Illegal Immigration Ethics Train Wreck

J.D. Vance’s Wishy-Washy “Town Hall” On CBS

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Speaking of Vice-Presidents, yecchh.

Our current VP was subjected to a CBS “town hall” over the weekend where a series of generally none-too-bright questioners peppered Vance with questions that he hesitated to answer with the clarity and forcefulness necessary. I thought Vance’s strength was supposed to be communication. Maybe Trump can get rid of him…

You can read the transcript here, but my main nausea came from Vance’s weenie responses to two questions regarding illegal immigration. CBS set him up to some extent with the first one, asked by a nun, Sister Nancy Sylvester. The Veep is Catholic, of course, and spoke as if he felt he owed some kind of deference to Sister Nancy despite the fact that her question bypassed law and policy and went straight to toxic empathy. She asked…

“Mr. Vice President, we are sisters who minister at the southern border in the United States, as well as here around Detroit, and they are constantly seeing families who are affected by our immigration policies. They see the trauma of children who are separated from their parents, sometimes on a moment’s notice. They go to school and they come back and they’re not there. And they have to sort of fend for themselves. And so they, the sisters see the kind of effect, the fear and violence of the ICE behavior. We know the complexity of this issue, but what really pains us is how it’s being implemented in such ways. And so I’m going to, sort of know that both of us share the same faith. We may not always agree, ’cause I understand you don’t always even agree with our pope sometimes. And so I want to, though, wonder what would you say, how would you justify to people of faith, especially those of us who try to follow the gospel, how the behavior of the ICE men and women can constantly be justified to, in terms of the kind of values we live, wanna live by, and also what policies would you advocate to try to promote more compassionate and respective behavior toward our immigrant sisters and brothers?”

Elected officials and responsible citizens can’t accept the false premises underlying such a question, but Vance did. He replied, after wasting time showing his concern for the Pope’s health and pandering to his fellow Catholics,

“So let me say, one, we’re trying to strike the right balance. And when you have a country where approximately 25 million illegal aliens have come in over the past 30 or so years, many of them completely unchecked and unvetted, we’re trying to strike a balance between how do we do law enforcement, but how do we also do it humanely, and how do we not do so little law enforcement that you actually empower some of the worst people in the world. And so—I think that it is constantly a work in progress. When you’re talking about millions and millions of people and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers, you know, we’ve even just in the past year or so increased training protocols. Because I do think that men and women of ICE, by the way, it’s like the men and women of law enforcement. Most of them are amazing people who are patriots and they want to do a good job protecting their country. Sometimes you have some people who make mistakes. Sometimes you have some people who really screw up. And obviously we have a responsibility to prosecute, investigate when people do screw up.”

Clear as mud, and incompetent. His duty was to begin by saying, first, that the Sister was talking about illegal immigrants, and the “immigration policies” of enforcing the law. These aren’t “immigrant sisters and brothers,” but illegal immigrants who should not benefit from taking what isn’t theirs to take, It’s nice that she and her colleagues are trying to ease the burdens law-breaking illegals have inflicted on their own children, but that is not the fault of the United States or its primary concern, nor should it be. “Following the gospel” means, as the wonderful Pope has made clear, open borders, and the disastrous consequences of that are blazingly evident in Europe and increasingly in the U.S. You cannot govern competently and responsibly with faith and the the idealistic teachings from a culture 2,000 years ago. Law enforcement wouldn’t have incidents of overreach, bad decisions, accidents and mistakes if lawbreakers didn’t force the government to deal with their destruction.

I have a dear friend and occasional commenter on EA who thinks like Sister Nancy. This is the poison well of misplaced Christian charity that creates the “Good Illegal Immigrant” myth and the absurd parallels between Mary and Joseph and the millions of illegals the Biden administration encouraged to first break our immigration laws, and then to engage in further lawbreaking.

Then CBS host Tony Dokoupil introduced another questioner, a naturalized citizen named Niv Agarwal. Sister Nancy had just asked, “I’m interested in how, from your very core of your faith, how would you want to be, how do you want to treat immigrants? Because in many cases, we get, they all are called terrorists sometimes by people. They are—like, how does, what, what would you want? What would you want to do?” Great: Shut up, Sister, you ignorant slut. Tony segued to Niv, whose infuriating question was along the same lines. He said,

“Hey, my name is Niv. My family and I immigrated here about 20 years ago, and I became a citizen about five years ago. So you were the first person I voted for, actually….One reason, because of the reasons you just mentioned, I was concerned about border safety, as in the trafficking and the drugs, not because I think immigrants actually take away jobs from Americans, but after seeing ICE behave like military police, and you recently call H-1 visa workers foreign indentured servants. I think Americans are anything but safe. So I’m just curious, why, why are you scapegoating immigrants for the issues you’re supposed to be solving as a Vice President?”

Immediately, Vance should have said,

“Let’s get two things straight once and for all, Niv. First, the issue is illegal immigrants, not legal immigrants like you. Stop letting open borders advocates confuse the issue by adopting their dishonest rhetoric. Second, if an illegal immigrant has a job in this country, by definition he or she is taking that job away from an American, because if that illegal wasn’t here, an American would have that job. So if you don’t think immigrants actually take away jobs from Americans, you’re confused. Nobody is “scapegoating immigrants.” Again, we are talking about illegal immigrants. I would think, as an immigrant yourself, you would insist on that distinction. We are correctly pointing out the harm done to the nation, society, the economy and law-abiding citizens when foreign citizens come here illegally, and ICE acts exactly as law enforcement has to act when criminals are being protected by rogue state and local governments and misguided Americans who have accepted pro-open borders propaganda as you have.”

If the Republicans get clobbered in the mid-terms, a main reason will be their incompetence and rhetorical cowardice.

Ethics Villain: Arlington County (VA) Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

With this post, I am belatedly adding “Ethics Villain” to the Ethics Alarms categories. I should have done it before: frankly, properly adding categories and tags to each post after I have finished it is a chore, and I often wonder whether it is worth my time. I’ve posted around 20,000 essays, and the tagging and categorizing process takes about 3 minutes, which means I have spent 5 days worth of waking hours doing it already with no end in sight. I could really use those 60 hours right now.

Anyway, back to Ethics Villain: I have used the term to indicate sort of a super-Ethics Dunce, but that that’s not quite right. Ethics Villains are more like ficks, the EA designation for the people who know what they are doing is wrong and shamelessly do it anyway. In March, I posted an incomplete inventory of Ethics Villains, leaving off Dr. Fauci, who was properly branded with the designation later. Upon reflection, the list was very incomplete, omitting, for example, both Clintons and Barack Obama.

It did include “Virginia Democrats,” however, and that’s from whence today’s Ethics Villain oozed.

***

Local news reports here in Virginia and newly released transcripts from a House July deposition reveal that Arlington’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Taftiac admitted that her office follows a policy in which a DUI charge may be reduced to a different Class 1 misdemeanor when the drunk driver holds DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status. After all, these drunks are special: they are “good illegal immigrants” who face severe immigration penalties for serious law-breaking in addition to the penalties for drunk driving. An office memo urges prosecutors to consider lesser charges when a DACA recipient is arrested for endangering legal, law-abiding citizen drivers and their families as well as pedestrians who looked both ways and waited for “WALK” before crossing a street in what they assumed would be a safe crosswalk. Hey, all they want is a better life!

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Huh. Who Could Have Imagined That Uncontrolled Illegal Immigration Had Negative Consequences?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Not California!

Paving Paradise, a research analysis study of the loss of California’s agricultural and natural land due to rapid population growth found that 91% of land development since 1970 is a consequence of uncontrolled “immigration,” aka. illegal immigration.

California, a so-called sanctuary state, has the highest concentration of illegal immigrants in the United States, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Over 400,000 entered the state between 2021 and 2023 during the Biden administration. Because population of California has doubled over the past five decades, 3,740 miles of California’s farmland, forests, wetlands and open spaces have had to be paved over to accommodate the all the lonely people, and we know where they all come from. 2.4 million acres of land, an area three times larger than Yosemite National Park, have been consumed. The overpopulation contributes to water shortages, loss of wildlife, more wildfires, traffic congestion, rising housing costs in the state, researchers found.

To be fair, at least there are more murders, rapes, and other felonies. And twenty-four million former California residents have legally migrated to other states to flee the effects of the open borders, so it all evens out in the end.

Oh Good! Another Obama Era Incentive for Illegal Immigration Is Finally On The Way Out…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The whole “Dreamer” thing seemed like classic liberal sentimental hogwash from the start, because it was, ethically, logically and legally. If illegal immigrants could be certain that their young children sneaking across the border when they did would suddenly become “good illegal immigrants” as soon as they approached majority and would be eligible for all sorts of benefits, that was just one more incentive for aliens to break our laws.

You may recall that President Obama issued an unconstitutional Executive Order to coddle the “Dreamers” that was struck down by the Supreme Court. I wrote at the time,

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Ethics Dunces and Incompetent Elected Officials of the Month: The Arlington (VA.) County Board

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

My current state of legal residence has gone nuts.

On November’s Virginia ballot, Virginia’s voters will consider “Amendment 1,” which would:

  • Make abortion freely available throughout the third trimester of pregnancy, all the way up to birth;
  • Abolish the right of parents to be consulted on, and to consent to, abortions sought by their young daughters; and
  • Enable anyone to perform an abortion and to escape legal responsibility for botching an abortion.
  • Enable a child, without her parents’ knowledge or consent, to receive puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sterilization surgery.

Like the earlier Democratic attempt to sneak a Constitutional amendment past voters with a dishonest description on the ballot, this one employs misleading and deceitful language (“reproductive health” standing in for “the ability to kill unborn babies in the ninth month of pregnancy”) and belies Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger’s promise that she would govern as a “moderate Democrat.”

But wait…there’s more!

The Arlington County Board just voted to put aside $50,000 for families whose head of the household is an illegal immigrant and has been detained or deported by ICE. Moreover, the county won’t require families to prove detention or deportation or provide employment records. Each eligible family can get up to $2,000. The money will be distributed by Arlington Thrive, a non-profit organization that provides emergency financial assistance.

“This investment in our families is about the urgency we have seen in our community in the last month,” said Arlington County Board Chairman Matt de Ferranti. “And we are going to respond with care. and we are going to respond proudly. That’s what this $50,000 is toward with Thrive.”

Former Acting ICE Director and former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey said the county may be violating federal law, arguing, “Arlington County is putting aside money for presumably people that are not even legal in the country, as opposed to giving it to Arlington County residents or American citizens.” “But I think the one thing that’s really interesting about what they’re doing here, there’s this alien harboring statute, a federal statute that makes it illegal to do something that induces or encourages someone to come to the country illegally or to reside in the country illegally, and I think Arlington County has a real problem with that statute.”

“They’re going to induce more illegal aliens into Arlington County, which will also cost the taxpayers even more money,” added Fahey. “There’s probably so many things that could be done that are better for the taxpayers and the residents and the legal residents of Arlington County.”

To Be Fair: The Washington Post Is Still As Ridiculously Biased As The New York Times…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

It is only fair to flag this idiocy, since I routinely call out the Times’ progressive and Democratic Party propaganda under the “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” banner and leave the Post, which I stopped subscribing to a decade ago because it was so infuriatingly biased, relatively unscathed, :

One of my few non-Trump Deranged Facebook friends posted that tweet today with the wry legend, typical of him, “I don’t see the problem…”

We have “respected” news organizations literally telling the public that there is something cruel and unjust about deporting people who come here illegally as long as they don’t kill, rape, rob or set fires. This logic is in the same bonkers category as that irresponsible New York State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher who feels shoplifting should be legalized. Yet I bet all of your progressive friends agree with the Post.

This wasn’t among my planned posts for today, but after picking on the Times in the previous post, I feel ethically obligated to point out that the Washington Post is an “enemy of the people” too.

“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Note of the Week: CNN’s Dana Bash Peppers Tom Homan With “Poor Illegal Immigrants” Questions

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I try to avoid the Sunday talking-head shows now (once upon a time, my late wife and I would watch them all). For some reason I lighted on CNN’s “State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash” this morning and caught the hang-dog, sour-faced Bash trying to bash Trump Administration illegal immigration policing czar Tom Homan.

Bash: “Do you feel at all bad about sending Haitians back to a country where your own administration considers conditions dire?”

Ethics Verdict: Stupid, manipulative, and irresponsible. “Feelz” are not valid considerations in law enforcement, nor are they legitimate topics for inquiry by serious journalists, of which we have approximately none; certainly not Dana Bash.

What exactly does she propose, importing the whole population of Haiti because that accurately labeled “shit-hole country” hasn’t managed to get its act together for its entire, miserable, violent existence since it became independent in 1804? Holman, who has a terrible poker face on which we could see his disgust with each one of Bash’s questions that had the unstated implication that he, and President Trump, of course, are heartless racists. Homan answered this one by saying that he doesn’t feel badly and shouldn’t when he is enforcing the immigration laws as passed by Congress. He also made the obvious, though not to Bash and all the other “Good Illegal Immigrant” bleeding hearts, point that millions of people across the globe are in line to come to “the greatest country on earth” the legal and right way, and there is no justification for allowing those who came here or remain here illegally to block their paths.

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Ethics Alarms Challenge: Give Me A Persuasive Argument Why We Should Oppose The Deporting of “Good Illegal Immigrants”

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

The New York Times is in a tender mood over I.C.E. deporting illegal immigrants who haven’t killed, raped, robbed or otherwise turned to a life of crime—at least as far as we know— being deported by I.C.E. In the deliberately deceitfully-headlined “ICE Arrests Soar as People With No Criminal Record Are Increasingly Targeted” (Uh, no, illegal immigrants are being targeted. I, for example, qualify for the group “People With No Criminal Record,” and I am not being “targeted”), the New York Times writes today,

A majority of the immigrants arrested in July were people who were accused of violating civil immigration laws but who had not been charged with or convicted of a crime, an analysis of newly released federal data shows. The share with a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than 4 percent. Overall, immigration arrests rose to record highs with 43,000 ICE arrests in June and 49,000 in July. Two fatal shootings involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, in Texas and Maine, drew outrage but did not meaningfully slow the pace of arrests…ICE now appears closer than ever to meeting a recent goal of 2,000 daily arrests…Immigration arrests are near all-time highs in almost every state. Even sparsely populated Montana and Vermont saw spikes, with arrest rates more than doubling…

…Deportations have averaged well over 1,000 people a day since last summer, and there are signs that they are picking up speed. The number of deportation flights began rising in the spring, and in July reached a record of at least 329 flights out of the country, according to ICE Flight Monitor, a tracking effort run by Human Rights First.

My one word analysis of that report, which the New York Times presumably thinks will outrage its readers: Good. (And why would, or should, two fatal shootings involving ICE agents slow down appropriate law enforcement?)

Hey, but just for perspective and giggles, let’s see what appreciative Times readers (there are some sane comments in there too) are saying about the article:

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Ethics Alarms Challenge: Name All The Ways This Meme Is Misleading and Breathtakingly Stupid….

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

My Facebook friends really like it!

This is the level of intellect at which foes of enforcing immigration laws are functioning. The director of the Smithsonian American History Museum gives land acknowledgements, meaning that she must think that map is profound.

Unethical Tweet of the Month: This Is Why You Can’t Have An Intelligent Discussion With These People…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

You have to truly be a blind ideologue to proudly post something this blazingly stupid on social media.

Let’s begin with the pairing of a trans pride flag with the Palestinian flag…the poster is irony-challenged. Jade then pronounces conservatives incurious, a contention that she doesn’t bother to support. I, for one, am curious how dedicated progressives continue to maintain scientific, legal and economic nonsense despite year after year of being embarrassed by their policies.

Then the tweet really gets rolling. Thoughtful people and ethicists believe abortion is “bad” because it involves ending a human life for the convenience of another human who is more powerful. The act would still be the same—homicide—if the Bible had no perspective on the matter at all. Similarly, we don’t believe theft is wrong because the Ten Commandments say so, but because civilization couldn’t exist if it weren’t prohibited.

It is something of an accomplishment that each of the three declarations is more moronic than the one before. “Immigrants are bad because Fox News said so” is a masterpiece of dishonesty and confusion. First of all, no one among conservatives says “immigration is bad.” Presumably Jade means illegal immigrants, but is so addled by the deceitful rhetoric of the Axis of Unethical Conduct that she doesn’t know the difference. I’m surprised she isn’t curious about that.

No, illegal immigrants are bad because they are breaking the law, and breaking the law is almost always bad by definition. Fox News doesn’t need to say so: statutes say so, court opinions say so, experience and common sense says so, Kant says so, Dostoevsky says so, and Hammurabi says so.

And yet the last line still wins the Ignoramus Blue Ribbon. Capitalism is good, not because Ronald Reagan said so, but because capitalism has, over the last 250 years, made the United States of America the richest, most productive, most influential and most creative nation on Earth, with the highest standard of living, the most innovation and the greatest number of contributions to civilization over that period.

You can’t argue with someone who posts nonsense like this. Well, you can, but I won’t. Jade complains about conservatives being incurious, but is so doctrinaire that she doesn’t have enough curiosity herself to check facts and history to find out if she knows what the hell she is talking about.

And she doesn’t.