Supreme Court: The Wall Can Go Foward...

[Teallaura]

I'm not sure that you have any idea what it feels like to be hunted by people that want to kill or torture you for your political opinions or beliefs. Do you seriously think that, if you're being hunted, you're going to go to a consulate, fill in a form, then head home for dinner?

Some really horrible things happen to people in some of these countries. Are you so hard-hearted to not be able to understand the horror of life as an innocent that falls into a category of persecution in an unstable country?

And I'm equally certain you have no idea what any of that feels like - or enough sense to realize that the embassy is the CLOSEST refuge IF the person is in fear of their life. Embassies and consulates (as CP pointed out, they are often closer at hand) are safe places and the diplomats can handle getting people out of them if need be. For the most part, unless you are someone like Assange who had EVERYBODY after him, there isn't going to be a 24/7 surveillance to pick up Joe Schmoe.

But most asylum seekers aren't in that kind of immediate danger - you watch a lot of TV, huh? - and yes, they often can go home safely while their paperwork is being processed. That seems significantly less dangerous than running for the border where there WILL be armed guards if your country is out to get you.

[Zara]

And I'm equally certain you have no idea what any of that feels like - or enough sense to realize that the embassy is the CLOSEST refuge IF the person is in fear of their life. Embassies and consulates (as CP pointed out, they are often closer at hand) are safe places and the diplomats can handle getting people out of them if need be. For the most part, unless you are someone like Assange who had EVERYBODY after him, there isn't going to be a 24/7 surveillance to pick up Joe Schmoe.

But most asylum seekers aren't in that kind of immediate danger - you watch a lot of TV, huh? - and yes, they often can go home safely while their paperwork is being processed. That seems significantly less dangerous than running for the border where there WILL be armed guards if your country is out to get you.

The story I quoted said people were tortured, and murdered. These people should have waited at home while their application was being processed? Pull the other one, it has got bells on.

Again, if you're on a list, governments can be extremely effective in picking you up and making you disappear. That you don't understand this, reflects that you watch a lot of Disney films? Assad, for instance, disappeared maybe 130,000 people - it's actually hard to know. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/w...e-prisons.html government can be extremely ruthless and effective.

Ironically, the US government helped the Guatemalan military round up people as part of the civil war, you know, when more than 200,000 people were murdered (93% of whom were civilians) and 40,000 disappeared. "Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilian collaborators at the hands of US-backed security forces had been widespread since 1965 and was a longstanding policy of the military regime, which US officials were aware of. A report from 1984 discussed "the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror." Human Rights Watch has described "extraordinarily cruel" actions by the armed forces, mostly against unarmed civilians."

So, no, I don't buy your story about how safe people are, such that a government or other armed group won't hunt someone down and murder them and their family for their beliefs.

[JimL]

Well of course Jim, just look at the big cities of California, and most of the other cities under liberal control - they are lawless hell holes. That is what leftism produces.

Now you're just blathering conservative nonsense, seer.

[JimL]

Jim, if my father was Spanish (which he was) what does that make me? And it is not minorities we fear, but leftist, irrational policies.

Right, and you understand that most immigrants, once a citizen, are not going to become a member of the immoral racist party of the wealthy. Unlike the republican party, they actually believe in democracy, not plutocracy, the rule of the wealthy. You're afraid of democracy, republicans are terrified of democracy, thus you are terrified of immigrants just as you are of the majority democrats in this country and do whatever you can to suppress the vote.

[JimL]

Um seems like using Pentagon (military) funds for the wall is what those funds are supposed to be used for, defending our borders and our country.

Wrong, those funds were already targeted, approved for by congress, for other purposes. Congress did not approve of those funds to be used for the rebuilding of a border wall, and congress, not the president is the body that is responsible for that decision.

[JimL]

You are speaking of half the world to one degree or another, they can't all come here, the majority can't come here. A significant minority can't come here.

Um, half the world isn't trying to come here seer, other countries take in both asylum seekers and refugees as well you know.

US requirements:

Asylum has two basic requirements. First, an asylum applicant must establish that he or she fears persecution from their Government in their home country. Second, the applicant must prove that he or she would be persecuted on account of one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or particular social group.

There is a difference between asylum seekers and refugees, seer. I think you're confusing the two.

[Teallaura]

The story I quoted said people were tortured, and murdered. These people should have waited at home while their application was being processed? Pull the other one, it has got bells on.

Again, if you're on a list, governments can be extremely effective in picking you up and making you disappear. That you don't understand this, reflects that you watch a lot of Disney films? Assad, for instance, disappeared maybe 130,000 people - it's actually hard to know. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/w...e-prisons.html government can be extremely ruthless and effective.

Ironically, the US government helped the Guatemalan military round up people as part of the civil war, you know, when more than 200,000 people were murdered (93% of whom were civilians) and 40,000 disappeared. "Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilian collaborators at the hands of US-backed security forces had been widespread since 1965 and was a longstanding policy of the military regime, which US officials were aware of. A report from 1984 discussed "the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror." Human Rights Watch has described "extraordinarily cruel" actions by the armed forces, mostly against unarmed civilians."

So, no, I don't buy your story about how safe people are, such that a government or other armed group won't hunt someone down and murder them and their family for their beliefs.

Don't read well, do you? I addressed BOTH possibilities. Also, you didn't quote anything in the post I answered - you just asked a bunch of emotional questions that have perfectly rational answers - you just can't face the fact that you're wrong.

[Starlight]

Um seems like using Pentagon (military) funds for the wall is what those funds are supposed to be used for, defending our borders and our country.

Constitutionally, Congress and more specifically the House, controls what is funded and what isn't. That's one of its core constitutional responsibilities and key to the separation of powers that prevents executive overreach and keeps the US from turning into a dictatorship. One of the current core limits on the power of Executive Orders is the president has no power to affect funding, so can't Order anything that would change the way federal funding is allocated.

Congress had specifically looked at the issue of wall, and specifically said "no" to it. So, constitutionally, that should be the end of the story - all the lower courts agreed. It is a massively unconstitutional decision by the activist Republican judges on the Supreme Court to reject the constitution in this manner and to allow the President to reallocate funding in direct opposition to the expressed will of Congress. It's going to allow for a truly massive expansion of Presidential authority in the future. This, combined with the gradual leaking of War powers post 9/11 away from the Congress and toward the President, is in serious danger of making the Executive branch an all-powerful branch of government and destroying the historic Separation of Powers that the US has depended upon. The upside, from my point of view, is the next Democratic president is going to be able to do basically whatever they feel like with Executive Orders. I hope that will include a $1 trillion plan to fight climate change.

The money that was redirected to the wall was drug-enforcement money. Also, the Pentagon is not responsible for border security against migrants, the DHS does that.* It wasn't an internal transfer of money within a department, it was a wholesale transfer to a completely different government department.

*Which was also why Trump's deploying of troops to the border last year was such an absurdly stupid stunt. The US military is legally prohibited from doing standard border patrol duties so the troops had to sit there suffering in makeshift accommodation while they twiddled their thumbs because they literally weren't allowed to do anything useful. You might personally think of preventing a few migrants crossing the border as 'defending the country', but the law doesn't frame it that way and the Pentagon's legal purpose is to defend against foreign countries invading with military forces (or, more commonly, to invade foreign countries with military forces). They are legally not allowed to do anything about a few refugees trying to illegally cross the border because that's the DHS's task to manage. You might think "well maybe this should change", and maybe it should but it would require new laws and new training, it's like saying "I think the fire department should now help the police to do police activities" - it's not inconceivable that current firemen could be trained and kitted out to be able to be police extras but currently they aren't and it simply isn't what their department does.

[Zara]

Don't read well, do you? I addressed BOTH possibilities. Also, you didn't quote anything in the post I answered - you just asked a bunch of emotional questions that have perfectly rational answers - you just can't face the fact that you're wrong.

Don't think too well, do you. A trend of this place and "conservatives" in general.

Your comment addresses the points with hand waving. Anyone can hand wave, it doesn't make it true.

You didn't read the article, did you?

"A brutal crackdown by the National Police and heavily armed pro-government groups against protesters left more than 300 people dead and more than 2,000 injured. In the following months, hundreds were detained." These people should have gone home and waited a year for their application to be processed? "Our report, “Crackdown in Nicaragua,” documented that many detainees had been subject to serious abuses, in some cases amounting to torture – including electric shocks, severe beatings, asphyxiation, rape, and fingernail removal. Some were reportedly denied medical care in public health centers. Detainees were also subject to deeply flawed prosecutions."

[Roy]

Let me make my question more personal.

Suppose you are sitting at home with your family watching television and your door bell rings.

When you answer it you find 100 people outside who rush into your home.

100? That's not remotely representative of the actual numbers. Try 1 or 2. Then read your bible.

[Cerebrum123]

From this point forward, "dinner" will be regarded as an insult!

(Stupid autocorrect didn't know I meant "dimwit". )

Yeah, I was beginning to worry you'd gone Hannibal Lecter on us.

[Cow Poke]

Don't think too well, do you. A trend of this place and "conservatives" in general.

I, for one, particularly enjoy your thought out and well reasoned rational responses.

[seer]

I, for one, particularly enjoy your thought out and well reasoned rational responses.

[Sparko]

The Rohingya should just stay in their country to ask for asylum. Right? That's his plan. While they are raped and murdered. Coz, you know, that makes sense.



Some are genuine refugees. Those countries have been heavily destabilized by US political interference and narcotic demand for decades. Innocent people are being murdered on a daily basis. Some of whom have to flee. It doesn't fit your narrative, so you dehumanize them to economic actors. We get that. It's pathetic.

Do I think there should be open boarders. No. Do I think this plan is moronic. Clearly.

No, they are not refugees. That word has a specific meaning and asylum into the USA has specific requirements. Being poor or living in a bad neighborhood doesn't qualify you for asylum.

Here is what Obama said about it:

Under US law you know we admit a certain number of refugees from all around the world based on some fairly narrow criteria, and typically refugee status is not granted just based on economic need or because a family lives in a bad neighborhood or poverty.

It's typically defined fairly narrowly. You have a state, for example, that was targeting a political activist and we need to get out of the country for fear of prosecution or even death.

There may be some narrow circumstances in which there is a humanitarian or refugee status that a family might be elevated -- if that were the case would be better for them to be able to apply in country rather than take a very dangerous journey all the way up to Texas.

--President Obama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1v8pwLg3Q4

[Sparko]

Sure.

However, if you help create a problem - and then 30 years later the consequence of that problem materialises in the form of people fleeing. I have little sympathy for a hard-line response from the US. Maybe don't interfere in these countries, or if you do, make sure that you leave them better than you found them so that people aren't motivated to flee. The number of people leaving stable countries in the region are not high.

You are from New Zealand, correct? Your immigration laws and criteria are even more strict than the US. Maybe you should worry about your back yard before you worry about ours?