Illegal Immigration Ethics Train Wreck

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Minnesota State Rep. Kaohly Her

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

And, may I add, what an idiot!

It’s bad enough that she has a name that automatically thrusts us into an Abbott and Costello routine [“Who?” “Her!” “Who’s Her?” “She’s Her!” “Of course she’s a her, but who is she?” “Her!”], but the fact that she also appears to have no compunction about lying, rationalizing law-breaking and making a fool out of herself along anyone silly enough to support her makes Her one more example of what’s wrong with Minnesota, the Democratic Party, and the advocates for illegal immigration.

During a debate on the Minnesota House floor that touched on illegal immigration, Her announced that she entered the United States as a child illegally. “I am illegal in this country. My parents are illegal here in this country,” she said.

Oh! That’s interesting: that means that she can’t hold elected office legally, that she shouldn’t be on a ballot, and that she can’t even vote in elections, much less on bills. The fourth-term lawmaker’s confession “ignited a firestorm in right-wing media,” The Minnesota Informer writes. I guess Democrats and progressives don’t care if an elected official isn’t holding office legally as long as she votes their way, just those racist conservatives who are sticklers for details like citizenship. One of her Republican colleagues in the House, Rep. Walter Hudson, called for Her to be investigated. What a meanie! A state rep admits that she’s in the state illegally, and this Fascist wants to have her kicked out of the legislature. Xenophobe!

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Unethical Quote of the Week, In So, So Many Ways: Becky Pringle, National Education Association President

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“We know what this administration is doing, so we are saying to Donald Trump and all of his allies, we will not, we will not scapegoat immigrants, we will not—the people who have built this country—we will not stand by and allow you to do that.”

—-Becky Pringle, President of the NEA, declaring her union’s support for open borders and illegal immigration while demonstrating dubious critical thinking skills.

Pringle just got up at a microphone and screamed all of that, and more. There’s a video here that I can’t embed; I have to say that I am suspicious that YouTube does not yet have a video of the hysterical display and that Pringle’s rant has not been more prominently shown on broadcast media. For it is tey another clip that will make a wonderful campaign ad for Republicans. Here is more of her craziness: I could have picked almost any sentence as an “unethical quote”:

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Update on “The LA Pro-Open Borders Riots Ethics Train Wreck”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

This morning, CNN pinged me with an alert that read, “CNN analysis: Trump’s deployment of the National Guard is a warning to other cities opposing his migrant policies.” You know, just like arresting and locking up serial killers is a warning to others who want to murder people, and giving tickets to speeders is a warning to irresponsible drivers who like to speed. Of course, CNN uses the deceitful cover-word “migrant” to avoid reminding dim-wit readers that these are law-breakers.

The news is that both California Governor Newsom and LA’s incompetent mayor showed that they were supportive of the rioting just as they have been supportive of illegal immigrants, and since the violence is aimed at blocking ICE from doing its job, the situation demanded Presidential action. In short, the riots are not about Trump, but the direct result of the refusal of the previous administration (whoever was in charge of it) to enforce the law (unless it was enforced against perceived political foes).

Meanwhile, in the hopes that I can make “A Friend” [see comments to this post]choke on his shredded wheat, here is how the New York Times is rolling out the Axis propaganda:

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More Thoughts and Observations on the LA Pro-Illegal Immigration Riots

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

1. This morning, while CNN and MSNBC were raging about the riots, Fox News had an extended feature about how to make faux cocktails using coffee. Gee, it would be nice to have a responsible, trustworthy broadcast news network that was both unbiased and that didn’t assume that is viewers dropped out of junior high school.

2. I am surprised that so few readers have commented on this morning’s introductory post. Was everyone at church? “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”

3. Here’s the comment on Facebook by an old friend, a retired journalist, and, of course, a Trump Derangement sufferer:

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Sanctuary! Well, Not So Much…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

It is mordantly amusing to listen to progressives on MSNBC bemoan the incursion of ICE into the “sanctuary” of churches attempting to extend their invisible force field around illegal immigrants. These are the same people who have shown no respect or reverence for Americans who assert their religious beliefs regarding, to take one infamous example, compelled speech.

In the case of church sanctuary, they are oh, a couple centuries behind the times. Allowing a church to harbor criminals and others sought by the state is a tradition that goes back to Roman times, and here and there it has been bolstered by the law. Not here and now however. The tradition makes no sense in modern times, and if churches have no legal grounds to protect lawbreakers, the claims of so-called sanctuary cities and states are weaker still.

The political and ideological Left has dashed itself on the rocks of illegal immigration, and based on some of the talking head nonsense I saw on MSNBC and CNN today, they are still dashing. When they are not crying “Think of the children!” (Note: law-breaking parents who put their children in untenable positions by their parents’ conduct are 100% accountable for those children’s plight) the apologists for illegal border-crossers are asserting that they are “human beings” and deserve to “have their humanity respected and recognized.” That’s fine: nobody denies that they are human beings. They are also human beings who do not belong in the United States.

This, for some strange reason, seems difficult for some progressives and Axis hacks to grasp. One of the two women I saw rending their garments over the Trump deportation policy, stuttered, babbled, shrugged, sighed and finally said, “I just can’t believe that this is happening! It’s so cruel!” Her partner in absurd “Good Illegal Immigrant” rhetoric nodded and agreed that deporting illegal immigrants who weren’t violent criminals is a violation of human rights.

There is apparently, according to these revolutionaries, a human right to live anywhere you want to. This is pure “Imagine-ism,” probably caused by hearing John Lennon’s fatuous paean to brainless utopianism one time too many. Both women also bemoaned the “collateral damage” of deportations. All law enforcement has “collateral damage” to families and others who depend on the law-breakers. That is a reason not to break laws, not to stop enforcing them.

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Bonus cultural literacy quiz: Who is that lovely young actress playing Esmeralda in that clip from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”? No cheating, now: this is an ethics blog…

Abuse of Celebrity: Selena Dumb Gomez’s Virtue-Signaling

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The video of former Disney star Selena Gomez weeping over the deportations of illegal immigrants who should be deported is a brilliant reminder that Hollywood makes you stupid. Gomez posted it on her Instagram which has 424 million followers and I want to kill myself.

Gomez is difficult to understand amid all the sobbing and histrionics, but here’s the text: “I just want to say I am so sorry… all my people are getting attacked [by Trump’s deportations]. The children. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something, but I can’t, I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”

To state the obvious, being subject to law enforcement isn’t being “attacked.” It is breathtakingly obnoxious for Gomez to call illegal immigrants “her people”—she’s an American citizen, and we are her people. Of course she plays the always popular “Think of the children!” card. And the hubris necessary for a B-list celebrity—she was okay in “The Dead Don’t Die”— to apologize for something she has no power over whatsoever, and to promise to “try everything” to stop it when there is nothing she can do is especially staggering.

“Entertainment Tonight” isn’t much better, saying in that clip that the deportation policy mostly “targets Latinos.” No, you hacks, it entirely targets illegal immigrants.

You can say this weepy virtue-signaling is harmless, but the fact that an ignorant woman like Gomez has over 400 million followers means that a political, cultural and ethics dunce can influence a dangerous number of people, making them stupid, fearful, and bad citizens. It has always been thus that our most talented artists (not that Selena is one of those) usually lack intellectual and critical thinking abilities on par with their performing abilities. They also tend to be emotionally frozen somewhere between the 6th and 11th grade. There are exceptions, of course, but social media has given these Dunning-Kruger victims a way to spread their juvenile politics and poor civics literacy far and wide, usually infecting the young most of all, and most damaging of all.

Maybe I’ll make a video of myself weeping over this…

In Which I Check On My Old Home Sweet Home And Discover That Massachusetts Has Finally Gone Nuts….

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

The toxic wokism that oozes out of Harvard and the other educational institutions in the Bay State have finally infected Massachusetts to the point where the it is too deranged even for the long-time Democratic Party’s mouthpiece, the Boston Globe. The propaganda rag that hasn’t endorsed a Republican President since… hmmmm, never, actually, though it has occasionally endorsed Republicans for governor if they sounded and acted like Democrats…issued an editorial this week headlined, “Massachusetts can’t handle the influx of migrants on its own.” Good ol’ Globe: it can’t stop spinning for the Left even when its criticizing it. The issue is illegal immigrants, not “migrants.” And it’s not an influx: it’s a completely predictable occupation in response to persistent invitations.

Two days ago, the Legislature passed a bill granting in-state tuition at public colleges for all illegal immigrants who graduate from Massachusetts high schools, where they shouldn’t be allowed to attend in the first place. State Rep. Paul Frost, a Republican, rose to make the obvious critical observation about the measure, saying, “This is another incentive to encourage more illegal immigration to the Commonwealth, that the taxpayers and the residents of Massachusetts will have to subsidize.”

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Ethics Quiz: The Announcer’s Suspension

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

North Carolina State basketball and football announcer Gary Hahn, broadcasting the NC State-Maryland Mayo Bowl game, said at one point, “down among all the illegal aliens in El Paso it’s UCLA 14 and Pittsburgh 6.” Learfield Communications suspended the Wolfpack Sports Network play-by-play announcer “indefinitely” following the game.

Various media outlets have described the statement as “offensive,” but it was unquestionably factual.

illegal immigrants are crossing the border into El Paso, Texas at a record pace. The mayor has declared a state of emergency. If it was the politically incorrect term “illegal alien” that was deemed offensive, the description is still used on some official government websites, perhaps because that’s what they are.

There is some crucial information we don’t have yet, though. Does Learfield Communications have a policy forbidding its announcers from making political comments during broadcasts? It should. There is no justification at all for sports broadcasters to bring non-sports topics, opinions and commentary into their broadcasts. I regard doing that as offensive whether I agree with the commentary or not. It is unprofessional: I don’t care what a baseball of football play-by-play announcer thinks about anything other that the game he or she is describing, and using that role to make gratuitous comments on public issues and current events is an abuse of position.

Was Hahn warned about this in the past? If this was his first offense, even if there is a policy, an indefinite suspension is unethically severe, so I won’t even bring that factor into today’s employment ethics Ethics Quiz, which is…

Can suspending Hahn for making a gratuitous reference to El Paso’s “illegal aliens” be ethically justified?

Outkick points out that Hahn might be excused for thinking that such editorializing is acceptable today based on the conduct of broadcasters like ESPN’s Mark Jones. ESPN (that’s Disney!) seems to encourage Jones, who routinely injects his extreme, woke, biased opinions into his basketball game coverage, constantly slamming Donald Trump, denigrating conservatives, even at one point making the false claim that Jacob Blake was unarmed to jibe with Black Lives Matter propaganda. The problem with that excuse for Hahn is 1) ESPN has clearly given Jones, at least, a green light to be unprofessional 2) Jones is black, and as we have seen elsewhere (CNN’s Don Lemon), there are different standards of professionalism for some black broadcast journalists. 3)Making gratuitous statements that offend conservatives is okay; offending progressives, even with facts, is currently far more risky.

My quiz answer: Absent a written policy, Hahn should have been warned and nothing more. If he violated a policy, a brief suspension would send a valid message.

I, however, am not broadcasting football or basketball game. They are illegal aliens (or illegal immigrants), not “migrants” or the other euphemisms and cover phrases, and that’s what they should be called, so the public understands the issue.

Comment Of The Day: “The Infuriating, Incompetent, Border Wall Debate”

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Zoe Brain weighs in with a typical (for her) carefully researched and detailed comment—two, actually, that function as one— regarding border walls as a matter of science and practicality, an obviously deserving Comment of the Day. Even if Zoe’s quoted experts were 100% correct on a factual basis, and they might be, it does not necessarily mean that a wall/fence/some kind of barrier would not have value. I particularly object to this statement from the first of the experts:

The whole situation needs to be addressed, and building a wall is a feel-good solution that is being pushed more because it pisses off Democrats than because it is a practical solution.

That’s anti-Trump bias, flat-out and undeniable, and untrue. President Trump did not propose a wall while running for President to piss off Democrats. He obviously believes a wall is necessary, and if Democrats showed that they would support a wall, he would not suddenly declare that he didn’t want a wall. At this point, he wants a wall because he promised one, and because he believes that he must fulfill that promise to keep faith with the people who elected him. There is no question, however, that the reverse is true. Democrats are willing to cause all sorts of collateral damage to deny the President a political victory and to signal to their open-borders base that they really don’t want the flow of illegals into the U.S. to stop. They could trace DACA for the wall, which would be effective, pragmatic, traditional politics. Trump would agree to that. A biased statement like the above makes me doubt the starting point of any analysis.

I also object to what follows this statement,  a random list of alternative ways to spend the same amount of money. Playing that game with 5 billion dollars is intellectually dishonest, because one could easily find that amount by cutting all sorts of wasteful expenditures. NPR and PBS cost about a a half billion dollars, for example, and there is no excuse whatsoever for taxpayers to pay for commercial television and radio. It also assumes that it will be any easier getting more practical or realistic measures funded, because, again, Democrats only talk about “comprehensive immigration reform” so people can imagine whatever they want. The last time they seriously discussed stemming illegal immigration, they were talking about fences and walls. What that party has been promoting since is a “path to citizenship” for anyone who illegally enters or stays in the country and who doesn’t break other laws, and sometimes even for the ones who do. This is a message has the effect of increasing illegal immigrants, of course. 

It doesn’t take a genius, an expert, an engineering degree or a lot of thought to conclude that there is a lot wrong with a border wall as long as the one proposed. However, at this point, a giant sign in multiple languages that reads, “To those who are tempted to enter the United States without following the appropriate procedures and laws, STAY OUT. You are not welcome. Your children are not welcome. We mean it.” The Government of the United States of America.

Sending that message alone is worth 5 billion dollars.

Finally, this statement (By Zoe’s Expert 1) is fatuous and dishonest:

At the same time, set up a program to accept people as economic refugees under temporary visas contingent on locating a job and keeping out of trouble. Spend some time on outreach in Central and South America to counteract rumors and misinformation about immigration to the United States. This comes back to the point about simplifying the immigration system. If you can’t explain it to a Guatemalan peasant, then saying “obey the law” is meaningless because he cannot understand the law. For that matter, you can’t understand immigration law. Immigration lawyers don’t understand immigration law. The f*cking INS doesn’t understand immigration law – ask any immigrant.

Illegal immigrants can understand THIS much: There are procedures and laws governing who is eligible to enter the United States, and if you are tying to storm the border, sneak across the border, get into the country on false pretenses and scatter, or get a temporary visa and then violate it, you’re breaking the law. I don’t think that’s too hard to “understand.”

Here is Zoe Brain’s Comment of the Day on the post, The Infuriating, Incompetent, Border Wall Debate: Continue reading →

The Infuriating, Incompetent, Border Wall Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Those entrusted with arguing for particular contentious public policy options have an obligation to do so competently and honestly. Few things in the public arena are more infuriating tha watching the wise and responsible point of view go spinning down in flames because its advocates are inarticulate, confused, repulsive (thus letting the Cognitive Dissonance scale take over), illogical, addicted to rationalizations,or stupid.

Unfortunately, most of our public policy controversies fall into this category. There might have been an intelligent social policy debate to be had over whether marriage should be extended to same-sex couples, but one the opponents resorted to religious dogma or straight-up bigotry, the argument was lost. Affirmative action is on the way to extinction in part due to blatantly hypocritical, pretzel-like arguments from its advocates: in a holiday discussion, an Asian-American woman told me that she did not support the lawsuit against Harvard for res ipsa loquitur discrimination against Asian students because the suit was being pushed by racists.

Oh.

Bye!

The debate over  tightening security at our boarders is literally a no-brainer—of course the U.S. should take necessary measures to prevent illegal immigration—that is increasingly brainless. Give President Trump the prize for starting it down this route. Either intentionally or because the man simply cannot express himself with precision, he initially framed the need to enforce our immigration laws with the confounding statement, “They (that is, Mexico) aren’t sending us their best people.” Well, yes, I guess it would be nice if a better class of illegal immigrants breaking our laws and defying our procedures was getting into the country to steal as many benefits of U.S residence that they can, but in truth it doesn’t matter whether illegal immigrants are the best people or the worst people. I don’t care if every one of them is a candidate for sainthood; it’s not up to foreign citizens to unilaterally decide who lives in the United States, and they have no right to defy our sovereignty. That’s it. That’s enough. It would be nice if no terrorists could gain access to their hunting ground through the porous enforcement Democrats and cheap labor-loving business interests have inflicted on us, but it would be no less imperative to enforce out borders if there were no terrorists. There is no valid, sensible, logical or honest argument from any perspective that we should allow people who come here a) to do so and b) to avoid enforcement of the laws they broke as long as they don’t break other laws. Continue reading →