What All the Fuss Is About

One of the problems with these quadrennial presidential election years, among many, is that one can so easily get caught up in all the political plot twists and lose sight of what all the fuss is about. While most of the media attention was devoted to fall-out from last Monday’s Iowa caucuses and all the subsequent bickering leading up to next Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, for instance, someone in the know was giving sworn testimony to Congress that our current immigration law enforcement policies are such that “We might as abolish our immigration laws altogether.”

That was the sworn testimony of Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Control Council, the union that represents agents and support staff of the United States Border Patrol, and he laid out a convincing case for his hyperbolic claim. He further testified that his members have been ordered to release illegal immigrants and to no longer order them to appear at deportation hearings, and he attributed the policy to the embarrassing fact that fewer than half of those ordered to appear such hearings have ever bothered show up, and that by the way many of those who have been caught and released are almost certainly members of notoriously murderous criminal organizations. Despite our innate suspicion of public sector unions we’re more inclined to believe Agent Judd than the far-away-from-the-border spokesmen at the Department of Homeland Security, who continue insist the border is hermetically sealed, despite all those press photographs from the pre-race days of trains crossing the border with roofs full of unaccompanied minors flipping off the photographers, and we’d like to think there’s still some seething anger about it.

The anger was once so seething that Donald J. Trump, a real-estate-and-gambling-and-reality-show-and-professional-wrestling mogul who boasts that his only previous involvement in politics was buying off politicians, was able to vault to the top of the Republican primary polls by unleashing his suspiciously newfound seething anger and promising to build a great big wall that Mexico would pay for to end the problem. He later promised to build a great big door in that wall to welcome the good ones back in, with promises of a top-notch staff to determine which ones are the good ones, but then he got beat in the crazy Iowa caucus by Texas Sen. Cruz, a loose cannon conservative who might or might not have betrayed the secure border cause in some procedural vote or another, and suddenly there’s a lot of talk about Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a former firebrand and current “establishment lane candidate” who clearly betrayed the cause once but sure sounds as if he’s gotten the true religion since then, and would arguably be held to it especially if he is the pragmatic opportunist he’s accused of being, and suddenly all of them would rather talk about the “tweets” and sound-bites of the post-Iowa news cycle.

Over on the Democratic side, they’re talking about an odds-defying series of coin tosses and who hates the financial sector of the American economy more and whether a commie or a potential convict should lead the country, and there’s conspicuously no mention of all in their debates about all those people in the know who are testifying before Congress that America might as well not have any immigration laws. The commie has expressed some relatively sane ideas left over from the days of Hugo Chavez and the New Left’s anti-“wetback” days, while the potential convict is probably more malleable to public opinion, but they’d rather not talk about it.

A friend of ours mentioned that he’d heard on one of the more serious talk radio programs reporting that illegal immigration isn’t a pressing issue in the next big deal New Hampshire primary, far away from the southern border and yet where Trump was last reported to be be leading despite a recent drop in his poll numbers and post-Iowa surges by both Cruz and the third-place-with-alleged-momentum Rubio, and we admit we find it all most fascinating. Still, we can’t shake a nervous feeling about someone in the know confirming our suspicion that we might as well abolish our immigration laws.

— Bud Norman

Two More Scandals to Consider

So many scandals are afoot that it’s hard to muster the necessary outrage for any new ones, but the recent revelations about the Veterans Administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency are worth noting. Both are outrageous even by the jaded standards of the moment, and both make important points about ongoing debates.

Some government officials are still insisting that there’s no proof anybody died as a result of what happened at a VA hospitals in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, and elsewhere, but that’s the best spin they’ve been able to put on it. There are allegations that hospitals in those states used off-the-books waiting lists to get around a federal requirement that veterans in need of care be seen within 14 days of calling for an appointment, which had been made after widespread complaints of dangerous delays, and the claims are being taken seriously. Congress has launched yet another investigation, and some Republicans have already joined the American Legion in calling for the secretary of veterans’ affairs to resigns. The president has appointed his deputy chief of staff to investigate the matter, and the even the usually respectful reporters at Reuters acknowledge that “The move demonstrated White House concern that the issue is taking on growing political weight.”

Less attention has been paid, for some reason, to the release by ICE of 36,007 criminals who were awaiting deportation hearings last year. The agency’s catch-and-release program freed 193 illegal aliens who had been convicted of homicide, including one who had murdered a public official, 426 with sexual assault convictions, 303 convicted kidnappers, and more than 16,000 with drunk or drugged driving records. Texas’ Rep. Lamar Smith said it “would be considered the worst prison break in American history, except that it was sanctioned by the president and perpetrated by our own immigration officials,” but few others were willing to address the matter with such candor. Another 36,0007 criminals on the streets doesn’t warrant much attention from the press, which seems more concerned that photo identification requirements might prevent the undocumented fellows from voting, but to the extent that the public is aware it will likely be miffed.

These stories will have to compete for space with the Benghazi and Internal Revenue Service scandals and the continuing sluggishness of the economy and all the crisis that are popping up from the South China Sea to Iran to Ukraine and beyond, but we hope they’ll find some room as the country considers what to do about Obamacare and the millions of people illegally in the country. The poor care being provided for the nation’s relatively small number of veterans should raise doubts about the government’s ability to run health care for the rest of the country, and the administration’s willingness to unloose 36,007 convicted on the streets should bolster arguments that it can’t trusted to enforce any closed-border provisions that might be tacked onto an amnesty plan. If the stories raise further doubts about the government’s ability to manage the entire economy and maintain some semblance of international order, so much the better.

— Bud Norman