Judging from his accent alone, Murdoch wasn’t brought up in the US… Whatever, the “English” he’s speaking isn’t American English, and may therefore be considered another language…

I’m mostly kidding, but there are times I’m not so sure our own Congressmen understand the language.

If you look at America and say: “I’d like this to be more like the Soviet Union” you can see how all the pieces fit: Capitalism is bad, the rule of law is an annoyance, the media fails to report on their political masters, the nationalism of the right is somehow racist and bad, employees of the state are given better pensions, better housing, more power, etc.

We don’t need any more people to immigrate to America! We have a bajillion-ty people and we can’t even take care of our homegrowns. Stay in your own country. If you must move to America, go through the appropriate legal channels and wait your turn like everyone else. Don’t be a South-of-the-Border line-cutter (no pun intended).

“Similar dissonance occurs when the word ‘illegal’ is used with respect to immigrants.”

As well it should be, since there’s no such thing as an “illegal immigrant.”

A law repugnant to the Constitution is void, the Constitution reserves powers not delegated to the United States to the states or the people, and the Constitution delegates no power to the United States whatsoever to regulate immigration.

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Bupkus. It ain’t there.

The anti-Federalists noticed it wasn’t there and bitched about it before the Constitution was ratified. The Federalists had no answer for them.

Congress operated for the first 89 years of the Republic on the assumption that since the framers hadn’t seen fit to write such a power into the Constitution, they didn’t intend for Congress to exercise that power.

They passed naturalization laws, which the Constitution provided for.

They passed a few laws which had the effect of making state immigration laws binding on ships entering federal ports in said states (and assessing fees/fines for enforcing them on behalf of those states).

It wasn’t until 1875 that an activist Reconstruction Supreme Court “discovered” a federal power to regulate immigration that Madison, Hamilton, Jay et al had somehow put in there without knowing or noticing or mentioning, and it wasn’t until 1882 that Congress exercised that newly discovered power with the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The subsequent 128 years of American history have been a living demonstration of why the framers left a federal power to regulate immigration out of the Constitution — because it was, and remains, one of the fucking stupidest ideas possible.

@TLK,
That is an excellent cluebat, and I thank you for this reply.
Typically I take this sort of analytic approach to the Federal Reserve.
I submit that the time for a second Constitutional Convention, and have a right jolly bun fight over these points.

Smitty,

Glad you liked it

I just posted it over at my blog with some minor additions/edits and sent the link love your way.

I am also for immigration restrictions being lifted, especially on massage therapists from Thailand and the Philippines. They have such tiny subtle hands.

They also appreciate a $540 payment and tip.

Why SHOULDN’T an Australian tell America what its immigration policy be? It’s not like Australia shoves its illegals in camps or something… oh,wait…

…and as you can see,I myself am a recent arrival from Ebonia:”…should be?”

Rupert Murdoch understands ONE thing:

Making More Money–no matter how.

Who needs language?

TLK: Art. I, Sec. 9 of the constitution says:

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person

Now, why would the Framers have felt the need to explicitly deny Congress the power to prohibit “Migration or Importation of … Persons” for a limited time if the Constitution already forbad it that power?

Curiously, that part I quoted was one of two provisions in the Constitution that could not be amended, which shows that the Framers gave that particular provision an awful lot of thought.

Once we end the Welfare State, I am all for immigration.

@The Monster,
You’re tap dancing on the slavery landmine, which was as unutterable then as “Islamic terrorism” is today.
That is a separate, complex, and generally historical topic.

The Monster,

You answer your own question.

The framers not only did not put a federal power to regulate immigration into the Constitution, but they set a date certain before which the Constitution could not even be amended to provide for such a power in the most likely area of such a power’s exercise.

They also set that same date certain for a prohibition against amendments which would allow a “Capitation, or other direct, Tax … in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration.”

If we accept your logic, then the income tax automatically, without further amendment, became constitutional as of 1808. After all, why would they have specifically alluded to a power that didn’t exist?

As you may recall, most presidents and congresses, and all Supreme Courts, thought otherwise and every attempt to levy such a tax prior to the ratification of the 16th Amendment was ultimately overturned.

The date certain isn’t “curious” with respect to my historical claims, it’s confirmatory OF those claims.

@TKL,
Referring to slave importation as immigration is blowing by some fairly vast legal questions that, you know, precipitated the Civil War, and rightfully so.

Smitty,

Yes, it’s complicated.

My view is that slave importation constituted “migration” in the same way, and for the same reason, as a slave constituted 3/5ths of a person.

That reason being political expediency and the desire to get the southern states to buy into that there newfangled “Constitution” thing.

I can’t buy the claim that an explicit, specific prohibition on the exercise one sub-type of Power X is a clue that there’s an implicit operant delegation of a general Power X, though, for two reasons:

- The framers and their successors spent nearly a century operating on the premise that they had not in fact been delegated any general Power X, that premise being fairly well-established in the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate by complaint on the Anti-Federalist part and silence on the Federalist part.

- There’s a similarly time-prohibited Power Y (direct taxation) in the Constitution. That prohibition was generally understood to require a constitutional amendment to lift, and as a result remained in force (excepting court-overturned initiatives) for 105 years after the expiration of the specific time-prohibition.

I suppose I could be accused of bias on this because I’m pro-immigration-freedom, but then again, look at it this way: Per my logic, the Arizona Know-Nothing Appeasement Act (SB 1070), which I loathe beyond description, is constitutional, and I admit that.