As most of you probably know, a federal judge has blocked portions of President Trump’s executive order pertaining to refugees from 7 Muslim majority nations. Josh Blackman has published a good summary of what this injunction accomplishes, as well as a copy of the temporary restraining order itself. According to reports, it applies to a few hundred foreigners who were either on American soil or on their way to the United States before the EO was issued. Although these individuals have temporary avoided the fate of the character portrayed by Tom Hanks in The Terminal, it’s worth noting that there are much bigger issues at stake in this debate.

The open borders know nothings have deftly exploited the ignorance of large swathes of the American public to score a public relations victory against a man whom they’ve impotently warred against for over a year. Ironically, one of the refugees Democratic partisans claimed to be rescuing was able to succinctly explain why our new President’s immigration policies were in fact pretty reasonable. Beyond the simple observation that this executive order is not a ban on Muslim refugees, we have to confront the truly bizarre notion that our current refugee resettlement policy is somehow beneficial to American citizens. While some armchair analysts on social media have made the assertion that this is not the point of refugee resettlement-a point on which we agree-others have claimed that not importing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from abroad poses a risk of future terrorism. By this token, Japan-which has a de facto ban on Muslim immigration-should be as unlivable as Afghanistan or Pakistan. Or, at the very least, have as many terrorist attacks as Turkey.

It’s a patently absurd suggestion, yet one which is repeated without shame by open borders apologists who have no rational justification for our country’s bizarre refugee resettlement program. Just as the beliefs of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande-two European leaders who have presided over an unprecedented spree of Muslim terror within their countries-is a laughable excuse to invite in potential security risks, so to is the misguided notion that we’re creating terrorists by not letting potential terrorists onto American soil. Nearly half of the refugees admitted to the United States, and over 30% of those admitted since the 9/11 attacks, are Muslim. To comprehend why this is such a problem you need only scroll through a week’s worth of posts on Refugee Resettlement Watch.

Leaving aside the potential for terrorism-both domestically and abroad-exploitation of the welfare system, and crime, there’s the fundamental incompatibility of cultures. As the economist Nassim Taleb has pointed out, Americans expect foreigners who come here to accept American values and customs-and at a bare minimum, not to impose their values upon us. Whether or not this is a realistic expectation is another matter, but the idea that every person coming here does so because they want to become part of American society-a notion regurgitated endlessly by open borders advocates-is simply preposterous.

Even those who don’t pose a direct threat to the health and safety of American citizens-who don’t engage in honor killings, as dozens of Muslims families in the United States do each year-hold beliefs that are fundamentally at odds with those which shaped this nation. While those views are normal in Iraq, Somalia, or Syria, they are not in the United States, and we should not attempt to normalize them-to borrow a phrase from the unhinged left. President Trump’s order, however crudely executed, was the right thing to do. Hopefully, it’s just the beginning of a completely new approach to this vital issue.

The Obama administration has spent the balance of its second term vivisecting what remains of the Constitution, which shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s followed the President’s dismal view of our nation’s legal cornerstone. The most vivid application he and his party’s thoroughly post-modern view of this document can be found in the White House’s novel legal theories pertaining to the non-enforcement of federal immigration laws. Our good friend Hans Von Spakovsky has an entertaining dissection of its latest legal crusade in The Daily Signal, which illustrates just how bizarre the Obama regime’s conception of justice is, and how far afield it is from the realm of logic and rationality.

It remains to be seen whether the 5th Circuit will uphold the prudent decision of Judge Hanen, or whether it will grant emergency relief to future votebanks for the Chelsea Clinton presidential campaign. What is indisputable is that this latest legal gambit marks a new level of chutzpah on the part of the open borders fanatics staffing the Justice Department. A quality that is never in short supply when we’re discussing the machinations of the treason lobby.

The fact that Obama has even alienated the most fervent corporate shills and mass immigration enthusiasts among the GOP should give you an inkling of how noxious this politically opportunistic power grab truly is.

The details, however nebulous they may be at the moment, of the President’s imminent evisceration of immigration law have now become public. First reported by Fox News, republished by the New York Times, the scope of his latest Executive amnesty could encompass anywhere between 3 and 7 million illegal aliens, most of whom would be invested with criminal immunity in addition to being given working papers, because as we all know, employment is plentiful. The gall required to so boldly disregard constitutional law-even by an administration well-versed in the exercise-is so shocking that it has already occasioned sarcastic reactions on our favorite social media network. 

Sadly, the actual Republican reaction to the White House’s ongoing decimation of what remain of federal immigration law has been nothing short of anemic, with only Senator Jeff Sessions waging any sort of counterattack against an administration that seems to have no compunction about brazenly breaking the law and cloaking its violations in the garment of open borders sanctimony. Despite the economic and cultural consequences of this disastrous policy of political expedience, he doesn’t seem to have that much support in Congress for substantive resistance. We can only hope that changes in the Congress to come. 

Otherwise, as the inimitable John Derbyshire has been known to lament, we are doomed. 

If there’s anything you can count on in Washington politics, it’s that Speaker John Boehner will put his foot into mouth, usually during or prior to a critically important election cycle. So it is with his recent comments regarding amnesty, which he pledged to enact at some point during the next session of Congress. A more diplomatic, or less stupid, man might try to down-play his support for a universally loathed policy right before conservative Republicans head to the polls, but not Mr. Boehner. I suppose the lure of yet more Zuckerberg cash is too tempting to restrain his idiotic outbursts, re: immigration, for more than a fortnight. 

And they wonder why Republicans in Congress are so viscerally unpopular with the American public. We who have been paying attention to the utterances of people like Congressman Boehner and Paul Ryan, on the other hand, are not confused at all.

In a gubernatorial race where both candidates are to a greater or lesser degree beholden to the open borders lobby, notwithstanding the requisite pre-election posturing of the GOP standard-bearer, a genuine debate about the impact of  mass immigration upon California has not materialized, alas. Even so, the public policies which have irrevocably transformed the Golden State over the past three decades continue to be felt by ordinary Californians and scrutinized by academic scholars. Both groups can’t help but recognize the devastating impact that generations of illegal migration and low-skilled immigration have had upon a state which once served as the sum of hopes for Americans throughout this country, but no longer.

It’s not surprising with findings such as those by researchers at USC, who have concluded that up to ten percent of the California workforce is comprised exclusively of illegal immigrants. Two of the fields in which they exercise the most economic dislocation are, naturally enough, the construction and agricultural industry. However, the notion that the one and a half million unemployed Californians are simply shut out of these jobs-whose pay scale has been perpetually degraded by years of unfettered illegal immigration-is misleading. Beyond question of legality, the impact of mass immigration upon the working age population in California, the epicenter of technological innovation in the United States, has made itself felt in much more lucrative fields, as the scads of unemployed graduates in STEM fields can attest to.

Oddly enough, a legal amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens gainfully employed in that state would probably not lead to any increase in wages for those at the bottom of the labor market, as the Public Policy Institute of California has demonstrated. The very forces that attracted these workers to the United States, i.e. employers looking to find an unlimited supply of cheap labor and a government unwilling to enforce the law, ensure that they will remain mired in poverty for the remainder of their working lives. Unfortunately, the future of this country can be seen in the present of California, where hardly anyone benefits-and scores suffer-save for a few politically powerful corporate and political interests vested in a system that ensures the gradual degradation of the body politic and its economy.

The mendacity of our current administration is at times stunning, even for those of us who should by now have become inured to the lies regurgitated by the Obama administration and its factotums for the better part of two terms. The disavowals by La Raza graduate Cecilia Munoz and village idiot Joe Biden notwithstanding, the systematic emigration of unaccompanied minors from their homelands to the southwestern United States is nothing if not a ploy designed by those in power to destroy whatever prophylactic measures the government currently takes to prevent the complete dissolution of our nation’s system of border controls. 

-You need look no further than ICE itself, whose bureaucrats acknowledge that a contract request to escort these youths was publicly advertised as early as the beginning of this year to realize how fatuous the current administration’s protestations of innocence are. The fact that this crisis is completely and utterly contrived seems not to have dissuaded the usual suspects in the mainstream  news media from putting the most appealing face on what has become an untrammeled invasion. Perhaps predictably, the fact that those tasked with protecting our nation’s security are now the functional equivalent of babysitters to carriers of lethal, communicable diseases has only exacerbated the existing tendency among press outlets to treat every breakdown of public order and security risk as a vessel for the classic illegal immigrant sob story.

-That the public is being largely denied pertinent information about the risks posed by these cherubic children-or a rational debate over whether surviving custodians/parents are practicing child abuse by forcing them to make a potentially lethal, 120+ mile trek through the Mexican desert-should come as no surprise. While concerned citizens might be surprised to learn that many of these “unaccompanied minors” are in fact vicious gang members, the fact that this tidbit is being overlooked by every single national broadcast network is nothing new when it comes to immigration coverage, unfortunately. Even the question of whether these individuals are being released into the care of human traffickers is probably not going to be raised by reporters invested in the wholesale erasure of American sovereignty.

-What galls, however, is the deafening silence by the fourth estate regarding the manipulation of access to the detainment cells and way stations, including military bases, housing these uninvited guests from Central America. Naturally, any critics of this administration’s  calculatedly disastrous immigration policy are being denied entry to the facilities housing the latest cohort of illegal aliens, as Arizona Speaker Andy Tobin learned recently. Likewise, any reporters seeking to engage in journalism-not merely act as stenographers for LULAC or the ACLU-are obstructed from practicing their craft, even as the Border Patrol officers who would seek to assist them are threatened with prosecution by their superiors, a la Fast and Furious. Thus, the freedom of information whose death the press routinely sheds crocodile tears for ends, not with a bang, and barely a whimper from the credentialed hypocrites.

-In contrast to the brick wall greeting those few genuinely patriotic lawmakers and intrepid journalists seeking the truth, the Spanish-speaking subjects of so many glowing personal interest stories over the past month are being provided with the best in legal representation that your tax dollars can buy. Someone should inform President Obama and his sidekick that these star-studded legal teams are promising their clients amnesty, which is open to them through a variety of means, including the notoriously porous refugee resettlement program.

-These unaccompanied aliens-and presumably, the adults who are assisting their perilous voyage north-are acting upon an entirely rational, understandable impulse. Namely, to leave behind a third world life of desperate poverty and lack of security in order to live in a, relatively speaking, prosperous and safe environment-one in which attempts to circumscribe their access to any welfare program will be met with howls of rage by indignant, open borders fanatics. They’re doing so because they have concluded that they will not be deported to their countries of origin, and despite the disingenuous protestations to the contrary by this administration and its apparatchiks, this is a largely accurate assessment of the situation, as columnist Ross Douthat has pointed out in the pages of the New York Times.

News & Notes

-Perhaps predictably, the political earthquake that vaporized Eric Cantor’s future career arc  doesn’t seem to have reached the denizens of Capitol Hill, K Street, or the White House. Valerie Jarrett’s recent comments about Rupert Murdoch and Dave Brat only serve to underscore the cosmic disconnect between those who make their living manipulating the political process in order to serve their financial and political interests and the people throughout the country laboring to sate their avarice. Unfortunately, just as we seem to be stuck with Murdoch, there is no prospect of Ms. Jarrett returning to Iran any time in the near future. GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, unlike his Australian counterpart, was actually born in the United States, therefore should presumably have a deeper attachment to American sovereignty and the quality of life of this nation’s citizens. Unfortunately, as Breitbart reports, that is simply not the case.

-One group that passionately detests the United States-at least, as it’s currently constituted-is the National Council of La Raza. Shockingly, they seem to have drawn all the wrong conclusions from Eric Cantor’s epic primary defeat, demonstrating yet again the utter futility of hispandering in  hopes of garnering that ever-elusive, much-heralded latino vote. One man who does not tailor his message in order to appeal to segmented ethnic groups is the gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo, a man whose praises we have sung repeatedly on this website. Of course, the open borders elites who control the GOP machinery despise Congressman Tancredo, which is all the more reason registered Republicans in the state of Colorado should go out and vote for him in today’s primary.

And with that important admonition, we conclude today’s Daily Rattle.

The Washington Post makes a glaring concession to reality. We’re not sure if this signifies the mainstream media’s acknowledgement that immigration reform, i.e. legislative amnesty, isn’t going to be enacted during this session of Congress, or if they’re merely spiking the football. However, we’re glad to see some members of the open borders brigade admit that the GOP’s attempts to ingratiate itself with Hispanic voters by rolling over on this issue is not only counterproductive but suicidal. The sooner this pernicious myth is put to rest, the sooner we’ll be able to have a productive discussion about immigration, something that has eluded us for decades.

As  a Facebook friend remarked when posting a link to this story, “what morons are running this godforsaken idiot party?” Good question, my friend. The answer, apparently, is liberal open borders, multimillionaire  Sheldon Adelson. Leaving aside the dubious provenance of Mr. Adelson’s wealth,  you have to wonder why Republican presidential aspirants would be so eager to court an benefactor who has a nearly unblemished record of bankrolling losing candidates.

The answer, of course, is that the leaders of the current Republican Party  are beholden to corporate donors and are willing to do their bidding, especially when it coincides with their own deeply-held beliefs. Jeb Bush is merely the most pliant instrument of the open borders lobby, but his views, unfortunately, are shared by many of the front-runners in the 2016 GOP presidential sweepstakes. Including pre-Bridgegate media darling, Governor Chris Christie.

The battle has been joined, it’s time patriotic Americans weighed in, don’t you think?

Hat Tip: Vdare