“Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Proclamation Targeting Some Asylum Seekers” (nytimes):
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter where or how they entered the United States, dealing at least a temporary setback to the president’s attempt to clamp down on a huge wave of Central Americans crossing the border.
Judge Jon S. Tigar [Obama appointee] of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the government from carrying out a new rule that denies protections to people who enter the country illegally. The order, which suspends the rule until the case is decided by the court, applies nationally.
After the judge’s ruling on Monday, Lee Gelernt, the A.C.L.U. attorney who argued the case, said, “The court made clear that the administration does not have the power to override Congress and that, absent judicial intervention, real harm will occur.”
My comment:
I’m pleased to hear that the virtuous citizens of San Francisco, including at least this one judge, wish to welcome asylum-seekers and also pay them a $15/hour minimum wage. How about we offer plane tickets to SFO, SJC, and OAK for any asylum-seeker anywhere in the U.S.? My understanding is that San Francisco has an ample supply of public housing and other services for those at the lower end of the wage scale (and/or for those whose skills are not sufficient to command a $15/hour wage). Certainly folks in the Bay Area have big hearts and it wouldn’t be fair either to them or to the asylum-seekers for other states, regions, and cities not to assist the passage of all caravans straight through to Union Square.
I’m happy to pay for some Southwest, JetBlue, and Spirit tickets. All that I ask for in return is a Smartphone [Obamaphone?] photo of the welcoming committee in San Francisco.
This was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but why doesn’t it happen? Californians say that they want immigrants, regardless of documentation status or skill level. Americans in other states don’t want more immigrants. Transportation is inexpensive. Why not make it easy for any asylum-seeker or undocumented immigrant to go to San Francisco?
[Separately, why is the ACLU involved? Its web site says that it is “the nation’s premier defender of the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,” but do would-be immigrants have rights under the U.S. Constitution? If so, shouldn’t people in Afghanistan and Iraq have had the right to due process before getting bombed and shot? The ACLU is also recently against “due process” for college students who are accused of sex-related misdeeds. They say that this is because of their concern for “women and girls of color”, but Atlantic says that it is disproportionately “men of color” who are accused and kicked out. From the Atlantic article: “In 2015, in The New Yorker, Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor, wrote that in general, the administrators and faculty members she’d spoken with who ‘routinely work on sexual-misconduct cases’ said that ‘most of the complaints they see are against minorities.’ (Professor Suk was a source for us on domestic violence and the potential for a one-hearing divorce, custody, and child support victory.) If the ACLU is enthusiastic about African-American men being stripped of the presumption of innocence in university-run sex tribunals, why wouldn’t they also advocate for the removal of what had been considered due process in ordinary criminal courts?]
Related:
- “Unlimited Haitians for communities that prepare to welcome them?”: People in San Francisco, Santa Monica, Manhattan, Boston, etc. are criticizing Trump for voicing his opinion (wrong, by definition!) regarding living conditions in Haiti. They also criticize him for being unwelcoming toward low-skill immigrants from unsuccessful societies in general. What if Trump were to offer immigration proponents an unlimited supply of people, without any preference for those capable of working, on condition that immigration advocates use state and local tax dollars to pay for their housing, health care, food, and walking-around money? So if people in San Francisco want to build a 1000-unit apartment complex for Haitian immigrants, and folks will be permanently entitled to live there by paying a defined fraction of their income in rent ($0 in rent for those with $0 in income), and San Francisco commits to build additional apartment complexes in which any children or grandchildren of these immigrants can live, why should the Federal government stand in the way of their dreams? (Of course, the city and state would also have to pay 100 percent of the costs of Medicaid, food stamps, Obamaphones, and any other welfare services consumed by these immigrants or their descendants.) If there were no numerical limits on immigration, but host communities had to pay for the guests whom they were welcoming, Trump wouldn’t have to be the bad guy anymore. …
Yes, I think this is a great idea. Seriously (I live in San Francisco). Please ask your representatives to make this happen.
It’s not clear which laws you would have to change to ensure that cities keep track of the descendants of these immigrants from whom they are supposed to take responsibility. But I imagine you have thought about that and would be curious to know how you imagine this would work in practice.