re: "What the Immigration Debate Needs Is -- More Discrimination"

Dafydd at Big Lizards ("Please enjoy the blog while you wait with breathless breath and baited hook for the rest of this fershlugginer web site.") had a reasonable enough suggestion.

Money quote(s):

"I mean that quite literally: We need to discriminate between different classes of illegal alien.

Patterico has for some time pushed -- desultorily, to be sure -- a welcome policy suggestion; he calls on the feds to "deport the criminals first."

No, he's not saying that, since all illegal aliens are by definition "criminal," we should deport them all immediately; by contrast, Patterico says that there already is a subgroup, within the larger group of illegal aliens, comprising those illegals who commit crimes apart from the crime of being here illegally (and its associated crimes of document fraud and such)... and that we should focus first on deporting those who come to this country in order to live a criminal livestyle.." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

This idea has much to commend it; such as The Principle of Low-Hanging Fruit.

Which is to say that criminals, being that class of people prone to commit criminal acts, are more prone (than the merely law-abiding) to come to the attention of law enforcement, whereupon their illegal alien status can come to light and be addressed by our immigration enforcement apparatus.

(So midnight raids and the sorts of police-state actions that alarm the citizenry are unnecessary to implement this kind of program.)

"It makes a lot of sense, and it's a perfect example of discrimination: Patterico discriminates between illegals who want to try to fit into and contribute to American society, and illegals who see America as a vast piggy bank to be looted, abused, and despoiled." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

This also serves as an exemplar of both The Principle of Low-Hanging Fruit and The Principle of Self-Defense, plus The Principle of Practicality. While more-or-less law-abiding (leaving aside their immigration violations) illegal immigrants aren't to be encouraged, it's just good sense to prioritize or, as Dafydd says, discriminate between the two classes of illegal aliens.

"I hereby initiate my own program that I believe complements Patterico's pontification noted above. He says, "deport the criminals first;" I say, legalize the most innocent first.

Who are the most innocent of all illegal aliens? Those who were brought here as little children, too young even to understand what a national border is or what it means to cross without permission, let alone mature enough to consent in an informed way to illegal entry. Such innocents need a name, so let us call them "unwitting aliens," UA -- they illegally entered the U.S. without their own consent or even knowledge.

(Do you want to call it amnesty? I don't mind; I don't even care. Does anybody deserve amnesty more than a person who never even committed the crime of which he stands convicted, since he was a little kid when it happened?)

There are a great many such UAs, in raw numbers; and for nearly all of them, the United States is literally the only country they have ever known. They grew up here, went to school here, made friends and enemies here; they are completely assimilated into American society; they think of themselves as Americans; they have no recollection of having lived in Mexico or Argentina or El Salvador; and likely in quite a lot of cases, they don't even speak Spanish or Portuguese. Their parents may have falsely told them all their lives that they were born in the United States; they may even have shown the UAs a false American birth certificate.

Should we really tell these kids that they don't deserve in-state tuition, even if they have lived in one American state all their conscious life, because they're criminals? Do we want these young men and women to be forever barred from living legally in the only home they remember, the only country to which they feel loyalty, unable to establish residency anywhere in that country because of something their parents did when the UAs were still infants? Do we for God's sake want to deport these very American "illegals?" Deport them to where -- a country they cannot even remember, whose citizens speak a language the unwitting aliens might not even know?" (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Dafydd raises several excellent points as well as asking some (possibly) rhetorical questions along the way. I'll address them in damnall order:

1. "Who are the most innocent of all illegal aliens? Those who were brought here as little children, too young even to understand what a national border is or what it means to cross without permission, let alone mature enough to consent in an informed way to illegal entry."

Question asked and answered, with enough justification that he makes it stick. The consular officer in me wants to ask though, how old? Where are we going to draw the line, specifically, because if implemented, some person on our side is actually going to need guidance and a legal basis and authority to make a hard and permanent decision that's going to have a decisive impact on another person's entire life.

2. "Such innocents need a name, so let us call them "unwitting aliens," UA -- they illegally entered the U.S. without their own consent or even knowledge.".

The use of the term "unwitting" appeals to former counterintelligence professional who lurks just below CAA's surface, since "witting" and "unwitting" are CI terms of art having very long standing.

3. "Do you want to call it amnesty? I don't mind; I don't even care. Does anybody deserve amnesty more than a person who never even committed the crime of which he stands convicted, since he was a little kid when it happened?"

In consular work, unlawful presence by a minor (under age 18) doesn't count in terms of constituting a visa ineligibility. That is, if someone walks up to the visa interview window at a U.S. consular section and applies for a U.S. visa, none of their unlawful presence (if any) prior to their 18th birthday counts as an automatic visa ineligibility. Unlawful presence that counts begins acruing on their 18th birthday, and an automatic visa ineligibility doesn't trigger until six months of unlawful presence are achieved.

Now, the fact that someone lived in the U.S. illegally as a minor and, presumably, may have strong ties in the U.S. (and, presumably, correspondingly weak ties in their county of citizenship) are certainly factors that a consular officer has to (and will) consider in terms of evaluating that former illegal alien minor in terms of their being a likely visa overstay. And that will get them a visa refusal under INA Sec. 214b.

But it's not automatic; it's based on the interviewing (and adjudicating) officer's best judgment considering the totality of the visa applicant's circumstances. So it can go either way. CAA has encountered more than one of these situations himself and made visa decisions each way.

Frankly, CAA has tended to be favorably impressed by young persons who, upon reaching age 18 as illegal aliens in the U.S., made sure to leave the U.S. before acquiring six months of unlawful presence as an adult. They took the trouble to learn the law and, as legal adults, comply with it.

(As a general rule, consular officers are inclined to view positively those instances where someone takes the trouble to comply with our sometimes opaque or arbitrary immigration law. That sort of law-abiding behavior is to be encouraged.)

This also can cut the other way; encountering those sorts of responsible acts by former illegal aliens has made CAA much less patient and understanding when he encounters someone who didn't hie themselves out of the U.S. before reaching the age of 18 and six months, but stuck around until they themselves ran into trouble and found themselves deported.

4. "There are a great many such UAs, in raw numbers; and for nearly all of them, the United States is literally the only country they have ever known. They grew up here, went to school here, made friends and enemies here; they are completely assimilated into American society; they think of themselves as Americans"

This the part that pulls your heartstrings, assuming you still have them. And most consular officers still do.

(CAA must be excepted from those ranks since he has no personal feelings on any subject. Okay, that's a lie.)

They say that most FSOs come into the Foreign Service with a fairly (politically) liberal outlook, and that after doing their first consular assignment, particularly visa work, they're still liberals, but not when it comes to illegal immigration.

(They are always saying things.)

I don't know if that's wholly true, but I do think that nobody joins the Foreign Service because they hate foreigners, because they're xenophobic and don't like other countries. Since we're all volunteers in this profession, we're a group self-selected to be at least interested in foreign countries, and at least respectful of other cultures and peoples.

Of course, a year or so of having people lie to you, bold-faced and un-embarrassed, every single day of visa work can tend to wear on one; plus, working on the implementation side of U.S. immigration law does at least produce someone who's become educated about the issues and implications of illegal immigration.

My second point (and I do have one) is about the nature and essence of citizenship.

Citizenship is like unto love and marriage; everyone thinks they know what they are but definitions are hard to pin down and there's a broad spectrum of them.

Consular officers have to implement the laws and regulations as they're written (and not as they would have written them themselves). That means we don't have discretion about facts and rules; our only areas of discretion are in areas where we are required to exercise judgment, as in when making adjudications.

So if the 14th Amendment and the relevant portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) lay out the definitions of U.S. citizenship in lawyerly and orderly fashion, then those are the criteria we have to use. And we don't have discretion in terms of extending the privileges of citizenship (and I'm talking specifically about the right to reside within U.S. territory) to people who feel American.

That being said, I think that our Founding Fathers, the Framers, and even our congressional legislators today understand that citizenship, if it means anything at all beyond residential permission or preferences, involves a personal attachment beneath purely legalism. This goes under the heading of allegiance, which is a personal attachment or feeling that goes beyond the simply rational and enters the realm of the mystical and spiritual.

So forgive me if I don't get too upset about establishing a "path to citizenship" for persons who grew up in the same country I did and love it just like I do. Rules (and laws) aren't written to be broken, but some laws were just written to be amended.

Which brings be to this:

5. "Should we really tell these kids that they don't deserve in-state tuition, even if they have lived in one American state all their conscious life, because they're criminals? Do we want these young men and women to be forever barred from living legally in the only home they remember, the only country to which they feel loyalty, unable to establish residency anywhere in that country because of something their parents did when the UAs were still infants? Do we for God's sake want to deport these very American "illegals?""

Minor children can't be criminals because they're minors, unless a court says otherwise. This is where Dafydd goes a bit off the beam; illegal alien children don't generally get charged tuition until they're old enough (i.e., no longer children or "kids") to attend tertiary institutions such as universities or community colleges.

As I discussed in my "3." above, once illegal alien children reach age 18 they're legal adults (at least for purposes of this discussion) and thus responsible for their own actions and immigration violations.

That being said, the topic of in-state tuition for illegal aliens is muddied by the competing notions of resident status within states and that of legal (or illegal) residence in the U.S. as a whole. These are separate concepts, and under our federal system each state gets to decide not only who qualifies for "residence" within that state but who qualifies for "in-state" tuition for that state's public (i.e., state-funded) universities.

States are free to decide that persons who are unlawfully in the U.S. but physically residing in their state deserve (or don't deserve) to receive the benefit of reduced university or college tuition, presumably since they pay taxes in the state in which they physically reside. But there may be a political cost to individual politicians in those states (such as governors or legislators) who chose to take that stance.

(They knew the job was dangerous when they took it.)

"Most American family courts, in the case of divorce, will take the ages of the children into consideration when determining custody; when a child is deemed old enough to make an informed decision, he can decide whether to live with the father, the mother, or under some joint custody plan. Certainly any adult child (over the age of eighteen) can freely decide whether to live with one of his parents or move into his own place.

I call for the same sort of program for unwitting aliens as we have for the children of divorce: If a UA's parents are discovered and ordered deported, and if the UA is deemed old enough to give informed consent, he should be allowed to freely choose which country he will live in; and we should grant him permanent residency in the United States, if that's what he chooses.

That doesn't mean his parents get to stay as well; if they're subject to deportation, they're still subject to deportation. The UA can be raised by a legally resident relative, or in the extreme case, can be made a ward of the court and sent either to a foster home or adopted out. But any good parent should want the best for his child, correct?

If a UA comes to the authorities' attention by some other means -- say by applying for university and claiming, in all innocence, the in-state tuition of the local state university -- then the same applies: He is told that he is an unwitting alien and that he must choose.

In either case, once obtaining permanent residency, he is eligible to work towards citizenship, just as would be any other legal permanent resident.

(If such a law is passed, and a reasonable period of time elapses -- time for people to understand the system -- then UAs who don't apply for residency but instead take criminal steps to conceal their alien nationality should lose their UA status; they are no longer "unwitting;" they have become co-conspirators with their parents.)" (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

It's a thought. What do you think?.

10/2

re: "Afghan Meadows Massacre - or Haditha Redux?"

Dafydd at Big Lizards ("Please enjoy the blog while you wait with breathless breath and baited hook for the rest of this fershlugginer web site. It really will be coolsomeness personified, the very apex of intelligent web design, when it's done. I promise.") exhibited some honestly acquired media skepticism.

Money quote(s):

"An American staff sergeant has just been indicted, tried, convicted, and condemned for a horrific massacre in Afghanistan; the court was the mainstream media -- which also served as judge, jury, and sentencing panel....

The trouble is, we don't know what really happened there, because the investigation has barely begun." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Still true. This is the point, one presumes, of an investigation and (subsequent) trial.

"(W)hile such staggering carnage was carried out -- evidently by a lone American soldier -- not a single resident could locate a weapon and shoot back at the man. Not one.

But in areas of Afghanistan like Panjwai, that are forever in a tug-of-war between Taliban and government forces, shouldn't we assume that every man would be armed, or nearly so? Shouldn't these three villages be awash with AK-47s, M-16s, and heavier weapons, and thick with Afghans boasting much recent experience using them?

Yet a single soldier can not only walk from house to house, trying doors and entering domiciles to butcher women and children at will, but even finds the time and leisure to pick up eleven dead bodies, convey them (presumably one at a time on his shoulders or tucked under his arms) from one place to another, and there burn them. A veritable Superman. (Didn't anybody think to fire upon him while his hands were thus occupied?)

I can't say it's impossible that such a massacre occured in the way that AP and its sock puppets described it... but boy howdy, what a series of unfortunate events must have occurred to prevent the local residents from doing anything, anything at all, to stop this one man death squad from devastating a village.

And what perfect timing! The alleged event occurs just as the Koran-burning riots are dying down. By a tragic coincidence, a lone American gunman goes nuts and commits a demonic act of mass human sacrifice just in time to reignite the rampage against Americans and NATO, just as withdrawal talks have finally resumed.

We don't know who actually reported what supposedly happened, but we sure know who benefits from those reports (true or false): the Taliban... in one of the home bases of the Taliban.

I'm sorry if I seem insufficiently convinced of the accuracy and veracity of this report; but I can't help remembering the "Haditha Massacre" in Iraq -- which turned out, after a lengthy investigation and multiple criminal trials, to be a complete fabrication in almost every particular reported in the first heady days of the story -- lurid "factoids" ginned up by the media, who have yet to apologize or even admit they were dead wrong." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

One question: how is that a single soldier was anywhere outside the wire? That just strikes me as odd from the outset. Nobody goes anywhere without a "battle buddy," after all.

Dafydd went on to describe two other deception operations which were, fairly successfully, targeted against us by someone.

He concluded:

"Maybe I'm jaded, but color me skeptical. It may well turn out to be every bit as horrific and shameful to America as the media gleefully report; accuracy is always a possibility, no matter how out of character that would be. But that's not how initial reports of similar incomprehensible, "American-caused" massacres have generally fared when exposed to the light of actual evidence dredged up by a thorough and complete investigation.

Let's sit tight and wait to see what the evidence actually shows before belly-flopping, yet again, upon the American military."

With the recent/pending/ongoing implosions of various media story-lines now occuring (e.g., Fluke, Trayvon, "war on women"), CAA is reminded that The First Report Is Always Wrong.

3/11

re: "Predictions, Predilictions UPDATED"

Dafydd at Big Lizards ("everything in this site is under construction, except for the blog") made some predictions that seem a lot less crazy than they would have even a year ago.

(DISCLAIMER: CAA is not any sort of economist by training, education, or inclination.)

Money quote(s):

"We all know that something is rotten in the state of the European Onion; but I'll be the boldest by staking out this prediction:

Within six years from today, by September 14th, 2017, the European Union as a political body will cease to exist except on paper. And the whole sorry farce of "United in Diversity" will be nothing more than a vivid and utopian opium dream."

Recall that there are/were a host of lesser-and-or-included international organizations still persisting in sort of a state of suspended relevence, such as the WEU and other various treaty-generated bodies.

The EU, which is only the latest phase of long string of existances which began as a steel and coal consortium, will likely continue some sort of legal existance, even if only as a collection of surviving components.

In a similar fashion, some portions of the former League of Nations survived to be incorporated into the U.N.

"The Euro will no longer be a semi-pan-European currency; each country will revert to its native currency -- lira, deutschmark, drachma, pound sterling (all right, all right, the last never actually disappeared) -- and the Euro will only be honored as trade-in on the local national currency."

Speculation on just how that would be implemented is already making the rounds of the blogosphere.

(I particularly like the notion of checking ones Euro currency and coinage and separating out the ones printed/minted in other EU countries, then exchanging them until you only have those from you own country. Although I kinda/sorta/really doubt that would make any practical difference in the end.)

Back in the real world, you can already see news reports of capital flight such as from Greece to the U.K.

"(T)he EU (pronounced eeew!) has never really existed except on paper in the first place. Nobody really believes that Greece, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria, Latvia, and the UK (pronounced yuck!) are all contained within a single geopolitical unit. It's impossible and insane.

But I mean something stronger: Under my prediction, nearly all the political entities putatively absorbed into the EU, and all of those with functioning economies without exception, will have formally repudiated any supernational "sovereignty" of the European Union; if it exists at all, it will be only as a "free-trade zone." "

Oddly, the "free-trade zone" is the single most practical and useful part of the EU. I hope it survives.

"(I)it's already happening; and the trigger has been the looming debt defaults (often driven by bank failures) and proposed and actual bailouts of perpetual paupers Greece and Portugal; countries with serious deficit and debt problems, such as Italy, Ireland, and Spain; and even the very powerhouse economies that are called upon to bail out everyone else: Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. (Ireland and the UK are in trouble mostly because their banking systems are integrally tied into their federal budgets.)"

What goes unmentioned here is how much debt paper from the PIIGS is held by the major banks in the "powerhouse economies" (esp. France and Germany). The last thing those countries want is for the music to stop and for those "investments" to be written down (or off).

"Take Germany as one example; it doesn't want to bankrupt its relatively good economy with a succession of bailouts to the many countries in the EU that face imminent economic collapse. But on the other hand, I doubt Germany is anxious to be made into the scapegoat for the political implosion that might result from denying those bailout loans.

And there are likely legal consequences, too: By joining the EU, Germany and the other member states accepted the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union. If the other strong economies (France, the UK, others) bought into the loan package, but Germany refused, the contributors might be able to go to the Court of Justice and try to force Germany to comply.

I have no idea whether the CoJ has either jurisdiction or authority to force a member state to join a bailout... but my guess is that neither does anyone else; I strongly suspect that the rules of that court are kept deliberately vague, allowing tremendous latitude for the court itself (and favored litigants), and tremendous risk for Germany, or any other member state thwarting the decisions reached at the upper reaches of the European Parliament. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some provision allowing Germany to be haled into the dock at Luxembourg and hit with fines and potentially political punishment.

Bottom line, I don't think it's feasible for Germany to refuse to lend the money, but still remain in the European Union. (Note that this same analysis applies to every other member state expected to pour its treasure into rescue packages for the basket cases.)"

How many divisions has the CoJ? Jurisdiction or authority notwithstanding, exactly how does Brussels expect to force Germany to do anything?

"In the end -- if not for this bailout, then for the next, or maybe the one after (that's why I gave my prediction a six-year time span) -- the rich states will not crucify themselves upon a cross of continentalization. Either the current government, or else the next, after that government falls, will run for election on the platform of withdrawing from the EU, notwithstanding the fact that there is no provision for unilateral withdrawal.

Once some nation, Germany or another, punches the first hole in the dike, the other EU member states who have a functioning economy will disassociate from the Union rapidly. If stable states are reluctant to bankrupt themselves propping up the perpetually collapsing states, think how much more reluctant they'll be when one of more of their fellows in stability opt out: "Why should we pay tens of billions to Greece and Portugal when Germany isn't paying a single deutschmark?", the next state will cry... and that argument is pretty unarguable." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

For the moment, I expect more deckchair shuffling, and perhaps the morphing of the Eurozone into a two-tier arrangement.

On the other hand, as a consular officer I believe it's incumbent in my duties to thing-the-unthinkable and do some worst-case-scenario crystal ball reading in order to anticipate some worst-case contingencies. In the event the Eurozone were to come unglued, what happens to the tens of thousands of American travelers and tourists passing through when their bank cards stop working (or worse).

9/15

re: "The Big Lizards Immigration Reform"

Dafydd at Big Lizards ("this fershlugginer web site") has a whole raft of suggestions for immigration reform.

Money quote(s):

"The primary goal of reform is henceforth to select immigrants solely on the basis of two criteria: assimilability (A) and benefit to the United States (B), not by any other criteria (such as race, country of origin, class within the country of origin, having relatives already living legally in the United States, or any other criteria currently used."

Some of his ideas are fairly common-sensical but he goes way off-beam with the stuff about indentured servitude. There are enough problems with modern-day slavery without adding this to the mix.

10/4