What I'm going to write here may seem so obvious that it's not worth saying. I think it is worth saying, because it is worth bringing out into the open tacit assumptions that lie behind liberal actions. Here's the too-obvious-to-bother-with statement:
Not allowing a non-citizen to come to the United States and/or stay in the United States permanently is not analogous to punishing him for a crime.
I know. Why bother saying this?
Well, because I think its denial lurks behind many otherwise extremely strange actions (and refusals to act) on the part of our leadership.
Consider, for example, something noted by Lawrence Auster here and here: President Obama and his advisers apparently think that an embrace of jihadist ideology and associates is not a sufficient reason to put a person on a no-fly list. Rather, the government has to have specific reason to believe that the person is definitely planning to carry out a terrorist attack. Sounds crazy, right?
But it makes a (little) bit more sense if we think of refusing to let someone fly to the United States as a punishment. If the prima facie case is that everyone and his aunt has a right to come to the United States and live in the United States, then we're pretty much at the level of needing a conviction of a crime beyond reasonable doubt before denying someone this right. If it isn't illegal in the United States to believe jihadist ideology, so goes the tacit reasoning, how can we punish a person by not allowing him to come to the United States simply for believing jihadist ideology? He has to be doing something (plotting a specific terrorist attack) we could arrest him for and charge him for, and we have to have strong, hard, evidence of this criminal activity, before we can deny him his prima facie right to come here.
Last week, commentator Jeff Singer expressed, correctly, the negation of the criminal punishment model when he said that if immigrants will not abide by our laws, respect our culture, etc., "...they will not be allowed in our country and/or we will take measures to remove them from our country as they live here not as some sort of human right of all men, but at the mercy of our hospitality."
I have suggested, to the shock of some, that all Muslim immigration to the U.S. should stop. Others will say only that those with jihadist connections (like the Christmas Day underwear bomber) should be kept out of the country. But we aren't going to get any restrictions, however obvious, however minimal, so long as we leave in place the criminal punishment model. At that point it's just a question of how far a given administration takes it. Obama is taking it to the logical conclusion (of a mad premise) by treating people as candidates for flying to the U.S. unless we have direct evidence that they are going to carry out a terrorist attack.
Once we throw out the criminal punishment model, we can argue about what constitutes a sensible immigration strategy that makes use of inductive evidence about Islam, jihad, sharia, and all the rest of it. But we can't get off the ground as long as we treat coming here as a right and not coming here as a punishment.
Comments (16)
You're making a good point, Lydia.
And to take this further, it seems we also apply the criminal punishment model to airport screening. To subject young Muslim men to extra screening in airports cannot be done, because that is an "attack on their rights." Why is it seen as an attack on their rights? Because it is seen as the equivalent of criminal punishment.
Posted by Lawrence Auster | January 15, 2010 8:28 PM
But since lots of other people do get special screening (for example, people are selected at random for pat-downs, and I have even seen them done on young children), is it possible that they are so illogical as to think at one and the same time that it is punishment and also that it's okay to do it randomly to innocent little kids and little old ladies and such?
I suppose that level of illogicality is possible. I would be inclined to think that what is at work in selection for special screening (pat-downs, for example) is the craziness of anti-discrimination thought _even more than_ a criminal punishment model. That is, perhaps they think it isn't punishment because "we all" have to be prepared to go through it; it's only bad and evil if it's done in some way other than randomly. So patting down a randomly selected blonde-haired little girl is fine but patting down an OMEA male with a Muslim name _because_ he is OMEA and has a Muslim name is wicked.
Posted by Lydia | January 15, 2010 10:32 PM
Hi Lydia
Yes I think that your basic point has some plausibility to it. I'm wondering, however, that there are good security reasons why the Obama administration has made this decision. Could it be, for example, that by allowing people with these views into your country (I hail down from the Antipodes) they are able to monitor them more closely and thus gather valuable intelligence. It might be that having your enemies close is a good idea in this instance.
Regards
Paul
Posted by Paul Kabay | January 15, 2010 10:42 PM
No way. What we know about our enemies (and we do have lots of intelligence all over the world, we just don't use it very well) tells us, or should tell us, to _keep them outta here_. They can do much more harm than good here. There is no way that letting Mutallab onto that plane was justified by the bare possibility that somehow we would learn _more_ intelligence from him by having him here in the U.S. As it was, he nearly succeeded in killing himself and everyone on the plane, which would hardly have helped the cause of gathering intelligence from him.
Posted by Lydia | January 15, 2010 10:53 PM
"I have suggested, to the shock of some, that all Muslim immigration to the U.S. should stop."
Even if this is a wise policy, it clearly isn't achievable in the short run. American leaders need to be weaned from their commitment to foolish non-discrimination.
A marginally more workable policy would cut off or drastically limit all Muslim immigration from countries or national ethnic groups whose members attempt terrorist attacks on the United States.
This would provide incentives for both governments and their nationals abroad to break up or inform upon terrorist cells in their communities. Reasonable exemptions could be made for cases like the Nigerian's concerned father who reported on his son beforehand but was unable to stop the failed attack.
Posted by Kevin J Jones | January 16, 2010 7:50 PM
And I hate to say it, but the concerned father has not-so-great ties as well. I can look up the links later. It's a bit of a mystery why he was reporting the concerns about his son, but he doesn't look like a very savory character himself. It's a weird, weird, weird weird world.
Posted by Lydia | January 16, 2010 8:08 PM
Lydia,
I think your linking of the liberal fetish for legalism regarding illegal immigration and airport security is perceptive.
The problem you have identified is part and parcel of the statism that liberals embrace to cure the ills of society. Because, by liberals' lights, the state is the preferred agency for perfecting society, it must be controlled by the rule of law. But not the rule of law in broad sense, but in a narrow legalistic sense of bureaucrats, lawyers, and courtrooms. Thus, all problems that the state must address are reduced by liberals to matters subject to the judiciary.
And so liberals view even combat and border security as ultimately the province of the judiciary and shoehorn them into the law enforcement model. This judicialism of liberals stems from their rationalism and so their enamorment with the abstractions of procedure rather the concrete facts of outcomes.
Posted by Bill Tingley | January 18, 2010 5:20 PM
Is migrating a right? It seems to me that it is, I wonder what the founding fathers thought.
Given the restrictions on govt. power in the 10th amendment, I cannot think of how one could say that the U.S. federal government has the power to unduly restrict immigration. Where does the U.S. constitution say the government has that power? Only an extremely liberal activist court would say that "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" magically creates the power to unduly restrict or regulate immigration.
Immigration is only a real problem because the same liberal activist courts that want to restrict immigration have ruled that the 14th amendment magically compels states to give welfare to non-citizens.
Posted by Steve P. | January 18, 2010 7:26 PM
Oh, and the analogy stems from the fact that having one's rights (in this case the right to migrate) taken away is something that is regularly done as a punishment for a crime.
Posted by Steve P. | January 18, 2010 7:28 PM
Steve P., you would have gotten along well with the authors of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. I would point out, however, that it is one thing to say that X is not properly a federal issue and something else to say that X is "a right." On the contrary. Before incorporation the states were not even obligated to recognize freedom of religion, and they sometimes had established churches. The federal government has no authority to prohibit murder, for that matter, throughout the country, but committing murder is not a right.
Posted by Lydia | January 18, 2010 8:07 PM
Steve P., if the Constitution does not give the power to the Federal gov't for restricting immigration, then perforce it leaves that power to the states and the people. That sounds like a great idea: Texas can institute its own border patrol and kick the bums out for illegal entry, etc.
Even if natural law demands a wide latitude for immigration in theory, nothing in natural law provides that a state should not be able to set quotas, yearly limits, and check out prospective immigrants under a set of criteria - including sufficient wealth, language skills, sponsors, no criminal record, etc. And breaking the immigration law is itself sufficient evidence that the person is an unacceptable immigrant.
Posted by Tony | January 18, 2010 8:11 PM
Lydia,
A very sensible post. This is certainly a case where positive human rights make a tyrannical claim against freedom. A people that are not free to defend themselves must consider if they are, in any meaningful sense, free.
My thinking has changed substantially on this issue, and I fear I was uncharitable to you in the past--in fact, I know I was. While we still may not be in complete agreement, I would certainly place you in the camp of friends, and spirited friends at that. Please, keep up the thoughtful blogging.
Posted by Brett | January 19, 2010 3:05 PM
Thanks very much, Brett. I appreciate it.
Posted by Lydia | January 19, 2010 3:30 PM
The information presented is top notch. I've been doing some research on the topic and this post answered several questions.
Posted by Gov Records | January 25, 2010 4:19 PM
Dear Lydia,
As I understand it, you propose to ditch the criminal punishment model whenever common sense or reality dictates it.
Well, somebody else already did that: the terrorist organizations, be it Irish Catholic IRA, Basque ETA, the anti-Fidel Cubans, the CIA, the Islamic Terrorists, and countless others.
I can understand the kill-or-die approach of the barbarians: there was not a lot of room for ethical considerations some thousands years ago, but I think that thousands of years have passed, and that we need to keep the high moral ground as much as we can. And we need to do it not only because we know now that it is the right thing to do, but also because it simply works.
At airports, random testing instead of racial profiling has several reasons to be, but the main one is keeping the high moral ground. There are Christians and Muslims all around the world. How are you going to know that somebody that looks like a Muslim is really a Christian, Jewish, or something else? Every human being (white, black, yellow, brown, green or blue) can have any faith he or she wants. Race doesn't imply faith. How do you know that a terrorist didn't implant a bomb in a kid's backpack? Same thing about that sweet old lady that just happens to suffer dementia.
Indeed, closing the door is not a punishment or a crime. But it's not necessarily that Christian, either.
Personally speaking I find your agreement with the following generalization dangerously close to be terriby offensive (although I hope you did not intend to generalize, because we cannot assume that "immigrants" are a homogenous block of people): >
Getting back to Muslims. Closing the door to all Muslims is not only not Christian (what's next? Expell them or force them to become Christians?), it would be erasing centuries of our history. It would forgetting the cleansing horrors of the past that occurred in so many places. It would be forgetting how English treated the native American Indians...
Do I really have to say more?
Terrorists, and many Muslims, hate us because they think that we are evil. Let us not show them that they are right.
Luis
Posted by Luis Colorado | January 27, 2010 11:18 PM
Correction:
I forgot that HTML tags were allowed.
The paragraph that says:
Personally speaking I find your agreement with the following generalization dangerously close to be terriby offensive (although I hope you did not intend to generalize, because we cannot assume that "immigrants" are a homogenous block of people): >
Should say:
Personally speaking I find your agreement with the following generalization dangerously close to be terriby offensive (although I hope you did not intend to generalize, because we cannot assume that "immigrants" are a homogenous block of people):
Last week, commentator Jeff Singer expressed, correctly, the negation of the criminal punishment model when he said that if immigrants will not abide by our laws, respect our culture, etc., "...they will not be allowed in our country and/or we will take measures to remove them from our country as they live here not as some sort of human right of all men, but at the mercy of our hospitality."
Posted by Luis Colorado | January 27, 2010 11:27 PM