Immigration Amnesty is Racist, Sexist, Classist and destructive to the environment

There is a lot of talk about immigration right now. It is a teaching moment. Political candidates who want to be President are talking a lot of nonsense.

Start with the basic facts:

The U.S. is overpopulated and creates more ecological destruction per human than any other country on earth (yes, including China).

The economy can not be expanded infinitely.

There has been growing economic inequality.

Immigration amnesties lead to further illegal immigration.

Illegal immigrants mostly compete for the lowest paying jobs. Even legal immigrants tend to compete for entry level jobs, though some are wealthy or educated enough to join the upper class or upple middle class as soon as they get here.

Who else competes for the lowest paying jobs in America? High-school dropouts, and even graduates, of course. That means mainly children of people who themselves are marginally employed or work regularly, but for low wages. Working class and welfare class women. And, disproportionately, people who have traditionally been discriminated against, including African-Americans, American Indians, etc.

The people who advocate for immigration amnesty, and hence for unlimited future immigration to the U.S., are well-intended. They see it as a human rights issue.

And there are long-term benefits to immigration for the economy. More people means more demand and more workers, and so more GDP. Legalized immigrants can better match their talents to the job markets. That is why the Republican establishment used to lead in advocating for more immigration, including immigration amnesty. That is why the largest single amnesty was put in place in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan.

The immediate impact of new immigrants, whether legal or illegal, is pressure on those jobs that require little skill to perform. They are often hard jobs. This includes childcare, cleaning services, and unskilled physical labor. These are exactly the jobs that unskilled citizens, including poor white, black, and hispanic citizens also want. The competition for these jobs pushes down wages, often to below the official minimum wages. It makes finding full time work difficult, except perhaps during brief economic booms. It makes it even harder for families that have been in the United States for generations to accumulate the resources necessary to climb out of the bottom of the working class.

That is why labor unions, otherwise pretty liberal and supporters of the Democratic Party, have traditionally been for minimal immigration.

The effect on the U.S. and global environment is also negative. Most illegal immigrants come here because they are greedy and want to have a higher standard of living than they would have in their native nation. To the extent they achieve that they are using more energy and other natural resources. They are generating more greenhouse gasses, and they are speeding up global warming.

In an ideal world the idea that "all men are created equal" might mean that men and women could move freely, to live wherever they want. We don't live in an ideal world. We live on a dying earth where most nations are already populated beyond what is sustainable. That is particularly true of the United States.

What we really need is a one-child policy in the United States. Mexico needs a one-child policy. So does Canada. So does nearly every nation on earth.

So what is wrong with my dear liberal and leftist friends? They are mostly herd animals, and they are not much for thinking for themselves. They "buy" a package of positions on issues that make them feel good about themselves. They want an environmentalist merit badge and a human rights merit badge. On many issues those badges are quite compatible.

But not for immigration. Increasing immigration and anything that encourages illegal immigration are positions that have practical consquences. They help rich white employers and bankers. They hurt working class men and women, and disproportionately hurt black workers. And they hurt the environment.

Congress should change the immigration law to allow in a number of immigrants each year that will not have a negative impact on employment for unskilled citizens. Congress should not grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.

Obama: Crimea Doesn't Need Any Stinking Election

United States President Barack Obama is against having an election in the Crimea to determine whether that peninsula (practically an island) should rejoin the Russia it had been a part of until it was switched to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by communists who thought it would be easier to administrate through Kiev.

Obama called the plans for an election a violation of international law: "And that includes standing up for the principle of state sovereignty. The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law. Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine. In 2014, we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders." [March 6, 2014 Statement by President Barack Obama on the Ukraine]

This is a President who supports a fiercely anti-woman and anti-religious freedom regime in Saudi Arabia [See Dictator of Saudi Arabia]; who pays for mercenaries for a half dozen nations to rape Somalia [See Rape of Somalia]; who executes American citizens without trial; and who comes from a long line of Presidents who have acted like global dictators, installing puppet governments and overthrowing democratically elected governments whenever that furthered the purposes of the U.S. corporate security state.

The "democratic leaders" Obama refers to in his statement are an interim government put in place by a mob after the mob forced the elected government of the Ukraine to flee the capitol.

Perhaps someone should remind President Obama that our nation is based on illegal elections. The Founding Fathers held elections against the will of Parliament and the King of Britain.

I thought our ancestors had established that it is the people, not the rulers, who get to decide when an election is appropriate.

A majority of people in Crimea don't like being part of the Ukraine, especially now that right-wing thugs organized by neo-Nazis have overthrown the legitimately elected government. Let me be clear that I understand that many of the people who protested the former government were not right-wing thugs. People have a right to protest. But they don't have a right to overthrow an elected government that plans to continue to hold elections. They could have waited for the next election; if the government were that unpopular, it would have fallen peacefully.

The situation in the Ukraine looks like Algeria, Palestine, and Iran all over again (and many more national elections if you look further back in history, particularly in Latin America). In each of those cases the people elected anti-American governments. In Algeria the U.S. backed a military coup; in Palestine we backed a coup by the PLO, favoring them over Hamas; and in Iran we simply demonized the regime, shot down a civilian airliner, paid Iraq to attack and kill millions of Iranians (including using poison gas and mass electrocutions), and organized illegal international economic measures to try to strangle the regime.

In the U.S. it is illegal for a foreigner to donate to a political campaign (though of course it happens on occasion). But the U.S. funnels vast sums of money to parties it likes in foreign nations. If Obama really cared about sovereignty, he would stop interfering in so many nations' elections. He'd stop using military donations to bribe leaders. He'd shut down the CIA torture centers and fix the massive problems of the U.S. instead of keeping 12 aircraft carriers and their fleets circling the oceans as floating bullies.

I am not a fan of Vladimir Putin or Russian society. But it is their society. If people in the Crimea want to try being part of Russia instead of the Ukraine, it is their inherent human right. In the words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence: "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it." The "Ends" mentioned are, among others, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

If the people of Crimea think they will by happier and more free as part of Russia, it is their inalienable right to take action on that Pursuit.

If any other oppressed or misgoverned group, wants autonomy, or independence, or to merge with some other nation, that is their right as well.

Citizens of the U.S. should think about their right to "alter or abolish" the government of the United States of America, because it sure as hades could stand some major improvements.

Settlements, War Crimes, Israel and Palestine

It is a war crime for an aggressor to settle its citizens in a conquered area.

Is it the most serious of war crimes? No, initiating a war is the most serious of war crimes.

Why is it a war crime, when an exactly similar settlement of foreign citizens may be legal in times of peace? Well, a peacetime settlement by foreigners would occur through the invitation of the host country, or through the normal process of paying for land from people who are willing to sell. Settlement during or after a war indicates a plan to retain territory conquered in a criminal manner. It is like the difference between an honest trade and a theft.

Why bring up this topic now? Because today the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a preliminary report noting that the most recent Israeli settlement in eastern Palestine violates this war crimes law. The implications are large. [See the Press release, Israeli settlements symbolize the acute lack of justice experience by Palestinian People, which links to the full report.]

Is there a statute of limitations on war crimes? I don't think so, though there probably should be. I know the Israeli and other governments continue to hunt down and prosecute alleged war criminals from the Nazi era, over sixty years ago.

If there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, or if the statute of limitations is 60 years, then the entire state of Israel is in trouble. Most Jews in Palestine had converted (perhaps not voluntarily) to Islam by about 700 A.D. Jewish communities that remained were small until the Zionist movement of the late 19th century. The early Zionists were legal immigrants, and as a result several small areas of Palestine had Jewish majorities by World War II.

Most of the post-war Jewish immigration to Palestine can be characterized as illegal. The war that established the State of Israel in 1948 coincided with the ejection of non-Jewish Palestinians, followed by Jewish settlements on their land. Thus it is not just the remnants of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, that are at stake. The creation of the State of Israel can be characterized as a war crime.

It is often said that the United Nations (then newly formed, and basically a war organization for fighting Germany and Japan) created the State of Israel. It appears that all the U.N. did was endorse a Jewish semi-autonomous partition zone within Palestine. But supposing the U.N. did in fact back the creation of Israel by settling Jews on lands taken from Palestinians. Then the U.N. itself should be said to have committed a war crime.

The implications are staggering the further we go back in history. What if, after a war of aggression takes place, there is a peace treaty? Does that make it legal to settle on land occupied in a war of aggression? Peace treaties tend to be imposed by aggressors. They are not really voluntary agreements.

What about the settlement of Europeans in colonial nations? What about the United States, which would not exist except for a constant clamor of wars, occupations, and settlements?

If the purpose of war crimes laws is to stop wars and war crimes, then they must be enforced. American settlements occurred, in the main, before the war crime laws were written. Israel, however, creates a different case. It came into existence after the war crimes laws were on the books.

But the real question is, will anyone enforce the war crimes laws? Conquered nations like Japan and Germany have had their leaders prosecuted for war crimes. But no victorious nation has ever been prosecuted for war crimes.

Like Hitler marching into Russia, it looks like the Israeli occupation of eastern Palestine has gone too far, endangering the entire Israeli project. A sane leadership of Israel would cut their losses to hold onto their gains. A sane leadership would trade forgiveness for their earlier crimes against humanity and war crimes in order to hold onto the lands gained by those crimes. A sane leadership would offer to remove all Jewish settlers to Israel proper, in return for an immediate and permanent peace.

Impeach Antonin Scalia

Antonin Scalia's partly concurring and partly dissenting opinion in Arizona v. United States is not a simple prejudiced, racist misreading of the laws of the United States. It is as close to treason as one can get in the United States of America without actually, as the Constitution defines treason, "levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies."

Justice Scalia begins his argument by asserting "The United States is an indivisible 'Union of sovereign States.' Highlander v. La Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co. 305 U.S. 92, 104 (1938)." That individual States are not sovereign is obvious from hundreds of Supreme Court Decisions, even infamous ones like Dred Scott. Scalia's argument is totally dependent on presenting careful selections from U.S. history as if they were strong precedents.

In fact the cases and historic examples he uses have been discredited, or have only minor significance. Given his attitude, it is surprising that Scalia did not cite the declarations of independence of the States that joined the Confederacy, and then forget to remind us that the Confederate States lost the Civil War and had no Supreme Court ever ruled that they had a right to declare independence.

Scalia even cites the (pre-Constitution) Articles of Confederation, neglecting that they were superceded by our Constitution, which created a nation with a federal system in which the national government, including its Supreme Court, are the supreme law of the land.

My opposition to Scalia's opinion is not meant to detract from the rights of States, and of the People, and of the limitations of the power of the central government outlined in the Constitution. It is not a problem for me when Scalia or any American argues for states rights when they actually exist. Scalia goes much further: he joins the rebels of the Confederacy, using their very arguments, and asserting boldly each individual State is sovereign.

Justice Scalia cites the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions to support his views, as did the rebels of the Confederacy. These Resolutions are part of our history, but they amount to an opinion that was not ultimately supported by our people or government. Not by most individual states most of the time, not by any Congress, never by a President (not even by their authors, Jefferson and Madison, once they became Presidents), and not by any Supreme Court justice except the rebel Scalia. States cannot judge laws passed by Congress (and signed by a President) to be unconstitutional. That judgment is a duty of the Supreme Court.

A Supreme Court judge is not supposed to cite the losing sides of arguments as precedents. True, the Supreme Court occasionally overrules precedent, as when Brown v. Board of Education began correcting prior decisions that had limited the human rights of non-white citizens. Scalia, in Arizona v. United States, is not simply re-interpreting the Constitution, straightening out some flaw in its prior application. He is attempting to re-write history, law, and the Constitution, and to break up the United States into 50 separate nations.

At the beginning of Section II Scalia writes "One would conclude from the foregoing that after the adoption of the Constitution there was some doubt about the power of the Federal Government to control immigration, but no doubt about the power of the States to do so." But one's conclusion would be based on Scalia's editing of history to distort the whole cloth of law.

Scalia only reluctantly accepts that the federal government can control immigration "not because of the Naturalization Clause but because it is an inherent attribute of sovereignty no less for the United States than for the States."

So we see the rebel's reasoning clearly: Sovereignty is Supreme, and Scalia and his gang of right-wind legal thugs are to be the interpreters of the meaning of Sovereignty. Does Sovereignty mean trampling on human rights? To Scalia it does. Does it mean trampling on the U.S. Constitution? That is apparent from Scalia's opinion.

After falsely declaring each individual state to be Sovereign (in which case there is no real need for a United States) Scalia claims the case was "about a federal law going to the core of state sovereignty: the power to exclude."

Scalia would exclude illegal immigrants from Arizona. That is not a radical opinion. The problem is the basis of his opinion. Scalia earlier stated who can be removed by a sovereign State: "certain persons, or for certain particular purposes, according as he may think it to the advantage of the state," "obnoxious aliens" (even perhaps bearing Green Cards), "paupers, vagabonds," "persons with contagious diseases," and "freed blacks."

In other words, Scalia would exile anyone Scalia did not like. And a State could exile anyone it did not like. Perhaps Jews, Arabs, Blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals, atheists and agnostics, or the unemployed. Perhaps a state ruled by the Republican Party would exile Democratic Party members. The sick and disabled might be cast out. It all depends on who controls a State.

This is madness. Preaching this poison, which is done all too much within the United States of America, is protected by our rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Sitting on the Supreme Court trying to rule based on this poison is not protected.

Antonin Scalia has exceeded the bounds of his appointment. He should resign. If he does not resign, he should be impeached. If Congress fails to impeach him, human rights in this nation will be gravely in danger of disappearing.