Musings on Immigration

As   reported  extensively over the last two weeks, and in a way that was grossly misunderstood by the average person,  the Obama administration plans to issue a regulation that would address a long-standing problem in immigration law—a Catch 22 created by requiring the spouses and children of U.S. citizens who entered the country unlawfully to depart the U.S. before completing the processing of their application for lawful permanent residence. The trouble is that once they leave the country, they are subject to a   three or ten year bar   for unlawful presence and need a waiver to get   back   into the US earlier than the 3 or 10 year bar would allow.  The new proposal would allow them to submit the waiver application to the USCIS in the United States and receive a decision before departing the U.S., thus reducing the time, anxiety, and sometime danger inherent in waiting abroad for a decision. This Catch-22 is one of the most notorious pro...

We constantly hear that undocumented immigrants are not obeying the "rule of law" or that because we are "country of laws" undocumented immigrants need to be arrested and deported regardless of their situation and the consequences to either them or the U.S. These phrases are thrown about randomly because they surely sound good. Who does not want to live in a "country of laws" where we are governed by the "rule of law?" But an understanding of the concept of the "rule of law" in the context of the U.S. immigration system might better serve our national debate on immigration and bring us closer to resolving a problem that is not intractable. Deserved respect is paid to the Constitution as a basis for all of our laws. As such, we should acknowledge that the framers of the U.S. Constitution believed that an unjust law was not really a law at all. And, as noted in Wikipedia : James Wilson said during the Philadelphia Convention in 17...