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Nullification
I have always seen sanctuary cities and states as manifestations of nullification: states or localities defying federal law. The original nullification had to do with tariffs, of which we are currently awash, but this is a different nullification issue. In Andrew Jackson’s administration, his own Vice President was a supporter of the nullification of federal tariff laws; the South was harmed by them, whereas the North perceived itself to benefit from them. Jackson famously said that he would personally lead 40,000 federal troops into South Carolina and hang the first man he caught promoting nullification, even though he was a Southerner and opposed the tariffs. The issue then was fraught, but a compromise was worked out that more or less satisfied all and kept the nation intact.
Venues that enforce sanctuary status are in overt violation of federal law. This has been the case for many years; in fact, many decades. Neither party, and certainly not both parties together, has reached anything approaching a compromise since Reagan was rolled by the Democrats after having accepted a deal in which amnesty for those already here would be exchanged for enforcement of the borders to prevent further illegal immigration. The amnesty was granted; the border enforcement never materialized. That has so poisoned the well that nothing has been possible since. Democrats want both illegal immigration ad libitum and citizenship for all.
It has long been recognized that the Democrats are intent upon fundamentally changing the electorate and the balance of power on a permanent basis. With massive numbers of illegals in the country in sanctuary venues, Democrats get more congressional seats, more federal largesse based on the census, and the possibility of forever enshrining their power in those states, with California as the foremost example.
They are, of course, doing this illegally. For all of my adult life, the US has NOT been a nation of law, but of lawlessness, as regards illegal immigration. The exploitation of illegals has been vast, from sex trafficking and virtual slave labor, to padding Social Security revenues on the backs of people that will never be eligible to receive benefits (at least to the extent that Congress will never pass legislation authorizing such benefits; though vast fraud—that is, the foremost characteristic of such government programs—may provide them such, along with Medicaid and Obamacare benefits, education, welfare, etc.).
Now with a president who is more opposed to illegal immigration than Lincoln was to slavery (and appropriately so), we see the ever-predictable Democrat response: violence. We are now treated to the spectacle of rioting in the streets in Los Angeles (of course Los Angeles) with attacks on often-demonized ICE, while the rioters are egged on in their attacks. So the California National Guard has been called out by the president over the objection of the governor, and the Marines at Camp Pendleton have been placed on alert. Are we witnessing a modern version of Fort Sumter? Is the nation on the brink of another civil war?
Illegal immigration has been as much of a detriment to the nation as was slavery. Of course, it is not just Democrats who support it, but many including libertarians and moderates who do not call themselves Democrats are among the proponents of an immigration free-for-all. They are all on the wrong side of the issue.
One of the admitted problems with our immigration system is that it was, for all intents and purposes, based on the vile ideas of eugenics. The 1924 Immigration Act, which essentially ended the era of open migration to America, as celebrated in the Lazarus verse on the Statue of Liberty, was passed by a Congress that was advised by none other than Harry Laughlin of the Eugenics Records Office. Laughlin’s office was located at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, under the direction of the foremost American advocate of eugenics, Charles Davenport, chair of Biology at Harvard University (of course, it would be Harvard). He was supported by virtually all of the “scientific” establishment, as well as the political establishment. Eugenics was the climate change issue of the first half of the 20th Century (although it continues almost unabated today in modified forms, chameleon-like). The immigration law was signed by Calvin Coolidge, though his veto would have been overruled had he chosen to veto, so popular was the Eugenics agenda. It was cemented, not by a Constitutional amendment, as was Prohibition, but by a 8-1 Supreme Court decision (Buck v. Bell, May 2, 1927), with the majority decision written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., which comprised one of the most vile opinions, word for word (the opinion was very short), ever to come out of the Supreme Court. That opinion equated human pregnancy with the contagion of smallpox, and cited Jacobsen v. Massachusetts as the basis for the police power of the state to forcibly sterilize the “unfit.” Then it was off to the races (no pun intended) with forced sterilization. The record for the most such sterilizations by one institution is held by Caltech.
The later modifications to immigration law hardly improved anything, as, among other issues, they enshrined chain migration.
Rational immigration laws that would promote immigration favorably for the nation are impossible under today’s politically poisonous climate. Will illegal immigration be the issue that splits the nation again, and brings us another civil war? If so, here’s hoping Tom Homan and his agents are as tenacious as Grant.
Published in General
Immigration should be for those who have and will obey our laws, and provide a benefit to America ( skills, knowledge, or just plain working hard ). If you come here illegally, you should be expelled and forever banned from being allowed in the USA. Yes, I oppose a path to citizenship for those who came here illegally.
We don’t always agree but you nailed this.
Were you on the side of President Biden when he didn’t want Texas enforcing immigration law? He said that was for the feds, not the states.
Why should any of us feel beholden to some commie poem attached to a nice gift from France?
Anyway, why are state and local police obliged to enforce federal laws? This is not nullification, it is more of not doing extra. A passive aggressive approach. If states and localities cared to get rid of criminals, they would honor detainers. But the politicians don’t care about crime and neither do their voters.
That is all OK as the federal government can enforce immigration laws. The feds should use the IRS to enforce employment verification.
This reminded me of hearing last week some lefty talking head refer to illegal aliens as “undocumented citizens.”
When she wrote, there were essentially no barriers to immigration from Europe. What America represented was opportunity, not a socialist or communist state. Virtually all immigration was allowed. A vastly different circumstance before 1924 than after 1924.
Local authorities should be required to cooperate with federal authorities rather than actively obstruct and defy their efforts.
Biden, or at least his administration, was actively violating immigration law, as when the FBI ordered Tennesse State police to not detain Obregón Garcia when he was caught in flagrant violation of federal law. As far as I can tell he was doing the dirty work the Biden administration wanted him to do and so told Tennesse law enforcement to butt out. For all intents and purposes he was treated like the NGOs the Biden administration was paying to do the same thing, for political optics, eg so they couldn’t be accused of putting children in cages, except he wasn’t paid by the federal government but by one of their voluntarily cooperating organizations (MS13?). I take it from your question that you are in favor of human trafficking by the feds or any other organization.
I have no problem with Texas protecting its own borders in accord with federal law. I have a big problem with the federal government forcing States to violate federal law.
Illegal immigrants were treated by Biden’s administration as a protected class that was above the law. In a sane world, Biden would have been removed from office for willful violation of federal law regarding illegal immigration, in my view. He was not impeached, but his policies were rejected by the voters. Perhaps you side with the Democrats in their efforts to block the results of the 2024 election with violence in the streets? Personally, I call that election denial, far worse than anything Trump is accused of doing.
I presume that you disagree.
This is a stupid question. Failing to enforce laws for which an oath has been taken to enforce is equivalent to aiding and abetting and would be grounds for impeachment but the Democrat Party today is with the enemies within. All President Trump is doing is in compliance with SCOTUS rulings of where authority is established for enforcing immigration law. If Biden said it was for the feds, why didn’t he do it?
There are areas of law in which both the federal government and state governments can exercise jurisdiction and authority (sometimes called “concurrent jurisdiction”).
There are areas of law in which there has been “concurrent jurisdiction” but the federal government has so thoroughly taken over that the states lose their ability to exercise jurisdiction, and the area of law becomes exclusive to the federal government.
Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court, even as recently as 2012 or 2013 (in a case involving Arizona) has said that immigration to the United States has been so thoroughly taken over by the federal government that the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction.
BUT . . . the argument has been made that during the Biden administration, the federal government, by actively violating its own immigration laws, and by failing to enforce federal immigration law to any meaningful extent, had abandoned that exclusive jurisdiction over immigration, and that it became incumbent upon at least some state governments to protect the state’s own citizens and residents by enforcing some version of immigration law.
Today, we have state governments actively interfering with federal government enforcement of federal law, and state governments passively allowing and even encouraging people to actively interfere with federal government enforcement of federal law. Today’s situation may more closely resemble the southern states in the lat 19th and early 20th century actively interfering with the federal government’s post-Civil War reconstruction and racial integration efforts.
So much for federalism and the Constitution.
I’ll bet you do presume that.
So the local police authority can’t protect the federal authorities in the conduct of their duties, or they won’t. The former is incompetence. The latter is insurrection. Pick one.
I am glad to see that somebody here has a little historical perspective on state vs federal conflicts. Thank you.
I don’t think there are easy answers to these federal vs state conflicts over jurisdiction. It will be a sad day when the answers are easy.
BTW, I recently saw some headlines suggesting to me that it’s hard to fault the Trump administration for going in and dealing with the level of violence that has been directed against ICE officers, and it would be a dereliction of duty not to do so. I haven’t bothered to study up on whether those headlines described the situation accurately.
But speaking of nullification, I am not in favor of turning the states into nullities that can not resist an overpowerful federal government. Conservatives have a bad habit of creating weapons that the federal government may use on our side now, but which it is soon going to use against us.
So you think Trump has no right to send in the California National Guard to quell the riots threatening ICE agents in Los Angeles?
You never seem to answer any questions or address any real issues in any specific way.
One might construe from your statements that you opposed Lincoln’s actions trying to supply Fort Sumter. Or issuing the EMancipation Proclamation. Or suspending Habeas Corpus.
SO you are right there with John Calhoun. And probably opposed Eisenhower sending the 101st Airborne to Little Rock.
No one in this post suggested changing the states into nullities that cannot resist an overpowerful federal government. You are far too late on that, as that is pretty much a fait acompli starting with the Progressive Era and extending through the New Deal and the Great Society. But nice to know that you have some grasp of original federalism.
Am I wrong?
Very accurate observation. Trump’s action in California is precisely in accord with federalism concepts since border control and immigration law are part of federal responsibilities for national defense. Did everyone notice all the Mexican flags? What interpretation should we put on that? Maybe not quite the same as when we see Ukrainian flags.
Yes, you are wrong about that and about a lot of other assumptions, too.
BTW, I think Lincoln’s handling of Fort Sumter is an excellent example of the right way to go about these conflicts, and have said as much in the past, right here on Ricochet. Trump seems to have been handed an opportunity to handle the riots in California the right way, too, if MAGA will just let him.
This is where you consistently jump the tracks, irrelevancy.
I certainly agree on Fort Sumter. So far I haven’t seen that Trump has blown it in California; to the contrary, I think he has approached the situation appropriately to this point. He can of course go off the rails quickly, but the Left has already gone completley off the rails, and, in my view, a strong response is necessary.
Interestingly to me, there were other Federal troops in South Carolina at the time of Fort Sumter. Once hostilities began there, Black slaves were fleeing en mass to the federal troops, often having to flee through Rebel lines, at risk of life and limb, taking their families with them. Once they got within the protection of Union lines, General Hunter “appropriated” them as contraband, which was allowed with property (called Hunters’ Contraband), gave them their freedom, made them citizens, and offered them positions with the Union Army. Virtually all of the able bodied men then enlisted. Lincoln could not tolerate that politically at that time and put a stop to Hunter’s actions.
I just have to say that it makes me crazy that we stomp on generations of human and financial capital and then we didn’t give them anything after that. We could have given them something. Some land way out west, that would obviously be developed, or something. They shot Lincoln and then the next guy in the south just pounded on them some more.
I am not a fan of requiring things from the Feds. How about financially compensated for cooperating. It is work for a sheriff to do the immigration check and house an illegal alien and do the paperwork. The feds could pay $500 a head.
Something like that could be fair. Or even just not HELPING. But if someone actually HINDERS, like that Wisconsin judge, they need serious punishment.
It is interesting to me that States like Texas and Florida are highly cooperative with ICE under Trump without expecting additional federal payments. They see dangerous criminal illegal aliens as a threat and are more than happy to help the feds remove them from their States. In California there is massive opposition, from the rioters in the streets to the mayor’s and governor’s offices.The contrast between The States is so great it seems to me absolutely unbridgeable. Now Trump is deploying Marines to LA. Starting to feel more and more like Reconstruction, with Federal troops protecting the State houses from attack in the South. In the present case, federal troops protecting federal officials who are under assault, and federal property.
At what point can the term ‘Insurrection’ be employed?
I’ve already heard the term being used. Maybe it was here on Ricochet, but I don’t remember for sure. Since January 6, 2021 I have had a different view of the term than I used to have. I have become suspicious of its political use.
Texas was interfering with abdication and non-enforcement. If the President were to choose doing nothing if a joint Russian-Iranian-Venezuelan task force invaded and seized Galveston Island, could Texas mobilize to repel or be barred by presidential primacy on the issue of national defense and foreign policy?
The whole system kinda breaks down if cynical motives prevail.
Yes. There is a very significant difference between a failure to enforce the law while in an office where an oath was taken to do that and a state or the people taking that law into their own hands precisely to restore order.
California and Texas are on opposite ends of this spectrum, chaos and order.
I think “undocumented” is so five minutes ago and is now mean & judgmental. I think “document-challenged” or “underwelcomed persons” or “voting-rights-deprived” would be more warm and friendly.
Wouldn’t it be awful for it to be common practice to say “State & city government-approved Mexican/Hamas LA riots”?
Congress should require that all buses and planes used by ICE be called “due process” from now on just to make court transcripts kinda funny.
Yes, those are different situations. But are we taking care to preserve those distinctions? The laws and precedents are not all settled on these conflicts. I am not in favor of taking federal actions in the one type of situation that will also be used to hinder state action in the other. If we think it’s an easy call, we’re probably creating a lot of future trouble for ourselves.