, and it certainly would be possible to question the wisdom, necessity, and humanity of such a reduction). According to some sources, those reduced refugee admission numbers will soon be exhausted, perhaps as early as March.

Consequently, unless the President takes action to raise the number again, the refugee admission program will effectively be “suspended” until the beginning of the next fiscal year, Oct. 1, 2017, without any further action on the Administration’s part.

Additionally, the Administration has never explained exactly what type of additional “vetting” they would add to that already in place. There is certainly nothing stopping Secretary of State Tillerson from improving visa screening in any way that he deems necessary, provided that the “improvements” are not just a ruse for discrimination. Additional questioning of refugees both abroad and at the border hardly requires an Executive Order. As long as the inquiry legitimately aims at discovering possible grounds of inadmissibility, it’s well within the existing authority of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security.

The use of questionable terms like “extreme vetting” and singling out particular Muslim majority countries for a complete ban is unnecessarily inflammatory. It antagonizes the Muslim world (without making us any safer), while sending a highly inappropriate message about the Muslim religion to the American public, thereby encouraging hate, discrimination, and separation.

While the majority of Americans appear wise enough to emphatically reject the Administration’s false message, there is a significant minority who have adopted or been convinced by the Administration’s largely “fact free” attack on refugees and the Muslim religion.

We as a nation could well be in for some difficult times over the next four years. To persevere and prosper, the vast majority of Americans will need to pull together toward common goals. The Administration could help achieve that end by ditching the unnecessary and inappropriately divisive rhetoric about refugees, Muslims, and immigrants.

PWS

02/19/17

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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