RUTHFULLY YOURS

A showboating federal judge in San Francisco has issued an injunction against President Trump’s executive order cutting off federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities. The ruling distorts the E.O. beyond recognition, accusing the president of usurping legislative authority despite the order’s express adherence to “existing law.” Moreover, undeterred by the inconvenience that the order has not been enforced, the activist court — better to say, the fantasist court — dreams up harms that might befall San Francisco and Santa Clara, the sanctuary jurisdictions behind the suit, if it were enforced. The court thus flouts the standing doctrine, which limits judicial authority to actual controversies involving concrete, non-speculative harms.

Although he vents for 49 pages, Judge William H. Orrick III gives away the game early, on page 4. There, the Obama appointee explains that his ruling is about . . . nothing.

That is, Orrick acknowledges that he is adopting the construction of the E.O. urged by the Trump Justice Department, which maintains that the order does nothing more than call for the enforcement of already existing law. Although that construction is completely consistent with the E.O. as written, Judge Orrick implausibly describes it as “implausible.”

Since Orrick ultimately agrees with the Trump Justice Department, and since no enforcement action has been taken based on the E.O., why not just dismiss the case? Why the judicial theatrics?

There appear to be two reasons.

The first is Orrick’s patent desire to embarrass the White House, which rolled out the E.O. with great fanfare. The court wants it understood that Trump is a pretender: For all the hullaballoo, the E.O. effectively did nothing. Indeed, Orrick rationalizes his repeated misreadings of what the order actually says by feigning disbelief that what it says could possibly be what it means. Were that the case, he suggests, there would have been no reason to issue the order in the first place.

Thus, taking a page from the activist left-wing judges who invalidated Trump’s “travel ban” orders, Orrick harps on stump speeches by Trump and other administration officials. One wonders how well Barack “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” Obama would have fared under the judiciary’s new Trump Doctrine: The extravagant political rhetoric by which the incumbent president customarily sells his policies relieves a court of the obligation to grapple with the inevitably more modest legal text of the directives that follow.

Of course, the peer branches of government are supposed to presume each other’s good faith in the absence of a patent violation of the law. But let’s put aside the unseemliness of Orrick’s barely concealed contempt for a moment, because he is also wrong. The proper purpose of an executive order is to direct the operations of the executive branch within the proper bounds of the law. There is, therefore, nothing untoward about an E.O. that directs the president’s subordinates to take enforcement action within the confines of congressional statutes. In fact, it is welcome.

Fraud: Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fraud

1 a: deceit, trickery; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right : was accused of credit card fraud
b: an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : trick : automobile insurance frauds
2 a: a person who is not what he or she pretends to be : impostor : He claimed to be a licensed psychologist, but he turned out to be a fraud; also : one who defrauds : cheat
b: one that is not what it seems or is represented to be : The UFO picture was proved to be a fraud.

Merriam-Webster

Fraud is a common crime that occurs in a wide variety of areas. So-called “con artists” seek to gain the confidence of their intended victims. In point of fact, the term “con” is a contraction of the word “confidence,” wherein the criminal tricks their victims into trusting him so they can be taken advantage of.

Most “white collar crime” involves fraud.

Think of how many victims, for example, were defrauded out of their life savings by the infamous Bernie Madoff, who conned his victims into trusting him.

Bernie Madoff’s pyramid scheme is similar to a “Ponzi Scheme” — named for Charles Ponzi, who in the 1920s, used the monies paid to the initial investor-victims by those who came on board subsequently. Ultimately such schemes fail but enable the perpetrator to pocket huge sums of money before the collapse.

Insurance fraud generally involves individuals filing false claims to bilk the insurance company out of money.

Welfare fraud involves individuals concealing assets and sources of income to be eligible to receive assistance that they would not be entitled to if all of the material facts were known by the authorities who administer the welfare program.

Not unlike other forms of fraud, immigration fraud is a serious crime committed by aliens, and those who may conspire with them, to enable aliens to game the immigration system to circumvent the immigration laws in order gain entry into the United States and/or gain lawful status or other immigration benefits to which they are not lawfully entitled.

Examples of these benefits include being granted political asylum, lawful immigrant status, or even U.S. citizenship via the naturalization process.

The nexus between immigration fraud, terrorism, and national security is of considerable concern, and, in point of fact, when aliens engage in immigration fraud to facilitate terrorism, they generally face a maximum of 25 years in federal prison.

There are generally two forms of fraud that concern law enforcement: document fraud and immigration fraud schemes.

Fraudulent documents involve the production of counterfeit or altered documents such as birth certificates, passports, Social Security cards, driver’s licenses, or other such identity documents, or supporting documentation such as diplomas or marriage licenses. Immigration fraud schemes involve such deceptions as marriage fraud and false statements in immigration applications.

There are several federal statutes that establish the elements of crimes involving immigration fraud. Title 18 U.S. Code § 1546 — Fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents are key sections of federal law that address such fraud.

It’s bad enough that President Trump violated his own campaign promise and continues the illegal, unconstitutional “DREAMer” amnesty created by President Obama. But now Trump is going out of his way to take the most dangerous illegal aliens that other countries don’t want!

The United States will honor an Obama-era agreement with Australia to help resettle Syrian refugees, despite the Trump administration not favoring the arrangement, Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday.

“President Trump has made it clear that we’ll honor the agreement — that doesn’t mean we admire the agreement,” Pence said during a joint news conference….

He’s honoring it but not admiring it? That’s the kind of doubletalk we expect from politicians. Well, I honor President Trump but don’t admire him either.

Up to 1,250 refugees housed in Australian detention camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea would come to the U.S. under the agreement made with President Barack Obama.

Within the first 10 days as president, Trump had a tense phone call with Turnbull about the agreement. He followed up the phone call with a tweet several days later where he called the deal “dumb.”

Trump was right. But you see that was the view of the January 2017 Donald Trump, whose views are different from the February 2017 Donald Trump and the March and April version as well. This is what you get when you have a president unmoored by a coherent belief system.

Obama made this bad deal, but Trump was not obligated to comply with it. And these are not just any refugees, these are refugees (probably mostly Muslim) from war-torn Syria. There is absolutely no way to vet these refugees, because there is no central, reliable government we trust to get this information from.

Candidate Trump had said that not only would he not admit any more refugees from Syria, he would send the ones here home. President Trump, meanwhile, has been admitting refugees from Syria at a faster rate than Obama, and now is taking in problematic refugees who weren’t even trying to come to America.

How many “Trump refugees” will turn around and kill Americans? How many “Trump refugees” will walk around wearing burkas and demand special accommodations? How many “Trump refugees” will build mosques which blare the call to prayer, five times a day, over loudspeakers starting at 6 a.m.?

What’s next? Will we start accepting Muslim refugees bound for Germany and France? Is this what Trump supporters voted for?

On April 9, 2017 The Hill reported that Democrats were winning the fight over the wall.
The Democrats have been adamant about preventing the construction of that wall. Therefore if they are winning then America and Americans are losing.

As this report noted:

Despite President Trump’s request for more than $1 billion to fund the Mexican border wall this year, GOP leaders are expected to exclude the money in the spending bill being prepared to keep the government open beyond April 28.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says the choice is pragmatic and the money will come later.

But the issue has become a political thorn in the side of GOP leaders who are facing pushback from Republicans voicing concerns over the diplomatic fallout, the disruption to local communities and the enormous cost of the project, estimated to be anywhere from $22 billion to $40 billion.

With Democrats united against new wall funding, it’s unlikely the Republicans have the votes to get it through and prevent a government shutdown.

Ever since I have spoken out about the issue of immigration and national security, including during my appearances at Congressional hearings and when I provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission, I have been clear that simply building a wall along the U.S./Mexican border would not solve the immigration crisis.
However, I have come to compare the wall along that problematic border to the wing on an airplane. Without a wing and airplane certainly would not fly, however, a wing by itself would go nowhere.

In other words, that border must be made secure and other deficiencies in the immigration system must simultaneously be effectively addressed including, of course, the vital issue of the effective enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

The 9/11 Commission determined that multiple failures of the immigration system enabled not only the terrorists of September 11, 2001 but other terrorists, as well, to enter the United States and embed themselves as they went about their deadly preparations.

We have seen similar patterns in the terror attacks that have been attempted and/or successfully carried out in the United States in the years following the attacks of 9/11.

The preface of the official report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” begins with the following paragraph:

“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.”

Facebook Inc. has given its staff the green light to skip work and join pro-immigrant protests on May 1, “International Workers’ Day,” when members of the communist left around the world protest.

The tech giant said it won’t punish employees who take time off to join pro-immigrant protests, and according to Bloomberg News, the company will also “investigate” if any of its vendors (providing security staff, janitors, shuttle-bus drivers, etc.) “illegally crack down on their employees’ protest rights.”

“At Facebook, we’re committed to fostering an inclusive workplace where employees feel comfortable expressing their opinions and speaking up,” a spokesman wrote in an emailed statement. “We support our people in recognizing International Workers’ Day and other efforts to raise awareness for safe and equitable employment conditions.”

Facebook notified employees of its policy in a posting on an internal forum April 14. A spokesman said it applies regardless of whether workers notify the company ahead of time. The Menlo Park, California, company also said it would re-evaluate its ties to any vendor if it breaks the law that protects workers’ rights to organize and protect themselves.

“It’s important not just to the engineers and H-1B holders that are traditionally thought of as the immigrants in tech but also to folks who are subcontracted but work side-by-side on those campuses,” said Derecka Mehrens, co-founder of Silicon Valley Rising, a union-backed coalition. “Immigrants play a critical role in the tech sector — both as engineers and coders but also in keeping tech campuses running smoothly.”

I remember well how Facebook — dedicated as they are to “fostering an inclusive workplace where employees feel comfortable expressing their opinions and speaking up” — gave a similar green light to tea-party conservatives who wanted to protest against Obama’s policies from 2009 to 2012.

Wait … that didn’t happen at all, did it? To be fair, that’s likely because they had very few — if any — conservative employees at the time (at least none that were out of the closet).

On the other hand, Facebook did allow its liberal employees to suppress conservative views in its “Trending News Module” for years on end.

Facebook is only one out of many other tech companies that have been vocal in their opposition to Trump’s immigration agenda. In February, more than 120 tech firms united in opposition to his executive order on immigration by filing a legal brief. CONTINUE AT SITE

The immigration debate in America is often framed in absolutes: Those who want the law enforced, support the construction of a wall along the southern border, or are concerned about vetting migrants from troubled parts of the world are denounced as racist, xenophobic bigots. As a former foreign service officer who screened more than 10,000 visa applications, I’ve seen firsthand why tough immigration enforcement is necessary.

The question I hear most frequently regarding my time as an immigration gatekeeper is: Why can’t we just let people in? It’s a reasonable question. Anyone who has never lived in a corrupt country with no rule of law, unsafe drinking water, foul air and few opportunities to escape poverty may find it hard to fathom the desperation that drives millions to strike out for the United States.

Understanding how attractive life in America is to the 1.5 million legal and illegal aliens who arrive on these shores every year is vital to understanding why strict immigration enforcement is a necessary evil. How many might come if we loosened or even removed visa restrictions?

Last year more than 76 million foreign visitors were admitted at U.S. ports of entry. We have no idea how many of them worked illegally or overstayed, because we still don’t have mandatory E-Verify or a reliable entry/exit visa-tracking system. And while we don’t know how many visitors would stay if we let them, we can draw some conclusions from the Diversity Visa Program, better known as the green-card lottery.

The annual lottery received more than 40 million applications from around the world from 2013-15, including more than a million each from Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. More than 1.7 million Ghanaians played the lottery last year.

To enter the 2018 lottery, you must come from a country that sent fewer than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years. For this reason, nationals of Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Pakistan and more than a dozen other countries are ineligible. Further, only those with a high school diploma or sufficient work experience qualify.

Polls bolster the case for immigration enforcement. A 2008 Gallup survey of residents in 82 countries revealed that 26% of the world’s population wanted to move permanently to another country. Rolling surveys conducted by Gallup of 452,199 adults in 151 countries between 2009 and 2011 estimated that 640 million people wanted to emigrate, with the U.S. being the desired destination for 150 million. A 2014 Pew Research study found that 34% of Mexico’s 120 million people would like to move to the U.S. CONTINUE AT SITE