RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/hillary-clinton-conservatives-were-right-on-mass-migration/?utm_source=ntnlreview&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=amconswap

Amidst the hurly-burly of politics these days, it can be hard to notice when your side has won a victory. Yet that’s what’s just happened for conservatives on immigration: they’ve won. Okay, it’s not a final victory, nor even a crushing victory, but, even so, it’s a win.

We know this because Hillary Clinton, arguably still the biggest name in Democratic politics, has just said that conservatives were right. She has conceded the essence of the rightist—and, by the way, centrist—critique of the open-borders approach to immigration.

On November 22, Clinton said in an interview with The Guardian, “I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame.” Continuing in that vein, she damned German Chancellor Angela Merkel with faint praise: “I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message—‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’—because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.” In other words, when Merkel opened the German border in 2015, she was being nice, but misguided. Of course, Clinton is no doubt aware that the global backlash against Merkelism was felt in America, too, contributing to her own defeat in 2016.

To be sure, Clinton is no convert to Trumpism. Indeed, lest anyone think she was, she also told The Guardian that the president has “a strong streak of racism…the whole package of bigotry.”

Yet of course, the fact that Clinton doesn’t like Trump is not news. What is news is that she has shifted her stance on immigration in a Trumpian direction—or, if one prefers, to the familiar rule-of-law position embraced even by the Bernie Sanders left until recently.

Yet the immediate reaction to Clinton’s words was cautious incredulity. As The New York Times put it later that day, “Mrs. Clinton’s remarks to The Guardian drew criticism and a dose of surprise from an array of scholars, immigration advocates and pundits on both the left and the right, some of whom were so perplexed by the comments that they wondered aloud whether Mrs. Clinton had perhaps misspoken.” After all, as the Times observed, “Mrs. Clinton, many said, has a long history of supporting refugees—a track record seemingly at odds with her recent remarks. Her immigration platform in the 2016 presidential election boasted that ‘we embrace immigrants, not denigrate them.’”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/28/trumps_plan_to_stop_the_caravan_138767.html

President Donald Trump is putting the economic screws to Mexico to control the flood of Central American migrants storming our southern border. Unlike prior presidents, Trump is driving a hard bargain. Exports are Mexico’s economic lifeblood. A staggering 81 percent of those exports go to the United States. That’s why Trump’s threat to close the border — even for short time — gets results. Shutting the border shuts down Mexico. Period.

No wonder Mexico’s incoming president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, seems open to a “Remain in Mexico” deal that will make his country the waiting room for migrants applying for asylum in the U.S. In another sign of cooperation with Trump, Mexican immigration officials rapidly deported 98 migrants who tried forcing their way into the U.S. on Sunday.

Under “Remain in Mexico,” asylum-seekers would be held south of the border. Because they won’t step foot on American soil, they won’t have a “right” to public schooling, emergency health care and other costly American guarantees. That’s good news for taxpayers.

Making Mexico the waiting room is one part of Trump’s plan. Trump also announced on Nov. 9 that only migrants presenting themselves at official border entrances — not those sneaking in — could apply for asylum. Trump’s trying to solve the catch-and-release problem. Migrants caught crossing illegally simply have to say the word “asylum” to border agents, and voila, they’re released. They disappear into the U.S. and half never actually file for asylum or show up for a hearing. They’re turning asylum into a farce.

Unfortunately, a federal judge in San Francisco, Judge Jon S. Tigar, put a temporary hold on Trump’s policy. In a laughable decision likely to be overturned, Tigar said Honduran and Guatemalan migrants miles south of the U.S. border can sue the president of the United States, via an American third party, challenging his policy and asserting a right to enter the U.S. illegally. Sure, and pigs can fly.

Tigar’s ruling prompted a spat between Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts, who chastised the president for calling Tigar an “Obama judge.” Roberts is right about judicial independence, but he sure picked the wrong poster boy for it. Tigar is an activist with a history of outlandish decisions, including compelling taxpayers to foot the bill for sex reassignment surgery for a prison inmate.