What 'People' Are We Talking About?

Bob Krumm on Obama's refusal to enforce DOMA drug laws school standards gambling laws immigration laws:
Since the very beginning of our Nation’s founding, there has been (by design) a healthy tension between the Legislative branch, which writes laws, and the Executive Branch, which executes those laws.  Laws were only de facto valid when they were both on the books and willingly enforced.  As every law is a limit upon the people, this created a very high barrier to restrictions on individual rights. 
"Every law is a limit on the people," eh?  So what the anarchists really need is just to elect a President, who can refuse to enforce any of the laws?

But which "people" are we talking about here?  The law in this case is a restriction on peoples who are not American citizens:  it restricts them from moving to America without a permit.  The restriction doesn't particularly affect the American people.

The preamble to the Constitution suggests that it is the people of the United States who ordain and establish the government, for ends of their own.  They are good ends, but they are not universal ends:  and the category of people who established and ordained the United States is not universal either.

Maybe Krumm is right in general:  maybe it's generally a good thing if the law goes unenforced.  Maybe it's fine to have a lot of laws on the books that have no force in practice.

Somehow, though, I doubt it.  That sounds to me like a vision of the law as the sword of Damocles:  a deadly thing hanging over my head, fit to fall at any time.  But -- for now -- a little string keeps it from my skull.

8 comments:

Texan99 said...

Yes -- when you're trying to undermine a bad law, it seems like a very good thing that the populace will help you by refusing to enforce it. But it's a peculiar strategy for the President, and it makes for whimsical and therefore tyrannical government. Just make everything illegal, then refuse to enforce the laws against anyone but your enemies. Everything not compulsory is forbidden. We'll let you know.

This immigration policy is kind of like an anti-oak-cutting ordinance my county recently passed: a test of my principles. I hate to see anyone cutting down the oaks that are so precious to our ecosystem here on the Texas coast, where very few old oaks are left. If the local government is going to interfere in land use at all, that's a way that's calculated to warm my heart. I also have a strong emotional reaction to the plight of any young illegal alien who was brought here as a child and now needs to be able to find a job, or else be consigned to the black market, welfare, or forced return to a country he doesn't even know. But what are we saying? If we really want to open the borders, hadn't we ought to open them honestly? How does it make sense to make people into criminals by entering, then every now and then to wave a wand and say, OK, you can work, but you over there, you can't?

Personally, I'd let them all work, deport them if they weren't working, and terminate welfare for anyone who wasn't disabled. But that would mean exploding the immigration quotas and dealing with the enraged unions and other progressives, because you can't do all that and preserve entitlements and minimum wages, too.

I've been following this issue over at FireDogLake. I get the impression they want to let them all stay but send them government checks so they won't glom onto any jobs.

MikeD said...


I've been following this issue over at FireDogLake. I get the impression they want to let them all stay but send them government checks so they won't glom onto any jobs.


Which is a perfectly rational thing for the folks not paying the bills to want. "Let those RICH people pay for it!" It's not the money of the folks at FireDogLake, so they're more than happy to decide how it's spent.

E Hines said...

The restriction doesn't particularly affect the American people.

Actually, it does. It reduces our ability to compete for jobs, albeit only slightly in the present instance, with an addition of 800,000 illegal aliens (they aren't immigrants; they've not immigrated, only entered illegally) to an un/underemployed population of some 23 million. And it increases, formally, our costs in supporting them until they "get" jobs. And so on.

But it's a peculiar strategy for the President....

It's also both unconstitutional and a direct violation of his oath of office. But it's Rule by Law, the Chicago Way, as opposed to Rule of Law, the American Way, so that's OK.

...that would mean exploding the immigration quotas and dealing with the enraged unions and other progressives....

What's the downside of any of these three? In particular, a proper resolution to our immigration problem is three-pronged: deal with the existing population of illegal aliens (and I think Gutierrez (D, IL) and Rubio (R, FL) both have the beginnings, if wholly incomplete, of workable ideas for this), seal and secure our borders, and make it a whole lot easier to enter our country legally--something like border crossing stations every mile (which also would negatively impact the operations of coyotes and other human traffickers), eliminating visa quotas (most especially H1, and the like), allowing student visas, virtually automatically, to be converted resident visas/green cards on graduation, eliminating delays in granting/converting any visas--there's no excuse for that to take weeks to months.

Of course there are details to be filled in, such as maintaining our security. But the imperative must be utterly altered from "how do we keep these Untouchables out" to "how do we most expeditiously let these folks in."

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

MikeD -- it goes without saying that whatever they advocate is founded on OPM.

Grim said...

Mr. Hines:

The restriction you're talking about arises from the non-enforcement of the law, not the law itself. My point is that Mr. Krumm is wrong: not all laws are restrictions on 'the people.' Some laws are really for their protection. Few, maybe! But some.

douglas said...

I know this is veering to an aside, so please pardon me-

"This immigration policy is kind of like an anti-oak-cutting ordinance my county recently passed: a test of my principles."

Tex, we have a similar thing here for California Black Walnuts (as well as California Oaks, but I don't have any of those). There are unintended consequences to such things- if a black walnut sprouts on my property, I'm cutting it down before it reaches the minimum size required for it to be considered protected, as I don't want to be block from something later because of a plant. So, as a result, I have no black walnuts on my property. Net loss. Better to not have legislated. I like groups like Nature Conservancy that simply buy land they want to see preserved.

douglas said...

On topic- I could support many ideas about what to do with illegal immigrants that have been living here for some time, but I want the inflow cut to a drip first- what's so hard for those folks in D.C. to understand about that?

Texan99 said...

I totally agree with you there. Lately the Nature Conservancy has been buying all kinds of land around here, to preserve habitat for the whooping cranes. I love it.