21 thoughts on “The “Dreamers””

  1. Both good articles, but unworkable. We can’t deny voting to illegals now even with current law. With no new DACA papers being issued many may self deport as their papers expire.

    While children are not responsible for their parents actions they still pay the price and certainly not on just this one issue. Congress has to act. People that lived most of their childhood in this country are, if not technically, culturally American. We need to find a solution that allows them to stay and is workable.

    I suggest military service with honorable discharge giving them full rights as a workable solution. I would also attach that they can’t use family relations to bring others into this country even though this means they pay a price for their parents action.

    1. I would also attach that they can’t use family relations to bring others into this country even though this means they pay a price for their parents action.

      In the case of DACA, this means the parents pay a price and their kids don’t.

      I agree there should be limits on the relations that illegal immigrants can bring into the country. There should be limits on legal immigrants too. But the courts disagree that the government can restrict immigration. Trump is heading to SCOTUS because SCOTUS says the relatives of refugees and immigrants have to be let in. This means we essentially have open borders.

      That is what DACA is being used for. Its a backdoor way to get parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts/uncles, and in-laws into the USA. When letting in a single person means we are really letting in some unknown number more that can be in the dozens, the system is broken. Its an exponential problem.

      It also gives rights to new immigrants that other Americans don’t have. Just because my family has been here longer we can’t get our relatives in? Could we go back and look at the familial connections of the original immigrants and allow all the people down their line entrance?

      Having a relative in the USA should be something considered when applying for citizenship but it shouldn’t become an automatic grant to immigrate here.

  2. The problem with books is that the outcome is determined by the author. Why wouldn’t the elites say you have to go to Harvard to be able to vote? What is stopping them from taking over the military as they did the colleges? I am all for keeping control away from people who think they know better.

    Taking away the right to vote because you don’t like who people vote for is a terrible idea. I have little faith that the elite in our society would perform any better in a system with this voting scheme. The problem isn’t the voters or the politicians but that our society doesn’t produce people with the values some of us find important.

    The solution is education and evangelizing. Hard to do in an education system bent on destroying our country but there has never been a better time to spread information to educate people.

  3. There was an interesting Constitutional argument put forth by St George Tucker in 1803 in his commentaries on Blackstone’s Commentaries that would say the federal government wasn’t granted power for implementing anything like DACA.

    Tucker: section 9 (scroll past the adverts)

    Under British and US common law there were three types of people, aliens, denizens, and subjects (citizens in the US). Subjects were of course those born under the king’s protection, which is where we get birthright (natural born) citizenship. Those born on the soil are the natural (native) inhabitants. Those not born on the soil were aliens.

    Parliament and Congress held the sole power to grant citizenship through naturalization. However, the king held the sole power to make denizens, which was a state in between a citizen and an alien. Denizens were generally aliens who’d been granted the right to conduct business and own property, but who could never vote. Lots of Jews in England were denizens, as the king viewed them as beneficial to the economy, and often his act of denization would give them a different (higher) tax rate than regular English subjects. He also made Jewish denizens in the British colonies as trade expanded.

    Parliament could at any time grant British denizens full rights through an act of naturalization, and of course the British-born children of denizens would be natural born English subjects regardless. But the two powers, of naturalization and denization, were completely separate. One was held by Parliament, one by the king. They were quite different in their effects and not to be confused.

    In the American colonies, states used denization to grant rights to immigrants from parts of Europe that weren’t under English law, such as France and Germany. Those immigrants were allowed to stay, own land, and conduct business even though they weren’t British subjects. Technically, only the king was supposed to have the power to do that, but states did it anyway. Virginia started it in the mid 1600’s with the legislature granting denization to a German surgeon and his family, and then renewing it.

    As Tucker relates, denization was granted by a state, and the rights so granted did not transfer to any other state. A denizen of Virginia couldn’t move to Maryland and be anything other than an alien there.

    Later, states started granting British citizenship to non-English immigrants even though that power was reserved to Parliament alone. Parliament got irritated with that and banned the practice, eventually leading to war, but in the mean time states went back to making denizens, and they kept making denizens under the Articles of Confederation.

    Then, in the Constitution, the states granted the sole power of naturalization to Congress, which was charged with writing uniform rules for the naturalization of aliens. Tucker argues that since the power of denization was not granted to the federal government in the Constitution, and since the state’s prohibited from exercising it, and since they had been exercising that power under the Articles of Confederation, the states must still retain that sole power under the Constitution.

    So what is DACA, and many other Obama programs? It’s denization, the granting of rights short of full citizenship, and with strings attached, which make someone more than an alien but less than a citizen. Tucker would argue that the federal government was not granted the power to do that.

    The federal government does clearly have the power of enforcing the border, and controlling who comes here, and handling customs and duties. It has the sole power to write rules for naturalizing aliens, and thus handling immigration. But does it have the power to grant rights that make people more than an alien (tourists, student visas, etc) but less than a citizen? Tucker says no.

    Unfortunately, the only person to address the subject since 1803 is apparently me, because the country had no desire to make anyone a denizen when the goal was to make immigrants into citizens.

    The subject of denizens did come up in a paper on European immigration, arguing that the status of millions of refugees flooding into Europe who were in limbo with a patchwork of laws and policies granting them limited and provisional status, was legally the same as denization but without the old understanding of the status. Things are being done ad hoc, under various pressures, by departments that may not even possess the powers they’re exercising.

    Perhaps some very old legal clarity is needed.

    1. Perhaps some very old legal clarity is needed.

      Like a president canceling DACA and giving congress six months to pass a law? Where will we ever find a president to do that?

        1. As I see it, if Congress doesn’t act within six months the “Dreamers” become fair game for deportation, which is why we’re seeing the rending of garments among the left.

          Also, I don’t see what your criticism of Trump in your reply to Ken is based on. Do you think that deportation is an undesirable outcome?

          2. Trump is not threatening to deport the Dreamers.

            Absolutely right and there are several reason’s.

            Most actions he might take would carry a large political cost. Doing it this way, many will self deport or not come here at all because their paperwork that allows them to stay will expire and not be renewed.

            They’re being used as a political wedge but it’s not their fault. Handled property (yeah, that’s a longshot) they aren’t the major immigration problem.

            By avoiding the controversy of directly kicking them out, Trump keeps his powder dry for the more important aspects of the immigration problem.

            The biggest problem being the courts over ruling Trump’s fully legal, constitutionally mandated and precedented actions. “It’s only illegal if Trump does it” is the beginning of the end of the rule of law.

            We should be impeaching such judges… if the rule of law actually existed or mattered.

          3. He’s threatening to continue Barack Obama’s lawless behavior.

            Obama set a lot of precedents. Trump is giving congress the chance to do things the right way. However things unfold after that, no one knows.

            I don’t like that DACA exists but if Trump doesn’t get rid of it, its just the status quo. Trump hasn’t abused his power like that yet and look at how the courts have now said that if you let in one person, you have to let in everyone related to them. Trump potentially letting DACA stand is a much smaller problem than other things going on with immigration right now.

      1. That’s a good question, because since we ignored denizen as a category, even though it was quite useful, we created other means to fill the gap, such as green cards and permanent residence.

        If you get to the nitty gritty, Congress was only granted the power to write rules for the naturalization of aliens. Naturalization is the granting of full citizenship. If something Congress does doesn’t end in citizenship (granted or denied), and isn’t involved in foreign relations (the purview of the executive) then are they acting outside their powers? But with states not exercising such powers either, someone was going to fill the void, so Congress stepped in and filled it.

        If some state AG’s actually argued that denization was a real thing, reserved to the states, and the Supreme Court agreed, there would be some interesting consequences. California could throw the doors open to Mexican labor, granting them work permits and the like, while Congress could say those people will never ever be citizens (but their children born in California would be). But as denizens of California, they’d have no special rights outside that state, so if they showed up in Iowa, Iowa could treat them as illegals and hand them to the DHS for deportation to Mexico or repatriation to California. Congress would probably wade in with the Interstate Commerce Clause and the mess would get even bigger.

        But since the term “denizen” is so vague (just a status in between a citizen and an alien), California could also grant them everything short of full citizenship, which California would probably do, along with creating vast state bureaucracies to cater to them. But then California pretty much does that anyway.

        On the other hand, with the federal government out of the “special privileges” granting business, we wouldn’t have to worry about another Obama flooding states with various Muslim refugees, since the states could hold that such refugees in their state would be treated no differently than anybody on a tourist or student visa, visas which I assume would still fall under the federal control of foreign relations.

        Of course almost every aspect of it would be subject to challenges in the court because it represents a path not taken 200 years ago, and there are zero court precedents to go by. There are, however, old acts of denization by the Colonies and states under the Articles of Confederation that could be looked at, along with acts by the king in the centuries prior to the Revolution.

  4. You can’t trust the egg-stealing weasels in Congress, leftist judges, and the lackeys in every level of the Deep State to not change their minds and give voting rights later. All it takes is one judge in favor, and somehow that becomes cemented in law forever. The
    Left never, ever gives up.

  5. Simon is either dreaming or delusional or both if he thinks you can let them stay but will be able to deny them voting capabilities.

  6. The argument that, if the “dreamers” are allowed to stay, they should be able to bring in relatives is utter bull. This is especially true of their parents, who are usually the ones who came in illegally. I’m not in favor of rewarding criminals.

    I often hear about “compassion” and “family reunification” and “you can’t break up families.” Well, that’s utter BS. I know very well what it’s like to be in the position of having most of your family overseas, because for me it’s called “life”.

    I’m the only member of my family born in the US (My parents immigrated, legally, before I was born – and it took them 8 years of trying to be let in). Everyone else in my family is British, and live in the UK. So I know very well what it’s like to have a family divided by distance. Does it suck sometimes? You betcha it does. But the idea that this gives me some kind of a right to bring them to live here is both absurd and harmful.

    Life is full of choices. It’s also full of consequences, because often even good choices have a price. The idea that we have to protect people from the consequences of freely made choices is nothing less than a disease upon our society. The choice my parents made meant, and still means, I see my family far more rarely than if they lived here I didn’t make that choice, but so what? That’s life.

    As for those DACA recipients whining and demanding that their families be let in, I say deport them, because the last thing America needs is more useless whiners.

    1. An interesting take on the Dreamers, or at least their activists, is that they are perfectly willing to throw every other illegal immigrant under the bus as long as they get their free college education.

      The deal they’re essentially shooting for is that they, and only they, have the right to stay, and all others can be loaded onto buses and shipped back. They’d ship their own family members back.

      Not the makings of a great generation.

    2. Being British, the people in charge of deciding who get to immigrate would use their discretion to ignore those familial ties.

  7. I don’t think there is any politically feasible way to deny anyone the vote.

    Solution: stuff the ballot boxes with more votes.

    You have a pulse? One vote.

    You complete a term of military service, with honorable discharge? You get another vote..

    Peace Corps? Another vote.

    You pay taxes? An extra vote.

    You pay more than some threshold in taxes? (Probably set as a federal tax paid as a multiple of the poverty-level income requirement.) Another vote.

    You get a Master’s degree from an accredited college? Another vote.

    You win an Olympic medal? An extra vote.

    Lots of people would have two or three votes. A few would have five or six. Imperfect, and subject to gaming like any other political compromise. But it’d be better than what we have now.

  8. Rand, curious as to how soon you’d implement the voting privilege for active members of the military. As soon as they mustered and took the oath? I would think that would meet the criteria for why we adopted the 26th Amendment:

    https://usconstitution.net/constamnotes.html#Am26

    To be clear in legal speak there is no such thing as an “earned” right, rights are inherent. Legally speaking only privileges (also known as powers) can be earned. All such things, including rights, can be denied. For example, the right to liberty can be denied upon conviction of a crime.

    But since voting has been so ingrained as a right inherit upon citizenship, I think really the only way to make this workable is to have two track citizenship. The ‘natural’ citizen which allows one to vote and is the default citizenship we have now and the ‘magnanimous’ citizen which allows one to hold elective office. This latter type of citizen would have to meet one or more of the requirements you laid out in your piece. ‘Denizens’ (these days considered to be Resident Aliens) would not be eligible to vote.

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