So much for Swiss efficiency

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). I was hoping I would never have to type that again after she ended her sideshow of a presidential campaign, but the old girl doesn’t quit. I was also hoping I’d never have to mention her husband again. Alas, he’s at the center of this story, so we’re stuck with him today. You know Marcus Bachmann as a purveyor of ethically and medically dubious conversion therapy for homosexuals, but did you also know that he is the son of immigrants from Switzerland? And due to Swiss law at the time of their marriage, Bachmann herself became a Swiss citizen.

Now, that’s not the issue here. I myself fully intend to become a dual citizen after I relocate to the U.S. (Sidebar: I take sample U.S. citizenship tests online for fun, and I could ace the real one with no problem.) But Bachmann, figuring her dual citizenship would become an issue to anyone still paying attention to her, dropped her ties to Switzerland two days after it was revealed that some of her five children wanted it for themselves. Imagine how that conversation went down in the Bachmann home:

Now, kids, your father and I are very proud that you want the connection to his heritage that the two of us have. But Mama is the standard-bearer for the xenophobes of America, and I don’t want to lose that status. So, forget it. And I’ll drop my own Swiss citizenship for extra punch.

Inherent in the above (fake) (as far as I know) quote is the perfect way for her to have explained this: Yes, she had Swiss citizenship, but while she never actually sought it out, she didn’t believe keeping it made her less of an American patriot. Of course, she didn’t. Is it so much of a problem that she married a man whose home country has some quirky citizenship laws? According to her Democratic challenger, Jim Graves (D-MN), it is. And instead of seeing the perfect opportunity to smack him down, Bachmann walked right into either his trap or that of her anti-immigrant base.

But the worst part is this: “Bachmann had drawn flak from critics who noted that Switzerland has universal health care . . .” Are said critics aware that Switzerland has a mix of public and private care and it’s consistently rated one of the top systems in the world? People who know nothing of the world outside America are really drawn to this woman for some reason.

Disposal Day #120: Still on the to-do list

STORY #1: DREAM on

I could take this opportunity to make fun of President Obama for a) not making good on his promises of immigration in his first term and b) blaming congressional Republicans for it. But it has been in various stages of congressional debate in 2009, and although a few Republicans have co-sponsored it in the Senate, its Achilles heel has consistently been its inability to reach a 60-plus majority. So, really, his problem is with a fairly small number of legislators who could have moved it to where he wants it to be: his desk.

Now I have nothing against the DREAM Act, although the Republican alternative, which we will discuss a bit later, may make a bit more sense. Without getting too deeply into the policy differences just yet, Obama will have a much tougher time getting it passed now that there is an alternative – and one crafted by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), no less. With so many Republicans lining up to kiss his ass, Obama can’t hope for much more political mileage than he’s already had.

STORY #2: And now, the differences

The central differences between the DREAM Act and Rubio’s alternative, which appears to be unnamed, are these: Good grades in college and/or military service would provide a shorter path to citizenship for children of illegal immigrants under Obama’s plan. Rubio’s plan does not consider college or military service (for n0w; it’s still in the development stages) and would not provide a shorter path to citizenship, although it would supply non-immigrant visas to those same children. Seems simple enough to me.

People may end up castigating both plans for not being comprehensive enough; indeed, improved border security and workplace-related reforms might end up being added through policy riders. But Rubio’s plan is a good start. It doesn’t punish these children for their parents’ illegal immigration, nor does it reward them at the expense of legal immigrants facing their own delays. Don’t be surprised to see Rubio win the day.

STORY #3: The only good Nazi . . .

Just a quick hit out of Arizona (why doesn’t that factor surprise me?) about the leader of a neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant militia, now dead in a murder-suicide attempt involving his girlfriend and her family – none of whom, I’m assuming, were recent immigrants. I bring this up because his version of “border security” was to place landmines across the U.S.-Mexico border. Please, if you’re a legislator, don’t consider this. Save the landmines for whatever hole this asshole is about to be thrown into.

Illegals drive themselves out of America

President Obama’s administration may be telling the truth when it claims that its crackdown on illegal immigration focuses only on the “worst of the worst.” The same cannot be said for local police, who arrange the growing number of deportations of illegal immigrants who violate traffic laws. I suppose a publicly funded anti-drunk driving campaign for this audience would not be regarded too kindly by many.

Over two years, the number of deportations for traffic violators has almost tripled. Of the nearly 393,000 deportations made during the last fiscal year, seven percent were for drunk driving charges. (“Traffic offenses” has a much broader definition.) The majority of deportations are still due to drug-related charges, including manufacture, distribution, possession and sale. As if those charges aren’t pointless enough for legal Americans.

By now you should know my feelings about the War on Drugs; I would not bother deporting the sellers right off the hop unless they had links to a cartel. If Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress is to be believed, other traffic offenses, which may include speeding or parking violations, need no more punishment for illegals than higher fines. If they abide the law otherwise, why be so zealous to deport them?

The drunk driving charges are much more politically complicated. Anyone who has watched an O’Reilly Factor segment on the subject is aware that when an illegal immigrant is drunk while operating a vehicle that kills a member of the community, the community focuses on their immigration status, not necessarily the nature of the crime itself. Or at least Bill O’Reilly does. It’s hard to tell for whom he’s speaking sometimes.

I would suggest something along the lines of a two-strikes law if the first offense is just the fact of drunk driving, without any injury or death incurred by another person, but then someone would ask me why someone has to die before I start to care. My only recommendation after that is to make it very clear to these illegal immigrants that if they drive drunk in America, they will be sent back to wherever they were before. Anyone who resorts to illegal means to get in should be aware of the illegal means to get out.

Here’s such a message that works for everybody: “If you drive drunk, you’re a fucking moron.” There is no other excuse for getting behind the wheel when you’re toasted. Let’s see the Ad Council fund a campaign with a quote like that.

Bad fences make sneaky neighbors

The Secure Border Initiative network (SBInet) was described by former President George W. Bush, during whose administration the project kicked off, as “the most technically advanced border security initiative” ever. You’d think something with that description would be adjusted for terrain, weather and regional need. Wrong. Anyone who dreams of a fence all along the U.S.-Mexico border needs to wake up.

An especially troublesome flaw is related to land. The fence was partly made up of surveillance towers with cameras mounted on top. The idea was that someone watching from a command post would be able to see border-crossers live. Unfortunately, cameras mounted in such a way can’t maneuver themselves to catch people slipping in between mountains or through valleys. Solution: More cameras? Weak.

Suggested improvements include “commercially available surveillance measures, unmanned drones, thermal imaging, and other equipment.” Thermal imaging sounds the most promising of these, assuming such technology has become sophisticated enough to avoid the same trouble the cameras had. Unmanned drones seem excessive when you’re not trying to bomb something, and when the only crime of the people you’re trying to catch is being there, in most cases. Keep drones in Pakistan.

It is unlikely, from where I sit, that anyone will recommend more personnel along the border. It is 1,969 miles long, and there are 20,500 Border Patrol agents and their proxies; that’s 10.4 personnel per mile, which sounds like plenty. If anything needs to change here, it will come in the form of shuffling agents to more sensitive areas and leaving the peaceful ones to just a few.

SBInet was clearly a boondoggle from the beginning, and it remains so over $1 billion later. It’s as if they held a high-level meeting on what to do about illegal immigration and some poor fool said “Can’t we just built a big long fence with cameras?” and they ran with it. Any time would have been ideal to fix the problems. But with the DREAM Act in limbo, and several unwilling to consider it until they see improvements vis-à-vis border security, President Obama has another major legislative victory – and a bipartisan one at that – just waiting for him.

The only political risk I can see, besides concern over the drones (I hope), is that prospective Republican presidential candidates will talk about how much sooner they would have done this. But that’s the “I saw it first!” school of debate. They’ll have to give the admin credit for this one.

How to deal with the parentals

The issue of birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, has added a new facet to the debate over how to deal with illegal immigration. I wrote in guarded support of repealing that amendment, on the grounds that “it might remind some illegals-to-be that having a baby on U.S. soil would make it even harder for them to be deported,” even if they end up deserving it after committing a crime. But if birthright citizenship must continue, which it most likely will, gender is the last basis on which to discriminate when doling it out. Yes, you read right.

That’s the central issue in Flores-Villar v. U.S., in which 36-year-old Ruben Flores-Villar argues that he should be given citizenship because of his father’s residency in the United States. Mothers who do not have American citizenship need only live in the U.S. for a year before giving birth to a child who can get it. Fathers have to wait five years, cut down from 10 in 1986. They also need to have been over 14 for at least two of those years. Flores-Villar’s father just missed that point; he was 16 when Flores-Villar was born, which was bad enough for him.

For those of you who are still unclear on who gets to be a citizen, the article sums it up neatly: “. . . a child born in the United States is a U.S. citizen regardless of the parents’ nationality, as is a child born abroad to two American citizens if one of them has ever lived in the United States.” Flores-Villar was born in Mexico and was raised by his father and grandmother in San Diego.

The fact of the matter is that if his mother had been his custodial parent, he would have had his citizenship a long time ago, since she would have cleared the threshold simply by virtue of being the mother. According to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, this is fine because “it is much more likely that the woman will end up caring for [an illegitimate child] than that the father would.” Now we’re making laws based on probability?

Scalia is correct to the extent that the woman carried the child in her womb and, presumably, would spend the most time with it after birth. But what happens if she hands the baby off to the father and splits? As Flores-Villar’s public defender and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have also asked, would the father still be the lesser parent?

This law is unnecessary and outdated at best, blatantly discriminatory at worst. There is no real reason to take the sex of the parent into consideration anymore. If a biological parental relationship can be proven, that’s really all anyone needs to know. And then we can talk about repeal.

Just hold your nose and vote

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Robert de Posada, leader of a group called Latinos for Reform and the producer of this ad, which Spanish-language TV network Univision refused to run. The key message: “Since congressional Democrats have offered up nothing but talk on immigration reform, the best way for Latinos in Nevada to hit back at them is not to vote at all.”

De Posada – a former official with the Republican National Committee – later said he feels the same way about the GOP, given their rhetoric against illegal immigration. I find that a bit dubious, considering the ad only mentions and shows Democratic names and faces. A particularly suspicious mind might wonder if he’s race-baiting for the sake of Republican gains. I’m just throwing that out there, for discussion’s sake.

De Posada seems to be taking the attitude that even when a party has a supermajority, they have the ability to ram through an agenda whenever they want. No party would ever get away with this without at least a modicum of input from the opposition. To do otherwise would reduce them to a democratically elected oligarchy. If de Posada wants to know why immigration reform has been moving so slowly, he might want to read the news once in a while.

In any event, as much as the lack of a viable national third-party alternative depresses me, this sort of campaign is no way to create one, if that’s what de Posada wants. The Tea Party had a similar complaint when they got started: They thought both parties were insufficiently fiscally conservative, and wanted to change the political culture to hold them accountable for that. They did it, and they did it through the system, not outside of it. Say what you will about the Tea Party, but at least they got that right. If only their PR skillz were used for something decent.

I have absolutely no respect for people who can vote but don’t, and then turn around and complain about who ended up in office. You want your representatives to do what’s good for you? There are many ways to get them to listen. Attend their town-hall meetings and get up to ask a question. Write a letter. Comment on their Facebook page or send them a tweet. Write a blog, for fuck’s sake. You can even run for office yourself! But the purest expression of one’s political views is a vote. I cast one even when the available options make me sick. Do so whenever you get a chance. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Huddled states yearning to breathe free

At last, the United States Constitution comes into play regarding Arizona’s law against illegal immigration. In the lawsuit it filed in Phoenix, the Justice Department argues that the substance of the law isn’t the problem, constitutionally speaking, but its existence is, as it crosses the line of state and federal authority. Let’s see about that.

What does the Constitution have to say about who has the right to determine immigration policy? Nothing irrefutable. Even the word “immigration” is absent from the entire document, as are quite a few others, according to this invaluable link. However, Article 1, Section 8 clarifies that Congress does have the authority to “establish a uniform rule of Naturalization,” and there aren’t too many different ways to interpret that. If you have one, pass it on.

There’s also that bit in the Fourteenth Amendment which states that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Of course, there are a few important nitpicks in this case: 1. We don’t know what those privileges or immunities are going to be yet. 2. The targets of the Arizona law are not citizens. But if Congress has the authority over citizenship, is the right to the authority over immigration not implied? The amendment was written in 1868; I assume nobody was thinking about mass voluntary immigration then.

So if the Constitution does not make explicit the federal government’s right to determine immigration policy, case law will. For the sake of Arizona’s reputation (not that Gov. Jan Brewer [R-AZ] seems to care about that), and some of the people living there who might be approached by police mistakenly, it had better happen soon. The last thing we need is a patchwork of up to 50 different immigration laws, especially when we know that Congress has the right to say yes to whomever it wants who comes asking for citizenship. Why not the right to say no?

This will be the task of the Supreme Court, who will have a hell of a time getting back from their recess. In the meantime, congressional debate about immigration needs to begin now. And I don’t mean complaining about Arizona’s take on immigration; I mean setting out a national take. Health care is done, financial reform is done, and the energy bill can wait. There is no longer any need for stalling.

In the meantime (and this may seem radical), let Arizona do as it pleases and prove that their law is effective to the rest of the country. That’s their job until the federal government finishes its own.

“Hawkeye” Pearce vs. illegal babies

On Sunday, I complained that Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R-D18), defender of the homeland from those eeeeeevil illegal immigrants, was overreaching with the second stage of what is shaping up to be a very comprehensive plan. This one is intended to eliminate birthright citizenship, intended for anyone born on U.S. soil when neither parent is a citizen. A plan of this nature probably won’t have an easy time clearing any legislative body, since

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (My emphasis.)

Of course, when the 14th Amendment was written in 1858, I doubt anyone foresaw people emigrating to the United States on their own free will, instead of being forcibly taken for the purpose of becoming guest workers slaves.

I can’t see why the Arizona government has such stronger opposition to illegal immigration than anyone else. Maybe one of them killed Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R-AZ) dog or something. But constitutional boundaries aside, repealing birthright citizenship might not be the worst idea for Pearce’s goal. Now that the issue is back in the news, it might remind some illegals-to-be that having a baby on U.S. soil would make it even harder for them to be deported.

Hopefully, Pearce doesn’t actually think he has a chance of making this law stick without major federal interference. They would have to amend the Constitution, after all, and I doubt the majority of them would like it in any case. But he definitely got people to pay attention and have the discussion. That is probably worth more to him than an early legislative success.

Now would be a good time to play a requiem for the days when it was believed that every child deserved good old American freedom, to the point that one of them was almost forced to enjoy it, dammit. Anti-illegal-immigrant sentiment replaced that cheerful optimism about five years ago without much fanfare. I suppose it’s a good thing that this feeling is more based on legal process than vaguely defined values, but somehow it can’t make anyone smile without feeling a little twinge of guilt. At least, I hope they feel it.

Disposal Day #16: Immigrant song

STORY #1: Smell ya later!

President Obama has made his choice for the next Big Contentious Political Issue – after banking reform, I guess. He’s putting off immigration reform for two years, when it would be less politically risky, mostly for him but also for House members who are up for re-election. Instead, climate change will be next in the pipeline.

I personally think voters have more of an appetite for issues with serious legal implications, and climate change has less of these. This also makes them read about it more, which bodes well for me, as I will likely be writing about it more over the next while. Also, Obama had promised to take care of it in his first year in office. It’s understandable why he didn’t, but two years seems like good timing to me.

STORY #2: Hunting for illegals

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) (who ran for president once, remember?) recommends overriding the 14th Amendment and deporting the children of illegal immigrants, who automatically become citizens by being born on U.S. soil. “We’re just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen,” he says. “It’s what’s in our souls.” I hate it when people use that word to make a case for public policy. It’s like that woman who told me public arts funding was needed for the sake of ”nourishing the spirit.”

Hunter’s spokesman later said that his boss really meant “that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants should stay with their parents unless there is a legal guardian who could take care of them.” That’s neither here nor there; you’re taking “answer the question you wish you were asked” (a media relations strategy) too literally.

STORY #3: Idea maravillosa de Tim

A recent campaign ad by Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James (R-AL), complete with requisite soothing background music, attacks the offer of driver’s license exams in 12 languages, because “This is Alabama. We speak English.” And if you don’t, you’d better, he adds.

It’s true that over 96% of Alabama’s population speaks English. But James justifies it by mentioning a) the cost savings and b) the public safety benefits, since then all drivers will be able to read signs on the road. I personally think a big red octagon is pretty universal, but whatevs.

A need-to-know basis for citizenship

I’ve noticed this year that The Uniter (the newspaper at my old university which no longer has a sports section, but let’s not get into that) has been running more editorials from policy wonks, free marketeers, and even a defense hawk or two – my kind of people. Of course, I wasn’t a big fan of the one that basically said “It’s not torture if you aren’t maimed.” But we’ve dealt with the torture debate here already.

But the peaceniks and the public arts lobby still run rampant in the pages of The Uniter, and here’s an editorial that both will love. (The comment below the article is indeed from me; note the absence of responses.) It was written by a second-year student named Rob Holt, who has previously written a very astute attack on the annual Day of Action, among other editorials whose topics I don’t really care about. The one we’re focusing on today is quite a bit less astute.

It seems that the newest edition of the study guide for Canada’s citizenship exam has beefed up its lessons on Canadian military history. It may surprise some of you Americans that Canada has a military history, but we do, and the highlights take up 50 pages of this book. Holt does not like the new emphasis on “the bloodier side of Canada’s heritage” and would prefer to see the arts and culture section, now 2.5 pages, expanded first.

Just to clarify, “arts and culture” is a bit of a misnomer in this situation, as one page of it is devoted to Canadian innovation and another to our sports. Couldn’t they have just called it “Fun Stuff?” Holt says the last half-page “makes no reference to specific Canadian television shows, radio programs, musicians, singers, poets, novelists or films.” But he doesn’t say what that last half-page does have, or why specific Canadian artists deserve that space more.

The rest of Holt’s argument can be summed up as follows: 1. Too little knowledge of the arts is bad, very bad. 2. The federal government doesn’t care about finding a good way to “present our nation” to immigrants. 3. They just want to recruit new soldiers into the Canadian Forces, hence the ad for it on page 9.

Now here are my arguments: 1. Why shouldn’t the government bother instructing immigrants about our military history, for which we have more occasion to be proud than Anne Murray? 2. Especially considering that any immigrant who knows how to use the Internet can learn about our arts on their own time? Vote now!