🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏻RACISM IN AMERICA: With Racially Tone-Deaf Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson & His Righty Buddy Judge Paul Niemeyer Leading the Way, Split 4th Circuit Panel, Says “Yes” To Trump/Miller White Nationalist Attack On Public Benefits For Immigrants of Color! 

Kevin R. Johnson
Kevin R. Johnson
Dean
U.C. Davis Law

Dean Kevin Johnson @ ImmigrationProf Blog reports:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/08/fourth-circuit-vacates-injunction-against-public-charge-immigration-rule.html

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Fourth Circuit Vacates Injunction Against Public Charge Immigration Rule

By Immigration Prof

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Courthouse News Service reports that the Fourth Circuit yesterday ruled 2-1 (opinion by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, with Judge Robert B. King dissenting)  in favor of a Trump administration policy that makes it more difficult for noncitizens to become lawful permanent residents if they have received public benefits.

The ruling does not, however, change an injunction issued last week by a federal judge in New York barring enforcement of the so-called public charge rule.

The Second Circuit affirmed the injunction but limited its scope to New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The appeals court found the government’s justification for the rule is “unmoored from the nuanced views of Congress.”

KJ

 

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Judge Wilkinson’s racially insensitive judging recently was publicly “called out” by Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Roger Gregory in a remarkably honest and incisive opinion. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/07/16/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8fcalling-out-white-nationalist-judging-in-a-remarkable-opinion-4th-cir-chief-judge-roger-gregory-blasts-colleagues-retrograde-views-on-race-judging-policing-communiti/

Perhaps, dissenting Judge Robert B. King best sums up his colleagues’ willingness to distort the law and pervert rationality in support of the regime’s racist-driven, White Nationalist Immigration agenda:

In the face of the extensive history accompanying the term “public charge,” to conclude that the DHS Rule’s definition of “public charge” is reasonable makes a mockery of the term “public charge,” “does violence to the English language and the statutory context,” and disrespects the choice — made consistently by Congress over the last century and a quarter — to retain the term in our immigration laws. See Cook Cty., 962 F.3d at 229. For those reasons, the Rule’s “public charge” definition ventures far beyond any ambiguity inherent in the meaning of the term “public charge,” as used in the Public Charge Statute, and thus fails at Chevron’s second step. In light of the foregoing, the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the Rule is unlawful, and the majority is wrong to conclude otherwise.

Equal justice for all, due process, reasonableness, and non-racist judging aren’t “rocket science.” That’s why Wilkinson had to cloak his anti-immigrant bias with 71 pages of irrational nonsense and legal gobbledygook. 

Just another example of the U.S. District Judge “getting it right” only to be undermined by bad judging from higher Federal Courts. Unwillingness of the Federal Judiciary to take a unified strand for equal justice and against institutionalized racism and the White Nationalist agenda of the Trump regime is literally ripping our nation apart as well as showing the fatal weakness of the Federal Judiciary as a protector of our democracy and our individual rights.

Folks like Wilkinson and Niemeyer are what they are. But, we have the power to elect a President and a Senate who will appoint judges who actually believe in Constitutional due process and equal justice for all, regardless of color or status. Judges who will “tell it like it is,” “just say no” to “Dred Scottification” of “the other,” and courageously stand up for an unbiased interpretation the law and for simple human decency, rather than pretzeling themselves to defend an indefensible Executive agenda of unbridled White Nationalism and racism.

This November vote like your life and the future of our nation depend on it. Because they do.

PWS

08-06-20

COMPLICIT COURT UPDATE: 4th CIRCUIT JOINS 9th IN “TANKING FOR TRUMP” ON PUBLIC CHARGE RULE – Judges Harvie Wilkinson & Paul Niemeyer Go “Belly Up” For Trump, While Judge Pamela Harris Stands Up For The Rule Of Law –- Complicit Federal Judges continue to advance & enable Trump’s White Nationalist agenda by “working against our collective national interest.”

Scott Martelle
Scott Martelle
Opinion Writer
LA Times

 

https://apple.news/AEvdsXcjDQJ6o7WK_NGgpYg

 

Scott Martelle writes in the LA Times:

 

Opinion: Court decisions are falling Trump’s way on a bad immigration policy

Just because two of three pending appeals have gone Trump’s way, that doesn’t mean his ‘public charge’ rule for immigrants is good policy.

Two down, one to go.

Federal judges in three separate circuits issued injunctions — two nationwide, one limited to the 9th Circuit — against President Trump’s pending “public charge” rule, which would make immigrants ineligible for green cards if they sign up for certain public benefits.

On Monday, the 4 Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., joined fellow jurists in the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in lifting injunctions after the federal government persuaded them that it likely had the legal authority to adopt the new restrictions.

That leaves the 2 Circuit Court of Appeals, which is mulling an appeal of a nationwide injunction issued in October by a district court in New York City, as the last barrier.

The lower court decisions hinged on complaints by immigrant advocates and several state attorneys general (including California) that the government violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act by adopting an “arbitrary and capricious” policy that exceeded its authority under immigration law. But two appellate courts now say the government likely had the authority to do what it did.

Even if that is true, that doesn’t make the new rule good policy. Much like the government’s effort to require potential immigrants to prove they could cover anticipated healthcare costs (that also has been held up in the courts), the public charge rule is clearly aimed at reducing the number of poor people admitted to the country and increasing the ranks of the wealthy.

You know, fewer people from those infamous “shithole countries” in Africa, South American and the Caribbean, and more from wealthier nations in Europe, such as Trump expressed favorite, Norway (good luck with that, as my colleague Paul Thornton once pointed out).

In typical fashion, the White House used the Monday decision as a point of attack.

“The 4th Circuit’s lifting of the lawless nationwide injunction imposed against the administration’s public charge immigration regulation is a major step forward for the rule of law,” the White House said. “It is our hope that the 2nd Circuit will, like the 9th and 4th Circuits have already done, lift the meritless nationwide injunction a New York district court has imposed against the rule so that it can be enforced, consistent with the plain letter of the law, for the benefit of all citizens and lawful residents of this country.”

But the “public charge” rule is not a benefit to all. It makes life tougher for people who have already immigrated and who are hoping to be joined by their families — allowed under decades of U.S. policy — and it counters our national economic interest.

As The Times editorial board wrote in September when the proposed rule surfaced:

“The government estimates that the new regulations would negatively affect 382,000 people, but advocates say that is likely an undercount. And the rules would keep people from coming to the country who economists say are vital for the nation’s future economic growth. President Trump’s xenophobic view of the world stands in sharp contradiction not only to American values, but to the nation’s history. We are a country of immigrants or descendants of immigrants, and as a maturing society we will rely more and more on immigration for economic growth. Research shows that even those who start out in low-wage jobs, and thus are likely to get some financial help from the government, often, over time, learn or improve skills that move them into higher income brackets and help the overall economy.”

So in the administration’s efforts to reduce immigration of all stripes, it continues to push policies that appease Trump’s narrowing base while working against our collective national interest.

 

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Wonder who’s going to stand up for the legal rights of anti-democracy judges like Wilkinson and Niemeyer once Trump and his White Nationalists no longer need the courts? Would their immigrant ancestors have passed Trump’s nativist tests?

 

My full commentary on the similarly complicit ruling of the Ninth Circuit is here:http://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/12/06/complicit-9th-circuit-judges-continue-to-coddle-trump-this-time-legal-immigrants-are-the-victims-of-trumps-judicially-enabled-white-nationalist-agenda-judges-jay-bybee-sandra-i/

 

 

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Judges Never!

 

PWS

 

12-10-19