Immigration

Supreme Court issues orders on immigration executive orders, ObamaCare individual mandate, and abortion restrictions

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Back in January I posted that The Mass Deportation Party wants the US Supreme Court to delay ruling on the Obama administration’s executive orders on immigration:

ImmigrantsThe 26 “red states” that brought the legal challenge to the Obama administration’s executive orders on immigration do not want the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the appeal this term in the middle of an election year. They would rather use the case for political propaganda purposes during the election.

So the 26 “red states” are asking the Court (1) not to rule on the Obama administration’s appeal, or (2) to expand the scope of the appeal to address the underlying constitutional issues (which has not been addressed by the trial court nor the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals). This would be extraordinary for the Court to depart from the regular order of legal procedure.

The GOP desperately does not want the Court to rule on this appeal until after a new president takes office in January 2017 — leaving hundreds of thousands of immigrants who qualify for the Obama administration’s DACA and DAPA programs in legal limbo and uncertainty, because the Mass Deportation Party does not care about their situation.  They are hoping that a Republican will be elected in 2016 who will reverse Obama’s executive orders, rendering this appeal moot, and putting those individuals in the DACA and DAPA programs in jeopardy.

The U.S. Supreme Court today issued its orders list from last Friday’s conference, and granted the Obama administration’s request to hear this appeal from the 5th Circuit this term. There will be a decision on the administration’s executive orders before the end of June.

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Law Professor: Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president

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Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, wrote a research paper in 2014 entitled The Natural Born Citizen Clause as Originally Understood. This research paper presents the pertinent English sources, combined with statements by early American jurists. Based on a reading of these materials, the article concludes that, in the eyes of the Framers of the Constitution, a presidential candidate must be born within the United States.

Professor McManamon writes in an op-ed today at the Washington Post,  “Donald Trump is actually right about something: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.” Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president:

The Constitution provides that “No person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The concept of “natural born” comes from common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept’s definition. On this subject, common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are “such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England,” while aliens are “such as are born out of it.” The key to this division is the assumption of allegiance to one’s country of birth. The Americans who drafted the Constitution adopted this principle for the United States. James Madison, known as the “father of the Constitution,” stated, “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. . . . [And] place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”

Cartoon_49Cruz is, of course, a U.S. citizen. As he was born in Canada, he is not natural-born. His mother, however, is an American, and Congress has provided by statute for the naturalization of children born abroad to citizens. Because of the senator’s parentage, he did not have to follow the lengthy naturalization process that aliens without American parents must undergo. Instead, Cruz was naturalized at birth. This provision has not always been available. For example, there were several decades in the 19th century when children of Americans born abroad were not given automatic naturalization.

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(Update) SCOTUS: the defining issue in the 2016 election

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Last year I posted SCOTUS: the defining issue in the 2016 election, a quick glance at attorney Rick Hasen’s  longread for TPM, which is well worth your time to read.  It begins:

The future composition of the Supreme Court is the most important civil rights cause of our time. It is more important than racial justice, marriage equality, voting rights, money in politics, abortion rights, gun rights, or managing climate change. It matters more because the ability to move forward in these other civil rights struggles depends first and foremost upon control of the Court. And control for the next generation is about to be up for grabs, likely in the next presidential election, a point many on the right but few on the left seem to have recognized.

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Today Hillary Clinton  has a new op-ed in the Boston Globe emphasizing the importance of the high court in this year’s election:

There’s a lot at stake in this election. Nowhere is this clearer than in the US Supreme Court.

The court’s decisions have a profound impact on American families. In the past two decades alone, it effectively declared George W. Bush president, significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act, and opened the door to a flood of unaccountable money in our politics. It also made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, preserved the Affordable Care Act not once but twice, and ensured equal access to education for women.

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Sen. John Kavanagh to pursue anti-immigrant bill that would cost the state federal money

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The U.S. Supreme Court currently has pending before it an apportionment/redistricting case from Texas, Evenwel v. Abbott, in which the plaintiffs challenged redistricting on the grounds that the legislature should use eligible voters, rather than total population, as the relevant measure for apportionment. Each district, in other words, should have roughly the same number of eligible voters, not the same number of people.

This would not only exclude non-citizens but also American citizens who are not registered to vote, minor children and felons. As was explained to the Justices in amicus briefs and at oral argument, there is no existing data base that would allow for such a calculation. All states rely on the decennial census population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The U.S. Constitution empowers the Congress to carry out the census in “such manner as they shall by Law direct” (Article I, Section 2). The legal authority for collecting the data resides in Title 13 of the U.S.C. or the “Census Act.”

That Census data is used not just for redistricting but for distribution formulas for federal revenue sharing to state and local communities for health, education, welfare, public safety, housing, transportation, etc.

The twisted logic of Evenwel appears to be behind the latest anti-immigrant nativist proposal from Sen. John Kavanagh, an acolyte of disgraced and recalled former Senator Russell Pearce and crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio. Lawmaker: Don’t let Census count illegal residents:

Arpaio1A state lawmaker wants to block communities trying to boost their revenues through a special interim census from counting residents who are not in this country legally.

The legislation crafted by Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, would allow cities, towns and counties to count only those who are U.S. citizens, nationals of U.S. territories, or are legally admitted to the United States. More to the point, SB 1044 would forbid counting anyone who is an illegal immigrant.

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The Mass Deportation Party wants the U.S. Supreme Court to delay ruling on the Obama administration’s executive orders on immigration

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ImmigrantsYou may recall that the Obama administration timely filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel’s 2-1 decision upholding the trial court’s imposition of a stay during the pendency of the trial of the Obama administration’s executive orders on immigration.

The appeal was filed just under the deadline to get the appeal heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this term, with a decision that would likely come in the last week of June, only weeks before the RNC National Convention begins on July 18 in Cleveland, Ohio.

The 26 “red states” that brought the legal challenge to the Obama administration’s executive orders on immigration do not want the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the appeal this term in the middle of an election year. They would rather use the case for political propaganda purposes during the election.

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