ACID, ABORTION AND AMNESTY
In 1972, Richard Nixon's campaign goons summarized George McGovern's position on the issues by reference to the 3 A's: "acid, abortion and amnesty." The amnesty to which said goons referred was amnesty that they believed McGovern would give to draft-dodgers then residing in other nations who resided in other nations so as to avoid the draft. These Republicans, who did not serve in the war, hated the idea of Americans returning to America and being treated as Americans. (For the record, McGovern did support lliberalization of drug laws and liberalization of abortion laws; two months after his electoral defeat, the Supreme Court issued Roe v. Wade, and several months after his defeat, American participation in Vietnam ended. The Roe vote was 7-2 and thhe Vietnam withdrawal was long in the making, which meant that the idea of amnesty had gained considerable public acceptance circa Novemer 1972. But, elections don't wedge issue themselves, so even though McGovern ran an embarrassing campaign from a technical standpoint, and actually shut out a lot of moderate Democratic voices, the Republicans had to wedge-issue the election out of - I don't know what - nobless oblige?)
Today, "amnesty" is another big Republican word. It is a big word in the sense that most Republican catchphrases cannot consist of more than a few words, because a particularly long multi-word catchphrase might lead to attempts to thinking. It is also a big word because it attempts to describe a complicated issue in a thoroughly reductive manner: Republicans use the term disparagingy to describe any attempt made by a lawmaker to not forcibly remove an illegal immigrant fron this country - i.e., if we do not forcibly deport illegal immigrant X, we are granting him "amnesty." The term is hurled from the White House into Fox News' fax and phone lines, and from there slimed into right wing websites' homepages, and from there regurgitated into right wing airwaves. The echo chamber is thus created. In the process, those who bandy the term about do not gain the slightest appreciation or understanding of what it means - and thereby do not gain the slightest understanding of that which they are agitating over and demonizing.
To GRANT someone amnesty is to grant that person an act of clemency or pardon. The PERIOD of amnesty is the period during which offenders - lawbreakers - are exempt from punishment; amnesty is also knows AS a GRANT of a pardon from lawbreaking. The pardon is generally granted for political offenses, such as draft-dodging. Someone who is granted amnesty is not rewarded (other than by being pardoned); his offense is merely "waved away."
See how easy it is to avoid being suckered into acts of demonization simply by reading?
From the above definition, several observations obtain: 1) the government has the discretion, meaning that it can (DEFINITELY can) pardon an individual or group of individuals from breaking the law, and it need not specify its reasons for doing so. The only way the exercise of this discretion can be illegal is if another law (beyond the law broken) prohibits the exercise of this discretion (I do not see how such a law could exist, given the President's general pardon power for federal offenses), OR if the exercise of discretion works an equal protection violation. If Congress creates, and the President signs, a bill that makes legal status or activity that used to be illegal, that bill, to be unlawful, must constitute a violation of some other law(s), or must be an invalid exercise of Congressional and/or Presidential power.
In the case of the Senate bill that does not forcibly remove most illegal immigrants, Congress and the President, to the best of my knowledge, have acted lawfully and within the scope of their powers so as to make lawful that which previously was unlawful. Amnesty historically has been granted through means other than the pardon power; as long as it is granted via legislation or presidential prerogative that does not trammel upon other laws or upon the Constitution, a law providing for such amnesty is proper.
By the way - and here's the really important part about the bill - it's not really AMNESTY. AMNESTY involves the waving of a magic wand, the resetting of a clock - the restoring or rendering of someone to a position as if he had not broken the law, and nothing more. The Senate bill, while it does place someone in a position such that he has effectively never broken the law in that it allows someone who ONCE broke a law to stay here, actually DOES, at the same time, punish that someone for once breaking that law by making him pay fines, and by learning English, etc. In other words, the person can only stay here IF he pays - to some degree - for his lawbreaking. This arrangement, by definition, is NOT amnesty.
Naturallly, quite a few foamies (roughly 36 in the Senate and over 200 in the House) don't see it that way. They simply recite the foamy definition of "amnesty" noted above, and favor forcible deportation of 12 million people. Do they care who is to pay for this? How it is to be paid for? No. They simply know that they will not personally have to pay for it, nor will their xenophobic rich friends who live in the states that, miraculously, are the most terrified of "illegal immigrants" even though there are maybe 2 or three illegal immigrants in the entire borders of these states. If these Representatives were truly serious about forcible deportation, they should have insisted on not making all of those tax cuts permanent. Do we really need to borrow money from China again to deport Mexicans? How will China respond to a request that we need its money to deport an entire race of people? It wasn't that long ago when Asians were excluded from immigrating to the U.S., after all.
Oh - there are two other aspects to the House plan. One is granting immediate felon status to all illegal immigrants in the United States. Such a grant, however, is merely antecedent to the House Repulican desire for deportation. If the stated goal is to deport, why bother going to the trouble of classifying the group as felons? Just keep track of who was deported and when - that way, when you decide you won't want them ever coming back in - actually, you've already decided that - you'll know who it is you don't want coming back in.
The other aspect - one that the House Republicans claim requires immediate implementation - is a fence that covers virtually the entire U.S.-Mexican border. Of course, a fence, as these worthies have realized, is not good enough. The fence must be surrounded with motion sensors, tracking devices, and remote cameras, to aid our ever-vigilant Border Patrol in spotting attempts at border crossing. I once represented a gaggle of federal employees accused of "improper contracting practices" when they were working for GSA. Theey had procured, for Border Patrol, and under Border Patrol's direct orders, such a technology system. The government discovered that out in the Arizona, New Mexico and Texas deserts, sensor and infrared technology is prone to malfunction, especially when the government awards the contracts to provide such technology to its favorite military-industrial cronies instead of groups that can - ! - actually get the job done! The Border Patrol, as presently constituted - works AGAINST such technology, thereby making the techolongy a literal waste of funds. Oh, and what on Earth does the National Guard know about the technology? The BP knows nothing about it, so that means the National Guard knows less than nothing! And since the government cares more about paying these contractors for crappy work so as to give the appearance that something is being done than about actually achieving results, expect A LOT of waste of taxpayer funds to grace this latest project.
So, labels are harmful, and lead to harmful and stupid thinking. But thinking people know that already.
If you hadn't noticed, I haven't actually taken a stand on the "immigration issue" in this post. Sometimes, one's stand has already been drawn in the sand, to a large degree, by logic - or more specifically, by simply realizing the stupidity of other people's stands. Yes, there are too many people from Mexico coming to this country, and yes, something needs to be done about it. But neither the House Republicans nor the Senate nor the President really are committed to a solution. If they were, they wouldn't have waited until six months before the Congressional elections to tell us about a problem that has existed for decades. A solution to this problem - whatever that solution should consist of - requires reasoning, thinking, refraining from demonization and labeling, and a little common sense. God help us all.
Today, "amnesty" is another big Republican word. It is a big word in the sense that most Republican catchphrases cannot consist of more than a few words, because a particularly long multi-word catchphrase might lead to attempts to thinking. It is also a big word because it attempts to describe a complicated issue in a thoroughly reductive manner: Republicans use the term disparagingy to describe any attempt made by a lawmaker to not forcibly remove an illegal immigrant fron this country - i.e., if we do not forcibly deport illegal immigrant X, we are granting him "amnesty." The term is hurled from the White House into Fox News' fax and phone lines, and from there slimed into right wing websites' homepages, and from there regurgitated into right wing airwaves. The echo chamber is thus created. In the process, those who bandy the term about do not gain the slightest appreciation or understanding of what it means - and thereby do not gain the slightest understanding of that which they are agitating over and demonizing.
To GRANT someone amnesty is to grant that person an act of clemency or pardon. The PERIOD of amnesty is the period during which offenders - lawbreakers - are exempt from punishment; amnesty is also knows AS a GRANT of a pardon from lawbreaking. The pardon is generally granted for political offenses, such as draft-dodging. Someone who is granted amnesty is not rewarded (other than by being pardoned); his offense is merely "waved away."
See how easy it is to avoid being suckered into acts of demonization simply by reading?
From the above definition, several observations obtain: 1) the government has the discretion, meaning that it can (DEFINITELY can) pardon an individual or group of individuals from breaking the law, and it need not specify its reasons for doing so. The only way the exercise of this discretion can be illegal is if another law (beyond the law broken) prohibits the exercise of this discretion (I do not see how such a law could exist, given the President's general pardon power for federal offenses), OR if the exercise of discretion works an equal protection violation. If Congress creates, and the President signs, a bill that makes legal status or activity that used to be illegal, that bill, to be unlawful, must constitute a violation of some other law(s), or must be an invalid exercise of Congressional and/or Presidential power.
In the case of the Senate bill that does not forcibly remove most illegal immigrants, Congress and the President, to the best of my knowledge, have acted lawfully and within the scope of their powers so as to make lawful that which previously was unlawful. Amnesty historically has been granted through means other than the pardon power; as long as it is granted via legislation or presidential prerogative that does not trammel upon other laws or upon the Constitution, a law providing for such amnesty is proper.
By the way - and here's the really important part about the bill - it's not really AMNESTY. AMNESTY involves the waving of a magic wand, the resetting of a clock - the restoring or rendering of someone to a position as if he had not broken the law, and nothing more. The Senate bill, while it does place someone in a position such that he has effectively never broken the law in that it allows someone who ONCE broke a law to stay here, actually DOES, at the same time, punish that someone for once breaking that law by making him pay fines, and by learning English, etc. In other words, the person can only stay here IF he pays - to some degree - for his lawbreaking. This arrangement, by definition, is NOT amnesty.
Naturallly, quite a few foamies (roughly 36 in the Senate and over 200 in the House) don't see it that way. They simply recite the foamy definition of "amnesty" noted above, and favor forcible deportation of 12 million people. Do they care who is to pay for this? How it is to be paid for? No. They simply know that they will not personally have to pay for it, nor will their xenophobic rich friends who live in the states that, miraculously, are the most terrified of "illegal immigrants" even though there are maybe 2 or three illegal immigrants in the entire borders of these states. If these Representatives were truly serious about forcible deportation, they should have insisted on not making all of those tax cuts permanent. Do we really need to borrow money from China again to deport Mexicans? How will China respond to a request that we need its money to deport an entire race of people? It wasn't that long ago when Asians were excluded from immigrating to the U.S., after all.
Oh - there are two other aspects to the House plan. One is granting immediate felon status to all illegal immigrants in the United States. Such a grant, however, is merely antecedent to the House Repulican desire for deportation. If the stated goal is to deport, why bother going to the trouble of classifying the group as felons? Just keep track of who was deported and when - that way, when you decide you won't want them ever coming back in - actually, you've already decided that - you'll know who it is you don't want coming back in.
The other aspect - one that the House Republicans claim requires immediate implementation - is a fence that covers virtually the entire U.S.-Mexican border. Of course, a fence, as these worthies have realized, is not good enough. The fence must be surrounded with motion sensors, tracking devices, and remote cameras, to aid our ever-vigilant Border Patrol in spotting attempts at border crossing. I once represented a gaggle of federal employees accused of "improper contracting practices" when they were working for GSA. Theey had procured, for Border Patrol, and under Border Patrol's direct orders, such a technology system. The government discovered that out in the Arizona, New Mexico and Texas deserts, sensor and infrared technology is prone to malfunction, especially when the government awards the contracts to provide such technology to its favorite military-industrial cronies instead of groups that can - ! - actually get the job done! The Border Patrol, as presently constituted - works AGAINST such technology, thereby making the techolongy a literal waste of funds. Oh, and what on Earth does the National Guard know about the technology? The BP knows nothing about it, so that means the National Guard knows less than nothing! And since the government cares more about paying these contractors for crappy work so as to give the appearance that something is being done than about actually achieving results, expect A LOT of waste of taxpayer funds to grace this latest project.
So, labels are harmful, and lead to harmful and stupid thinking. But thinking people know that already.
If you hadn't noticed, I haven't actually taken a stand on the "immigration issue" in this post. Sometimes, one's stand has already been drawn in the sand, to a large degree, by logic - or more specifically, by simply realizing the stupidity of other people's stands. Yes, there are too many people from Mexico coming to this country, and yes, something needs to be done about it. But neither the House Republicans nor the Senate nor the President really are committed to a solution. If they were, they wouldn't have waited until six months before the Congressional elections to tell us about a problem that has existed for decades. A solution to this problem - whatever that solution should consist of - requires reasoning, thinking, refraining from demonization and labeling, and a little common sense. God help us all.
posted by EnterCenter at 5:03 PM
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