Friday, January 27, 2017

Sanctuary Cities

Trump's Right: Law-Breaking 'Sanctuary Cities' Must Obey The Law
Deciding that you, as mayor, chief of police, governor, or whatever, have the authority to defy federal law is generally a bad and dangerous idea. Only in the most extreme case, where some clearly horrible injustice is to be visited upon total innocents, can this ever even be considered. Immigration laws that say people who have crossed our borders illegally must be found and processed by the federal agencies responsible for them are totally reasonable. It doesn't matter if it's someone who's overstayed a student visa, or who was brought here illegally as a child, or who came across just to work and send money home, or someone who is a vicious criminal who'd rather face US jails than South American ones. If they are here illegally the system has to handle them, and if there's something too harsh in that system, the answer is to start a campaign in Congress to fix it. But the law is the law, and if you break it, you need to be prepared for penalties to come your way. Cities with such policies need to have all federal aid cut off, every penny of it. Yes, that's harsh and will cause hardship to lots of people, many of whom have little to nothing to do with setting the city's policy. But the blame for that has to go to the ones who did adopt the policy, and either they figure out that serving their citizens means backing off on defying federal law, or they get to answer for all the hardship that their citizens will be facing. They might try to make the government the Bad Guy, and of course that will play well with some, but that lack of all federal funding is going to cause so much pain to so many that reality will have the final impact. Meanwhile, the federal budget is that much better off with less money going out. --Del. Slavery is illegal, but I suppose the left would have no problems if you established a "sanctuary city" for slave holders. ~Bob

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