Snarling, name calling and making up your own version of the law is not going to change the facts, but you might want to look to your blood pressure.

Cheers!

Which would mean that every suburban housewife who refers an illegal immigrant housekeeper to a neighbor should spend a few years in Leavenworth.

KenMcK on February 20, 2013 at 10:02 PM

No, that’s not what that means, Idiot.

That’s what the country wants and justice demands.

The country most certainly wants and justice most certainly demands the enforcement of many laws.

Securities laws are a perfect example of that. YOU would hate to learn that SEC is deliberately turning a blind eye to crimes and other violations, yet you think that enforcement should turn a blind eye when it comes to immigration laws.

It’s pure hypocrisy, and I’m a bit surprised that your debating skills are so bad that you could avoid the blatant display of hypocrisy.

Try again.

But it’s funny that Jazz has you all worked up on semantics.

Immigration violations need to be pursued by law enforcement – just like we need to pursue violators of securities laws.

Recognizing the fact that illegal immigration is not a crime, and therefore that Congress – the entity charged with the Constitution with the decisions in this area – has never considered illegal immigrants to be culpable of an offense serious enough to criminalize, is an important first step …”

Sorry.

Why is there no clarion call in these comments for rounding up these felons

“Clarion”? LOL. Like melodrama much?

The title question and the topic was “Illegal immigration. Is it a crime or not?”

But… when you’ve exhausted your argument, haven’t gotten anywhere, and can’t/won’t answer outstanding question addressed to you, and when you have run out of insults and don’t know what else to do, then try to change the subject and try to get others to answer your new questions. Sometimes it even works.

But there are criminals in this picture! Serious federal felons, in fact! While Congress has never made being an illegal immigrant a crime, Congress has criminalized employing illegal immigrants. Section 8 USC 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)(b)(iii):

“Any person who . . . encourages or induces an illegal alien to . . . reside . . . knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such . . . residence is . . . in violation of law, shall be punished as provided . . . for each illegal alien in respect to whom such a violation occurs . . . fined under title 18 . . . imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”

Section 274 felonies under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, INA 274A(a)(1)(A):

A person (including a group of persons, business, organization, or local government) commits a federal felony when she or he:

assists an illegal alien s/he should reasonably know is illegally in the U.S. or who lacks employment authorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him or her to obtain employment, or
encourages that illegal alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him or her to an employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in any way, or

knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions.

Penalties upon conviction include criminal fines, imprisonment, and forfeiture of vehicles and real property used to commit the crime. Anyone employing or contracting with an illegal alien without verifying his or her work authorization status is guilty of a misdemeanor. )

Despite all this criminalization, employment of illegals is widespread, which is why they can remain in the country.

Why is there no clarion call in these comments for rounding up these felons, that is, these criminal employers? And why should the customers of these employers not be subject to sanctions? Of course, if that were done, virtually every home owner in California and Texas would be spending time in the federal pokey. But, still, the law is the law, isn’t it? Don’t we need to teach these criminals, these federal felons, a lesson they’ll never forget? The likelihood that millions of employers, and all those millions of middle class homeowners who ever hired Home Depot parking lot guys to set patio stones “no-immigration-question-asked”, would have their lives and businesses destroyed by having to endure federal criminal prosecution shouldn’t stand in the way of principle, should it!

Private property is now what the government lets you keep. Your income is what the government decides is “fair” — it takes the rest. The underlying operative assumption is that private property and income is in reality collectively owned, meaning the collective is within its rights confiscating and redistributing whatever it wants however it wants in the name of “fairness” and “social justice”. The government no longer always protects private property rights. On one hand it does, sometimes. On the other hand it routinely subverts, ignores, or destroys them.

Alana on February 19, 2013 at 4:33 PM

I am pretty close to adopting this same attitude.

there is no longer much respect for the law and whatever you can get away with is the rule. People are admired for what they can get away with.

The government not only permits some people get away with a lot, it insists on it. Dear Leader has decided he can selectively and unevenly enforce laws based on his whims.

While a completely balanced and fair legal system is an unachievable ideal, it is something for which we should strive. Government in the US doesn’t even try anymore, while politicians pay lip service to the ideal.

We are living in an Orwellian country where doublespeak, doublethink, and double talk permeates the highest levels. And where words are routinely redefined, for political expediency and gain, to mean something other than they have for centuries.

KenMck, we’ve thoroughly explored your point. It was weak and meaningless.

Try harder.

blink on February 19, 2013 at 11:32 PM

In his case trying “harder” will most likely mean hurling more insults and personal attacks.

But then, what do you expect from someone who has trouble understanding what “civil” means in a legal context? No reason to think he knows what it means in another context.

KenMcK on February 19, 2013 at 3:43 PM

KenMck, we’ve thoroughly explored your point. It was weak and meaningless.

Try harder.

As the dance goes on the boder is wide open and they come every night and day.

The “coyotes” who run the U.S. / Mexico border now are just the tools/worker bees for the Mexican Drug Cartels. The enforcers aka the rule of law on the Mexican / U.S. Border are the Zeta “head chopping former Special Forces members of the Mexican Army.

There are “leaks” from our side to the Mexican Army on operations by the DEA, FBI, CIA, Border Patrol, which is relayed to the Mexican Drug Cartel bosses who hand that to their Zeta hired guns.

Understand the drug mules, one of which was a DEA paid informant who got in the gun fight (ambush) of Brian Terry,,, had information on where Brian Terry was to be that night.

We have more than crime to worry about , there is treason going on and no one in Washington D.C. does shit about it.

Ask yourselves why?

Will you stand and fight or hide in shame America?

That’s what I thought at the time, and that’s what I think now.

To be more accurate, though, I would say that there are laws, but they only apply to some. I know, for example, that all laws always apply to me in all cases, and that I will pay dearly if I break any of them.

But for others, not so much.

Ditto with the illegal alien situation. Laws do not apply to them because they are presumably the downtrodden and the oppressed, and are definitely the non-white.

If you are a law-abiding. tax-paying conservative, you are the enemy, and any infraction will be punished. You will also pay for those who break the law . . . and you will like it. This goes double if you are white, because if you are white, you are automatically doubly guilty.

I was SUCH a believer in law, too, all my life, up until a few years ago, when I noticed that it no longer applied to favored parties.

Now I have NO respect for the law. None, understand that – none. I still follow it to the nth degree, but I respect it not one bit, and I respect the country I love/loved not one bit, either.

If I didn’t realize this by the application of laws to some but not others, Obama made it clear by labeling people such as myself as “the enemy” on, I believe, more than one occasion. I am the enemy in my own country. Laws apply to me but not to others. What’s to respect?

You are a fool in this country if you obey the law. I am a fool, of course, but then, it’s too late for me to change. For others, all you do is pay for your own downfall.

Jazz? You there?

Overstaying a visa is not a crime…

KenMcK on February 19, 2013 at 12:57 PM

As you’ve pointed out. Many securities laws violations are not a crime. Would you be ok ignoring violators of such laws?

Yes or No.

I await your answer.

…deportation is not a punishment.

Great. So you have no problem deporting them even if they’ve had a child in the meantime. You won’t cry about breaking up families, right?

Neither can be prosecuted for an immigration crime

Seriously? Is this your entire game here? To point out that technically certain crimes can’t be prosecuted? Does that somehow make it ok?

It seems as if Jazz preempted your argument.

Try again.

Of course, flagrant continuous violation of a civil regulation matters, so some way other than mindlessly equating civil offenses and crimes must be found to take that into account.

KenMcK on February 19, 2013 at 12:57 PM

Yeah. Like enforce the damn law!

If deportation isn’t a crime, why is it so awful that I advocate deporting illegal immigrants/visa overstayers and their entire immediate families? I don’t understand what’s so extreme about that! If you don’t want to break up families, don’t break up families. Just get rid of the anchor babies crap and do what the law says you ought to do — period. I’m open to the merest possibility of changing the law if/when we start enforcing the laws we have now. Unless and until that happens, I really don’t give a flying fark about whether we call it a crime or not. Or whether we call it a “punishment” or not. Enforce the law. If that makes me some kind of irrational extremist, I guess that says more about the sad state of society we live in than it says about me.

Jazz’s other concern was that illegal border crossers commit a new crime every day just because they remain. That is not correct, either. Eventually the statute of limitations renders the original illegal border crossing crime non-prosecutable, although Jazz didn’t want to deal with that issue here. So eventually both illegal border crossers and those who overstay visas are in similar positions: Neither can be prosecuted for an immigration crime, but both can be deported as a matter of civil enforcement. The legal system has always recognized the huge and centrally important distinction between crimes and civil offenses.

Of course, flagrant continuous violation of a civil regulation matters, so some way other than mindlessly equating civil offenses and crimes must be found to take that into account.

Why do you think that this is such an important point? What difference does it make?

blink on February 19, 2013 at 9:30 AM

It doesn’t. Overstaying a visa is an offense against the state, and ergo by-definition a crime punishable by imprisonment and subsequent deportation. But remember, I’m the extremist who wants to restrict immigration because I want to enforce the law we already have in place.

KenMcK on February 19, 2013 at 2:05 AM

Again, why are you continually bringing up the fact that many illegal aliens didn’t cross our border illegally, but, instead, have overstayed their visa illegally?

Why do you think that this is such an important point? What difference does it make?

Should we start giving all violators of federal civil offenses a free pass? Should we stop going after people who violate non-criminal securities rules?

If not, then what’s your point – other than to play semantics?

blink on February 19, 2013 at 12:45 AM

I’ll await your answer.

“A long-standing problem in immigration enforcement—identifying foreigners who fail to go home when their visas expire—is emerging as a key question …. Talk of illegal immigration often conjures images of people sneaking across the U.S. border from Mexico, but an estimated 40% or more of those now illegally in the U.S. entered with a valid visa. …. Nobody is sure how many people are in the U.S. on expired visas. The most commonly cited figures equate to some four million to five million people. But that is based on a 2006 study by the Pew Hispanic Center, which relied on a formula that was created using 1990 data.”

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323764804578312330678211000.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories]

O, and blink, since I never “questioned the legal authority that SEC has to seek penalties on short swing trades” it’s odd that you say I did just that and it’s “telling.” It’s not the only example of your doing that. The SEC does not have authority to seek Section 16(b) disgorgement, and your going off on that tangent is not germane and even odder. More generally, you are obviously dragging the entire SEC matter quite far from its basis, which is a large and well-known set of examples of federal civil offenses that are not crimes and need not involve any crimes. Its job is done. The answers to the rest of your questions can be deduced from that.

§ 16(b), 15 U.S.C. § 78p(b) specifically stated . . . that the SEC has no authority to obtain disgorgement of short-swing profits.

Actually, it DOESN’T specially state this. It merely doesn’t include SEC as a party with standing.