Paying for Global Children

I shake my head over the largesse of the American politician.

For example, it has been determined by the US Supreme Court (Plyler v Doe, 1982) that American schools MUST provide a free public education to any child from anywhere who shows up at the school.  No Social Security card required (unless you happen to be an American).  No papers.  Your parents do not need to be here legally.   And every social benefit must also be provided, such as fee waivers, free lunch and language training.  No charge.

Then there is the concept of anchor baby citizenship, also determined by the Supreme Court.  As the present interpretation goes, anyone born here is automatically a citizen, regardless of the allegiance or even the immigration status of the parents.

And we allow the foreign-born to send money back home while we are providing the safety net for them at taxpayer expense.   Mexicans alone send back around $2 billion a month out of our economy.  The money doesn’t circulate here.  The only people to benefit are the banks, Western Union and Walmart who charge a fee for the transfer.

But wait, there’s more.  What if you lived here illegally but had an ITIN so you could file a tax return?  And what if you had nieces and nephews back in your home country?  And what if you sent money back to them to help out?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could claim a Child Tax Credit on your return for those nieces and nephews?

Well, you can.  Our IRS will hang widows out to dry but they are throwing cash out the window when it comes to the Child Tax Credit.  And the Inspector General has been sounding the alarm about it for years.  Despite our red ink budget, no one is taking care of this loophole.

Take a look at the Inspector General audit report:

http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2011reports/201141061fr.pdf

…and this TV report:

http://www.wthr.com/video?clipId=7054149&autostart=true

I spoke to an accountant about it and he says the loophole exists.  And it is happening with citizens, too.  There is no back up required to claim the Child Tax Credit.

What about an audit?  Well, do you think someone living here illegally cares about auditors?  Do you think he’s going to show up?  He has no respect for our laws because even the IRS is making exceptions for known illegal aliens.  That’s what the ITIN is.  People buy houses and cars using the ITIN.

In their eyes the federal government is about as stern as Jello.  Skipping out on an audit is no big deal if you are living a lie to begin with.

So...all that money they are sending back to Mexico…could be tax refunds.  Imagine that.

On May 14^th the House passed a bill ending the loophole for ITIN-holders, but the Democrats in the Senate seem to be unwilling to make the change.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had something to say about closing this loophole: “I just think the child tax credit is working just fine and there’s no need to punish children,” Reid said.

Source link:

http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-01/business/31013886_1_jobless-benefits-negotiators-dave-camp/2

It all makes a fellow wonder what’s going on in Washington.  But we need not wonder where the record low approval ratings for Congress come from.

"Conventional" Wisdom

Here we go with another GOP Convention (August 27th in Tampa).  Romney has some challengers who are getting weaker by the minute.  That means that the party stand on immigration will be whatever Mitt wants it to be.  (That’s no big deal because Romney has had the firmest position since Herman Cain.)

Like McCain in 2008, he will control the public display.  How he portrays it will be telling.

What he cannot control is the party platform.  Look for it to continue to suggest stronger enforcement.  It hopefully will speak out against amnesty as rewarding bad behavior.

“Build the fence,” is safe territory but not very effective by itself.  More effective at the border are things like flexible patrol units with portable eyes in the sky.  Not very glamorous, but effective.  Couple that with good intelligence on movements and you’ve got something.

Add a Port Court system to end catch-and-release for real, and you’ve got a plan.  That assumes you have funding to actually do the job and the political will to prosecute those who try to re-enter the United States. 

None of this is new, but we’ve never been consistent with enforcement.

Interior enforcement is another issue that needs addressing.  Mandatory E-Verify?  That’s not new either, but it’s never happened.  Worksite raids?  Prosecution of BOTH the worker and the employer send the right message.

The local-federal co-op programs are a shambles.  Be it Secure Communities or 287(g), they have been largely dismantled as a result of activists crying, “Racial Profiling.”

Detention beds are always in short supply.  That ought to be covered.

One would expect a party platform that addresses all these issues.

Watch the cast of characters.  George W Bush, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio…even Newt Gingrich are capable of leading a pep rally on amnesty.  If given the stage for that purpose it will signal that the old GOP is still running things.

Palin is an unknown quantity on immigration.  She was coached by McCain’s people to remain silent and she still does.

Michelle Bachman seems set against amnesty but prefers to talk about sponsorship reform.

Santorum and Cain are solid.

My point on speakers is this:  If the old guard wants to send a message to Latinos about immigration reform they have the players to do it.  Look to see who they put up there and what they say.

Now, to watch for the red herrings.

Any guest worker programs would be nothing more than a sham.  We HAVE guest worker visas already.  They are temporary and do not lead to green cards.  Employers have to bring workers in and pay for them.  There’s the rub.  All these complaints from resorts and packing plants are really about getting workers on the cheap, not getting workers.

I might add that the real approach would be a plan to get our citizens back to work.  If those jobs are really that valuable, where’s the salary and benefits to entice our own people to do those jobs?

Vagueness is something else to watch for.  A lack of candor really means a lack of position.

Whatever is said by the candidate will be doctrine that must be defended in the campaign.  Watch for Romney’s boldness, or lack of it.  Immigration issues are a great way to flesh out integrity, or lack thereof.  McCain tried acquiescence, just a bit softer than GWB’s message.  The Left owns the amnesty message (which Obama has failed to deliver on) and any efforts by the GOP to use it for additional votes will be very costly.

Romney would do well to speak to Latinos at another level.  Talk about jobs and families and crime and ethics.  Talk to them as Americans and coax them out of their hyphenated world.  Tell them that illegals take jobs from them and cheapen wages.  Tell them that illegals are keeping their family members waiting for a legitimate visa.

I would love to see a conservative candidate have that conversation.  Flat out tell them that amnesty is not a bargaining chip.  Move on to other topics all Americans, including Latinos, should care about.

Vitriol vs. Vertigo

There is a common complaint these days about nastiness in the political debate.  Calls abound for civility in the public arena.  Politicians, clergy, newspapers…they’re all calling for people to settle down and make nice.

But when you stop and think about these so-called peacemakers they have a common denominator.  They are all elites and they are all losing influence.  They have recognized that other groups threaten their power and hinder their effort to “reframe the debate” to their liking.  New media and Internet communities have weakened their hold on the narrative.

What may appear to be the moral high ground is nothing more than an effort to grab back the power they once held.  They have no control over the message any longer and that’s bad for them.

The truth is, shrill works.  People who make noise and call out liars get attention.  It is seldom pleasant, but sometimes necessary.  It really isn’t right when a candidate sugar-coats an issue and goes all vague on us with their answers.  They are so good at it, and someone needs to push for a straight answer.

For the first time in history we have the background on issues and statements.  The web allows us to call up what Obama said and did 10 years ago.  Ditto for Romney.  And we have a right to a straight answer.  If the elites among us don’t want to push, we’ll do it ourselves. 

In fact, it’s the lack of candor by those in power that has created the need for New Media.  If NBC hadn’t climbed into bed with the Democratic Party, we’d still trust them.  If Dan Rather hadn’t foisted a fake GWB military document on us, we’d still listen to him.  If the churches hadn’t gone about protecting their own interests in the name of social justice, we would continue to follow them.

Remember the merry-go-round at the park?  We’d climb on and someone would get it moving fast.  Blood would rush to our feet and we’d lose our sense of direction.  Our brain would become disoriented.  We wouldn’t know which way was up.  We’d lose our balance.

And in such a condition someone could take advantage of us.

And so it is with politicians, lobbyists, activists, social justice advocates (churches mostly), media, college professors...  They want to make the world appear a certain way.  And so they twist the issues.  Gay marriage, crime, immigration, unemployment, the welfare state, taxation, global warming, banks, corporations…all spun to meet their purposes.

In the end we have a government that is too expensive and too ineffective.  But that big government has a big payroll and big power.  It will circle the wagons and fight exposure.  It will find ways to protect itself and form allies to help them.

One way they fight us is to call out their critics as mean-spirited and uncivil.  Stick a label on us rather than address the question.

My point is that what they are calling vitriol in most cases is just people pushing back against the hype.  We’re tired of the narrative packaged to fit the elite agenda.

To be sure, there are errors and agendas at work in New Media as well.  People must think for themselves and check out the stories.  But they are far better than those in power who would spin us around for their benefit.

Like Walmart, except with people

You don't have to look far to find someone who is critical of Walmart.  People will complain that they import Chinese merchandise which puts Americans out of work.  They point to appliances, electronics, textiles, shoes, toys...all made in Asia.

And it isn't just the redneck "Amuricuns" who complain.  Very liberal-minded folks easily come up with disdain for Walmart and their foreign goods.

In places like Chicago the Democrat-dominated city council fights Walmart because of the lower wages they pay their workers.  Typically the council will negotiate by establishing a minimum wage ordinance and/or a benefits package.

The other issue some people have is the way small businesses are driven out by the competition.

But those same people fail to make any comparison to the illegal alien problem.  May I suggest that the illegal alien labor force is quite similar to importing large amounts of cheap, foreign goods.  It has the same effect.

There are huge numbers of people who buy simply on price and they will choose a cheap worker for the job, even if that worker is probably illegal.

Doing so tilts the scales against our own citizen workforce. 

I'm not saying Walmart hires illegal aliens.  What I'm saying is we can compare the concept of cheap, imported merchandise with cheap, imported labor.  The results are very similar and have a negative impact on our own jobs and workers.

Obama’s “E” for Effort

It’s report card time for the Commander-in-Chief.  Election day is coming right up.  It appears that no democrat will challenge him at the convention, but he cannot escape November 6^th.

The conscientious voter will look at all aspects of his performance, including defense, the economy, crime, education, health care, the price of gas…and…wait for it…immigration.

I was reviewing some old files the other day.  One file contained information on the Bush White House from 2006 and 2007.  In it were news clippings, statements from politicians and official White House documents such as the Bush agenda on immigration reform, press conference transcripts and speeches Bush had given at varied events like the National Restaurant Association, Associated Builders and Contractors and the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast.

In context, here was a lame-duck president pushing hard for the legalization of illegal aliens.  And he knew his position was unpopular with conservatives.

Bush realized that his lack of enforcement of the existing laws was part of the problem.  After his failure during the summer of 2006 he got busy with worksite raids, new cooperation programs with local law enforcement, more detention beds and some serious (at least on paper) fence-building.

But aside from what he thought were good-faith efforts at enforcement, he was all along pushing for guest worker legislation.  As foolhardy as it seems to me, he even had Michael Chertoff, his Secretary of Homeland Security, up on The Hill lobbying Congress in behalf of amnesty. 

(I say foolhardy because it seems ironic to send the one cabinet member charged with keeping illegals OUT to lobby for forgiveness of those he let slip by.)

Chertoff was accompanied by another Bush cabinet member, Carlos Gutierrez of Commerce.  At least that one made some sense.  After all, he is Hispanic and an ally of the Chamber of Commerce.  The Chamber always did favor cheap labor.  The hidden message of seeing Gutierrez up there was that it meant cheap roofing jobs and reasonably priced tomatoes.

And those two cabinet members spent months twisting arms in Congress.  They lobbied everyone.

Bush recruited his RINOs to work side-by-side with Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid.  Bush gave speeches and press conferences advocating for passage of his legalization plan.  It was Bush who pulled out the back taxes clause, not Kennedy.  Remember his “Gang of 12”?

I disagree with the whole plan, but must admit that Bush was diligent in trying to get his plan passed.  He didn’t shy away from it in the least.

Then there’s Obama.  How much effort has he put into passage of immigration reform?

The short answer:  Not much.

And this from a man who promised action in his first year in office.

His chief of staff at the time, Rahm Emanuel, had a history of avoiding the amnesty question.  He knew it was polarizing and had no elegant solution.  If only Rahm had been able to keep Obama from making those wild promises on the campaign trail.

That’s not to say that Obama hasn’t been working behind the scenes to keep the pressure off illegal aliens.  (He obviously didn’t see the connection between demonstrating good faith enforcement and passage of an amnesty plan.)

Here are a few of Obama’s Executive Branch selective enforcement efforts:

¦    The gutting of 287(g).  This was a successful program between ICE and local police departments whereby cops and the feds worked together to enforce immigration laws.  It was all on the up-and-up, authorized by Congress in 1996.  And 287(g) had a waiting list of county sheriffs and police departments.  Obama changed the contract (MOU) making it impossible to be effective.

¦    In similar fashion to 287(g), the Secure Communities program  was destroyed.  This one was a little more technical.  Basically ICE spliced into the fingerprint scanners at the county jails and reacted to hits that matched the illegal alien files.  It was killed by just one word – “conviction” – making  Secure Communities a mere shell of a program.

¦    One of the bottlenecks to deportation is the lack of detention beds.  Mostly, they are rented beds in county jails with a few private prison corporations thrown in.  Obama insisted that jail cells were cruel to illegal aliens.  They deserved detention facilities that were more like dorm rooms.  As a result of his new standard the growth in detention beds stopped.  In fact, the numbers slid backwards.

¦    Obama ended worksite raids.  His hidden message there was that the worker is innocent and the employer is the only one who should be punished.  The famous example of the Obama plan is the Bellingham Washington engine plant raid in February 2009.  Boy was he upset when he found out that ICE was actually doing its job.

¦    Perhaps the most egregious example of Obama’s rule by fiat is his instruction to review 300,000 deportation letters.  It’s as though all these people with run letters are given a new, more generous offer, similar to the one Obama’s Aunt Zeituni got.  It can be a sweet deal.  She was ordered to leave in 2004 but instead was living on a disability check in subsidized housing.  What was her punishment?  A green card and a shot at citizenship.

Some will look at the charts and say, “Obama has deported more people than Bush,” but that’s really just the old Bill Clinton trick of Port Court.  Roll in the numbers of people run through deportation court at the border without even having lived in the United States and you get some really big numbers.  But those big numbers are an aberration since Bush was turning people back south (TBS) all along and not counting them as deportations.

So…Obama will be hard-pressed to prove to the world that he’s made much of an effort at immigration reform.  No matter.  All he has to do is tell people what a great job he’s done, and promise once again that he’ll pass comprehensive reform in his first year of his second term…and people will believe him.

Pleading the 14th

Something on the order of six out of ten voters believe that the current interpretation of the 14^th Amendment is wrong.  That is to say, they do not believe someone born in the United States to illegal aliens should be given automatic citizenship.

Source link:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/new_high_65_oppose_automatic_citizenship_for_children_born_here_to_illegal_immigrants

And there is good reason for their opposition; they realize that the current interpretation strays far from the original intent.  The 14^th Amendment was created after the Civil War to establish the rights of the children of slaves.  It was a bold declaration that negro babies born from that day forward would not be the chattel of the slave owners.  They were no longer to be considered as just another lamb or foal or piglet added to the livestock count. 

You see, a landowner’s possessions can be bought and sold.  Property can be parceled off.  A bull can be castrated, dehorned and yoked to carry a heavy load.  Cows are milked and slaughtered.  And children born to slaves were considered nothing more than animals to be exploited for the good of the enterprise.

The import of that burden is horrifically illustrated in the novel Beloved, by Toni Morrison.  The character Sethe chooses death for her child rather than submission to ownership by another.

The 14^th Amendment boldly declared that these children were citizens of the United States.  With rights and privileges.

And the Amendment was sufficiently clear to exclude visitors and diplomats.  And it spoke to the notion of allegiance with the phrase, “…and subject to the jurisdiction thereof..”

Not insignificantly, American Indians were specifically excluded from the citizenship clause.  It is not simply a matter of geography.

Subsequent interpretations of the Wong Kim Ark case turned the original intent on its head.  Interestingly, it was about a Chinese man born in the United States who left the country for a time and was barred from returning.  His parents were here legally and conducting business in the United States, and those facts were part of the case as ruled upon by the Court.  But somehow a precedent was set for babies of illegal aliens as others misapplied the message of the 14^th and Wong Kim Ark.

One would think that Blacks in America would be incensed about this hijacking of the Amendment that freed their ancestors from ownership.  Were illegal aliens brought here involuntarily?  No.  Did they establish themselves as legitimate visa-holders?  No.  Do they consider themselves Americans?  No.  (In fact, they overwhelmingly consider themselves Mexican citizens working in the United States.)

So, what of their babies?  Do they have a loyalty to the United States?  Not really.  By nature of their family situation they aren’t learning English at home.  The bill for their bilingual schooling falls to the rest of us.  Often they are from poor families, so “We the People” paid for the delivery as well as health care, food and housing.

These babies are pawns for bringing  the benefits of the welfare state into the home, and later on they become sponsors for their parents to get legal.  Meanwhile, their very existence staves off deportation of mom, dad and siblings.

It is a powerful magnet to be sure.  But it is a far cry from the original intent of making sure slave babies were Americans, not cattle.

Some Clarity on Selective Enforcement

I’ve commented before about the disarray our politicians have created in the simple checks-and-balances process.  The President is creating laws, Congress is hold hearings and the Courts are changing the original intent of the legislation.  What a mess.

One of the ways a President changes the law is to use his limited funds to enforce certain laws he likes while ignoring others because of a lack of resources.  Every President in my adult life has done this in one form or another.

Most government agencies are governed by rules rather than legislation.  OSHA and the EPA are prime examples.  A left-leaning President will likely put forth stronger enforcement efforts against business than a rightie.

When it comes to immigration, GWB’s efforts are instructive.  For much of his tenure Bush Jr. ignored enforcement legislation.  In fact, Bill Clinton carried out more worksite raids than Bush…until 2006.  At that point Bush realized that his amnesty plan wasn’t going anywhere in Washington without a show of enforcement.  Only then did you see serious fence building, border patrolling and worksite raiding.

Obama did not take the hint and started looking the other way.  He immediately ended worksite raids, thus sending the message that working illegally in the USA was OK with the Executive Branch.

He dismantled the 287(g) program and Secure Communities a couple of years later in the name of civil rights.

He effectively halted the creation of detention beds (a key component of enforcement) by insisting on turning them into dorm rooms rather than jail cells.  The message here: Unlawful presence is no big deal and illegal aliens should not be treated as though they were…well…illegal.

He cooked the books on deportation statistics by cranking up Bill Clinton’s Port Court program and including arrests at the border in the deportation tally.

Obama’s coup de grace was his cancellation of about 300,000 legitimate deportation orders, calling for a reevaluation of all of them.  This was a fiat, a procedural order.  He had no Congressional authority to do that.

To that point, selective enforcement by the Executive Branch, IRLI sends a court brief to Utah.  They are crying foul.  The Obama administration cannot dictate priorities to the states, especially when the legislation calls for action.

Follow the link to a good read about a President trying to erase existing law for his own political gain.

http://irli.org/node/46