Freedom First Society

Toward a Police State

The escalating nationwide demonstrations and riots during the past several days have a very sinister purpose, which few Americans understand and about which the voices they look to for leadership are silent.

We are talking about the decades-long campaign to discredit, demoralize, and cripple local independent police in order to pave the way for a national police force or even foreign UN troops to restore order. That is not to say that local police forces don’t sometimes have bad apples. Indeed, the presence of bad apples serves the campaign. But a national, unaccountable police force is no cure. It is a gross betrayal of a free nation.

The first thing to realize is that riots and demonstrations in more than 75 cities nationwide are not spontaneous reactions. They are organized by revolutionaries to advance a subversive agenda, using the pretext of opposing police brutality. The ghastly torture-killing of George Floyd has been used for that purpose.

As did much of the controlled-media, The New York Times (5-31-20) attributed the escalating demonstrations to “an outpouring of national anger sparked by the death of a black man in police custody.” But angry individuals don’t just congregate at the same place and time with prepared banners, painted signs, slogans to chant, constant clenched-fist salutes for the cameras, and marching orders.

The foreword to our January 2015 Action Report, below, documented the deceptions and subversive purpose of the demonstrations that followed a 2014 police-killing in Ferguson, Missouri. The demonstrations supply “pressure from below” for government power grabs, but the pressure wouldn’t have much effect if the Conspiracy that supports the revolutionaries and controls the major media didn’t seize the opportunity to apply “pressure from above.”

Understandably, the controlled-media support the revolutionary ruse as to what’s driving the demonstrations by refusing to go beyond the police-killing pretext. In doing so, the media are actually cooperating with the organizers in keeping national attention where the organizers want it. The driving revolutionary organization depends on that cooperation to create the illusion of widespread support.

A useful tactic of revolutionary communist organization has been to create appropriately targeted front groups to attract additional support for the demonstrations and give credibility to their advertised complaints about “police brutality.”

Intermediate successes in the past have included forcing big-city police departments to submit to oversight by revolutionary-controlled “civilian review boards.” And further militarizing our police in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which bars military involvement in domestic law enforcement, unless “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress” would be a major revolutionary success. The Act constitutes an important safeguard against the creation of a police state.

Yet, as reported by The Hill (5-29-20), President Trump was willing to violate that act in response to the violence in Minneapolis: “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control….”

Of course, attributing the violence to “THUGS” is itself a refusal to alert Americans to the revolutionary game plan. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, also refused to acknowledge the root of the violence. According to The Washington Times (5-30-20): “An overwhelmed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Saturday that he had reached out to the Pentagon for help in controlling the growing mobs of out-of-state agitators seeking to “break the back of civil society” in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

The “pressure-from-below, pressure-from-above” game plan is not new. We conclude here with the promised foreword to our January 2015 Action Report, written following protests in the wake of the 2014 police-shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

January (2015) Action Report

“The Rest of the Story”

When protesters burned down a convenience store near where a police officer fatally shot Michael Brown [on August 9], many condemned it. But experts say the ensuing images on national television could become as much of a catalyst for social change as peaceful protests. [Emphasis added.] — “Ferguson violence could be a catalyst for change,” USA Today, August 30

What has transpired in the wake of the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri provides important lessons in media misdirection and concealed subversive organization and agendas.

Media Misdirection
Typically, the major media cooperate with revolutionaries by helping them develop pressure from below for “change” in the form of federal power grabs. The media portray their protests as representative of widespread concerns and driven solely by the advertised complaints. Nowhere do you find a suggestion that the protests might be designed to serve a far different purpose, and often there is no hint they are even organized. Consider this example:

People protesting the Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury decision took to the streets in cities across the U.S. for a second day Tuesday, showing that the racially charged case has inflamed tensions thousands of miles from the predominantly black St. Louis suburb. [Emphasis added.] — “Protests against Ferguson decision grow across US,” AP, 11-25-14

Did the decision ignite the protests and the riot? Or were revolutionaries already looking for a pretext to protest?

Our answer: Organized revolutionaries saw an opportunity and were eager to distort the facts to support their agenda. Reviewing the grand jury decision not to prosecute Darren Wilson, even a reporter for the Establishment’s Time concluded:

Indeed, the preponderance of forensic and eyewitness testimony suggests that Wilson was acting in self-defense against a violent perpetrator…. But there can no longer be a question that the initial accounts of the case were fraudulent. — “Michael Brown was not a gentle giant,” Time.com, “Facts and Ferguson,” 11-26-14

Evidence of Planning
Buried within media reports we can nevertheless find evidence of planning and orchestration. For example, coordinated “signs,” “chants” and “mock trials” require organizational leadership:

Those who made it inside City Hall [in St. Louis] were part of a group of about 300 protesters who marched and held a mock trial of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown during an Aug. 9 confrontation in the St. Louis suburb. [Emphasis added.] — “Protesters force lockdown of St. Louis City Hall,” AP, 11-26-14

And consider this USA Today report pointing to outside involvement:

On Friday night in Ferguson, 16 people were arrested outside the police station who had come from Boycott Black Friday protests at stores in the area, and 15 of them were not from Missouri. [Emphasis added.] — “Ferguson could spark a new civil rights movement”

Investigate the Rioters
Encouraged by the national attention, revolutionaries quickly staged protests in other cities over several “police killings.” And, still the national media focused on charges of “police brutality” and “racism” while ignoring any nationwide organization to the protests. A few AP examples:

Protesters around the country rallied for a third day Friday over a New York grand jury’s decision to not indict a white police officer in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man….

In Colorado, students walked out of class Friday to protest the decisions not to prosecute police in New York and Ferguson. — “Protesters of chokehold death rally for 3rd day,” AP, 12-5-14

About 150 took part in the march through the streets of downtown Phoenix to police headquarters, while also calling for an end to what they say is a nationwide epidemic of police brutality.” [Emphasis added.] — “Phoenix police shooting is latest to ignite outcry,” AP, 12-5-14

The War on Local Police

January 2015 cover photo
Revolutionary influence ignored by major media

Ignored by the major media, Establishment Insiders and their revolutionary kin have labored for decades to undermine a bastion of freedom — independent, local police, who live in the communities they serve — and to gradually replace them with a national police accountable to a central government and eventually to international regulation.

In 1961, the Internal Security Subcommittee of the United States Senate published “A Communist Plot Against the Free World Police,” describing a highly organized campaign “directed primarily toward discrediting the police in the eyes of the people.”

The 32-page Senate report noted: “A campaign against the police of one free country is not planned and directed by the Communist Party of that country; it is planned and directed by the strategists of international communism.”

The report included pages from a Communist document used to train revolutionaries worldwide on how to organize a riot. Illustrations showed how to outflank and attack the police.

At a press conference following the 1965 Watts riot, Michael Laski, a member of the Central Committee of the U.S. Communist Party, boasted that he and his organization had worked for two years to agitate the riot, which he called a “class uprising.”

One of the early initiatives in this campaign was the push for “civilian” review boards as a cure for alleged rampant “police brutality.” The leftist controlled boards were actually established in some cities, before grassroots action forced their demise. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described their effect: “Where there is an outside civilian review board the restraint of the police was so great that effective action against the rioters appeared to be impossible.”

And, of course, if the local police were no longer able to maintain law and order, Big Brother would be eager to step in. Indeed, widespread riots in this country provided the Insiders with the pretext to create the federal “Law Enforcement Assistance Administration” [LEAA] in 1968. The LEAA sought to gain control of state and local law enforcement agencies through federal grants. But LEAA Administrator Charles H. Rogovin hinted at another route. On October 1, 1969 he told a meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police that a federal police force may need to take over “because local law enforcement has failed to do its job.”

The LEAA was abolished in 1982 following concerted grassroots pressure. But the Conspiracy never gives up. Later came the federal civil-rights lawsuits against major city police departments, resulting in consent decrees, amounting to a virtual federal takeover. And still later, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 provided the emotional cover for the consolidation of police powers in the Department of Homeland Security.

New Federal Intervention
The Obama administration is already taking support from the revolutionary pressure from below as an excuse to “investigate law enforcement” rather than the rioters:

President Obama opened a speech in Chicago by talking about Ferguson, saying that he had ordered Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to undertake a major review of policing practices in the United States, including a community-by-community process of identifying and highlighting specific steps to “make sure that law enforcement is fair and is being applied equally to every person in this country.” — “Security in Ferguson Is Tightened After Night of Unrest,” NY Times, 11-25-14

But apparently Holder was on board well before the Ferguson eruptions:

On Thursday [12-4-14], Attorney General Eric Holder said a Justice Department probe had concluded the Cleveland Division of Police has a pattern of using excessive force, both in firing weapons and in using non-deadly techniques. Cleveland officials agreed to an outside monitor to improve training and practices, officials said. [Emphasis added.] — “Police Move to Revamp Tactics,” Wall Street Journal, 12-5-14

The Journal article suggests what is coming: “Police departments around the country are racing to develop new training rules on the use of force, a response that has gained urgency amid scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department and an emerging consensus that law-enforcement practices need to be reviewed and revamped….” [Emphasis added.]

The orchestrators of pressure from below do not go to so much effort unless they have some serious plans to make a major step in their long-term agenda. We will keep our members advised as to where the new focus lies.

The W.H.O. Cover-up

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday [4-15] he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while a review is conducted.

Trump said the review would cover the WHO’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus.” [Emphasis added.] — CNN.com (4-15-20)

President Trump’s announcement unleashed a firestorm of media and partisan controversy. As so often, the controversy mimicked the entertaining hype for a professional wrestling match, an exaggerated conflict between two sides, while covering up the reality that freedom is the loser regardless of the outcome. (A month later, on May 29 (left), he announced a decision to terminate funding unconditionally.)

On the one side, the President’s supporters piled on with the complaints about W.H.O. and how it needed to be reformed. Fox News analyst Gordon C. Chiang argued:

The president’s action is the first step needed to spark meaningful reform of the United Nations organization and the global health architecture. — “Trump right to stop funding World Health Organization over its botched coronavirus response,” foxnews.com, 4-14-20

On the other side, the President’s opponents claimed that the timing in the middle of a pandemic was irresponsible, as the world depended so much on the great work of W.H.O. This criticism by Nicholas Kristof, a member of the world-government promoting Council on Foreign Relations, is hardly surprising:

Trump’s announcement that he is halting American funding for the W.H.O. just as the world is facing a raging pandemic is a dangerous attempt to find a scapegoat for his own failings. It is like taking away a fire department’s trucks in the middle of a blaze. — “Trump’s Deadly Search for a Scapegoat,” New York Times, 4-15-20

But both the pro- and anti-W.H.O. positions serve to keep Americans unaware of the real looming Internationalist threat of which W.H.O. is just one part. Indeed, W.H.O.’s overriding mission, as one of the UN’s system of agencies, is to convince the world that the solution to global problems lies in giving more power to Insider-controlled institutions.

The President’s criticism, however, is the most damaging because he enjoys an undeserved conservative image. His criticism reinforces the deadly deception regarding the positive purpose of these institutions, while ignoring their subversive designs by those with a grip on Washington. It is, therefore, horribly misleading.

Moreover, calls for reform of the World Health Organization serve to cover up its subversive origins and purpose. Indeed, the demand for reforms has long been a useful Internationalist Establishment tactic for deflecting serious opposition. In particular, conservative demands for the U.S. to withdraw from the UN have repeatedly been deflected by Establishment calls for reform — which go nowhere, of course.

W.H.O.’s Subversive Origins and Purpose
So what is being covered up about the origins and purpose of the UN and its agencies?

Let’s start by recalling that the leading figure at the UN’s founding conference was secret Soviet agent Alger Hiss, later convicted of perjury and sentenced to prison. We recorded the media-suppressed background to these organizations in Masters of Deception – The Rise of the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR]:

Alger Hiss (1950)

In April of 1945, the founding conference for the UN began in San Francisco, lasting into June (Japan did not surrender until August). Alger Hiss served as the acting secretary-general of the conference, helping to finalize the UN Charter. Time magazine commented in advance of the conference: “As secretary-general, managing the agenda, [Hiss] will have a lot to say behind the scenes about who gets the breaks.”…

Alger Hiss became a member of the CFR in 1945….

We do not mean to suggest that the CFR leaders were in any way snookered, or even surprised, by the Soviet agents in their midst. The San Francisco conference was almost entirely a CFR show. More than 40 of the American delegates to the San Francisco conference were or would later become CFR members, only a portion of whom would subsequently be identified as Communists. Among the Establishment CFR members present were Isaiah Bowman (founding CFR member); Nelson Rockefeller; future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (founding CFR member); and John J. McCloy (future chairman of the CFR).

The UN purchased land for its headquarters in New York with a $8.5 million gift from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. — pp. 56, 57.

A few years later, in 1952, Senator James O. Eastland, the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, would charge: “[T]here is today in the UN among the American employees there, the greatest concentration of Communists that this Committee has ever encountered.” And, of course the employees from the Communist bloc nations were Communist. So, it shouldn’t have been surprising to find the UN and its agencies working an anti-freedom agenda.

And now, Republican voices, such as Nikki Haley, President Trump’s former ambassador to the UN, are conveniently directing attention away from the continuing role of US Insiders, claiming that we need to curtail Communist China’s influence. And many GOP congressmen have adopted the focus on China as a useful reelection strategy.

However, US Insiders played a key role in betraying our former ally the Republic of China (Taiwan) and bringing Mao Tse Tung to power in China. In consolidating his tyranny, Mao would liquidate millions of Chinese. Trilateralist and David Rockefeller protégé President Jimmy Carter would abrogate our treaty with Taiwan and recognize and support instead Communist China. And US Insiders, such as President Trump’s friend Henry Kissinger, would work to build Red China into a World Power.

So it’s really no surprise that Communist China has had great influence in the W.H.O. Indeed, China’s influence is by design and addressing the resulting problems is a distraction. The real focus should be on the designers — the global tyranny-promoting Internationalists who created the UN and have solidified their grip on our government.

And that is also the focus of this post. But for those readers who would like more of the story of the perfidy surrounding this incredible deception, please read on.

W.H.O.’s Communist-Socialist Beginnings

W.H.O. got underway in 1948. On its 10th anniversary, J.B. Matthews, a former research director for congressional committees investigating communism in America, surveyed W.H.O.’s beginnings in an article for the May 1958 issue of American Opinion magazine:

WHO’s Constitution opens with a statement that nine “principles are basic to the happiness, harmonious relations and security of all peoples.” They are listed as follows:

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

“The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.

“The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent upon the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.

“The achievement of any State in the promotion and protection of health is of value to all.

“Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of disease, especially communicable disease, is a common danger.

“Healthy development of the child is of basic importance; the ability to live harmoniously in a changing total environment is essential to such development.

“The extension to all peoples of the benefits of medical, psychological and related knowledge is essential to the fullest attainment of health.

“Informed opinion and active cooperation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people.

“Governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures.”

Before commenting on the extraordinary nature of this set of basic principles, it will be pertinent to call attention to a booklet of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which praised the World Health Organization. Published on the eve of the formal launching of WHO, this booklet’s preface, written by none other than Mr. Alger Hiss, contained the following statement: “The new specialized agency carries on one of the most successful parts of the work of the League of Nations. The Constitution of the World Health Organization, however, has a far wider basis than that established for the League organization, and embodies in its provisions the broadest principles in public health service to day. Defining health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’, it includes not only the more conventional fields of activity but also mental health, housing, nutrition, economic or working conditions, and administrative and social techniques affecting public health.”

It would be difficult to imagine any area of human thought or activity— private or public, individual or collective—not covered by the definition of health set forth in WHO’s Constitution….

Brock Chisholm (R) — 1st Director-General of W.H.O

Brock Chisholm [the first Director-General of the World Health Organization (1948–1953) and later awarded “Humanist of the Year,” (1959) by the American Humanist Association] … wrote as follows: “History is studded with critical dates —wars, invasions, revolutions, discoveries, peace treaties—that are firmly implanted in our minds…. This document [WHO’s Constitution] may well go down in history as one of the most far-reaching of all international agreements…. The World Health Organization is a positive creative force with broad objectives, reaching forward to embrace nearly all levels of human activity.”

The powers of the World Health Assembly, as set forth in Chapter IV of WHO’s Constitution, were shrewdly defined. In Article 19, we read: “The Health Assembly shall have authority to adopt conventions or agreements with respect to any matter within the competence of the Organization.” As we have seen, there is no matter which is not within the competence of WHO.

In Article 20, we read: “Each Member [State] undertakes that it will, within eighteen months after the adoption by the Health Assembly of a convention or agreement, take action relative to the acceptance of such convention or agreement. Each Member shall notify the Director-General of the action taken, and if it does not accept such convention or agreement within the time limit it will furnish a statement of the reasons for non-acceptance.” The power of enforcement of the Health Assembly’s decisions lies in the stigma of non-compliance on the part of a Member State.

Dr. Brock Chisholm, who had more than anyone else to do with the writing of WHO’s Constitution, has explained that the aforementioned provisions of Chapter IV incorporated a “new principle of international law” by circumventing the usual procedures for the ratification of international conventions or agreements. The Member States, in ratifying WHO’s Constitution at the beginning of their membership in the organization, signed a blank check to be bound by such regulations as should be adopted by the World Health Assembly in the future unless they formally notified the Director-General of non-compliance. “The long, slow, and usually never completed process of ratification by each government of an international convention is thus avoided,” says Dr. Chisholm.

Gro Harlem Brundtland

To conclude review of the development of W.H.O., we take a look at one of W.H.O.’s later director-generals, Gro Harlem Brundtland. Brundtlandt, the former socialist prime minister of Norway, was elected 1st Vice President of the Socialist International in 1992. In 1998, W.H.O.’s governing body elected her as the director-general of W.H.O. for a five-year term. But let’s back up.

In 1983, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar appointed Brundtland to chair the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), the UN’s agency pushing the economically advanced nations to adopt “sustainable development.” WCED subsequently became known as the Brundtland Commission.

Gro Harlem Brundtland has championed expanded UN authority in virtually all areas. At the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, she argued that “the nation state is too small an arena for addressing regional and global challenges related to the environment and development.”

UN socialists, such as Brundtland, work comfortably with CFR leaders (e.g., Brundtland with Jeffrey Sachs (CFR)). CFR leaders, the real architects of the UN, comfortably control their creation, while on the surface the UN pretends to be a democracy of nations. But that is another story.

Liberty vs. Tyranny: A Tale of Two “Surveillance” Approaches

“The key to getting to [something we might call] normal will be to establish systems for discriminating — legally and fairly — between those who can be allowed to move around freely and those who must stay at home.

“Assorted proposals now coming out of bodies such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, describe how this might be done. The basic outlines are all similar….

“Regardless of the methods chosen, the goal is the same: after a couple of months of shutdown, to begin selectively easing restrictions on movement for people who can show they’re not a disease risk.” — Gideon Lichfield, “This is what it will take to get us back outside,” MIT Technology Review, April 12, 2020 [Bold emphasis ours.]

The Insiders pushing our current “pandemic” scare are using many stratagems — involving deceptive use of language — to try to hide that it’s meant to abrogate our fundamental rights. Only thus can they hope to sell us their snake-oil, “new normal,” in which those rights are at best a dim memory.

One obvious example of such stratagems is how the mainstream media will speak of the terrific economic damage “the coronavirus is causing” — glossing over the fact that our state governors are, by arbitrary edict, themselves inflicting all the damage. In this way, the media hope to evade otherwise easy-to-reach conclusions that none of the damage was inevitable — or even to any good purpose.

Not all examples are so obvious, however. Yet, the deceptive use of language (along with correspondingly twisted “logic”) is possibly our enemies’ most destructive weapon. Let us therefore examine one of the less obvious current subterfuges.

Intentional Obscuring of the Fundamental, Radical Social Difference between “Surveillance” Approaches

In just about any discussions of the allegedly technocratic, “big-data” approaches of surveillance that Taiwan, Singapore and other countries have deployed in the fight against the coronavirus, China’s approach is mixed right into the discussion — as if they are all birds of a feather. In this way, the media try to make us think there is no fundamental difference between the latter’s approach and that of freedom-upholding countries such as Taiwan and Singapore.

If they can get us to accept that China’s response to the coronavirus is not essentially different from Taiwan’s, this defuses the danger which Taiwan’s example presents, otherwise, to their whitewashing of China’s government’s response — indeed it enhances the whitewashing, through associating China with Taiwan’s success. And Westerners had better have a big wake-up about this difference — and do it right away: because America, the U.K., and most of Europe are all hurtling towards, not Taiwan’s approach to “surveillance,” but that of Big-Brother, authoritarian China.

This quote from Clair Yang, an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, conveys a glib obscuring of that difference:

[T]he successful experience of some of the countries that had already flattened their curves suggests that digital contact tracing and big data analysis could also prove a useful tool in combating the spread of the virus. Research shows that many countries in the East Asian region, including South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and China, have implemented strict rules on digital contact tracing and used digital travel history of patients to predict risks for the general population. This approach would be highly controversial in the Western world. Contact tracing can be a serious infringement of individual privacy, but one’s travel data if used in the right way could also have positive external value for the general public. At the end of the day, it is a trade-off between public goods and individual rights. — Clair Yang, expert-opinion response, “States with the Fewest Coronavirus Restrictions,” WalletHub, May 5, 2020

The message comes through powerfully — even if subliminally: “You Westerners want to have the success that Taiwan and Singapore have had against the virus? Well, the fundamental difference between your approach and our Asian approach (of which — don’t you see — mainland-China is just another example) is simply that the Asians are not hung up on your Western fetish of ‘individual rights’! After all, which is more important: ‘rights,’ or the public good? Isn’t it time, then, that you came to see, and to do, things in mainland-China’s way?”

Admittedly, there is a single truthful representation in that message: Mainland China is quite disregardful of (“Western”) individual rights. Beyond that, however, it is only a shameful misrepresentation of Taiwan’s approach — which has been infinitely more regardful of individual rights than have statements (and decrees) coming from executive bureaucratic offices in the U.S. or China.

The Real Basic Difference

So, which characteristic makes China’s and Taiwan’s responses to the coronavirus as different as “chalk and cheese”? Basically — to use an ancient Western legal principle, if somewhat outside its usual context — it’s the maintaining, vs. the suspension, of habeas corpus. And the only reason we say this application of the principle is outside of its normal context here is that never in the history of American jurisprudence have the citizenries of whole states been put under virtual house arrest — much less, for an objective reason.

Because this is so unheard of, we don’t naturally and immediately apply to it a principle that’s been normally applied to non-house detention:

Nowadays in Western countries, the thought of government agents whisking off a citizen to a secret prison seems unlikely. So why do we still have habeas corpus? Is it simply an antiquated law we no longer need?

The short answer is unequivocally no. It’s the right of habeas corpus that makes the thought of being illegally imprisoned in a democratic society such a far-off idea. Habeas corpus is a prisoner’s one way to question the legality of his or her imprisonment. — Josh Clark, “Why is habeas corpus important?”

Under this principle, an official who has someone under detention for no publicly-disclosed, legitimate reason is required — when presented a habeas corpus writ — to bring the prisoner to court and “present proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether the custodian has lawful authority to detain the prisoner. If the custodian is acting beyond their authority, then the prisoner must be released.” (Wikipedia)

In contrast with this legal practice — so obviously entailed by “the rule of law” — we have the general practice which, in our initial quotation above, Gideon Lichfield (editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review) recommends “for discriminating — legally and fairly — between those who can be allowed to move around freely and those who must stay at home.” Just to make sure you don’t forget what he said, we’ll quote that part again:

Regardless of the methods chosen, the goal is the same: after a couple of months of shutdown, to begin selectively easing restrictions on movement for people who can show they’re not a disease risk. — Gideon Lichfield, “This is what it will take to get us back outside,” MIT Technology Review, April 12, 2020 [Bold emphasis ours.]

Please note that there is no difference at all between what Mr. Lichfield’s preferred experts (whom he’s citing) recommend for governmental handling of you and me, and what China is doing to all its slaves — er, citizens: They are all free to go wherever they like, engage in what discourse they wish, and so on — just as soon as they have proven to the government that they have complied with all its dictates and whims.

Here, habeas corpus is turned on its head: It’s not the government that must prove, before a court, that its detention of the citizen is a legitimate one; on the contrary, it’s the “citizen” who must prove — to the government that imprisoned him — that he has complied with all its dictates.

In Western countries, traditionally this is known by such terms as “tyranny” and “slavery.” Let’s make sure that we still see it that way — and that we warn our fellow citizens, loudly, of this tyranny — intended as our “new normal”!

Three COVID-19 Counterexamples: Taiwan, Singapore, and Sweden

“Can any governor or county executive simply flick his pen and shut every business even if it doesn’t create crowds? Can they unilaterally restrict every aspect of the Bill of Rights indefinitely without any oversight, due process, benchmarks, or transparency?

“In Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), the Supreme Court … made it clear that there is a point where states can enact [public-safety] policies in ‘such an arbitrary, unreasonable manner, or might go so far beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public’ that they would be outside constitutional bounds.^[1] …

“We’ve simply never done this before in our history. These are not mere quarantine laws that supporters cite to justify what is going on today. Quarantine laws traditionally separate an individual or an entire group of people from the general population. What we are doing now, however, is locking down the entire general population.” — Daniel E. Horowitz, “Is this quarantine or tyranny?,” March 31, 2020

Judging from the transparency — or rather, the lack thereof — they’ve shown on both COVID-19 and “climate change,” the governmental “powers that be” expect us simply to take for granted that they know best about scientific questions — and (of course) that they have our best interests at heart. By contrast, we “little people” should consider ourselves too simple to comprehend scientific matters — much less, to take part in serious discussions of them. We should just trust that the government — and tax-exempt foundations set up by the wealthy — know best!

Specifically, and in the current case, we’re supposed to take it on faith that the near destruction of the whole world-economy, through “social distancing,” is scientifically necessary in order to avoid COVID-19 catastrophe. (Nor have they asked us whether the COVID-19 catastrophe isn’t the preferable option!)

However, if the “powers that be” do know best and have our best interests at heart, then why haven’t we heard much about the sensible, non-draconian approaches of countries that have avoided both the economic and the (warned-of) COVID-19 catastrophe — for example, Taiwan, Singapore, and Sweden? And, why haven’t other Western governments been adopting such approaches — rather than the China-pioneered, general “lockdowns” and “shutdowns”?

Only one plausible answer to that question seems available: Whether “the powers that be” “know best” or not, we may rest assured that our best interests are about the furthest thing from their hearts. Let us, then, look more closely at Taiwan’s, Singapore’s, and Sweden’s successful — yet non-draconian — approaches.

Taiwan’s and Singapore’s Responses to the Coronavirus

The Establishment media have not been able to maintain a total “blackout” on Taiwan’s success in combatting COVID-19. That success is too remarkable and too clear.

However, though the media are now reporting on what Taiwan has overtly done to control the COVID-19 outbreak, for the most part the media have (strenuously, it seems) avoided mentioning what Taiwan has not been doing.^[2] That is likely because Taiwan eschewed the almost universal, dire “social distancing,” “lockdown,” and economic shutdown the rest of us are supposed to endure.

“Quick action” and “aggressive measures” are what helped Taiwan — so they keep telling us. They highlight Taiwan’s advanced databases of its citizens’ travel histories, along with its ability to attach those data to the same citizens’ entries in the country’s National Health Insurance (NHI) database. By limiting the discussion to Taiwan’s actions, mainstream media manage to color Taiwan’s successful virus-containment as a shining example of technocracy — rather than, one of government transparency as well — and much less, one of maintaining constitutional, limited government while quarantining individual dangerous cases.

It is true that Taiwan did take “quick action” — notably with regard to checking people arriving from Wuhan (ultimately banning flights from most of China), and in implementing short-term quarantine for people who had recently traveled from “level 3 alert areas.” In fact, Taiwan’s preparation for a new virus outbreak started in 2004, the year after the SARS epidemic killed 73 people there. Since that experience, “Taiwan has been on constant alert and ready to act on epidemics arising from China,” reports a Mar. 3 JAMA article.

Taiwan has been very careful about making sure (and strictly enforcing with penalties) that the risk cases, who are quarantined, stay there as long as assigned — generally, two weeks. It is also true that Taiwan appended to the end of the Lunar New Year holiday, a further two-week closure of elementary schools and high schools (classes resumed Feb. 25). Moreover, it implemented rules calling for additional two-week closures of any schools where cases of the coronavirus were detected.^[3]

Currently schools’ policy is to take students, teachers, and workers’ temperatures. If fevers are detected, classes in that school are suspended, but massive class suspensions do not occur. At the same time, online teaching is being encouraged, but is not being forced by the government. In many Taiwanese universities, online teaching is being promoted in order to let those who are not able to attend class in person to take courses. Although it is true that online education as a way to avoid infections has already been adopted in other countries, the peculiarity of Taiwan lies in the fact that it has not been imposed by government order…. The government’s transparency of information has also given the Taiwanese enterprises the time they need to voluntarily prepare and adopt teleworking progressively. — Javier Caramés Sanchez and William Hongsong Wang, “Why Taiwan Hasn’t Shut Down Its Economy,” Mises Wire, March 26, 2020

But the pro-active stance and quick action explain more about Taiwan’s extraordinarily low case-numbers, than it does about how they achieved them with only very limited impact on their economic activity (the only industry hit by government restrictions was the airline industry). After all, it’s not as if there was no introduction of the virus into the country: In an article unusually balanced for the Establishment-controlled media, the New York Times stated that “As of Friday [Mar. 13], about 58 percent of all confirmed cases in Taiwan were believed to have resulted from local transmission.”

Broadly speaking, Singapore’s approach has been parallel to Taiwan’s. In regard to schools, in fact, Singapore has shown even more accommodation of private citizens’ needs:

Large gatherings have been suspended. But to minimize social and economic costs, schools and workplaces have remained open. The Singaporean Ministry of Education — on an extensive FAQs web page — calls the closing of schools “a major, major decision” that would “disrupt many lives.” Instead, students and staff are subjected to daily health checks, including temperature screenings. — Benjamin J. Cowling and Wey Wen Lim, “They’ve Contained the Coronavirus. Here’s How,” New York Times, March 13, 2020

A National Post article summarizes correctly that these two countries “seem to have found the sweet spot between a laissez-faire ‘it’s just like the flu’ reaction, and imposition of economically devastating lockdowns. Both nations have concentrated [not on imposing lockdowns and shutdowns, but] on strictly isolating people who have or might have COVID-19, tightly controlling international travel and zealously pursuing those who had contact with the infected.”

Sweden’s Thoughtful, Commonsensical Approach

In its particulars, Sweden’s approach has differed somewhat from Taiwan’s and Singapore’s. But like Singapore and Taiwan, Sweden took the traditional approach to what “quarantine” is — namely, isolating sick people, to keep their disease from being caught by well people. And although, like Britain, they do not claim “herd immunity” is their goal, they do recognize that the latter is the likeliest way for the outbreak to come to a graceful end.

Fredrik Erixon, a Swede who directs the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels, was eloquent on the real difference in Sweden’s approach:

Managing the virus is a long game, and while herd immunity is not the Swedish strategy, it may well be where we all end up. The theory of lockdown, after all, is pretty niche, deeply illiberal — and, until now, untested. It’s not Sweden that’s conducting a mass experiment. It’s everyone else.

The main advice from [Anders] Tegnell [who is Sweden’s “state epidemiologist”] et al is repeated like a mantra ten times a day: be sensible. Stay at home if you feel sick. Oh, and wash your hands. But individuals, companies, schools and others are trusted to figure out on their own what precautions to take.

This Swedish exceptionalism is about principle, not epidemiology. It’s true that we’re perhaps less at risk due to our high rate of single-person households and low number of smokers. Closing the schools would, as well, have a bigger impact in a country where almost all mums are working mums. But frankly, all these explanations miss the point: yes, they make us different to Italy and Spain, but not to Denmark, Finland and Norway. Sweden simply made the call to take measures that don’t destroy the free society. — Fredrik Exton, “No lockdown, please, we’re Swedish,” The Spectator (U.K.), April 4, 2020

Tellingly, even the website of the World Economic Forum — one of the foremost pandemic-fear stokers of recent decades — had a helpful post, basically admitting there is nothing faulty with the science behind Sweden’s approach.

The Take-away from These COVID-19 Experiences — Oh, and Hong Kong’s!

By no means have these three countries been left unscathed by COVID-19 (and/or similar viruses). But the important thing to glean from their experiences is what they tell us about what’s not necessary to fight this “novel coronavirus.” Specifically, it says that quarantining healthy individuals who have no known reason for being susceptible, is unnecessary — and thus, a gross infringement of basic liberty.

Though it seems surprising to be able to cite the New York Times in summing up, the final paragraph of its March 13 article said it well (though having discussed Hong Kong instead of Sweden):

[T]he central point is this: Each in its own way, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong — three places with markedly different socioeconomic and political features — have been able to interrupt the chain of the disease’s transmission. And they have done so without embracing the highly disruptive, drastic measures adopted by China. Their success suggests that other governments can make headway, too. — Benjamin J. Cowling and Wey Wen Lim, “They’ve Contained the Coronavirus. Here’s How,” New York Times, March 13, 2020

1. Corroborating the general legal principle that Horowitz cites is, for example, a 1962 Colorado state court case opinion, which points out that “If a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, morals, safety, or common welfare has no real or substantial relation to these objects, and for that reason is a clear invasion of the constitutional freedom of the people to use, enjoy or dispose of their property without unreasonable governmental interference, the courts will declare it void.” Colo. Anti-Discrimination Comm’n v. Case, 151 Colo. 235, 380 P.2d 34 (1962).

2. Typical is an April 7, 2020 Atlantic Council post “Lessons from Taiwan’s experience with COVID-19”: They discuss 4 lessons, but overlook the vital lesson — that general lockdowns and shutdowns are quite unnecessary. The title of an April 3 Democracy Now! post summarized this theme well: “How Taiwan Contained COVID-19: Early Action, Technology & Millions of Face Masks.”
A couple of rare exceptions to this mainstream tendency were a March 13 New York Times article, “They’ve Contained the Coronavirus. Here’s How.”, and a March 31 National Post article, “How Taiwan and Singapore managed to contain COVID-19, while letting normal life go on”. Outside the mainstream, and more in character, was a balanced, March 26 Mises Institute post.

3. According to a data-supplement to the Mar. 3, JAMA article:
– If 1+ in a class (student or teacher) at the K-9 level diagnosed with COVID-19, class is suspended for 14 days
– If 2+ cases in a school, school is closed for 14 days
– If one-third of schools in a township, city, or district are shut down, all others are closed
– If a student or teacher is diagnosed in a high school, college, or university, all classes they attend or teach is suspended for 14 days
– If 2+ cases of COVID-19 in an institution at any level, it will close for 14 days

Where’s the Data, Dr. Fauci?

“President Donald Trump may want to reopen the U.S. economy by Easter — but the novel coronavirus wreaking havoc across the globe may have other plans.

“Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, pointed out Wednesday that the virus is determining ‘the timeline’ for the pandemic.

“‘You’ve gotta be realistic,’ Fauci told CNN’s Chris Cuomo…. ‘You’ve got to understand that you don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline….

“‘You can’t make an arbitrary decision until you see what you’re dealing with. You need the data.’” [Emphasis added.] — HuffPost, 3-26-20

Note: On March 29, President Trump announced that he was extending the federal social distancing guidelines until April 30th.

Okay, Dr. Fauci, where’s the data? I mean the data you used in the beginning to justify the unprecedented government decision to shutdown the economy? Surely, you wouldn’t have accepted the notoriously unreliable Communist Chinese data? Even the often quoted data from the UN’s World Health Organization can’t be trusted, because WHO has an agenda to reinforce the UN’s global power grab.

Indeed, where’s the data that the coronavirus is more deadly or more communicable than other infectious diseases that the world copes with every year without shutting down? The American people deserve to know, particularly since the Internationalist Insiders dominating our government regularly use crises as pretexts for government to seize more unconstitutional power (see “Internationalist Treachery,” below).

According to Dr. Ron Paul, a former U.S. Representative, Fauci “testified to Congress that the death rate for the coronavirus is ten times that of the seasonal flu, a claim without any scientific basis.”

We hear statistics about number of cases and deaths, but how to those compare with say, the flu, or tuberculosis? Most Americans can’t readily make the comparison, and many cases of such diseases go unreported. (The CDC estimated that during the 2018-2019 flu season, the flu killed 34,200 of about 35.5 million people infected.)

Scaring Us
In a March 16th open letter, Dr. Paul further charged: “The chief fearmonger of the Trump Administration is without a doubt Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Fauci is all over the media, serving up outright falsehoods to stir up even more panic.”

And the impact of that panic is everywhere. Congress just passed a $2.2 trillion rescue package, which The Hill (3-25-20) claimed was “the single largest stimulus package in the nation’s history.” And that may be only a beginning.

The ostensible justification for the enormous addition to the national debt was to stimulate an economy that is in recession, not because of the coronavirus directly, but because of governments’ (federal, state, & local) response, using the hyped scare as justification for the unprecedented assumption of power. Only a lesser portion of the rescue package was devoted to defense against the virus itself.

On March 29th, Dr. Fauci ramped up his warning dramatically. According to The Hill:

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fauci said that, based on what he’s seeing, the U.S. could experience between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths from Covid-19.

“We’re going to have millions of cases,” Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, noting that projections are subject to change, given that the disease’s outbreak is “such a moving target.”

Unfortunately, his projections seemed to have been based on computer models, which even Dr. Fauci admitted were no better than the assumptions fed into them.

Internationalist Treachery
In evaluating the crisis claims, we have a right to demand proof, because for decades Internationalists have been employing evolving threats and scares to gain power — leading to global power, accountable only to them.

With the start of the Cold War, the threat was nuclear annihilation. But that shifted with the break-up of the former Soviet Union. As replacements, the Internationalists embraced new threats — drugs, terrorism, and environmental catastrophe — as pretexts for increasing the authority of International bodies.

In its November 24, 1997 issue, The New American magazine warned that Internationalists had adopted another alarmist threat — pestilence — to accomplish their aims. The report was entitled “Scaring Us Toward Global Government.” Remember that the following assessments were written two decades before the world heard of a “coronavirus pandemic:”

In recent years, yet another alarmist refrain has been heard: “World government or pestilence!” This latest crisis requiring global management is the threat presented by supposedly new infectious diseases. Where once we were menaced by megatons, the danger now supposedly comes from microbes — and familiar voices are insisting anew that only world government can save humanity from destruction.

As a tool for manipulating public opinion, the threat of pestilence actually has an advantage over the earlier scare scenarios: Nuclear annihilation of humanity, while a horrifying prospect, is simply too abstract to have a visceral impact. The same is true of environmental collapse. But everybody has been sick and can individualize the horror of succumbing to an incurable disease. Thus, the pestilence scenario may have far more potential as a tool for selling the public on globalist “solutions.”

In November 1993, President Clinton set up, by Executive Order, the National Science and Technology Council, which included a Committee on International Science, Engineering, and Technology Policy (CISETP).

The New American article cited a CISETP report as an example of “the willingness of public policy elites to play off media-generated fears of infectious disease.” According to the report: “[Th]e past few years have been marked by a recognition of renewed vulnerability to infectious diseases. Bestselling books and Hollywood thrillers have triggered public fascination with ‘new,’ deadly, and unpredictable microorganisms.” The New American continued:

The report noted that protecting the health of the “global village” demands “a worldwide response,” and “recently, public discussion has been further focused on the global issue of emerging diseases by … popular movies such as ‘Outbreak,’ starring Dustin Hoffman.”…

In the miniseries Pandora’s Clock, an airliner bound for JFK Airport in New York has the misfortune to be carrying a passenger infected with a doomsday virus. The plane is not allowed to land, lest the virus be loosed, and the government plans to shoot the plane down instead — another effective pitch for the idea that crises must be dealt with through extreme measures.

CISETP’s eagerness to cite Outbreak and similar entertainment products typifies a distressing willingness on the part of some public health officials to focus on lurid scenarios at some expense to sound science. The average American is largely at the mercy of domestic and international public health bureaucracies for information about infectious disease. This trust has been abused by public health authorities in recent decades.

For a more recent example of this strategy at work, check out our 11-24-19 post “Crisis-Hyping — What’s At Stake!”

But perhaps, this time, the Internationalists do have a real crisis to drive their power grabs. Perhaps. However, we also know that with sufficient focus, the Establishment media can make any problem, such as “gun violence,” appear to be a new pandemic. And there are several reports circulating claiming that the coronavirus statistics are exaggerated.

Data Alone Fallacy
Dr. Fauci’s claim that the virus data alone should drive government policy is a dangerous position. In particular, his claim supports the Internationalist Establishment’s agenda for totalitarian power. As several have pointed out, when the threat passes, government doesn’t give us our freedoms back. It insists that an ongoing threat warrants that government retain the new authority. As an example, consider the “temporary” surveillance authorities granted to government following 9/11 by the Patriot Act, now the U.S.A. Freedom Act.

The coronavirus, even if it deserves major attention, is by no means the only problem the public faces. Human mortality has not been conquered. In the meantime, the public deserves the opportunity to try and accomplish life’s goals, protected by government, not burdened by government-imposed “emergency” restrictions.

But most significantly, the arguments in favor of the government measures ignore the much more dangerous threat of a high-level Internationalist Conspiracy that lusts to expand government authority in perpetuity and is greedy for useful pretexts.

So if these Conspiracy Insiders have their way, this scare is not a onetime event. Indeed, Dr. Fauci has warned: “We really need to be prepared for another cycle” to hit later this year. And what about next year?

Multiple Gains
Establishment Internationalists are reaping multiple gains from their “crisis.” Alexander Hamilton pointed to a principal one:

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates…. [T]he continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free. — The Federalist No. 8

Hamilton’s warning is even more valid today, when there is a major organized Conspiracy for total power at work determined to undo the American revolution. But in addition to preparing the public to give up its rights and accept government domination, the Conspiracy gains in other ways.

A primary Conspiracy gain is the enormous addition to our national debt from massive government spending — more than 2 trillion dollars the government does not have. The consequences (inflation) and potential consequences (destruction of the dollar and its replacement with an International currency) are huge topics in themselves. Bloomberg just reported (4-1-20):

The Federal Reserve is trying to call time on a fire sale of Treasuries by foreign governments and central banks.

Foreign official holders of Treasuries dumped more than $100 billion in the three weeks to March 25, on course for the biggest monthly drop on record, according to weekly Fed custody data that captures much of the pandemic-fueled turmoil.

Another gain by power seekers is the destruction of small businesses, a pillar of a free market economy and of the middle class — a bulwark of freedom. Many other small businesses are to be put in hoc to the federal government. In an interview with Yahoo! Finance (published 3-31-20) Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s daughter and senior advisor, made the following observation:

“Small businesses employ close to 50% of the American workforce, and obviously are the most vulnerable from a cash flow situation,” she said.

The $2 trillion fiscal stimulus sets aside over $350 billion in loans for small businesses. “We want to just bridge people until the world reopens,” she said.

And last, and very alarming, the Leftwing Politico reports that the Trump administration has asked Congress to draft legislation that would allow it to suspend parts of the Constitution:

The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as the novel coronavirus spreads throughout the United States.

Documents reviewed by POLITICO detail the department’s requests to lawmakers on a host of topics, including the statute of limitations, asylum and the way court hearings are conducted — “DOJ seeks new emergency powers amid coronavirus pandemic,” 3-21-20

The USMCA Scam

The USMCA is the largest, fairest, most balanced, and modern trade agreement ever achieved. There’s never been anything like it…. This is a colossal victory for our farmers, ranchers, energy workers, factory workers, and American workers in all 50 states…. [Emphasis added.] — President Trump, 1-29-20, WhiteHouse.gov

Mexico has already ratified the latest version of the pact, which includes changes demanded by House Democrats…. Canada’s parliament is expected to ratify the agreement within weeks, which would allow the agreement to go into force in the next few months. —1-29-20, Wall Street Journal

The USMCA is a massive Internationalist power grab using trade as the cover. It is designed to submit the U.S. to increasing regional government, leading to tyrannical world government. However, in talking about the USMCA, the President and the Establishment media focus all their attention on the agreement’s cover — trade and jobs. But the USMCA is not all about trade and jobs.

The USMCA, and NAFTA before it, were designed by Internationalists as a ploy to lead to regional government, following the deceptions they used to trap the nations of Europe in the EU. Let’s look at some of the evidence, beginning with NAFTA and the EU. Then we’ll look at how the USMCA takes the betrayal even further (see “And Now, the USMCA,” below).

Foreign Affairs magazine
NAFTA was negotiated by the George H.W. Bush administration and signed in 1993. President Bush had been a director of the world-government promoting Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and was undoubtedly working to implement Internationalist goals. Two years earlier, the Fall 1991 issue of the CFR’s magazine Foreign Affairs revealed that Insiders were well aware that NAFTA was intended to follow in the EU’s footsteps:

The creation of trinational dispute-resolution mechanisms and rule-making bodies on border and environmental issues may also be embryonic forms of more comprehensive structures. After all, international organizations and agreements like GATT and NAFTA by definition minimize assertions of sovereignty in favor of a joint rule-making authority….

Top Insider Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and architect with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission, explained the regionalism strategy at Gorbachev’s 1995 State of the World Forum:

We cannot leap into world government in one quick step…. In brief, the precondition for eventual globalization — genuine globalization — is progressive regionalization, because thereby we move toward larger, more stable, more cooperative units.

Of course, these regional governments are naturally “more cooperative units,” because the CFR Insiders set them up as their babies.

The CFR planners — experts in psychology — long ago recognized the advantage of the regionalization approach over persuading all nations to accept a world master authority in one fell swoop. That advantage was the natural tendency to regard nearby nations as family when pitted (particularly economically) against distant nations on other continents.

Even so, nations are reluctant to merge with their neighbors. To accomplish their goal, the Insiders had to move in steps (“progressive regionalization” in Brzezinski’s words), while vehemently denying the destination of those steps. In Europe, they would offer elaborate pretexts to camouflage their intentions — until the nations of Europe were caught in the trap.

CFR Insiders Acknowledge Goal
Both David Rockefeller (former CFR chairman) and CFR heavyweight Henry Kissinger lobbied openly in the nation’s press for NAFTA. But they tipped their hand by announcing that much more was involved than just lowering trade barriers.

In a 1993 column that appeared in the July 18 Los Angeles Times, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared:

[NAFTA] will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere…. [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system.

A few months later, David Rockefeller championed the agreement in the Wall Street Journal: “Everything is in place — after 500 years — to build a true ‘new world’ in the Western Hemisphere,” Rockefeller enthused, adding “I don’t think that ‘criminal’ would be too strong a word to describe … rejecting NAFTA.”

The Marshall Plan
At the end of World War II, Congress approved the European Recovery Program (ERP) — a program of massive aid to Europe, popularly known as the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was actually developed by a CFR study group — headed by Charles M. Spofford with David Rockefeller as secretary.

In general, American Insiders have used foreign aid to saddle recipient nations with socialist policies and governments. The ERP certainly followed that pattern. But in Europe the aid was also used to promote European unification.

The most prominent public figure in this plan was millionaire-socialist Jean Monnet, who would earn the title “Father of Europe” for his “leadership” in the drive to build a united Europe. Monnet would subsequently acknowledge that Marshall funds were “used with the intention of encouraging European unity.” (See Chapter 7 “Progressive Regionalization” in Masters of Deception.)

A glimpse into the EU perfidy came to light in 2000 with the release of documents associated with Britain’s 1970 application to join the Common Market. British journalist Christopher Booker and Dr. Richard North (a former research director for an agency of the European Parliament) summarized the revelations in their excellent 2003 book, The Great Deception: A Secret History of the European Union.

“For 40 years,” says Booker, “British politicians have consistently tried to portray it [the Common Market and EU] to their fellow-citizens as little more than an economic arrangement: a kind of free-trading area primarily concerned with creating jobs and prosperity, which incidentally can help preserve the peace.”

Although the architects of the Common Market denied that political union was the object of economic union, the historical record reveals that from the beginning their intention was to create a European socialist superstate. At the 1948 Congress of Europe, chaired by Winston Churchill, Jean Monnet pushed through a resolution stating: “The creation of a United Europe must be regarded as an essential step towards the creation of a United World.”

NAFTA’s Chapter 11
The implementation bill for NAFTA (H.R. 3450) created a minimum of 33 new international commissions, committees, secretariats and sub-groups to oversee future North American trade. Chapter 11 of the agreement seems to have drawn the most attention. An article for the April 18, 2004 New York Times tells what was later discovered about NAFTA. Here are some excerpts:

“This is the biggest threat to United States judicial independence that no one has heard of and even fewer people understand,” said John D. Echeverria, a law professor at Georgetown University….

The availability of this additional layer of review, above even the United States Supreme Court, is a significant development, legal scholars said.

“It’s basically been under the radar screen,” Peter Spiro, a law professor at Hofstra University, said. “But it points to a fundamental reorientation of our constitutional system. You have an international tribunal essentially reviewing American court judgments.”…

The part of Nafta that created the tribunals, known as Chapter 11, received no consideration when it was passed in 1993.

And Now, the USMCA
Let’s keep in mind that the individual who negotiated the USMCA for President Trump was his chosen U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he was supported by many of the same people who developed NAFTA.

Some of the betrayal and deception is even apparent in a careful reading of Establishment sources. For example, according to the January 29th Wall Street Journal:

Not-So-New Nafta
At its core, USMCA is an amended, rebranded version of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994, along with some newer provisions that the Obama administration had negotiated in a Pacific trade pact that Mr. Trump exited. Both USMCA and Nafta essentially guarantee duty-free trade and economic integration in North America. [Emphasis added.]

However, with respect to the hidden power grab that threatens American independence and freedom, the massive 2,082-page USMCA accomplishes several advances over NAFTA:

• The USMCA establishes a North American Competitiveness Committee (Chapter 26): “With a view to promoting further economic integration among the Parties and enhancing the competitiveness of North American exports, the Parties hereby establish a North American Competitiveness Committee….” [Emphasis added.]

But economic integration is intended as a steppingstone to political union. Establishment historian Carroll Quigley affirmed that intention with respect to the 1957 signing of the treaties that created the European Economic Community (EEC or Common Market): “The EEC Treaty, with 572 articles over almost 400 pages … looked forward to eventual political union in Europe, and sought economic integration as an essential step on the way.” — Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World In Our Time, p. 1285.

• The USMCA creates a new Free Trade Commission (Chapter 30), which supervise 16 committees to manage agriculture, transportation, financial services, telecommunications, intellectual property rights, and more.

Article 30.6 says: “1. The Commission shall establish and oversee a Secretariat comprising national Sections…. Each Party shall: 1 (a) establish and maintain a permanent office of its Section and be responsible for its operation and costs… 4(d) as the Commission may direct: 1(i) support the work of other committees and groups established under this Agreement….” [Emphasis added.]

The Free Trade Commission can make changes to the agreement without the consent of Congress!

• The USMCA has a total of 34 chapters.NAFTA had only 22 chapters. The USMCA added new chapters to address issues such as labor (Chapter 23) and the environment (Chapter 24).

• After negotiating his first USMCA agreement, Lighthizer negotiated further changes to bring liberals and Big Labor on board. During the House and Senate debates, liberals repeatedly boasted that the changes they achieved would help ensure that Mexico obeyed the rules, particularly rules regarding labor and the environment.

But they were careful not to mention, whose rules would be enforced and who would control the enforcers. The rules will be Internationalist rules, such as edicts by the WTO, the Left-wing ILO, and UN conventions, and regional bodies subservient to the Internationalists will enforce the rules.

For example, during the December House debates over ratification, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) boasted:

This USMCA agreement before us is a vast improvement over the first version shown to us by President Trump and his team. We worked together, and it now includes critically important changes offered by Democratic members in order to ensure that its enforcement mechanisms are stronger, that it protects American workers…. I am glad that our House Democratic working group was able to secure new provisions to ensure that America’s trading partners uphold the rights of workers to unionize and bargain collectively. And I am glad that this agreement includes strong, rapid-response enforcement mechanisms that will allow us to block imports produced in facilities where these commitments are violated. [Emphasis added.]

Au contraire, Mr Hoyer. American workers need protection from the socialists in our government and the Establishment elite who are working to steal our freedom and destroy American middle-class opportunity. Low-wage foreign workers do not threaten American prosperity. Instead, middle-class opportunity has been undermined by the U.S. government’s carrots [e.g., the Export-Import bank] and sticks [taxes and regulatory burden] that have caused American capital — heavy industry and manufacturing — to move to socialist and Communist countries.

Representative Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, further amplified Hoyer’s claims:

When we assumed the majority this year, we were asked to consider a renegotiated NAFTA that had structural flaws in a key number of areas: enforcement, labor rights, environment, and access to medicines…. During these past 25 years, we have seen the shortcomings of the original agreement, much of which comes down to a lack of enforcement, in my view. House Democrats, working with Ambassador Lighthizer, fixed many of those issues. The improvements to the USMCA that we negotiated finally make the agreement enforceable by preventing a country from being able to block the formation of a dispute settlement panel….

On the rules, we strengthened certain provisions and addressed obstacles to enforcement in many others. On monitoring, for the first time we have created a proactive monitoring regime for labor obligations in a trade agreement. The implementing bill establishes an Interagency Labor Committee that will actively monitor Mexico’s compliance, and report back to Congress.

On enforcement, we negotiated a historic mechanism never included in a trade agreement before. As a result of Democratic efforts, we will now have a facility-specific, rapid-response mechanism to address violations of key labor obligations.

We have made great improvements to environmental provisions. The USMCA will now include the highest environmental standards of any trade agreement in history and will include a new customs verification agreement to enhance enforcement. [Emphasis added.]

But the USMCA’s environmental standards are not designed to prevent man-made climate catastrophe. Instead, those environmental standards are intended to help government, particularly unaccountable international government, control people.

Consider, for example, the claims of Representative Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon), a member of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Trade Working Group:

The renegotiated USMCA strengthens labor rules so that it will be easier to prove violations. It includes robust monitoring systems and strong enforcement tools, including people on the ground in Mexico to monitor compliance….

This final agreement also makes important advancements to protect our environment. It improves environmental rules, puts them in the text of the agreement, provides a path to reducing hydrofluorocarbon emissions… makes it easier to prove environmental violations….

We did, however, include a clause that creates a path for adding additional environmental and conservation agreements in the future. I will continue to do all I can to pass and implement bold policies to combat climate change. [Emphasis added.]

• The original NAFTA implementation was only narrowly passed by the House of Representatives (234 to 200). And in the following decades NAFTA lost much of its original support. But the USMCA was approved by huge bipartisan majorities (385 to 41 in the House). And this time, the agreement even had the support of Big Labor. With such broad support, the agreement’s architects hope to win American acceptance for the authority of the new bodies created by the USMCA. The few dissenters were primarily Leftist Democrats and socialist Bernie Sanders who wanted even more enforcement in the USMCA.

In Conclusion
The USMCA is not at its root concerned about promoting healthy trade. It is about establishing unaccountable Internationalist government force (intervention) and paving the way to eventual political union. Both the House and Senate overwhelming supported the USMCA scam (see, for example, our analysis of the December 19th House vote, Roll Call 701).

This alone should be evidence that our freedom calls for major changes in Congress. But that won’t happen as long as most opinion molders rely for their news on corrupted media sources embracing the Internationalist agenda. So please, share this wake-up call widely.

Let’s Learn the Lessons of History!

“Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” — President Donald Trump, Second State of the Union Address, 2-5-19

Unfortunately, uninformed resolve won’t stop the socialist revolution. The Newsweek cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now,” for its February 16, 2009 issue, published during the Obama administration, is once again timely and illuminating. During the subsequent 10 years the socialist revolution has continued to advance through a pattern of subversive deception.

“We Are All Socialists Now” is supported by a second article, “Big Government Is Back — Big Time.” We will comment on both.

In their cover story, the two Newsweek authors properly excoriate posturing “conservatives” for attaching the unpopular “Socialist” tag to Obama administration policies while ignoring the fact that Republican administrations had also supported socialism.

But these GOP “conservatives” are not hypocrites, as Newsweek seems to imply, but “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” For the Establishment weekly also took pains to portray the subversive socialist trend in big-government as a natural modern development (thus covering up the hidden orchestration) and something that should be embraced.

Not surprisingly, both authors of the cover story showed up on the 2008 and 2009 membership lists for the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

We list here a few of the article’s claims, followed by our (FFS) analysis:

Newsweek: “Whether we want to admit it or not — and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not — the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.”

FFS analysis: Newsweek deceptively ignores the fact that America is being pushed into socialism. Neither natural forces nor an informed public will are driving that revolution.

Newsweek continues: “We remain a center-right nation in many ways — particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the [2008 financial] crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism — but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.”

FFS analysis: Here Newsweek again covers up the orchestration behind our nation’s demise, by suggesting that our culture and “our instinct” are what drives Washington rather than merely serving as an obstacle for the Establishment to overcome. But even Newsweek admits that “our instinct” didn’t prevent “a conservative GOP administration” from enacting “the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years.” Nor does the Newsweek story give any attention to the orchestrated attack on our culture through government-controlled education or the push for massive unassimilated immigration, against the public will, from cultures that are far from center-right.

Newsweek: “If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world.”

FFS analysis: Here Newsweek tries once more to reinforce the pure illusion that some kind of “open debate” is actually deciding the direction of government. While the partisan winners and losers may not be “fixed,” the socialist direction of government is. In support of that fix, the Establishment-controlled media obscures political betrayal by entertaining the public with the equivalent of a professional wrestling match. And, of course, Newsweek never even suggests that there are any constitutional restraints on what government can or should do.

Newsweek: “Whether we like it or not … the [government spending] numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction…. But the simple fact of the matter is that the political conversation, which shifts from time to time, has shifted anew, and for the foreseeable future Americans will be more engaged with questions about how to manage a mixed economy than about whether we should have one.” [Emphasis added.]

FFS analysis: Here again, Newsweek seeks to reinforce the illusion that political conversation and a public engaged with questions are what is driving our nation’s subversion.

Newsweek: “During the roughly three decades since Reagan made big government the enemy and “liberal” an epithet, government did not shrink. It grew.”

FFS analysis: President Reagan gave very conservative speeches, but, contrary to Establishment myth, his administration was anything but conservative. Indeed, President Reagan chose several stalwarts from the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations, such as Secretary of State George Pratt Shultz and Vice President George H.W. Bush (a former CFR director) to run his administrations.

Newsweek: “Now comes the reckoning. The answer may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending.” [Emphasis added.]

FFS analysis: Here Newsweek perpetuates the power-grabbing Establishment mantra that government must run a modern economy. But just perhaps, when consumers decide not to spend, they may have a good reason.

Newsweek: “Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can muster.”

FFS analysis: Here Newsweek further supports the same power-grabbing deception that has also been used to justify the Federal Reserve: namely, that only the “best and the brightest” intellectuals can be trusted to prevent a market economy from imploding.

Newsweek’s supporting article
Newsweek’s supporting article, authored this time by Michael Freedman, is titled: “Big Government Is Back — Big Time, U.S. policymakers reconsider the relationship between government and the private sector.”

Right off the bat, we would ask: “When was big government away?” But let’s look at some of what the article is promoting.

This article regularly compares what was happening in the U.S. (in 2008-2009) with what was happening in France under President Nicholas Sarkozy:

Newsweek: “When Obama called Wall Street ‘shameful’ and greedy, he was articulating what the French have always thought, and endorsing Sarkozy’s recent dismissal of the ‘crazy’ idea that markets are always right.”

FFS analysis: While markets may not always be right, they have the right to be wrong. This applies to what consumers spend their money on as well. The clever sophistry that government force should supervise such decisions is merely a pretext for a government power grab.

Newsweek: “At its most basic level, the nearly $1 trillion U.S. stimulus package now being dissected on Capitol Hill is a fight over how great a role the federal government will play in what had been, for decades, private economic life. And while it’s impossible to know just what the day after the crisis will look like, the broad contours of the new economic world are becoming visible.”

FFS analysis: The “new economic world” sounds ominously like “a new economic order.” “Building a new economic order” is a phrase used by Internationalists (e.g., Trilateralists and CFR types) to refer to the process of consolidating global control. And Newsweek is just helping to lay an intellectual smokescreen for a new step in government control of “private economic life.”

Newsweek: “One of the more lasting effects will be a steady drift toward what could be called a European model of governance, regulation and paternalism…. More specifically, in the absence of a robust private sector (or at least public confidence in business) the U.S. government will be forced to fill the gap, firmly directing businesses in all sorts of ways — regulating some industries (particularly banking and the automotive sector) with big-brother vigilance, favoring others like clean energy with grants and loans, and turning still others — health care, pensions — into virtual wards of the state.”

FFS analysis: Who forces government to fill an ostensible gap? Not the public. Instead, opportunistic socialists seek to fill any gap they can claim exists. And constitutional protections against government overreach be damned.

Newsweek: “So aside from expanding the social safety net, the government will have to take a greater role in guiding business toward ends the state deems healthy for the overall economy.” [Emphasis added.]

FFS analysis: This outrageous endorsement of more government power is a blatant rejection of the limited government authorized by our Constitution. America’s founders understood from the historical record that unrestrained government led to tyranny and that “the state” needed supervision, not the other way around. Newsweek doesn’t identify whom it sees as “the state.” But it’s obvious that its state consists of Establishment Insiders who seek to build an unaccountable police state.

Newsweek: “But sentiment is moving toward some form of universal health care and will only grow if unemployment remains high.”

FFS analysis: Whose sentiment?

Newsweek: “Another way government can take a larger role, particularly in easing the burden created by low stock-market returns, is by introducing programs that forgive some or all college-tuition debt in exchange for public service, something Obama promised to do on the campaign trail.

FFS analysis: Newsweek’s endorsement of “public service” seems reminiscent of President Clinton’s inauguration of “national service” via the National and Community Service Trust Act. That Act created the taxpayer-financed Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which would include the AmeriCorps and VISTA. The bureaucracy that must be set up to administer these programs is not only highly expensive, but the “service” is generally of marginal value to the taxpayer. And most ominously, the idea of an expanded volunteer army serving the State harkens comparisons to Mussolini’s programs for service to the Fascist State. One should also consider why college education has become so expensive now that the federal government is placing increasing demands on colleges to create bureaucracy to enforce political correctness.

Newsweek: “This crisis-driven debate on the proper role of government is not confined to America. At the recent World Economic Forum….”

FFS analysis: The notion that there is a high-level debate on the proper role of government is absurd. The only debate is over how government can best gain more power through deception and manufactured crises.

Newsweek: “Bailouts, protectionism, talk of bank nationalization and a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package are not a socialist conspiracy, as some right-wing U.S. pundits and talk-show hosts insist.”

FFS analysis: We think Newsweek doth protest too much, while seeking to demonize even phony opposition as “right-wing”!

Newsweek: “Nonetheless, it is clear that a ‘centrist rebalancing’ is taking place even in America, says Sunder Katwala, head of Britain’s center-left Fabian Society, and that a prolonged period of slow growth will force the United States to become something more like Europe.”

FFS analysis: Center-left? Britain’s Fabian Society is out-and-out socialist. Indeed, one of its leaders, published The Story of Fabian Socialism. From its inception, the Fabian Society embraced a strategy of deception, patient gradualism, and permeation of other organizations. The Fabians would permeate and control the British Labour Party and the Socialist International. They would also establish roots in this country.

Border Enforcement Duplicity

We’ve heard it from every quarter: our immigration system is “broken.” And the current border crisis seems to confirm this. But wherein does its “brokenness” lie?

No one disputes that incentives drive the “flood” of immigrants northward toward the U.S.: Specifically, such incentives comprise “push” factors (motivating the migrants to leave their former country of domicile) and “pull” factors (attractive features of the life they anticipate in the U.S.). And now almost everyone says the basic pull factor — or “magnet” — is the attraction of our government’s continuing practice of “catch and release” — though this term turns out to be imprecise, with no exact legal meaning:

There’s no hard and fast definition, but “catch and release” usually refers to U.S. immigration authorities’ practice of releasing unauthorized immigrants while they await immigration hearings, rather than keeping them in custody.

With some exceptions, only children and asylum-seekers are eligible for this kind of release. They often stay in the United States for months or years while their cases wind through the courts. Many of them do not show up for court dates and end up settling in the country without authorization. — Salvador Rizzo, President Trump’s claim that Democrats created ‘catch and release’ policies, April 4, 2018

There is no reason to deny such analysis regarding incentives. And clearly it implies that “catch and release” is a major cause of our system’s “brokenness.” But it is all the more remarkable, then, that this consensus as to one of our border problem’s major causes has led neither to any solution, nor to cessation of our government’s practice of “catch and release.” Could it be that some high-level group designed this border problem never to see a solution?

The Government’s Excuse

For its part, the government holds a ready explanation of the reason for its continuing practice of “catch and release.” Media-gurus, political pundits, and officials in the Executive branch have been telling us — for years — that “our immigration laws need fixing!” For that law is — they say — full of “loopholes”!

Former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s standard blame-deflection went like this:

Until these loopholes are closed by Congress, it is not possible, as a matter of law, to detain and remove whole family units who arrive illegally in the United States.

So, according to Nielsen, the immigration law itself is tying the hands of the government.

President Trump has similarly blamed our immigration laws. On April 3, 2018 he complained, “We have immigration laws that are laughed at by everybody…. We have to change our immigration laws.”

Former Atty. General Jeff Sessions intoned likewise that “as President Trump has warned, the need to fix these loopholes and weaknesses in our immigration system is critical and overdue.”

A recent version of this accusation says, more specifically, that a main “brokenness” in our immigration law is the part which deals with asylum. Media pundits, Executive Branch officials, and White House communications have all been decrying the “asylum loopholes” allegedly crippling our immigration system.

A White House “Fact Sheet” of April 29, 2019 entitled “President Donald J. Trump Is Working to Stop the Abuse of Our Asylum System and Address the Root Causes of the Border Crisis,” explained (red and italics ours):

THE ASYLUM LOOPHOLE: Migrants are flooding to our border to use asylum to gain entry into our country and remain here indefinitely.

Our immigration system has reached a breaking point as we continue to see an overwhelming surge of migrants, with more than 100,000 arriving at our border in March alone.

As a result of loopholes in United States immigration law, migrants claiming fear are often released into communities across the United States, where they often remain indefinitely.

In order to remain in the country, they often fail to show up to court hearings, fail to file an asylum application, or fail to comply with removal orders once their claims have been denied.

Trump echoed the lament on May 30, 2019:

Trump said on Thursday [May 30] that he would not be closing the border as he has threatened numerous times. “The asylum procedures are ridiculous,” he added. “No place in the world has what we have in terms of ridiculous immigration laws.”

Informed Rebuttals of the “Blame Congress and the Immigration Law” Explanation

The standard, “law-loopholes are preventing good border-enforcement” account of our border crisis has its skeptics, however. And most of these skeptics are not amateurs: Rather, they are professionals (including researchers, writers, and Border Patrol agents) who have made it their job to understand our immigration system — and its malfunctions.

For example, Daniel E. Horowitz — who has been explicating the legal and administrative aspects of immigration for years — wrote in a recent post:

How much longer are we going to allow lawless acts of past administrations and lower courts to flip immigration law on its head and act as if the laws themselves are the problems? Our immigration laws aren’t broken, it’s just that carefully selected lower courts violate those laws as well as Supreme Court precedent, plus the executive branch has refused to enforce many laws that haven’t even been tampered with yet by the judges. The American people never voted for the system in place to today. In fact, the people’s representatives voted for the opposite.…

There is this dangerous perception that somehow our laws declared open borders or at least granted endless rights to avoid deportation until and unless we muster the votes to change the laws. The reality is the opposite.

In a post earlier that month, Horowitz mentioned that this is the view also of Brandon Judd, head of the Border Patrol union (NBPC):

Brandon Judd, head of Border Patrol Union

‘Political pundits, talking heads, scholars and politicians have convinced the American public that only legislation can solve the problem. They say there are too many immigration and asylum loopholes preventing the government from deporting illegal border crossers in a timely manner. They are all wrong.’

Those were not the words of yours truly, but of Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol union, in a Washington Times op-ed. He suggests we [should] actually just enforce the asylum laws [that are currently] in statute and have border agents at the front lines, not bureaucrats in other DHS agencies, take the lead on enforcement.

The talking point about the broken laws, in the media and even from the administration, have [sic] been so incessant and emphatic that most people probably think the laws require open borders unless Congress votes to change them. In fact, our laws are very clear that people who come to our border without proper documentation are all illegal aliens and must be deported. In 1996, Congress further updated those laws to preclude endless lawsuits.

Likewise, researchers and writers from the Center for Immigration Studies have rebutted much of this standard account of our border crisis.

Why It’s Untrue, that “Asylum Loopholes” in the Law Tie the Hands of the Executive Branch

The skeptics are correct — the ostensible loopholes are excuses without merit. In this section we will discuss the “asylum loophole,” which the above-cited White House Fact Sheet alleges. In a companion post, we discuss the other category of immigration-law loophole — those relating to minors and families — which the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) claims hinder the enforcement of our border.

There are at least four reasons why the narrative that “asylum loopholes have forced ‘catch and release’” does not hold water. Either of the first two demolishes the narrative all by itself. Let’s review all four, though — and make our point inescapable.

The President’s Unlimited Authority over Immigration

One thing that the media — who are helping push this false narrative — never tell the American people, is that the president has “plenary” (absolute, unrestricted) authority to exclude any and every alien he wishes — at any time. This is an authority that is subject to neither of the other branches of the federal government.

This plenary authority over immigration turns out to be both “inherent” and “delegated.” The president’s inherent authority is built into the very structure of our federal government. The president’s delegated authority over immigration is that which the immigration statutes attribute to the president explicitly.

The president’s inherent authority over immigration is a foundational, long-standing principle of U.S. constitutional jurisprudence, recognized and openly acknowledged by the courts for over 200 years. The authority stems primarily from the president’s constitutional authority over foreign relations. (Aliens are, after all, foreigners, not U.S. citizens.^[1])

One of the clearest judicial statements of this principle is in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Knauff v. Shaughnessy (1950):

The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty. The right to do so stems not alone from legislative power, but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation.

However, to make sure everyone understands the president’s plenary authority to exclude aliens, our immigration law makes it explicit:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. — INA, §212(f); which is at Title 8 U.S.C. §1182(f)

Therefore, all the other immigration statutes, taken together, couldn’t “tie the president’s hands” if they tried! For this one provision implies that not only those whom the law excludes are to be excluded; but also, any and all whom the president excludes.

The Low Percentage of Arriving Aliens Claiming a “Credible Fear of Persecution”

The impression one tends to get from the media is that the immigration surges of 2018–19 are, to a large extent, people seeking asylum. According to our same White House Fact Sheet, President Trump has said that “The biggest loophole drawing illegal aliens to our borders is the use of fraudulent or meritless asylum claims to gain entry into our great country.”

But based on reliable reports — including some from the DHS — no more than about 10% at any time have actually been claiming a “credible fear of persecution” — far less a percentage than that of “families” and “UACs” (Un-accompanied children) coming across the southern border. (Issues surrounding “families” and “unaccompanied children,” we discuss in our companion post.)

A DHS release of April 4, 2018 noted: “Before 2013, approximately 1% of arriving aliens claimed credible fear (asylum). Now 1 out of 10 claim credible fear.” And Carl Landrum, Deputy Chief Border Patrol Agent in the Yuma Sector (our third-hardest-hit sector, behind the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso sectors), stated in a Fox News interview on April 22, 2019 that in his area, “Only six percent of the people crossing the border are expressing a credible fear and requesting asylum.”

Daniel Horowitz finds that news disturbing: “This revelation means that our government has essentially vitiated the entire Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and has declared a de facto open border.… We are shredding every word of the INA and processing and releasing almost all of these people, even those who don’t express a credible fear, rather than immediately placing [and keeping] them in expedited deportation.”^[2]

The Extremely Low Percentage of Arriving Aliens Possibly Qualifying for Asylum

Another pivotal misconception which our media and Executive Branch have fostered is the notion that people fleeing violence or poverty in Central America are legitimate refugees. In fact, virtually none of them are. Rather, what they are is “economic refugees.” But the criterion which our law applies for refugee status (and thus asylum), is whether the alien has a “credible fear of persecution” — as that phrase is defined, very precisely, in our immigration law.

The crucial part of that definition to understand is the term “persecution”: Once you know the technical sense of that, you may understand why practically no one fleeing violence, poverty, disease, or what have you in Central America (or in Mexico) satisfies our law’s criterion for such a “credible fear.”

Here is our law’s criterion for a “refugee” — including what qualifies as “persecution,” in this context (emphasis in highlighted bold ours):

any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

That definition is in Title 8, §1101(a)(42)(A) — which section, and which definition of “refugee,” are then referred to in §1158, “Asylum.”

So, if that’s what a refugee is, what exact level of proof makes it “credible” (in this sense) that a person has a “well-founded fear” of such persecution? Title 8, §1225(b)(1)(B)(v) gives this definition (emphasis in highlighted bold ours):

[T]he term “credible fear of persecution” means that there is a significant possibility, taking into account the credibility of the statements made by the alien in support of the alien’s claim and such other facts as are known to the officer, that the alien could establish eligibility for asylum under section 1158 of this title.

What constitutes a “significant possibility” is undefined in the immigration law, and the standard has not yet been discussed in immigration case law. However, a USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) Basic Training Course for asylum officers has a helpful discussion of what constitutes that “standard of proof.”^[3] After reminding readers that the alien is “the party who bears the burden of proof,” and discussing a range of “different standards of proof [which] are relevant in the immigration context,” this training course says that the “significant possibility” standard requires the person bearing the burden of proof to “demonstrate a substantial and realistic possibility of succeeding” in establishing eligibility for asylum under section 1158. [Emphasis in original.]

Now, Central America countries — and Mexico, for that matter — are each made up of such a homogeneous mass of people, with regard to race, culture, and so forth, that these countries’ likelihood of having “persecution” for any of the above reasons is miniscule or non-existent. It is therefore (to use the USCIS training course’s terms) “a claim that has ‘no possibility of success,’ or only a ‘minimal or mere possibility of success,’ [and thus] would not meet the ‘significant possibility’ standard.”

Daniel Horowitz concurs:

This law was clearly written for a situation where a group is facing religious persecution, such as the Yazidis in Iraq. Nobody can say with a straight face that any of these people coming from the Central American triangle meet any of these five conditions [viz., persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion]. These are some of the most homogeneous countries in the world. There is no religious or ethnic persecution. And it is quite laughable to assume they are being persecuted for political opinions. Those teeming across our border are not a bunch of Madisonians railing against the lack of free markets in Honduras. — Daniel Horowitz, How Trump can protect the border without Congress

Jeff Sessions, former U.S. Atty. General

Thus, it’s clear that the legal standard of proof is being misapplied in credible-fear determinations — with disastrous results. Even Atty. General Jeff Sessions, speaking in October 2017, admitted that the credible-fear adjudication process was being “gamed”:

[T]he adjudication process is broken as well. DHS found a credible fear in 88 percent of claims adjudicated. That means an alien entering the United States illegally has an 88 percent chance to avoid expedited removal simply by claiming a fear of return.

But even more telling, half of those that pass that screening—the very people who say they came here seeking asylum—never even file an asylum application once they are in the United States. This suggests they knew their asylum claims lacked merit and that their claim of fear was simply a ruse to enter the country illegally.…

The system is being gamed. The credible fear process was intended to be a lifeline for persons facing serious persecution. But it has become an easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States.…

Our asylum laws are meant to protect those who because of characteristics like their race, religion, nationality, or political opinions cannot find protection in their home countries. They were never intended to provide asylum to all those who fear generalized violence, crime, personal vendettas, or a lack of job prospects. Yet, vague, insubstantial, and subjective claims have swamped our system.…

… As one immigration judge recently told me about the credible fear process, “any adjudicatory system with a grant rate of nearly 90 percent is inherently flawed.” … We can elevate the threshold standard of proof in credible fear interviews.^[4]

OK; but if they can elevate it — why haven’t they done so? According to Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, there have been “reports from whistleblowers at USCIS who say that [USCIS] asylum officers [currently the ones handling all fear-claim interviews] have been instructed by resistant career supervisors to ignore efforts by the Trump administration to return to deciding these cases according to the letter and intent of the law.”^[5]

The Necessity that Arriving Aliens Pass a “Credible Fear” Interview or Review

Yet another misconception which media and Executive Branch officials promote is the idea that any arriving alien can just claim a “credible fear,” and they will be released to await their asylum hearing. That is, the media never make clear that arriving aliens who cannot show valid documentation of legal immigration status are each put, immediately, into “Expedited Removal Proceedings” — and kept there until removal, unless that arriving alien instigates and passes a “credible fear interview,” (or an administrative review of that interview).

In short, as long as the alien is in Expedited Removal, they are held in mandatory detention. Thus, there is no question at all of some alien, having just arrived, being “caught and released” legally.

There is a lawful process which is, sometimes, informally classified as “catch and release” — but more properly called, “parole” — but one must argue that, administratively, in many cases it’s given too eagerly after a determination of “credible fear.”.^[6] But neither that legal procedure, nor any “asylum hearing,” is available legally to “arriving aliens” by their simply showing up and claiming a “credible fear” of persecution.

Rather, an “asylum officer” (who is from USCIS, as things are working currently,) conducts an “interview” regarding the alien’s credible-fear claim; and based on this interview, makes a determination regarding this claim. If that determination goes against the alien, and he or she wants to contest it, they can ask for an “administrative review” — which will be before an EOIR “immigration judge.” But all of that happens as part of what’s called “Expedited Removal Proceedings,” into which all “arriving aliens” (and some others) who have no documentation of legal immigrant status are placed automatically.^[7] (An important qualification: “Expedited Removal” is not the process which the law stipulates for “unaccompanied alien children,” or “UACs”; we discuss those in a separate, companion post.) And detention is mandatory all through those proceedings, according to the law.^[8]

In contrast, an “asylum hearing” does not happen for any such (adult) “arriving alien” unless the alien has been determined (during expedited removal) to have a “credible fear of persecution,” and been therefore removed from “expedited removal” proceedings and placed into “formal removal proceedings,” and allowed to make formal application for asylum. And only once they’ve made such application are they eligible for “parole.” And that is what so-called catch-and-release is, for “arriving aliens” — a “parole,” under Title 8 §1182(d)(5).

Legally, then, they cannot be paroled until they’ve been “determined” to have a “credible fear of persecution.” All of which implies that if they fail in that determination — and virtually all Central Americans would fail, were the determination conducted according to statute — then there’d be no question of our immigration authorities ever paroling them, legally, into our country. Ending the fraudulent determinations that these aliens have a “credible fear” would, therefore, end their “catch and release.”

Locating Our Immigration-System’s Real “Breakage”

Besides those related to asylum, there are other alleged “catch and release loopholes” which need addressing as well, such as those pertaining to “unaccompanied minors” — all of which we discuss in a companion post. Taking also those into account, we could summarize the “immigration loopholes” situation this way:

The DHS and DOJ are applying an inexcusably and illegally low standard of legal proof, in their credible-fear determinations. And this is the only reason that the vast majority of adult arriving aliens from Mexico or Central America are allowed out of Expedited Removal — with its mandatory detention — and (then) considered for parole (one kind of “catch and release”).
As we discuss in our companion post, the government is granting a thoroughly undeserved deference to the dubious features of Judge Gee’s 2015 ruling(s) on the FSA (Flores Settlement Agreement) — including a pivotal one that the Appeals Court overturned! And this is the only reason the government is saying that it must release minors within 20 days — and that it must release whole alien families that happen to include a minor.

Contrary to representations by the president, DHS administrators, and media, though, none of this is a matter of immigration law, or of the FSA (which has the force of law). Furthermore, even if the law did have an actual “loophole,” the president would not thereby be prevented from using his full, plenary authority to restrict — or even to shut down — immigration!

Thus, the loophole-skeptics are correct: there is no law-problem; there’s only an implementation-of-law problem, a lack-of-enforcement problem.^[9] In short, contrary to repeated claims by the Executive Branch and the media, the president has by no means required Congress to close alleged “loopholes,” in order to secure our border.

Of course, there are logistical challenges to stemming the current flood. But historically, the hope of catch-and-release has created most of the “magnet” attracting immigrants. And removing the main “pull” factor — that magnet — would have no less impact on the flow than had the mere anticipation of catch-and-release ending, which anticipation slowed immigration dramatically in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election. The logistical challenges could then be handled, as we have handled them in similar (if smaller) border crises time and time again.

Accounting for This Inversion of the Truth

The story of the immigration law’s culpability for our border crisis is so patently, undeniably false, that there is really only one way to account for its dominance in the media and Executive Branch statements: which is, orchestrated duplicity. More specifically: it is an agreed duplicity on the part of much — we’d estimate, most — of the media, and of many top administration officials, lower court federal judges — and even of many Congress-people, insofar as they remain silent in the face of this dangerous disinformation. But what could be motivating this orchestration of duplicity?

Well, if we recall that the Establishment — which controls most of the institutions spouting this story — wants open borders (as the FFS has often documented), then several plausible motives come to mind:

Laying the blame on Congress and immigration law diverts the public’s attention from, and tends to keep them ignorant of, those places in which the system is indeed broken (namely, poor enforcement of the law) — which diversion is crucial for continuing or growing the crisis.
Also, such misdirection has the potential — very appealing to the Establishment — of convincing the public (finally) that our immigration law needs a major overhaul — which overhaul, given Congress’s increasingly wishy-washy stance for strong borders, might well eviscerate our (heretofore basically sound) immigration law.
- Even if failing to find consensus for a major overhaul (a.k.a. “comprehensive immigration reform”), those seeking open borders may find enough consensus for one or more “amnesties” — which helps keep the crisis boiling.
Also, this crisis offers the ever-increasing possibility (again, appealing to the Establishment) of getting the public to accept an international “resolution” of the problem — which would make permanent of course, rather than repair, our loss of control of our border — through further bilateral agreements with Mexico and/or Central American countries, for example, or even reviving the development of a North American Union, and/or through inviting U.N. “Peacekeeping” troops in — “to help.” Any of those approaches to a “solution” would seriously sabotage our national sovereignty and independence.

There is, therefore, no reason to doubt that the current border crisis is intentional — created, not by Congress, but by conspiratorial elements controlling our media and Executive Branch (with supporting roles played by a few lower-court judges). And this lie about “immigration loopholes” is the main tactic keeping the public from realizing the true cause of the problem — which is intentionally inadequate enforcement by our government’s law-enforcement branch (the Executive).

What to Do

Clearly, the only way that this non-enforcement will be remedied, is for an informed, activated electorate to apply concerted pressure on the government to remedy it. But an electorate not informed, will certainly neither be activated. So, the widespread exposure of this fraudulent “loopholes” tactic is key. That is the most obvious mission we must undertake, therefore.

Less obvious is that we must also use such educational effort to grow — as rapidly as possible — the reach and level of understanding of the Internationalist, conspiratorial intrigue that is seeking to strangle our national sovereignty, independence, and freedom. Indeed, if we neglect this latter mission, then the public’s demand for border enforcement will continue to be betrayed, as it has been for decades.

Both of these are crucially important tasks. In pursuit of the first, if this article has been found enlightening and helpful, then it is certainly worthwhile to share it with friends and acquaintances.

Notes

1. And as such, they have no standing in courts mentioned in or created under the Constitution (in Article III). That is the basic reason the president is not subject to these courts’ rulings on immigration matters. However, note that the president does have a constitutional obligation to restrict immigration at least as much as the immigration law does — since he is responsible to enforce the laws. On the plenary authority of both “political” branches (i.e., the Legislative and Executive branches) over immigration, see the CRS (Congressional Research Service) Report 44969, “Overview of the Federal Government’s Power to Exclude Aliens”; and, for a much fuller and absorbing treatment, see chapters 4–8 of Daniel Horowitz’s insightful 2016 book Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges from Transforming America, Washington, D.C.: WND Books.

2. It seems disingenuous, therefore, to imply that asylum-claims are “tying the hands of” the Border Patrol. What are actually tying their hands are: the taking care of immigrants who arrive sick or hurt themselves clambering over a barricade (an agent must also stay with the immigrant while he/she receives medical care); and also — believe it or not — the running a courier service, to bring in immigrants who are waiting on the other side of the wall! This astonishing DHS policy forced Mr. Horowitz to ask: “[I]f we actively bring in even the illegal immigrants standing outside the fence and believe it is our duty to do so, then what would change if we had more walls?”

3. The training course is cited, on this matter, by the CRS (Congressional Research Service) “Legal Sidebar” 10150, “An Overview of U.S. Immigration Laws Regulating the Admission and Exclusion of Aliens at the Border.”

4. Andrew Arthur of CIS reported that “Credible fear is found in 75 to 90 percent of all cases reviewed by asylum officers.”

5. The quotation is via Daniel Horowitz. Ms. Vaughan suggests strongly, as a remedy for this perfidy, that Border Patrol agents, who are valid “immigration officers,” be trained therefore also as Asylum Officers — the kind of immigration officer which the law requires to conduct all credible-fear interviews — and then be allowed to handle such interviews, rather than being forced to hand over all credible-fear claimants to USCIS Asylum Officers. Brandon Judd, head of the Border Patrol union (NBPC) is strongly in favor of that as well — as is Daniel Horowitz.

6. The reasons for which the regulations and/or administration allow such a parole have traveled a long way from what the law stipulates: The law’s criterion for parole is that it must be for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” But the federal regulations (at 8 C.F.R. §212.5(b)(5)) make the nonsensical determination that this criterion for parole is satisfied for an alien “whose continued detention is not in the public interest.” (Why would it ever not be “in the public interest,” to detain until their removal aliens who have — according to our immigration law — no legal status or permission to be here?) Then, ICE Directive 11002.1 establishes that criterion as automagically satisfied for aliens found to have a “credible fear.” However, one weighty proviso in the regulations — carried over into the Directive — is also being cynically overlooked: the parole is to be awarded only “provided the aliens present neither a security risk nor a risk of absconding.”

7. A helpful, brief summary of the various proceedings, rules, and laws pertinent to admission or exclusion of aliens is available in the CRS (Congressional Research Service) “Legal Sidebar” 10150 — although it exaggerates the power and significance of the FSA, and especially of Judge Gee’s 2015 ruling (on which, see our companion post). This author found even more useful a pictorial representation of the different legal statuses “arriving aliens” go through, related to “expedited removal proceedings”; and so, has diagrammed the various state-changes — and events causing them — in the form of a UML “state-machine” diagram, which one may download from our server. (For any shortcomings of this state-diagram, the author is of course responsible.)

8. Nor can any lengthy delay precede any “administrative review” of their credible-fear interview’s determination: On the contrary, according to the law, this review “shall be concluded as expeditiously as possible, to the maximum extent practicable within 24 hours, but in no case later than 7 days after the date of the determination.”

9. However, something was put into law, so to speak, which was a sort of “loophole”; but it was not in immigration law, but in a short-term funding bill — and not until this year. That was the horrible stipulation, as to expenditure of the funds, in sec. 224(a) of the budget bill Trump signed on February 15. Thankfully, this toxic provision expires when the funding expires — at the end of September.

Groundless “Catch and Release” of Alien Minors

One principal explanation for our ongoing “catch and release” border policy — according to the Executive Branch and most of the major media — is that:

Legal loopholes are exploited by minors, family units, and human smugglers, and are a magnet for illegal immigration.… These loopholes create a pull factor that invites more illegal immigration and encourages parents to pay and entrust their children to criminal organizations that will smuggle them in — often while abusing and molesting those children along the way. — DHS Release, Unaccompanied Alien Children and Family Units Are Flooding the Border Because of Catch and Release Loopholes, Feb. 15, 2018

The two “legal loopholes” which this DHS (Department of Homeland Security) Release cites are the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA), 1997, and the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2008. The Release claims that these mandate, effectively, the Executive Branch’s “catch and release” policies for “unaccompanied alien children” (UACs), and for “family units” as well.

However, a careful look at these alleged loopholes shows that blaming them for “catch and release” is a red herring. Let’s examine each of these “legal loopholes” — in chronological order of creation — and what the DHS claims about them.

The Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA)

The DHS Release wails and gnashes its teeth about the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement — and, how it has spawned “multiple onerous court decisions that handicap the government’s ability to detain and promptly remove UACs.” More specifically, it alleges that the FSA handicaps such ability in two ways:

“Under the Flores Agreement, DHS can only detain UACs for 20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services which places the minors in foster or shelter situations until they locate a sponsor.”

But the limit of “20 days” appears nowhere in the Flores Agreement; it says only that the government must release a minor “without unnecessary delay.” In fact, it was Judge Dolly Gee, of the Central California Federal District Court, who in her ruling of July 24, 2015 read into that phrase, arbitrarily, the “20 days” meaning.

Moreover, the FSA applies the “without unnecessary delay” stricture to the minor’s release, only when “the INS determines that the detention of the minor is not required either to secure his or her timely appearance before the INS or the immigration court, or to ensure the minor’s safety or that of others.” [Emphasis ours.] So, if DHS could realistically say that, as a general rule, these minors were not going to show up for their removal hearings, then detention would seem absolutely “necessary [in order] to secure his or her timely appearance before the INS or the immigration court”; and thus, the FSA would not be mandating their release from detention.

But the DHS can realistically say that these minors are not generally going to appear — and indeed, they and other experts have often so implied. In fact, in this very Release the DHS complains that “UACs frequently abscond and fail to appear for their removal hearings before an immigration judge — with 66% of all removal orders for UACs from FY15 to FY17 resulting from a UAC’s failure to appear for a hearing”! How, then, can they turn right around and claim that under the FSA, “DHS can only detain UACs for 20 days before releasing them”?

The second way DHS claims that FSA — or at least, “recent rulings in the Flores consent decree litigation” — have handicapped the government is that it requires the government to release (without unnecessary delay) not just minors, but also any “family units” that happen to contain a minor. According to the Release:

The 100,000+ UACs who were released [from FY16 to date] are in addition to the more than 167,000 family units (i.e. alien children who are accompanied by an adult claiming to be a relative or guardian) that were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection from FY16 to date.

Nearly all of these Family Units are released into the interior of the United States because of judicially-imposed constraints on ICE’s authority to detain the entire family units as a result of recent rulings in the Flores consent decree litigation. [Italics ours; bold in original.]

This claim that parents of minors must, in general, be released with their minor children is so duplicitous, it’s astonishing. Here again, the FSA said no such thing: this is another invention of Judge Dolly Gee’s 2015 ruling. But don’t take our word for it: on this we can cite the cogently-argued ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (to which the government appealed Judge Gee’s ruling) in this very same case (Flores v. Lynch).

A year after Judge Gee’s District Court ruling, the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court overturned that ruling’s part which said the FSA gives minors’ parents a right to be released. Judge Andrew Hurwitz, writing the opinion for the Ninth Circuit Court, made it unequivocal that: “The district court erred in interpreting the Settlement to provide release rights to adults. The Settlement does not explicitly provide any rights to adults.…

The fact that the Settlement grants class members [of this lawsuit] a right to preferential release to a parent over others does not mean that the government must also make a parent available; it simply means that, if available, a parent is the first choice. — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Opinion on the ‘Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California,’ July 6, 2016, pg. 19

Thus, according to the Ninth Circuit Court ruling in this case, the Flores Agreement has no requirement whatsoever that family units containing minors be released.^[1]

The 2008 “Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act” (TVPRA; a.k.a. “The Wilberforce Act”)

The other “legal loophole” which the DHS Release cites is the 2008 TVPRA, or “Wilberforce Act.” The DHS Release suggests three distinct ways in which the TVPRA presents “catch and release loopholes.”

The Release’s arguments for changing these provisions of the TVPRA are all reasonable. But none of them is at all convincing as to why “catch and release” is continuing. For none of the three TVPRA provisions is at all capable of causing“catch and release.”^[2]

Thus, none of the “catch and release loopholes” which the DHS Release attributes to TVPRA seem genuine. On the other hand, the implementation of TVPRA has been disastrously mishandled — in ways that are tantamount to “catch and release” and do contribute greatly — and obviously — to this “magnet” that is causing recent border surges. It is worth taking a minute to see that these are not problems with our immigration law, but with how — and to what extent — the Executive Branch is enforcing it.

The serious problems in the way the government is implementing TVPRA are twofold:

they are ignoring TVPRA’s broad inapplicability to an immigration-inflow with few genuine UACs in it (“unaccompanied alien minors”).^[3] And,
they’re likewise ignoring the illegal immigrant-status of the vast majority of sponsors (including parents or legal guardians) the minors are being placed with.^[4]

Yet, again, this is all a matter of horrendous misapplication — rather than of bad law. Thus, as far as the TVPRA itself is concerned, it is hard to improve on CIS researcher Jessica Vaughan’s summary of its (non-)impact on the Executive Branch’s authority:

To be sure, the Wilberforce Act [i.e., TVPRA] could stand some tweaking. It complicates the processing of apprehended illegal-alien children from countries other than Mexico in ways that are easy for the immigration-advocacy industry to exploit, and it has proven to be very costly to administer.

But this law is not the main problem. Even if this Congress could agree on a fix, the effort would only distract from the larger issue of inadequate enforcement generally. It can be reasonably argued that most of the new illegal arrivals — including many of the children — are not even covered by the Wilberforce Act, since they were not victims of trafficking and are no longer unaccompanied after being reunited with their families…. Lawmakers should recognize that once again it is the president’s interpretation of the law that is the problem, not the law itself. — Jessica Vaughan Don’t Blame the Border Crisis on a “Bush-Era” Law

Conclusion

This and other DHS statements about the border crisis have claimed that both “legal loopholes” and “asylum loopholes” (as we discuss in a companion article) are “tying the hands” of the Executive Branch, such that:

… we are stuck with a system that sanctions catch and release. Due to legal loopholes and court backlogs, even apprehended illegal aliens are released and become part of the temporary, illegal population of people that we cannot remove. — DHS Release, Ibid., Feb. 15, 2008 [Emphasis ours.]

But it turns out this is just histrionics and hot air. The American people need to be aware of the falsehood of these claims. For they need to know where, precisely, and why our immigration system is breaking down.

And — even more importantly — they need to understand (as we discuss further in a companion article) that powerful, nefarious conspirators are trying to deceive us about it, hoping to leverage our misunderstanding so as to remove our control of our borders — on the way to destroying our limited-government system and our national sovereignty.

Notes

1. For another thing, even this imaginative construction in the 2015 ruling was crucially qualified — in a way the DHS Release neglects to mention: According to Judge Hurwitz (on pg. 4), the District Court ruling by Judge Gee “ordered the government to:

(1) make ‘prompt and continuous efforts toward family reunification,’
(2) release class members [of this lawsuit] without unnecessary delay,
(3) detain class members in appropriate facilities,
(4) release an accompanying parent when releasing a child unless the parent is subject to mandatory detention or poses a safety risk or a significant flight risk,
(5) monitor compliance with detention conditions, and
(6) provide class counsel with monthly statistical information” (emphasis ours).

Yet, arriving adult aliens are always subject to “Expedited Removal Proceedings” (unless and until determined to have a “credible fear of persecution”) — which do entail mandatory detention!

2. The three TVPRA provisions the Release cites are:

(1) “Under TVPRA, UACs [‘unaccompanied minors’] who are not from Mexico and Canada are exempt from prompt return to their home country [because, instead of being returned almost immediately, they must be put into “formal removal proceedings,” and transferred to the custody of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS)]. We must amend the TVPRA so that all UACs who are not victims of human trafficking, regardless of country of origin, can be safely and promptly returned to their home countries.”
The problem here is that “not returned immediately” does not logically imply, “caught and released.”
(2) “We must amend TVPRA to limit the period to file asylum claims for UACs to one year consistent with all other applicants for asylum and ensure that these asylum cases are heard only in immigration court (no second bite at the apple).”
(3) “We must end abuse of the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) visa to ensure the applicant proves reunification with both parents is not viable due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment and that the applicant is a victim of trafficking. This is necessary as many UACs are able to obtain a Green Card through SIJ status even though they were smuggled here to reunify with one parent present in the United States.”
This is a reasonable suggestion. But to allege this visa-law’s causal connection with “catch and release” overlooks that going through the process of applying for, and (eventually) receiving, a residence visa is not a sort of thing which people refer to as “catch and release.”

3. The legal sense of “UAC” (Unaccompanied Child) entails that “there is no parent or legal guardian in the United States; or no parent or legal guardian in the United States is available to provide care and physical custody” (emphasis ours).
Given this legal sense of the term, the TVPRA appears to be inapplicable to a vast majority of the children coming in the current border surge. As Daniel Horowitz writes (for Conservative Review), “a vast majority are placed with parents or other relatives who are already in this country illegally.” Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) corroborated that in 2018: “In FY 2014, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), most of the UACs who were released were placed with parents or legal guardians.” And CIS’s Jon Feere, in 2014, commented: “According to advocates and media reports, around 90 percent of non-Mexican and non-Canadian children coming across the border are placed with family or guardians in the United States.”

4. Joseph Kolb is one of few authors to have brought this second issue to light (emphasis in bold here ours):
“The TVPRA calls for the HHS secretary to have the [unaccompanied] children promptly placed in the least restrictive setting that is in their best physical and emotional interest. This is the loophole HHS uses to place children with designated sponsors [who are] illegally in the United States. The law only refers to checking the sponsors’ immigration status, not [to] acting upon it. The perception by ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement, within HHS] is that regardless of immigration status, placing the children with a parent is the preferred solution. The AP report found that more than 50 percent of the children were placed with parents.”

Democracy, Tyranny, and the NPV Compact

“The Constitution is nicely balanced, with the federative and popular principles; the Senate are the guardians of the former, and the House of Representatives of the latter; and any attempts to destroy this balance, under whatever specious names or pretenses they may be presented, should be watched with a jealous eye.” — Senator Uriah Tracy, in the U.S. Senate debates over the proposed 12th Amendment (adopted 1804)

“The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the president is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68

“No matter what happens in America these days — whether by fate or by plan — there is almost always another agenda or some underlying hitch ancillary to the main theme. The Bush-Gore election crisis of 2000 was nothing but a comic opera compared to the events subsequently stemming from it. Among the far more serious evils attributable to the contested election result in Florida is a loud and clear trumpet call for America to DUMP THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE and replace it with direct national elections.” — Don Fotheringham, January, 2001

Overview: The National Popular Vote (NPV) interstate compact seeks to overturn an important part of the plan America’s founders gave us for selecting a president. The drive for the compact is well on its way to becoming reality. Working below the public radar, the drive has already convinced many state legislatures to join the compact. This scheme has flourished because it promises to further enthrone the false idol “democracy,” which our founders recognized as a tool of tyrants (we are a Republic, a rule of law, not a democracy). In this article, we will examine the beguiling NPV pretenses, the original plan of those who wrote our Constitution, how their plan has already been perverted, and why the NPV Compact is a dangerous step in the wrong direction. And most importantly we will provide readers with the information and perspective they will need to influence legislators in their state to resist the drive.

Anyone researching the drive for an NPV (National Popular Vote) compact between states confronts a bewildering paradox:

As the NPV website says openly: “The shortcomings of the current system of electing the President stem [not from the Electoral College, but rather] from ‘winner-take-all’ laws that have been enacted by state legislatures in 48 states.”
Yet, what the NPV compact does, in essence, is not to repeal or neutralize these state laws, but instead to translate this “winner-take-all” electoral system from the state-vote level to the national-vote level!

Clearly, there’s more going on here than meets the eye: A national drive which would nullify the Electoral College — without actually abolishing it — justifies its agenda by a critique that points rather to a very different, almost diametrically opposite solution. If we’re to understand the NPV-compact drive, this paradox needs an explanation.

What are the drive’s complaints, then? Why is the Electoral College immune to the critique? Why, and when, did the states’ “winner-take-all” laws arise? And, why does the NPV seek to rectify them with such a strange, unseemly antidote? In answering these questions, we shall draw heavily on the NPV’s own website — mainly to deflect suspicion that we are misrepresenting their position.

The NPV Website’s Complaints
To its credit, the NPV website’s helpful “explanation” page attributes only to state “winner-take-all” laws — rather than to the Electoral College — the situations which it decries. It is quite correct in blaming these situations on these state laws — which have strongly interfered with the functioning and fundamental intent of the (so-called) Electoral College which the Constitution outlines — and, in saying that these state laws have no basis in the Constitution.

The complaints which one finds on this webpage are curious, though, in that clearly they are based on policy-values having little to do with the foundational American system and philosophy of government. Consequently, for those of us not starting from alien, non-American values, the three “issues” the group raises are without force — even if their connections of cause and effect are valid.

The two complaints which the webpage lists first will unlikely tug on the heartstrings of many: One is that “Because of these state winner-take-all statutes, presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion.”

This complaint assumes — quite contrary to America’s founding fathers — that campaigning and getting voter-input are both vital parts of a presidential election. Moreover, it makes the outlandish assumption that an electoral candidate who does campaign should be careful to do so just as much in districts where support is overwhelmingly for or against that candidate. (What political campaign-advisor ever urged such a thing?)

The second complaint is scarcely more captivating: “State winner-take-all statutes adversely affect governance. ‘Battleground’ states receive 7% more federal grants than ‘spectator’ states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.” But given that all these examples of skewed “governance” are unconstitutional, gratuitous, and illegitimate to begin with, blaming them on the electoral laws seems off-target.

The complaint which people will most likely have heard, the website expresses thus:

“[B]ecause of state winner-take-all statutes, five of our 45 Presidents have come into office without having won the most popular votes nationwide. The 2000 and 2016 elections are the most recent examples of elections in which a second-place candidate won the White House. Near-misses are also common under the current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes. A shift of 59,393 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have elected John Kerry despite President Bush’s nationwide lead of over 3,000,000 votes.”

Interestingly, this complaint is non-partisan: The data the webpage cites show clearly that Republican candidates may be affected by this phenomenon as well as may Democrats.

However, the complaint is also non-American, in the sense that it is based wholly on a non-American political-philosophical assumption — the bare, unargued assumption that presidents should not “come into office without having won the most popular votes nationwide.” The website neglects to elucidate why such an occurrence would be reprehensible.

More fundamentally, it fails to explain why there should be, in any U.S. presidential election, such a number as the “popular votes nationwide.” Nowhere does the Constitution suggest this — not even in the 12th Amendment (which modified the workings of the Electoral College). However, understanding this requires at least a basic overview of the Electoral College, as the Constitution establishes it — a detour which we shall now briefly take.

The “Electoral College”
Regrettably, that NPV webpage seems to buy into the primary misconception Americans hold about the Electoral College: for it states [emphasis ours]:

“The U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1) gives the states exclusive control over awarding their electoral votes: ‘Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….’ The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is state law. It is not in the U.S. Constitution.”

On the contrary — not only is the “winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes … not in the U.S. Constitution,” neither is this whole, bizarre notion of state legislatures’ “awarding their electoral votes.”

The “electors” which the Constitution directs each state to appoint were not “messenger-boys” obligated to cast votes as directed; rather, they were the persons appointed in each state (in whatever way the state legislature chose), to cast their free, uncoerced votes to nominate other persons they deemed suitable for the offices of president and vice-president.[1]Except when a majority of the electors voted for the same person, the election of the president — from among the candidates with the most electoral votes — was then to be made by the House of Representatives — with each state’s delegation casting one vote.[2]

It is crucial to understand that neither in the original Constitution, nor under the 12th Amendment, were electors to be obligated, or even influenced, by either their state legislatures, or other Electors (from their own or other states):

“It is significant to note that there was to be no connection with the Electors of other states, no campaigning, no trading of votes for future influence, or “supporting your program if you support mine.” They were to give it their best shot first — because that was the only shot they had.

“In fact, the Electors met in their separate states on the same day to avoid the chance of collaborating with the Electors from other states during this process. The Electors in each state were able to freely discuss among themselves which individuals were most qualified to be president. They were not, however, forced to conform to the nominations of other Electors from their state. Each Elector’s independent decision of which two individuals to nominate was preserved and respected.” — Gary and Carolyn Alder, The Evolution and Destruction of the Original Electoral College, pp. 23, 24

In order to help ensure this independence, no elector could be a “Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States.”

Each state was allotted as many electoral votes as it has legislators in Congress — i.e., one vote for each of its representatives in the House, plus two votes for the state’s senators. Perhaps the most natural selection method(s), then, would construe two of the state’s electors as being delegates of the state (or the legislature) as a whole, and each remaining elector as a delegate from one of the state’s electoral districts for U.S. House of Representatives.

The latter is still the basic idea in those states which are currently eschewing “winner-take-all” laws: Maine and Nebraska. But each state legislature could adopt any method it wished for selection of its electors; and different states adopted widely varying methods. The NPV “explanation” webpage reports:

“In 1789, electors were chosen from congressional districts in Massachusetts, from special presidential-elector districts in Virginia, and by counties in Delaware. The Governor and his Council appointed the state’s presidential electors in New Jersey. State legislatures appointed presidential electors in the other states.”

The States’ “Winner-Take-All” Laws
We’ve noted that the NPV website’s arguments against states’ “winner-take-all” laws are, rather curiously, without force for those of us not buying into their policy-value assumptions — so alien to the American system. However, this does not mean that we have no complaint(s) of our own, against such laws.

In light of what we’ve just seen about the Constitution’s presidential-electoral system (commonly called the “Electoral College”), the most important thing to understand about “winner-take-all” laws is that any law (state or federal) which compels a presidential elector to vote any particular way is blatantly unconstitutional! That includes, of course, the NPV Compact.

Secondly, it’s helpful to note that such laws, at the state level, are the basis of the unconstitutional party-based-presidential-nomination systems in the 48 states with current “winner-take-all” laws. In these states, the electoral procedure these days is basically this: Each of the major parties selects a whole roster of provisional “electors” who are ready and sworn to serve as electors — and to vote for that party’s candidate — should that candidate happen to win the state’s popular vote. In the latter eventuality, the state legislature then anoints (so to speak) that party’s roster, as the state’s official electors for the election.

The nomination-function was originally the role of the electors. It was usurped first at the national level — by what were called “congressional caucuses.” By 1828, though, the usurpation had moved to the state level: The first election year in which the political parties and their “caucus” meetings at the state level assumed control of the nominating process, was 1832.[3]

Surprisingly, it took less time than that for most states to try out a “winner-take-all” type of statute. The first heavily competitive election, that of 1796, raised strongly the question of whether states’ electors should be chosen “by a general ticket [winner-take-all], or by districts”: This was how Democratic-Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson framed the issue in a subsequent letter (Jan. 12, 1800) to James Monroe, then governor of Virginia — and likewise a Democratic-Republican.

Jefferson was still smarting from having lost the presidency by only three electoral votes “because presidential electors were chosen by district in the heavily Jeffersonian states of Virginia and North Carolina, and Jefferson lost one district in each state.”[4] In addition, both major parties (Democratic-Republican and Federalist) were disgruntled by the fact that the Electoral College system had engendered a bipartisan team of President (Federalist John Adams) and Vice-President (Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson).[5]

In his letter, Jefferson mentioned to Governor Monroe:

“On the subject of an election by a general ticket [winner-take-all], or by districts, … all agree that an election by districts would be best, if it could be general [to all states]; but while 10 states choose either by their legislatures or by a general ticket [winner-take-all], it is folly and worse than folly for the other 6 not to do it.”

Gov. Monroe took the hint, and the Virginia legislature swung into action:

“As a result, Virginia quickly passed a winner-take-all law in time for the 1800 election — thereby assuring Jefferson of all the state’s electoral votes.

“Meanwhile, the Federalist majority in the legislature of John Adam’s home state of Massachusetts — alarmed by rising support for Jefferson in the state — repealed the state’s district system — thereby assuring John Adams of all the state’s electoral votes in 1800.

“This triggered a domino effect in which each state’s dominant political party adopted winner-take-all so that it could deliver the maximum number of electoral votes to its party’s nominee. Ten states enacted winner-take-all by 1824….

“By 1836, all but one state had enacted laws specifying that their state’s voters would vote for presidential electors on a winner-take-all basis. By 1880, all states were using this system.”[6] — NPV “explanation” webpage

And, as they say, “the rest is history.”

The Strange “NPV” Antidote
Summing up: We’ve found that we who are Constitutionalists are in strong agreement with the NPV group, that the state “winner-take-all” laws are egregious — but we are in fundamental disagreement with them, as to why those laws are (in our respective views) egregious. What is less simple to elucidate, though, is why the NPV group’s action-proposal — the interstate-compact which they are pushing — displays no intent to do away with those state laws, even though it lodged all its complaints directly against them — and why it is even, in an important sense, a higher-level establishment of the same corrupt, “winner-take-all” system which those laws undergird.

What do we mean, by its “displaying no intent” to do away with the laws it is critiquing? Let’s look at exactly what the NPV group is proposing.

They are seeking for states to enter into a compact to force their electors to vote for whomever is the winner of the “National Popular Vote.” The compact would not be binding on any state signing it, until the total number of electoral votes of the states signing it is a majority of all the electoral votes.

Since Congress has 535 members, but the District of Columbia has also been given three electors, the total number of electors is 538; so, the required majority of electors is 270. When the compact enrolls states controlling at least that number of electors and those states’ electors are therefore required to vote for the national popular-vote winner, that candidate is (ostensibly) guaranteed election.

As we’ve mentioned already, this proposal is establishing something that’s clearly unconstitutional — the violation of electors’ constitutional right and duty to nominate the qualified persons whom their conscience tells them are the best nominees. That this is so clearly and incontrovertibly the case, while the NPV site argues nevertheless to the contrary, raises serious questions about the veracity and reliability of the NPV-site’s authors (and editors).

Even the NPV website admits (see its alleged “rebuttals” 9.16.2 and 9.16.7):

“[T]he Compacts Clause does not expand state powers. All compacts must be consistent with the U.S. Constitution. In particular, a compact’s subject matter must be among the powers that the states are permitted to exercise….”

As we’ve seen as well, though, they make a grave, even bizarre error, in conflating states’ (constitutional) power to “appoint electors” in any manner they wish, with their (unconstitutional, illegal) power to “award electoral votes” in (allegedly) any way they wish (e.g., “winner-take-all”). And this bizarre confusion appears, not just once, but repeatedly on the website’s pages — particularly on the pages where it is ostensibly “answering myths.”

On the basis of that (false) conflation of two very different notions, it argues that this compact does not violate the Constitution, nor change the electoral procedure stipulated in the Constitution. Much of the verbiage on its “Myths about Interstate Compacts and Congressional Consent” page boils down to this simple, but obviously unsound argument:

“[T]he National Popular Vote compact does not change anything in the U.S. Constitution, and therefore no federal constitutional amendment is necessary …. Instead, the National Popular Vote compact changes state winner-take-all statutes that came into widespread use more than four decades after the Constitution was ratified. None of these state winner-take-all statutes was originally adopted by means of a federal constitutional amendment.” (Under “Myth 9.16.7”)
1. The state laws say (in effect): “Following the election, the state will appoint electors who are to cast all their votes for the STATE popular vote winner.”
2. The compact changes these state laws, to say (in effect): “Following the election, electors will be appointed in each Member State who are to cast all their votes for the NATIONAL popular vote winner.
(And this is the faulty premise:) Nothing about state “winner-take-all” laws violates the actual procedural requirements laid down in the Constitution; for each state has the Constitutional authority to “award electoral votes” in any way it wishes (e.g., “winner-take-all”).
So, no Constitutional amendment is necessary to effect this change: for not only does this compact leave unchanged the wording of the Constitution; also,it leaves unchanged — i.e., unviolated — the actual procedure required by the Constitution.

Thus, not only are the NPV group’s arguments for the desirability of its changes based on highly disputable premises; but also, its argument for the legality of its changes, is based on an indisputably false one. So, the question is: Why would a group of presumably intelligent people be presenting — so zealously — such unsound arguments?

There are not very many plausible answers to this. Indeed, we have seen that both the current system’s and the NPV-engineered system’s proponents are quite comfortable with running roughshod over the Constitutional prerogatives of the electors, for the sake of a direct, popular-vote-based presidential election. The difference between the two is thus a surface difference, of implementation and tactics, only.

Let’s take an analogy: It is much like the difference between banks independently allowed to issue their own fiat paper money as “legal tender,” and a centralized banking system, in which only the head office is allowed that piratic privilege. Whether centralized and thus more-coordinated or not, the system is based on a breach of rights. And in either of the more-centralized systems we have in view, though the bumpiness of the road might be rather smoothed out, the danger that the road is heading to disaster — and the potential size of that disaster — are,if anything, actually greater.

The only plausible motive for the compact, it seems, is the same one that belonged, reportedly, to the men who set up the perverted system we have now — the lure of power:

“Ten states enacted winner-take-all by 1824 when Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton said: ‘The general ticket system [winner-take-all], now existing in 10 States was … not [the offspring] of any disposition to give fair play to the will of the people. It was adopted by the leading men of those states, to enable them to consolidate the vote of the State.’”— NPV “explanation” webpage

This lure exists because granting the populace the conceit that it is in their own values and desires, and the vicissitudes of party temper, that the compass of sound government lies, promises demagogues a road to the heights of tyrannical power. Even before our Constitution was submitted for ratification, one founding father spoke of this conceit as the “excess of democracy”, and described its typical abuse by power-seekers:

“The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Mass[achusetts] it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute.” — Elbridge Gerry, delegate from Massachusetts, speaking at the Constitutional Convention, 1787

And James Madison warned us of this same conceit, in a classic statement of the dangers of this “excess”:

“[Pure] democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”— James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10

The Way Forward
What should be done, instead, about our current electoral system? Given a desideratum of nullifying state’s “winner-take-all” laws — and any laws that coerce or obligate presidential electors — and given that it was fear of other states’ such laws that drove the domino effect of passing them — the idea of a state compact seems apt: Why not an NEV (National Electoral Vote) compact? When enough states have joined (having 270 electoral votes?), they would each be obliged to rescind immediately their laws that coerce or obligate their presidential electors in any way.

That’s something to be thought about, and worked through. In the meantime, though, we should certainly reject the NPV-group’s agenda. That whole program is an attempt to “remedy” — for the wrong reasons, and with the wrong motive — one grotesque perversion of the Constitution, simply by translating its basic state-vote infringement, to a national-vote scope. This is not the way to get our republic back.

Rather, we need to educate our fellow citizens, and especially our state legislators, about both the fraudulence and the ill-intention of the NPV. (To see whether or not your state has adopted the compact, please check the NPV website’s home-page.) If you have found this article a useful tool for education about those things, please share it with all who need to learn of them.

Notes

1. Their votes were, of course, restricted by the Constitution’s rules about who is eligible to be President or Vice-President; and, in both Article II and Amendment 12, at least one of each elector’s two votes had to be for someone not “an inhabitant of the same State with themselves.”

2. The main change the 12th Amendment introduced is that the two nominations each elector made were now specific to a particular office: one nomination was for the office of president, and the other for the office of vice-president. Also, the Amendment made some minor adjustments to the process of final selection by the House, for each of these offices.

3. Alder & Alder, Ibid., pp. 54, 55. This is a useful book for studying the history of the Electoral College.

4. NPV “explanation” webpage, under “History of State Winner-Take-All Laws.”

5. Alder & Alder, Ibid., pp. 60, 61.

6. Maine adopted district elections for its electors in 1969, and Nebraska did so in 1992.

January (2015) Action Report

Intentional Obscuring of the Fundamental, Radical Social Difference between “Surveillance” Approaches

The Real Basic Difference

Taiwan’s and Singapore’s Responses to the Coronavirus

Sweden’s Thoughtful, Commonsensical Approach

The Take-away from These COVID-19 Experiences — Oh, and Hong Kong’s!

The Government’s Excuse

Informed Rebuttals of the “Blame Congress and the Immigration Law” Explanation

Why It’s Untrue, that “Asylum Loopholes” in the Law Tie the Hands of the Executive Branch

The President’s Unlimited Authority over Immigration

The Low Percentage of Arriving Aliens Claiming a “Credible Fear of Persecution”

The Extremely Low Percentage of Arriving Aliens Possibly Qualifying for Asylum

The Necessity that Arriving Aliens Pass a “Credible Fear” Interview or Review

Locating Our Immigration-System’s Real “Breakage”

Accounting for This Inversion of the Truth

What to Do

Notes

The Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA)

The 2008 “Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act” (TVPRA; a.k.a. “The Wilberforce Act”)

Conclusion

Notes

Notes

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