One of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s rules was that if a problem cannot be solved, it may not be a problem, but a fact.
I think the presence of millions of unauthorized immigrants in the United States is a fact. I don’t say their presence is a good thing; I say it is not feasible to deport them all.
Given this fact, I think the choices for the United States are to continue to have an underclass outside the protection of American law or to find a way to assimilate these immigrants into American society.
I think this would be the lesser evil, even from the standpoint of native-born American citizens and legal immigrants who have to complete with the unauthorized immigrants.
Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz and other Republican leaders threaten to impeach President Obama for using prosecutorial discretion to concentrate on border security and unauthorized immigrants who break domestic law, giving the others a free pass. Even though the federal government doesn’t have the resources to discover and deport all unauthorized immigrants, they say decisions to prosecute should be made on an individual basis and not about categories of immigrants.
They’ve got a point. Hard cases make bad law. I’d take the Republican leaders more seriously if they were equally indignant about the administration’s use of prosecutorial discretion in financial fraud committed by “too big to fail” bankers.
I sympathize with poor people from Mexico or Central America who break the law by coming to the USA to get jobs and help their families. I have no sympathy at all for Wall Street manipulators who break the law in order to get richer at the expense of everyone else.
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Obama’s huge new immigration plan, explained by Dara Lind for Vox news.
Obama’s Immigration Order: The Right Thing in the Wrong Way by Conor Friedersdorf for The Atlantic.
Obama Pretends to Put Immigration Reform in Play by Yves Smith for Naked Capitalism.
Cowering behind a border wall by Chris Ladd on GOPLifer.