Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Discretion

Discretion, I was told as a young man, is the better part of valor.  For a soldier, that's good advise.  Discretion is also important for a law enforcement officer.    President Obama had removed the discretion of certain immigration cops, but now it's being restored.
The secretary said agents are still to give priority to those with criminal rap sheets, but are free to use discretion — taken away from them in the Obama years — to detain anyone they believe to be in the country illegally.
It doesn't sound like a crackdown, per se, but immigration cops don't have to ignore illegals that they might come in contact with.

That's the thing about executive orders.  What one president does with the stroke of a pen, another president can undo with the stroke of a pen.We can argue both ways on executive action, but the plain truth is that Congress needs to pass an immigration reform law.  If Congress does that, then no one will have anything to gripe about.

Democrats had an opportunity during the Obama years to pass any type legislation they wanted to pass.  With a majority in the House, and a majority inn the Senate, they could have passed anything they wanted to pass.  They didn't do that. That's on them, and they have no room to complain.

Republicans have that same opportunity right now.  If they choose to pass an immigration reform law, they can do that as well.  Until then, we should enforce the law as written.  And, give those good immigration agents the discretion to do their jobs.

1 comment:

Javahead said...

Even if the majority of the House, the Senate, and the majority of voters agree on it, you *know* that the left-wing "they're undocumented, not illegal!" crowd will complain if it's enforced.

Personally, I'm hoping for draconian penalties for anyone found to be employing illegal immigrants, knowingly or unknowingly (say, $20-30,000 per illegal), but with an extra per-employee fine for knowingly employing them.

Also a tip line that gives callers a substantial (25% or so) share of the fines.

And a law that forbids any government body, federal, state, or local providing any government-funded services to any illegal immigrant. With a similar fine and automatic firing for any government employee shown to have knowingly done so (or who can be proven to have avoided checking status).

Again, with a tip line that gives callers a substantial share of the fine.

And a law to end birthright citizenship unless a) either parent is a US citizen or b) the mother was in the US on a legal visa at the time of the child's birth.

How many of these suggestions have any chance of becoming law, do you think?