Two men hope to make Colorado the first state to redistribute income 

Two men hope to make Colorado the first state to redistribute income

March 14, 2018 By Sherrie Peif

DENVER
— Two Denver-area activists are looking to make Colorado one of the
first states to test a theory that the redistribution of income empowers
the poor and leads them to contribute positively to the economy.


Kevin Neal Patterson II, the son of Connect for Health Colorado Chief
Executive officer Kevin Patterson, and Eric Leveridge, a policy analyst
for United for a New Economy (UNE), have filed more than a dozen ballot proposals hoping to change the state’s constitution so that those earning above $300,000 per year will pay a much higher income tax.


That money would then be redistributed to anyone who qualifies for
the Earned Income Tax Credit, generally those who earn under $70,000.


UNE was involved in raising Colorado’s minimum wage.


The idea of direct cash payments, however, doesn’t belong to
Patterson and Leveridge, instead, the timing of the filings very closely
coincides with the release of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes’ new
book, Fair Shot, which outlines his idea that wage earners in the top 1 percent should pay the way for those less fortunate.


Hughes calls the plan Guaranteed Income. Variations of the idea have
been put forth as far back as the 1960s by Martin Luther King Jr. and
economist Milton Friedman.


Hughes’ organization The Economic Security Project is currently funding a pilot project to test the idea in Stockton, Calif. known as Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED).


SEED will begin giving qualifying residents of Stockton $500 per
month later this year to help stimulate the economy and help low income
residents out of poverty, the projects website says.


Hughes said in a 2016 blog:


“Put simply, in a time when all other economic stimulus tools have
been tried or filibustered and median incomes have not budged, cash
transfers could be the necessary spark to improve the standard of living
of American households.”


The two Colorado men have their own histories of involvement in social causes. Leveridge’s biography on the UNE website
says he has a passion for “economic justice.” He is originally from
Oklahoma and started his career as an immigration law and policy and
international human rights attorney. He moved to Denver in 2015.


Patterson’s Facebook page depicts multiple Black Lives Matters protests and events across the county that he has either attended or helped organize.


All the proposals have either already had their titles set or are being reviewed by the Legislative Council staff.
 They are all similar in that the new taxes would pay for a tax credit
program outlining a $2,000 refundable tax credit — either monthly or in
one lump sum — for taxpayers who qualify for the Earned Income Credit.


The differences include:

• Changing the income tax amount from a flat 4.63 percent paid by all
  Coloradans to 9.87 percent for those earning more than $300,000.
• Changing the income tax amount from a flat 4.63 percent paid by all
  Coloradans to 11.8 percent for those earning more than $500,000.
• How much can be retained by the state to pay for the program.
• Allowing the tax credit to qualified caregivers.
• Allowing the tax credit to students.

Neither Leveridge nor Hughes returned requests for comment. Patterson II could not be reached.


Before his current idea of increasing taxes on the 1-percenters,
Hughes outlined a carbon tax to pay for the idea and pointed to the Bush
administration during the recession as inspiration and proof his idea
would work.


“Fortunately, in the United States there is recent precedent for
helicopter money’s effectiveness and bipartisan appeal,” Hughes said in
his blog. “In the spring of 2008 as the country teetered on the brink of
what would become the Great Recession, a bipartisan majority in
Congress approved a rebate plan that George W. Bush signed into law.
Over the course of the spring of that year, all American adults making
less than $75,000 received a check for $600 in the mail. While it wasn’t
enough to stave off the recession, research in following years showed
that it was a powerful boost to the economy with between 50 and 90
percent of the funds being spent by recipients, much of it on durable
goods.”


Hughes said on his Twitter account that abolishing income inequality
is a top priority for him: “I spend most of time thinking about how to
combat income inequality through the guaranteed income.”

The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution

The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution - Fourteenth Amendment - anchor babies and birthright citizenship - interpretations and misinterpretations - US Constitution

Original intent of the 14^th Amendment

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads in part:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the
State wherein they reside."

Babies born to illegal alien mothers within U.S. borders are called anchor babies
because under the 1965 immigration Act, they act as an anchor that
pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives
into permanent U.S. residency. (Jackpot babies is another term).



The United States did not limit immigration in 1868 when the Fourteenth
Amendment was ratified. Thus there were, by definition, no illegal
immigrants and the issue of citizenship for children of those here in
violation of the law was nonexistent. Granting of automatic citizenship
to children of illegal alien mothers is a recent and totally inadvertent
and unforeseen result of the amendment and the Reconstructionist period
in which it was ratified.




Post-Civil War reforms focused on injustices to African Americans. The 14^th
Amendment was ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of native-born
Black Americans, whose rights were being denied as recently-freed
slaves. It was written in a manner so as to prevent state governments
from ever denying citizenship to blacks born in the United States. But
in 1868, the United States had no formal immigration policy, and the
authors therefore saw no need to address immigration explicitly in the
amendment.



Senator Jacob Howard worked closely with Abraham Lincoln in drafting and
passing the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,
which abolished slavery. He also served on the Senate Joint Committee on
Reconstruction, which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United
States Constitution. In 1866, Senator Jacob Howard clearly spelled out
the intent of the 14^th Amendment by stating:

"Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject
to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a
citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons
born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the
families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the
Government of the United States, but will include every other class of
persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all
doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.
This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and
legislation of this country."

This understanding was reaffirmed by Senator Edward Cowan, who stated:

"[A foreigner in the United States] has a right to the protection of the
laws; but he is not a citizen in the ordinary acceptance of the
word..."

The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was intended
to exclude American-born persons from automatic citizenship whose
allegiance to the United States was not complete. With illegal aliens
who are unlawfully in the United States, their native country has a
claim of allegiance on the child. Thus, the completeness of their
allegiance to the United States is impaired, which therefore precludes
automatic citizenship.

Supreme Court decisions

The correct interpretation of the 14^th Amendment is that an illegal alien mother is subject to the
jurisdiction of her native country, as is her baby.



Over a century ago, the Supreme Court appropriately confirmed this
restricted interpretation of citizenship in the so-called
"Slaughter-House cases" [83 US 36 (1873) and 112 US 94 (1884)]¹³. In the 1884 Elk v.Wilkins case¹²,
the phrase "subject to its jurisdiction" was interpreted to exclude
"children of ministers, consuls, and citizens of foreign states born
within the United States." In Elk, the American Indian claimant
was considered not an American citizen because the law required him to
be "not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of
the United States, but completely subject to their political
jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance."



The Court essentially stated that the status of the parents determines
the citizenship of the child. To qualify children for birthright
citizenship, based on the 14th Amendment, parents must owe "direct and
immediate allegiance" to the U.S. and be "completely subject" to its
jurisdiction. In other words, they must be United States citizens.



Congress subsequently passed a special act to grant full citizenship to
American Indians, who were not citizens even through they were born
within the borders of the United States. The Citizens Act of 1924,
codified in 8USCSß1401, provides that:

The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:

(a) a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;

(b) a person born in the United States to a member of an Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal
tribe.

In 1898, the Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court case^{10,11, 16} once again, in a ruling based strictly on the 14^th
Amendment, concluded that the status of the parents was crucial in
determining the citizenship of the child. The current misinterpretation
of the 14th Amendment is based in part upon the presumption that the Wong Kim Ark ruling encompassed illegal aliens. In fact, it did not address the children of illegal aliens and non-immigrant aliens, but rather determined an allegiance for legal immigrant parents based on the meaning of the word domicil(e). Since it is inconceivable that illegal alien parents could have a legal
domicile in the United States, the ruling clearly did not extend
birthright citizenship to children of illegal alien parents. Indeed,
the ruling strengthened the original intent of the 14^th Amendment.




The original intent of the 14^th Amendment was clearly not to
facilitate illegal aliens defying U.S. law and obtaining citizenship for
their offspring, nor obtaining benefits at taxpayer expense.
Current estimates indicate there may be between 300,000 and 700,000
anchor babies born each year in the U.S., thus causing illegal alien
mothers to add more to the U.S. population each year than immigration
from all sources in an average year before 1965. (See consequences.)




American citizens must be wary of elected politicians voting to
illegally extend our generous social benefits to illegal aliens and
other criminals.

For more information, see:

1.   P.A. Madison, Former Research Fellow in Constitutional Studies, The UnConstitutionality of Citizenship by Birth to Non-Americans (February 1, 2005)



2.   Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq., Illegal Aliens and American Medicine The Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 10 Number 1 (Spring 2005)



3.   Al Knight, Track 'anchor babies', Denver Post (September 11, 2002)



4.   Al Knight, Change U.S. law on anchor babies, Denver Post (June 22, 2005)



5.   Tom DeWeese, The Mexican Fifth Column (January 27, 2003)



6.   Anchor Babies: The Children of Illegal Aliens (Federation for American Immigration Reform)



7.   Tom DeWeese, "The Outrages of the Mexican Invasion" (American policy Center)



8.   P.A. Madison, Alien Birthright Citizenship: A Fable That Lives Through Ignorance The Federalist Blog (December 17, 2005)



9.   Dr. John C. Eastman, Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law,
Director, The Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence,
Dual Citizenship, Birthright Citizenship, and the Meaning of Sovereignty -
Testimony, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary,
Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims (September 29, 2005)




10.   William Buchanan, HR-73 -- Protecting America's Sovereignty, The Social Contract (Fall, 1999) - includes discussion of the related Wong Kim Ark 1898 Supreme Court case




11.   Charles Wood, Losing Control of the Nation's Future -- Part Two -- Birthright Citizenship and Illegal Aliens, The Social Contract (Winter, 2005) - includes discussion of the related Wong Kim Ark court case



12.   U.S. Supreme Court ELK v. WILKINS, 112 U.S. 94 (Findlaw, 1884)



13.   U.S. Supreme Court Slaughter-House cases ('Lectric Law Library, 1873)



14.   Jacob M. Howard, Wikipedia.



15.   A
Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and
Debates, 1774 - 1875 Congressional Globe, Senate, 39th Congress, 1st
Session Page 2890 of 3840.



16.   United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), Justia.com.

Birthright Citizenship: A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the 14th Amendment

Oct 30th, 2018 3 min read

COMMENTARY BY

Hans A. von Spakovsky @HvonSpakovsky

Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues – including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration.

The 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens. vlana/Getty Images

Key Takeaways

Critics claim that anyone born in the United States is automatically a U.S. citizen, even if their parents are here illegally.

Its original meaning refers to the political allegiance of an individual and the jurisdiction that a foreign government has over that individual.

Birthright citizenship has been implemented by executive fiat, not because it is required by federal law or the Constitution.

Copied

What’s the citizenship status of the children of illegal aliens? That question has spurred quite a debate over the 14th Amendment lately, with the news that several states—including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Oklahoma, Georgia, and South Carolina—may launch efforts to deny automatic citizenship to such children.
Critics claim that anyone born in the United States is automatically a U.S. citizen, even if their parents are here illegally. But that ignores the text and legislative history of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 to extend citizenship to freed slaves and their children.
The 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens. It says that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. That second, critical, conditional phrase is conveniently ignored or misinterpreted by advocates of “birthright” citizenship.

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Critics erroneously believe that anyone present in the United States has “subjected” himself “to the jurisdiction” of the United States, which would extend citizenship to the children of tourists, diplomats, and illegal aliens alike.
But that is not what that qualifying phrase means. Its original meaning refers to the political allegiance of an individual and the jurisdiction that a foreign government has over that individual.
The fact that a tourist or illegal alien is subject to our laws and our courts if they violate our laws does not place them within the political “jurisdiction” of the United States as that phrase was defined by the framers of the 14th Amendment.
This amendment’s language was derived from the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provided that “[a]ll persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power” would be considered citizens.
Sen. Lyman Trumbull, a key figure in the adoption of the 14th Amendment, said that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. included not owing allegiance to any other country.
As John Eastman, former dean of the Chapman School of Law, has said, many do not seem to understand “the distinction between partial, territorial jurisdiction, which subjects all who are present within the territory of a sovereign to the jurisdiction of that sovereign’s laws, and complete political jurisdiction, which requires allegiance to the sovereign as well.”
In the famous Slaughter-House cases of 1872, the Supreme Court stated that this qualifying phrase was intended to exclude “children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” This was confirmed in 1884 in another case, Elk vs. Wilkins, when citizenship was denied to an American Indian because he “owed immediate allegiance to” his tribe and not the United States.
American Indians and their children did not become citizens until Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. There would have been no need to pass such legislation if the 14th Amendment extended citizenship to every person born in America, no matter what the circumstances of their birth, and no matter who their parents are.
Even in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case most often cited by “birthright” supporters due to its overbroad language, the court only held that a child born of lawful, permanent residents was a U.S. citizen. That is a far cry from saying that a child born of individuals who are here illegally must be considered a U.S. citizen.
Of course, the judges in that case were strongly influenced by the fact that there were discriminatory laws in place at that time that restricted Chinese immigration, a situation that does not exist today.
The court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment as extending to the children of legal, noncitizens was incorrect, according to the text and legislative history of the amendment. But even under that holding, citizenship was not extended to the children of illegal aliens—only permanent, legal residents.
It is just plain wrong to claim that the children born of parents temporarily in the country as students or tourists are automatically U.S. citizens: They do not meet the 14th Amendment’s jurisdictional allegiance obligations. They are, in fact, subject to the political jurisdiction (and allegiance) of the country of their parents. The same applies to the children of illegal aliens because children born in the United States to foreign citizens are citizens of their parents’ home country.
Federal law offers them no help either. U.S. immigration law (8 U.S.C. § 1401) simply repeats the language of the 14th Amendment, including the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
The State Department has erroneously interpreted that statute to provide passports to anyone born in the United States, regardless of whether their parents are here illegally and regardless of whether the applicant meets the requirement of being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. Accordingly, birthright citizenship has been implemented by executive fiat, not because it is required by federal law or the Constitution.
We are only one of a very small number of countries that provides birthright citizenship, and we do so based not upon the requirements of federal law or the Constitution, but based upon an erroneous executive interpretation. Congress should clarify the law according to the original meaning of the 14th Amendment and reverse this practice.

Democrats have become the party of haters

Democrats have become the party of haters

Thousands protest the Trump administration's
separation of migrating families at the southern border during a rally
on June 30, 2018, in New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty)

Desiree Zapata Miller

In my lifetime I have never seen hate for
those who support a president the likes of which I see toward the
supporters of President Donald Trump. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is calling on people to publicly harass Trump staffers. Hillary Clinton
called us a basket of deplorables, accusing women of supporting Trump
only because their husbands told them to. A Virginia restaurant owner
and staff refused service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders
because she works in the Trump administration. In Charlotte, N.C.,
City Councilwoman Dimple Ajmera says Trump supporters have no place on
the council.

Is this what the Democratic Party
has become? A party of haters? Do Democrats condone this behavior?
Please tell me it isn’t so! Yet I see few Democrats calling to end the
behavior that causes such strife and division.

I must say,
however, that these tactics of the far left are not surprising to me. We
have their playbook: “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. The left has
been playing by his rules for decades. Hillary Clinton praised Alinksy
in her thesis. President Barack Obama
taught Alinsky’s tactics to grass-roots organizations in Chicago.
Alinsky’s fifth rule states: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It
is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. It infuriates the
opposition, who then reacts to your advantage.” The desired immediate
outcome is for those who voted for Trump to show fear and retreat.

I assure you that will not happen. We will not fear or retreat, because we have had enough. The Republican Party is emboldened.

Republicans
have continually supported and campaigned for dignified, collegial,
polite and yes, polished statesmen. Unfortunately, our Democratic
opposition has not offered the same dignified approach. Our candidates
from George Bush to Mitt Romney and many others since have not been
treated with respect or dignity by members of the Democratic political
machine or their comrades in the media. Trump isn’t always polite, but
he has no choice but to push back hard.

So we have Donald Trump, a
true fighter. He has taken off the gloves and applied the very same
fighting style against our opponents. He does not put up with lies. He
calls people out. We are fighting back in this war of words with the
truth, delivering it with the same hard-hitting rhetoric that our
opposition has been using for decades.

Is this the party you
Democrats want to become? The party of personal attacks and perpetual
lies? The party that has delivered 50-plus years of promises to help the
little guy, while continually making it worse?

To my Hispanic
friends, don’t be fooled by politicians on the left who pretend to care
for you. Democrats held both the presidency and the Congress when Obama
came into office, yet they did nothing to help you. As he departed,
Obama threw you a bone by signing an executive order for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, commonly referred to as DACA. He did nothing to reform immigration, a promise he made repeatedly.

If anyone can fix this immigration mess, it will be Trump, pressuring Congress to work with him.

There
was a time when those of us of differing political beliefs and opinions
could have a civil conversation, but now many of us don’t even attempt
to understand one another. I challenge you to have a cup of coffee with
someone who sees things differently than you see them, and seek to
understand where he or she is coming from. A little empathy and a little
respect will go a long way.

Xcel does an end run on the legislature — with an assist from Colorado's PUC

Xcel does an end run on the legislature — with an assist from Colorado's PUC 

Xcel does an end run on the legislature — with an assist from Colorado’s PUC

Author: Ray Scott - September 20, 2018

When the Colorado Public Utilities Commission recently approved Xcel
Energy’s Colorado Energy Plan, the commissioners made a highly
politicized decision that ignored economic reality, bypassed the state
legislature and allowed the company to break its promise to save
customers money. Coloradans should be troubled not just by the plan
itself, but by how it won approval through an end-run of the democratic
process.


In August 2017, Xcel unveiled the Colorado Energy Plan, (or CEP) to
great fanfare. The plan’s cheerleaders, including Gov. John Hickenlooper
and state agencies, celebrated the monopoly utility’s proposal to spend
$2.5 billion on fuel switching and its promise simultaneously to save
customers money. A project so massive would need legislative approval in
order to proceed, like the much less ambitious Clean Air, Clean Jobs
Act of 2010.


Earlier in 2017, Xcel Colorado’s then-vice president (now CEO) Alice
Jackson confirmed in public testimony to the Public Utilities Commission
(or PUC) that the Colorado legislature is the most appropriate entity
to approve prematurely shutting-down two coal-fired power plants and
replacing them with wind and solar. “If we are going to fundamentally
restructure the way that we do resource planning in Colorado… then that
is a question for the General Assembly and not for Mr. Monsen, CIEA, or
the company,” Jackson said at the time.


She was right about that. Because Xcel is a monopoly utility — whose
customers must shoulder the cost of any capital investments, and an
individual customer’s ability to actively intervene at the Public
Utilities Commission is severely limited — it only makes sense that
Colorado customers weigh-in via their state legislators.


During the 2017 legislative session, Xcel took the democratic route,
by deploying an army of lobbyists to the General Assembly in the hope of
passing a plan very similar to CEP. It failed in the Senate, however,
because it made zero economic sense to force Coloradans to pay to shut
down our most affordable and dependable power plants, in favor of
unreliable wind turbines and solar panels that can increase electricity
costs while decreasing dependability.


After the session, Xcel changed its tune, claiming a Hickenlooper
executive order was all it needed to seek regulatory approval of the
massive fuel-switching scheme. My colleague, President Pro-Tem Jerry
Sonnenberg (R-Sterling), appropriately accused Xcel of pulling “a bit of
a fast one by going to the Public Utilities Commission for something it
couldn’t get passed through the Legislature.”


A press release announcing the company’s change of tack not only
touted the “broad” coalition that supports the plan, and the $2.5
billion in “clean energy” investments it could bring to rural Colorado.
It also made the rather astounding claim that all this could be done at
“no additional cost to the company’s electricity customers.”


If that were true, the legislature surely would have approved the
measure in 2017. But Xcel is employing creative accounting to make the
CEP look affordable, which is why it didn’t pass the smell test with my
most business- and energy-savvy colleagues in 2017. Flaws in the
company’s analysis became apparent during CEP hearings, thanks to
diligent watchdog work by third parties and ratepayer advocates. But the
plan won approval despite those dubious underpinnings and the doubts of
some PUC members.


Before voting for a less radical iteration of the plan, for instance,
Commissioner Wendy Moser confirmed that customers will pay higher rates
to cover CEP’s cost, contradicting one of the company’s primary
rationales for making these moves.


Because the CEP would never have made it through the legislature,
Xcel tossed aside its Colorado president’s declaration that it must do
so, instead betting its future on the Hickenlooper-appointed PUC. And it
turned out to be a shrewd bet….until you see things from the energy
consumer’s point of view.


Xcel broke its pledge to pursue its aims democratically and an
unelected Public Utilities Commission let the for-profit monopoly get
away with it. Instead of deciding based on economics and the public
good, Commissioners made a political decision and set the stage for an
economic boondoggle that should infuriate Coloradans.


Xcel is sticking it to its 1.4 million captive Colorado customers,
who will have to pay millions of dollars more, while its Minnesota
executives and Wall Street shareholders laugh their way to the bank.


Colorado lawmakers from both parties have worked together for years
to find and implement long-term solutions to the state’s energy issues.
But by forcing the Colorado Energy Plan through the Public Utilities
Commission, Xcel prevented us from even having the option to advocate on
behalf of the public good. Shame on Xcel and the commission.

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits, by Milton Friedman

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits

by Milton
Friedman

The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970. Copyright @ 1970 by The New York Times Company.



When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social
responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system," I am reminded
of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of
70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe
that they are defending free en­terprise when they declaim that
business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting
desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and
takes seriously its responsibilities for providing em­ployment,
eliminating discrimination, avoid­ing pollution and whatever else may be
the catchwords of the contemporary crop of re­formers. In fact they
are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preach­ing
pure and unadulterated socialism. Busi­nessmen who talk this way are
unwitting pup­pets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining
the basis of a free society these past decades.



The discussions of the "social responsibili­ties of business" are
notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it
mean to say that "business" has responsibilities? Only people can have
responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this
sense may have artificial responsibilities, but "business" as a whole
cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense. The
first step toward clarity in examining the doctrine of the social
responsibility of business is to ask precisely what it implies for whom.



Presumably, the individuals who are to be responsible are businessmen,
which means in­dividual proprietors or corporate executives. Most of the
discussion of social responsibility is directed at corporations, so in
what follows I shall mostly neglect the individual proprietors and speak
of corporate executives.



In a free-enterprise, private-property sys­tem, a corporate executive is
an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct
re­sponsibility to his employers. That responsi­bility is to conduct the
business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to
make as much money as possible while con­forming to the basic rules of
the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical
custom. Of course, in some cases his employers may have a different
objective. A group of persons might establish a corporation for an
eleemosynary purpose–for exam­ple, a hospital or a school. The manager
of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objective but
the rendering of certain services.



In either case, the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate
executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the
corporation or establish the eleemosynary institution, and his primary
responsibility is to them.



Needless to say, this does not mean that it is easy to judge how well he
is performing his task. But at least the criterion of performance is
straightforward, and the persons among whom a voluntary contractual
arrangement exists are clearly defined.



Of course, the corporate executive is also a person in his own right.
As a person, he may have many other responsibilities that he rec­ognizes
or assumes voluntarily–to his family, his conscience, his feelings of
charity, his church, his clubs, his city, his country. He ma}. feel
impelled by these responsibilities to de­vote part of his income to
causes he regards as worthy, to refuse to work for particular
corpo­rations, even to leave his job, for example, to join his country's
armed forces. Ifwe wish, we may refer to some of these responsibilities
as "social responsibilities." But in these respects he is acting as a
principal, not an agent; he is spending his own money or time or energy,
not the money of his employers or the time or energy he has contracted
to devote to their purposes. If these are "social responsibili­ties,"
they are the social responsibilities of in­dividuals, not of business.



What does it mean to say that the corpo­rate executive has a "social
responsibility" in his capacity as businessman? If this statement is not
pure rhetoric, it must mean that he is to act in some way that is not
in the interest of his employers. For example, that he is to refrain
from increasing the price of the product in order to contribute to the
social objective of preventing inflation, even though a price in crease
would be in the best interests of the corporation. Or that he is to make
expendi­tures on reducing pollution beyond the amount that is in the
best interests of the cor­poration or that is required by law in order
to contribute to the social objective of improving the environment. Or
that, at the expense of corporate profits, he is to hire "hardcore"
un­employed instead of better qualified available workmen to contribute
to the social objective of reducing poverty.



In each of these cases, the corporate exec­utive would be spending
someone else's money for a general social interest. Insofar as his
actions in accord with his "social responsi­bility" reduce returns to
stockholders, he is spending their money. Insofar as his actions raise
the price to customers, he is spending the customers' money. Insofar as
his actions lower the wages of some employees, he is spending their
money.



The stockholders or the customers or the employees could separately
spend their own money on the particular action if they wished to do so.
The executive is exercising a distinct "social responsibility," rather
than serving as an agent of the stockholders or the customers or the
employees, only if he spends the money in a different way than they
would have spent it.



But if he does this, he is in effect imposing taxes, on the one hand,
and deciding how the tax proceeds shall be spent, on the other.



This process raises political questions on two levels: principle and
consequences. On the level of political principle, the imposition of
taxes and the expenditure of tax proceeds are gov­ernmental functions.
We have established elab­orate constitutional, parliamentary and
judicial provisions to control these functions, to assure that taxes are
imposed so far as possible in ac­cordance with the preferences and
desires of the public–after all, "taxation without repre­sentation" was
one of the battle cries of the American Revolution. We have a system of
checks and balances to separate the legisla­tive function of imposing
taxes and enacting expenditures from the executive function of
collecting taxes and administering expendi­ture programs and from the
judicial function of mediating disputes and interpreting the law.



Here the businessman–self-selected or appointed directly or indirectly
by stockhold­ers–is to be simultaneously legislator, execu­tive and,
jurist. He is to decide whom to tax by how much and for what purpose,
and he is to spend the proceeds–all this guided only by general
exhortations from on high to restrain inflation, improve the
environment, fight poverty and so on and on.



The whole justification for permitting the corporate executive to be
selected by the stockholders is that the executive is an agent serving
the interests of his principal. This jus­tification disappears when the
corporate ex­ecutive imposes taxes and spends the pro­ceeds for "social"
purposes. He becomes in effect a public employee, a civil servant, even
though he remains in name an employee of a private enterprise. On
grounds of political principle, it is intolerable that such civil
ser­vants–insofar as their actions in the name of social responsibility
are real and not just win­dow-dressing–should be selected as they are
now. If they are to be civil servants, then they must be elected through
a political process. If they are to impose taxes and make expendi­tures
to foster "social" objectives, then politi­cal machinery must be set up
to make the as­sessment of taxes and to determine through a political
process the objectives to be served.



This is the basic reason why the doctrine of "social responsibility"
involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms,
not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the
allocation of scarce re­sources to alternative uses.



On the grounds of consequences, can the corporate executive in fact
discharge his al­leged "social responsibilities?" On the other hand,
suppose he could get away with spending the stockholders' or customers'
or employees' money. How is he to know how to spend it? He is told that
he must contribute to fighting inflation. How is he to know what ac­tion
of his will contribute to that end? He is presumably an expert in
running his company–in producing a product or selling it or financing
it. But nothing about his selection makes him an expert on inflation.
Will his hold­ ing down the price of his product reduce infla­tionary
pressure? Or, by leaving more spending power in the hands of his
customers, simply divert it elsewhere? Or, by forcing him to produce
less because of the lower price, will it simply contribute to shortages?
Even if he could an­swer these questions, how much cost is he
justi­fied in imposing on his stockholders, customers and employees for
this social purpose? What is his appropriate share and what is the
appropri­ate share of others?



And, whether he wants to or not, can he get away with spending his
stockholders', cus­tomers' or employees' money? Will not the
stockholders fire him? (Either the present ones or those who take over
when his actions in the name of social responsibility have re­duced the
corporation's profits and the price of its stock.) His customers and his
employees can desert him for other producers and em­ployers less
scrupulous in exercising their so­cial responsibilities.



This facet of "social responsibility" doc­ trine is brought into sharp
relief when the doctrine is used to justify wage restraint by trade
unions. The conflict of interest is naked and clear when union officials
are asked to subordinate the interest of their members to some more
general purpose. If the union offi­cials try to enforce wage restraint,
the consequence is likely to be wildcat strikes, rank­-and-file revolts
and the emergence of strong competitors for their jobs. We thus have the
ironic phenomenon that union leaders–at least in the U.S.–have objected
to Govern­ment interference with the market far more consistently and
courageously than have business leaders.



The difficulty of exercising "social responsibility" illustrates, of
course, the great virtue of private competitive enterprise–it forces
people to be responsible for their own actions and makes it difficult
for them to "exploit" other people for either selfish or unselfish
purposes. They can do good–but only at their own expense.



Many a reader who has followed the argu­ment this far may be tempted to
remonstrate that it is all well and good to speak of Government's having
the responsibility to im­pose taxes and determine expenditures for such
"social" purposes as controlling pollu­tion or training the hard-core
unemployed, but that the problems are too urgent to wait on the slow
course of political processes, that the exercise of social
responsibility by busi­nessmen is a quicker and surer way to solve
pressing current problems.



Aside from the question of fact–I share Adam Smith's skepticism about
the benefits that can be expected from "those who affected to trade for
the public good"–this argument must be rejected on grounds of principle.
What it amounts to is an assertion that those who favor the taxes and
expenditures in question have failed to persuade a majority of their
fellow citizens to be of like mind and that they are seeking to attain
by undemocratic procedures what they cannot attain by democratic
proce­dures. In a free society, it is hard for "evil" people to do
"evil," especially since one man's good is another's evil.



I have, for simplicity, concentrated on the special case of the
corporate executive, ex­cept only for the brief digression on trade
unions. But precisely the same argument ap­plies to the newer phenomenon
of calling upon stockholders to require corporations to exercise social
responsibility (the recent G.M crusade for example). In most of these
cases, what is in effect involved is some stockholders trying to get
other stockholders (or customers or employees) to contribute against
their will to "social" causes favored by the activists. In­sofar as they
succeed, they are again imposing taxes and spending the proceeds.



The situation of the individual proprietor is somewhat different. If he
acts to reduce the returns of his enterprise in order to exercise his
"social responsibility," he is spending his own money, not someone
else's. If he wishes to spend his money on such purposes, that is his
right, and I cannot see that there is any ob­jection to his doing so.
In the process, he, too, may impose costs on employees and cus­tomers.
However, because he is far less likely than a large corporation or union
to have mo­nopolistic power, any such side effects will tend to be
minor.



Of course, in practice the doctrine of social responsibility is
frequently a cloak for actions that are justified on other grounds
rather than a reason for those actions.



To illustrate, it may well be in the long run interest of a corporation
that is a major employer in a small community to devote resources to
providing amenities to that community or to improving its government.
That may make it easier to attract desirable employees, it may reduce
the wage bill or lessen losses from pilferage and sabotage or have other
worthwhile effects. Or it may be that, given the laws about the
deductibility of corporate charitable contributions, the stockholders
can contribute more to chari­ties they favor by having the corporation
make the gift than by doing it themselves, since they can in that way
contribute an amount that would otherwise have been paid as corporate
taxes.



In each of these–and many similar–cases, there is a strong temptation to
rationalize these actions as an exercise of "social responsibility."
In the present climate of opinion, with its wide spread aversion to
"capitalism," "profits," the "soulless corporation" and so on, this is
one way for a corporation to generate goodwill as a by-product of
expenditures that are entirely justified in its own self-interest.



It would be inconsistent of me to call on corporate executives to
refrain from this hyp­ocritical window-dressing because it harms the
foundations of a free society. That would be to call on them to exercise
a "social re­sponsibility"! If our institutions, and the atti­tudes of
the public make it in their self-inter­est to cloak their actions in
this way, I cannot summon much indignation to denounce them. At the same
time, I can express admiration for those individual proprietors or
owners of closely held corporations or stockholders of more broadly held
corporations who disdain such tactics as approaching fraud.



Whether blameworthy or not, the use of the cloak of social
responsibility, and the nonsense spoken in its name by influential and
presti­gious businessmen, does clearly harm the foun­dations of a free
society. I have been impressed time and again by the schizophrenic
character of many businessmen. They are capable of being extremely
farsighted and clearheaded in matters that are internal to their
businesses. They are incredibly shortsighted and muddle­headed in
matters that are outside their businesses but affect the possible
survival of busi­ness in general. This shortsightedness is strikingly
exemplified in the calls from many businessmen for wage and price
guidelines or controls or income policies. There is nothing that could
do more in a brief period to destroy a market system and replace it by a
centrally con­trolled system than effective governmental con­trol of
prices and wages.



The shortsightedness is also exemplified in speeches by businessmen on
social respon­sibility. This may gain them kudos in the short run. But
it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the pursuit
of profits is wicked and immoral and must be curbed and controlled by
external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that
curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly
developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of
Government bureaucrats. Here, as with price and wage controls,
businessmen seem to me to reveal a suicidal impulse.



The political principle that underlies the market mechanism is
unanimity. In an ideal free market resting on private property, no
individual can coerce any other, all coopera­tion is voluntary, all
parties to such coopera­tion benefit or they need not participate. There
are no values, no "social" responsibilities in any sense other than the
shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a
collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily
form.



The political principle that underlies the political mechanism is
conformity. The indi­vidual must serve a more general social
inter­est–whether that be determined by a church or a dictator or a
majority. The individual may have a vote and say in what is to be done,
but if he is overruled, he must conform. It is appropriate for some to
require others to contribute to a general social purpose whether they
wish to or not.



Unfortunately, unanimity is not always feasi­ble. There are some
respects in which conformity appears unavoidable, so I do not see how
one can avoid the use of the political mecha­nism altogether.



But the doctrine of "social responsibility" taken seriously would extend
the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does
not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine.
It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be
attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book Capitalism and Freedom,
I have called it a "fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free
society, and have said that in such a society, "there is one and only
one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in
activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within
the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free
competition without deception or fraud."

Putin Claims U.S. Intelligence Agents Funneled $400 Million To Clinton Campaign

by Tyler Durden

Tue, 07/17/2018 - 05:10

Vladimir Putin made a bombshell claim during Monday's joint press conference with President Trump in Helsinki, Finland, when the Russian President said some $400 million in illegally earned profits was funneled to the Clinton campaign by associates of American-born British financier Bill Browder - at one time the largest foreign portfolio investors in Russia. The scheme involved members of the U.S. intelligence community, said Putin, who he said "accompanied and guided these transactions."
Browder made billions in Russia during the 90's. In December, a Moscow court sentenced Browder in absentia to nine years in prison for tax fraud, while he was also found guilty of tax evasion in a separate 2013 case. Putin accused Browder's associates of illegally earning over than $1.5 billion without paying Russian taxes, before sending $400 million to Clinton.

After offering to allow special counsel Robert Mueller's team to come to Russia for their investigation - as long as there was a reciprocal arrangement for Russian intelligence to investigate in the U.S., Putin said this:

For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder, in this particular case.  Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia and never paid any taxes neither in Russia or the United States and yet the money escaped the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent [a] huge amount of money, $400,000,000, as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.  Well that’s their personal case.
It might have been legal, the contribution itself but the way the money was earned was illegal.  So we have solid reason to believe that some [US] intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions.  So we have an interest in questioning them.

We would expect Putin to show some receipts for such bombshell allegations, while President Trump did not challenge the claims.
Who is Bill Browder?
Israel Shamir, a keen observer of the American-Russian relationship, and celebrated American journalist Robert Parry both think that one man deserves much of the credit for the new Cold War and that man is William Browder, a hedge fund operator who made his fortune in the corrupt 1990s world of Russian commodities trading.
Browder is also symptomatic of why the United States government is so poorly informed about international developments as he is the source of much of the Congressional “expert testimony” contributing to the current impasse. He has somehow emerged as a trusted source in spite of the fact that he has self-interest in cultivating a certain outcome. Also ignored is his renunciation of American citizenship in 1998, reportedly to avoid taxes. He is now a British citizen.
Browder is notoriously the man behind the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which exploited Congressional willingness to demonize Russia and has done so much to poison relations between Washington and Moscow. The Act sanctioned individual Russian officials, which Moscow has rightly seen as unwarranted interference in the operation of its judicial system.
Browder, a media favorite who self-promotes as “Putin’s enemy #1,” portrays himself as a selfless human rights advocate, but is he? He has used his fortune to threaten lawsuits for anyone who challenges his version of events, effectively silencing many critics. He claims that his accountant Sergei Magnitsky was a crusading "lawyer" who discovered a $230 million tax-fraud scheme that involved the Browder business interest Hermitage Capital but was, in fact, engineered by corrupt Russian police officers who arrested Magnitsky and enabled his death in a Russian jail.
Many have been skeptical of the Browder narrative, suspecting that the fraud was in fact concocted by Browder and his accountant Magnitsky. A Russian court recently supported that alternative narrative, ruling in late December that Browder had deliberately bankrupted his company and engaged in tax evasion. He was sentenced to nine years prison in absentia.
William Browder is again in the news recently in connection with testimony related to Russiagate. On December 16th Senator Diane Feinstein of the Senate Judiciary Committee released the transcript of the testimony provided by Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS. According to James Carden, Browder was mentioned 50 times, but the repeated citations apparently did not merit inclusion in media coverage of the story by the New York Times, Washington Post and Politico.
Fusion GPS, which was involved in the research producing the Steele Dossier used to discredit Donald Trump, was also retained to provide investigative services relating to a lawsuit in New York City involving a Russian company called Prevezon. As information provided by Browder was the basis of the lawsuit, his company and business practices while in Russia became part of the investigation. Simmons maintained that Browder proved to be somewhat evasive and his accounts of his activities were inconsistent. He claimed never to visit the United States and not own property or do business there, all of which were untrue, to include his ownership through a shell company of a $10 million house in Aspen Colorado. He repeatedly ran away, literally, from attempts to subpoena him so he would have to testify under oath.
Per Simmons, in Russia, Browder used shell companies locally and also worldwide to avoid taxes and conceal ownership, suggesting that he was likely one of many corrupt businessmen operating in what was a wild west business environment.
My question is, “Why was such a man granted credibility and allowed a free run to poison the vitally important US-Russia relationship?” The answer might be follow the money. Israel Shamir reports that Browder was a major contributor to Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, who was the major force behind the Magnitsky Act.

Trump’s popularity

Trump’s popularity

May 12

The
mayor of Livermore California explains Trump’s popularity and success.
This is perhaps the best explanation for Trump's popularity ....

Marshall Kamena is
a registered Democrat and was elected mayor of Livermore, CA.. He ran
on the democratic ticket as he knew a Bay Area city would never vote for
a Republican. He is as conservative as they come. He wrote the
following:

Trump’s 'lack of decorum, dignity, and statesmanship' By Marshall Kamena, Mayor of Livermore, CA.

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers)
constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of
decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity
of the office.”

Here’s my answer: We Right-thinking people have
tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity
than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically
motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship.

Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?

We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?


And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were
playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left
has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only
rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t
find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s
lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp
up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.


I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four
Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover
your tracks.

I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.

Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”


The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of
the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where
nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale.. It has
been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence,
demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the
universities – till today.

The problem is that, through these
years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left
has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right
has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America ’s first wartime president in the Culture War.


During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t
the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses
Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him
drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming.

Had Abraham
Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the
Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today.

Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”


General George Patton was a vulgar-talking.. In peacetime, this might
have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the
normal rules of decorum then, Hitler and the Socialists would barely be
five decades into their thousand-year Reich.

Trump is fighting.
And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the
battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You
magnificent bastards, I read your book!”

That is just the icing
on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting,
he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war
against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama
administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis.


It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would
dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most
indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Trump’s tweets
may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what
Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after “the
fake media” — and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every
single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but
diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi,
to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri — Trump
isolated CNN.. He made it personal.

Then, just as Alinsky
suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most
powerful weapon of all.”... Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put
CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. ... They need to respond.


This leaves them with only two choices. They can either “go high” (as
Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would
disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately
report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope
to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The
problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start
honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic
Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news
(read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.

Imagine, for
example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate
Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi),
domestic terrorists (William Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn), the mafia
(Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah
Wright’s church.

Imagine if they had honestly and accurately
conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS
to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to
the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador
Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.

So,
to my friends on the Left — and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish
we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and
“dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do.

These aren’t those
times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting
without opposition for the past 50 years.

So, say anything you
want about this president - I get it - he can be vulgar, he can be
crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this
man. He fights for America!

Please pass this on..over and over, and again and again...

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996

Page issues

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Division C of Pub.L. 104–208, 110 Stat. 3009-546,
enacted September 30, 1996 (often referred to as "i-RAI-ruh," and
sometimes abbreviated as "IIRAIRA" or "IIRIRA") vastly changed the
immigration laws of the United States.

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996

Long title	An Act making omnibus consolidated appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1997, and for other purposes.
Acronyms (colloquial)	IIRIRA
Nicknames	Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1997, "The Mexican Exclusionary Act of 1996":
Enacted by	the 104th United States Congress
Effective	September 30, 1996
Citations
Public law	104-208
Statutes at Large	110 Stat. 3009 aka 110 Stat. 3009-546
Codification
Titles amended	8 U.S.C.: Aliens and Nationality
U.S.C. sections amended	8 U.S.C. ch. 12, subch. I § 1101 et seq. 8 U.S.C. ch. 12, subch. II § 1221 et seq. 8 U.S.C. ch. 12, subch. II § 1324 8 U.S.C. ch. 12, subch. II § 1363a
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 3610 by C. W. Bill Young (R-FL) on June 11, 1996 Committee consideration by House Appropriations, Senate Appropriations, House Judiciary Passed the House on June 13, 1996 (278–126, Roll call vote 247, via Clerk.House.gov) Passed the Senate on July 18, 1996 (72–27, Roll call vote 200, via Senate.gov, in lieu of S. 1894) Reported by the joint conference committee on September 28, 1996; agreed to by the House on September 28, 1996 (370–37, Roll call vote 455, via Clerk.House.gov) and by the Senate on September 30, 1996 (Agreed voice vote) Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 30, 1996

This act states that immigrants unlawfully present in the United
States for 180 days but less than 365 days must remain outside the
United States for three years unless they obtain a pardon. If they are
in the United States for 365 days or more, they must stay outside the
United States for ten years unless they obtain a waiver. If they return
to the United States without the pardon, they may not apply for a waiver
for a period of ten years.


Among other things, it explicitly gave the Attorney General broad
authority to construct barriers along the US-Mexico border and
authorized the construction of a secondary layer of border fencing to
buttress the already completed 14 mile primary fence. Construction of
the secondary fence stalled due to environmental concerns raised by the California Coastal Commission.

Contents

Constitutional Issues

Previously, immediate deportation was triggered only for offenses
that could lead to five years or more in jail. Under the Act, minor
offenses such as shoplifting
may make individuals eligible for deportation. When IIRIRA was passed
in 1996, it was applied retroactively to all those convicted of
deportable offenses.


However, in 2001, the US Supreme Court
decided that Congress did not intend IIRIRA to be applied retroactively
to those who pleaded guilty to a crime prior to the enactment of IIRIRA
if they would not have been deportable at the time that they pleaded
guilty in (INS v. St. Cyr).


IIRIRA's mandatory detention provisions have also been repeatedly challenged, with less success.


The Reed Amendment, a portion of IIRIRA that makes people who renounced U.S. citizenship excludable from the U.S. if the Attorney General finds that they renounced for purposes of tax avoidance, has also been suggested to be unconstitutional.^[1]


The IIRIRA authorized the Immigration and Naturalization Service to
use "secret evidence" , this is bad, against aliens in various
immigration proceedings if the evidence is deemed classified and the INS
considers it relevant to the case. Critics have challenged the
constitutionality of this provision and in 1999 and 2000 a "Secret
Evidence Repeal Act" was introduced in Congress, but never passed.^[2]

Deportation issues

Deportees may be held in jail for months, even as much as two years,
before being brought before an immigration board, at which defendants
need to pay for their own legal representation.^{[citation needed]} In 2001, the Supreme Court curtailed the Immigration Service's ability to hold deportees indefinitely in Zadvydas v. Davis.

Section 287(g)

Main article: Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g)

IIRIRA addressed the relationship between the federal government and local governments. Section 287(g) is part of the act that permits the U.S. Attorney General
to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies,
permitting designated officers to perform immigration law enforcement
functions, pursuant to a Memorandum of Agreement. This section does not
simply deputize state and local law enforcement personnel to enforce
immigration matters.^[3]


This provision was implemented by local and state authorities in five states: California, Arizona, Alabama, Florida and North Carolina by the end of 2006.^[4]

Higher education restrictions

Upon passage of this law, states were restricted from offering
in-state tuition at public institutions to students who were not legally
in the country.^[5]
Specifically, if a state allows illegal immigrant students to be
eligible for in-state tuition, then residents from other states must
also be eligible for in-state tuition. Several states have passed
tuition-equality laws by allowing anyone regardless of legal status to
apply for in-state tuition if they meet the state's eligibility
requirements.^[6]

Impact

A 2018 paper found that the Act reduced the health and mental health
outcomes of Latino immigrants living in the United States by escalating
the fear and risk that illegal immigrants be deported.^[7]

See also

• Cambodian American Repatriation
• DREAM Act
• Gallegly amendment, a rejected amendment to this bill
• Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act

References

1. 
   

Carter, Michelle Leigh (2002). "Giving
Taxpatriates the Boot, Permanently: The Reed Amendment
Unconstitutionally Infringes on the Fundamental Right to Expatriate". Georgia Law Review. 36 (835). Retrieved 2012-05-18.

Gobind Singh Sethi. "Legislative Focus: Repealing the Use of Secret Evidence". American University Washington College of Law, Human Rights Brief – Volume 8, Issue 1, 2000.

http://www.ice.gov/doclib/pi/news/factsheets/060816dc287gfactsheet.pdf Archived September 25, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.

Zezima, Katie (December 13, 2006). "Massachusetts Set for Its Officers to Enforce Immigration Law". New York Times.

Pérez, Zenen Jaimes (2014). Removing Barriers to Higher Education for Undocumented Students (PDF). Center for American Progress.

Illegal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Public Law
104-208, 104th Cong. 1st sess. (September 30, 1996).

7. Wang, Julia Shu-Huah; Kaushal, Neeraj (April 2018). "Health and Mental Health Effects of Local Immigration Enforcement". NBER Working Paper No. 24487. doi:10.3386/w24487.

External linksEdit

• Text of IIRIRA  (See p. 547 in this document).
• USCIS Factsheet, March 1997
• INS v. St. Cyr
• Zadvydas v. Davis
• USCIS Summary of the Act