You could organize your thinking about President Barack Obama’s
proposed executive actions on immigration into four questions: 1)
Is it constitutional? (Shikha Dalmia says
yes, Andrew Napolitano says
probably not.) 2) Would it produce a good policy result?
(Dalmia again with a
yes,
Planet Conservative with a
Hell No.) 3) Is it wise from a political and small-d democratic
point of view. (Peter Suderman, for one, has his
doubts.) And 4) Does it significantly address the root problem
of our messed-up immigration system? (I’ll take this: Not remotely,
no. We need to focus on more legal visas first, not ever-more
creative ways to deal with the problems created by not having
enough legal visas.)
My answers to 1-3 are, roughly: 1) Probably, though putting the
words “probably” and “constitutional” in the same sentence is
usually a dealbreaker. 2) Maybe 70-30? It’s not too hard to see
negative consequences in the absence of other reforms, though
perhaps it’s heartless to rate the lifting of deportation-fear for
millions of people as only worth 7 points out of 10. 3) I for one
vote no. In part, because the president (in my understanding)
already has the power to engage in prosecutorial discretion; he
just wants to make a big stink.
Which is a point I attempted to make on last night’s episode of
The Independents, in a segment alongside New York
Times science writer John Tierney and
ex-CIA operator Mike
Baker:
On
Tuesday’s show, Kennedy chewed over questions 1 and 3 with
Tamar Jacoby,
president of ImmigrationWorks USA, and Timothy Sandefur,
principal attorney of the Pacific Legal Foundation:
Reason has a rich treasure trove of immigration-related
material, including this special August 2006
issue, a memorable October
2008 flow-chart of how legal immigration works, and a
recent eBook edited by
Shikha Dalmia. Below, you can enjoy a Reason TV playlist:
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1HqWwwj
via IFTTT