Category Archives: Immigration

The Border Fence vs. Private Property Rights

The Washington Post has a detailed article this morning about the government’s efforts to steal private property to build a fence along the Mexican border:

EL CALABOZ, Tex. — In the 240 years since the Spanish Crown granted Eloisa Tamez’s colonial ancestors title to this flat, grassy expanse along the Rio Grande’s northern bank, her family has steadily lost its holdings to the Mexican War of Independence, the U.S. annexation of Texas and the Great Depression.

Now Tamez faces what could prove the final blow: The Department of Homeland Security has proposed building a section of the U.S-Mexico border fence mandated by Congress directly through the last three acres of the family’s original 12,000-acre tract.

But the 72-year-old nursing professor has a message for any government officials who expect her to leave quietly. “I’m not going down without a fight,” Tamez said, her dark eyes narrowing as she gazed beyond her back yard toward a field where she used to pick tomatoes as a child. “My father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather farmed this land. This is the land that gave me my life and my spirit. . . . I will fight this all the way.”

And Tamez isn’t the only one who stands to have her property stolen:

Over the past several weeks, U.S. attorneys acting on behalf of the Homeland Security Department have been filing lawsuits against the holdouts. Already, federal district judges have ordered one landowner in California, 11 in Arizona and 11 in Texas — including the small city of Eagle Pass — to temporarily surrender their properties. The mayor of Eagle Pass, which is located about 100 miles southwest of San Antonio and stands to lose 233 acres of city-owned land, said the city is planning to appeal. Suits are also pending against 14 landowners in California and 44 in South Texas, including Tamez.

News of the lawsuits has sent a chill through the chain of tiny centuries-old South Texas settlements that dot the Rio Grande like beads on a necklace. Like Tamez, many residents of these hamlets are descendants of the Spanish settlers who colonized the region in the late 1700s. But significant numbers of them are now impoverished, and even those who have become middle-class professionals, such as Tamez, lack deep pockets for a legal battle.

But here’s the particularly galling part, in many cases the border fence isn’t even being built on the border:

According to preliminary maps, large stretches of the proposed fence would be located more than a mile inland from the river, cutting off substantial swaths of land.

In other words, the fence would be cutting people off from several square miles of property that actually lies within the United States to begin with.

Though I find the idea of a border fence in the middle of the desert to be of dubious value, there are, as the article points out, other solutions. Vehicle barriers have been used in parts of Arizona. In other places, the levees along the Rio Grande are being built as high as 18 feet — an unscalable length — and border patrol reconnaissance is being increased.

In other words, there are ways to secure the border that don’t involve outright property theft. Here’s hoping the Feds don’t get away with it.

Department Of Homeland Security Claims American Public No Longer Expects Privacy

Apparently, the right to privacy no longer exist for anyone crossing the border as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has claimed that they have a right to search, without warrant or probable cause, anyone who comes into this country, including citizens

Amir Khan says he becomes frustrated and humiliated every time he enters the United States and federal agents search his computers. Khan, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen, says it has happened five times since 2003.  He says agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection have even forced him to give them access to password-protected, confidential information from his company and his banking records.

And the scope of what Customs may search for is apparently both unlimited and arbitrary:

The Customs and Border Protection defends the searches, saying the agency does not need to show probable cause to look inside suitcases or laptops.

“We have broad search authority at the borders to determine admissibility and look for anything that may be in violation of criminal law,” says agency spokeswoman Lynn Hollinger.

A DHS spokesman dismissed the complaints of travelers like Mr. Khan with the following statement:

“You forgo your right to privacy when you are seeking admission into the country…This is the kind of scrutiny the American public expects.”  

Keep in mind that Mr. Khan is not just a foreign visitor but an American citizen.  The government’s reply here is apparently not just restricted to foreign travelers with criminal records or those fitting a terrorist’s profile who come here, the government has openly said that United States citizens traveling abroad have no expectation of privacy if they’re coming back into their own country and anything you’ve got with you is fair game.  Got a risque picture from your wife that she sent you while you were on a month-long business trip?  Now you get to share it with the guard at Customs if they demand access to your cellphone or computer.  Got confidential information for a future business deal?  Now the government gets to see it too.  Got your bank account or credit card information saved and encrypted on your laptop so you can conduct transactions while traveling?  Now that information may get tossed into a government database where it’s vulnerable to identity theft.  Assuming, course, that they don’t choose to seize the offending electronic device as well:

Situations for travelers such as Khan are at issue in a lawsuit filed last week by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.  The suit accuses customs agents of “lengthy questioning and intrusive searches” and seeks clarification on the law that allows such searches.  The San Francisco, California-based foundation, which works to defend people’s rights in the digital world, says it knows of more than a dozen cases in which electronic devices such as cell phones, BlackBerries, MP3 players and laptops have been searched by customs agents. In some cases, they have been confiscated and never returned. 

There are those who would probably feel that such searches are justified.  After all, terrorists can hardly be expected to walk up to the Customs officials to announce their presence.  The problem with this line of reasoning, however, is that the overwhelming majority of people who come to this country are not terrorists, most are law-abiding people who come here for the same reasons any of us might go to their countries.  Some are travelers who wish to come and see the United States and spend their money (which they’ll be more than happy to spend elsewhere if it becomes too inconvenient), some are people who come to the United States to conduct business that contributes to economic growth (which they’ll be more than happy to conduct elsewhere if the government gets too intrusive), and some are people who come here because they wish to see what a free society is supposed to look like.  Apparently, their first impression of our free society will not include an expectation to privacy.

Update:  Commenter KipEsquire has pointed out that DHS’ approach is in line with the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Ramsey (1977), which apparently makes the actions of Customs legal, if not necessarily just or wise.

I Can’t Think Of A Catchy Title

I suppose the best way to describe myself would be to say that I have a problem with authority. I’ve always disliked when people told me what to do, even as a young child, and I’ve always preferred to find my own path through life and make my own decisions, even if it occasionally went against the conventional wisdom and sometimes worked to my short-term disadvantage. My dad said I inherited it from him, but that I’ve taken it to a whole new level. When I was young I wanted to be a journalist, until I got to college and realized that journalism was less about the search for objective truth than it was about writing the stories that best suited your employer’s interests, whether they were true or not (which didn’t sit well with me at all). So I drifted aimlessly through a couple of years of college as an indifferent (often drunk) student, unsure of what to do with myself until one of my fraternity brothers gave me a copy of “The Fountainhead” and I got hooked on the ideas that success and a refusal to conform to societal standards were not mutally exclusive, and that the greatest evil in the world was society and government’s failure to recognize or accept individuality and individual freedom as a strength, not a weakness. So I threw myself into studying politics and history, worked in a few political campaigns after college, had some success, and thought about doing a career in politics until I realized that most of the people I knew who had never had a career outside of politics had no comprehension of how the real world actually worked and tended to make a lot of bad, self-absorbed decisions that rarely helped the people they claimed to be representing.

That didn’t sit well with me either, so I decided to put any thoughts of going into politics on hold until I’d actually had a life and possibly a real career, and I spent the next couple of years drifting between a series of random yet educational jobs (debt collector, deliveryman, computer salesman, repo man, dairy worker) that taught me the value of hard work, personal responsibility and the financial benefits of dining at Taco John’s on Tuesday nights (2 tacos for a buck) when money got tight.

After awhile, however, the desire to see the world (and the need for a more consistent and slightly larger paycheck) convinced me to join the Army, where I spent ten years traveling around the world on the government dime working as an intelligence analyst. I generally enjoyed my time in the military, despite the aforementioned problem with authority (which wasn’t as much of an issue in the military as many people might think it would be), and I got to see that the decisions our political leaders make were sometimes frivolous, often ill-informed, and always had unforeseen repercussions down the road…especially on the soldiers tasked with implementing those decisions. I was fortunate enough to spend most of my 10 years in the military doing jobs I enjoyed, traveling to countries that I always wanted to see (Scotland is the greatest place in the world to hang out, Afghanistan is very underrated) and working with people I liked and respected, until I finally decided that at 35 it was time to move into a job where I didn’t have the threat of relocation lying over my head every two or three years, where I didn’t have to worry about my friends being blown up, and where I didn’t have to work in any capacity for George W. Bush.

I work now for a financial company in Kansas where I’m responsible for overseeing, pricing and maintaining farms, commercial and residential properties, mineral assets, insurance policies, annuities, etc. In my spare time I like to read books on economics, history, and politics (I’m preparing to tackle Murray Rothbard’s “Man, Economy & State” and Von Mises’ “Human Action”…should take me about a year at the rate I’m currently finishing books), watch movies, and destroy posers on “Halo 3” (where I’m signed in under “UCrawford” for anyone interested in taking a shot at me some time). I used to play rugby until age, inconsistent conditioning, and a string of gradually worsening injuries finally convinced me to quit. I’m a rabid fan of the Kansas Jayhawks in general and their basketball and football programs in particular and I’m also a devoted fan of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. I’m also fond of going online and debating/picking fights with people on the merits of the philosophy of individual freedom…sometimes to the point of being an asshole (but hopefully a reasonably well-informed asshole). I’ve been a big fan of The Liberty Papers ever since finding it online, I respect the body of work they’ve put out, and I’m honored that Brad Warbiany invited me to join his jolly band of freedom fighters. So cheers, Brad, and to everyone else I look forward to reaching consensus or locking horns with you in the near future.

Illegal Immigrants And Driver’s Licenses

There’s a very good post up over at Cato@Liberty on the debate that erupted between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over whether states should be permitted to give driver’s licenses to people who are in the country illegally.

As the post’s author notes, the right answer to the question has little to do with immigration:

Many people believe that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be “rewarded” with drivers’ licenses. Fair enough: the rule of law is important. There’s also a theory that denying illegal immigrants “benefits” like driver licensing will make the country inhospitable enough that they will leave. This has not borne out, however. Denying illegal immigrants licenses has merely caused unlicensed and untrained driving, with the hit-and-run accidents and higher insurance rates that flow from that.

The major reason, though, why I agree with Senator Obama is because the linking of driver licensing and immigration status is part of the move to convert the driver’s license into a national ID card. Mission-creep at the country’s DMVs is not just causing growth in one of the least-liked bureaucracies. It’s creating the infrastructure for direct regulatory control of individuals by the federal government.

Were immigration status and driver licensing solidly linked nationwide, the driver’s license would not just be a “benefit” of citizenship. It would then clearly be amenable to use as an immigration-control tool — as has already been proposed. Law-abiding, native-born citizens would more and more often be required to show ID. And it would be converted to additional uses. The federal government could condition our access to goods, services, and infrastructure on carrying and presenting a national ID, possession of which the government could make conditional on every regulatory whim that swept past.

This isn’t just a theory. As I noted last month, the Department of Homeland Security is proposing that we be required to show identification to purchase some over-the-counter cold medications. More importantly though, as with nearly everything else that comes from the state, this proposal to help “secure the borders” ends up making all of us less free. By turning the driver’s license, which when it was created was merely meant to signify that the holder has passed basic tests to show that they knew how to operate a motor vehicle safely, into an immigration enforcement tool, we have suddenly created, through the back door, the very National ID that people claim to oppose.

More importantly, there’s absolutely no evidence that denying driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants will do anything to stop illegal immigration. People come here for jobs, and they’ll get to those jobs any way they need to (around here it’s pretty common to see them going everywhere by bicycle) even if that means driving without a driver’s license. And unless they’re picked up in a traffic infraction, nobody will ever know about it.

Alex Knapp puts it best at Outside The Beltway:

One of the worst things about the Know-Nothing anti-illegal immigration crowd is that virtually all of the measures proposed by them to “secure the border” ends up making the country a less free place to be. I am livid at the fact that I now need a passport just to go to Canada–one of our staunchest allies and trade partners. I feel like a criminal every time I get a new job and an employer has to run a background and immigration check to make sure that I’m a citizen. I was positively appalled at the antics of the INS against a friend of mine from New Zealand (another staunch ally and trade partner) regarding his visa conditions, when all he wants to do is go to college here.

And it’s only going to get worse from there. Once you turn the driver’s license into a “citizenship verification card,” there’s no end to the possible uses that the state can make of it.

And that’s why, if they can pass the basic road safety tests, illegal immigrants should be allowed to get driver’s licenses.

Federal Driver’s Licenses: The Government’s New Plan To Screw Up Your Life

The brainiacs who’ve made air travel almost as fun as a 10-hour Coca-Cola enema have unveiled their new master plan for creating an efficient security system…federally mandated drivers licenses for everybody under the age of 50, which all states will be forced to comply with by 2011, whether they’re capable or doing so or not, if the Department of Homeland Security gets its way.  The rationalization for this plan, of course, is the same as that for any authoritarian program…a centrally mandated, controlled, and issued driver’s license will make it more difficult for con artists, drug traffickers, illegal immigrants, or terrorists to gain access to identification that could compromise our security. 

What goes unsaid, of course, is that such a program will inevitably make it more difficult for everyone else to get a driver’s license as well.  Do you like the two-hour wait at your state DMV every time you have to renew your driver’s license?  You can bet it’s going to be longer once every application has to run through a federal database that’s responsible for processing 50 times as many applications which will need to be cross-checked against watchlists of known terrorists, criminals, or illegal aliens.  Considering how flawlessly this approach has worked for the FAA with their no-fly lists, I’m finding it a little hard to believe that the process will run more efficiently or effectively than it does now, or that you’ll be getting your new driver’s license back on the same day that you’ve applied for it (as you can now).  Especially since the systems and processes the feds use to cross-reference are notoriously buggy.

Of course now if you go to the DMV and the computers are down, the inconveniences are relatively minimal.  You may have to come back the next day and endure another two hour wait, and you have to be a bit more careful about any traffic violations lest you get busted for driving on an expired license but you’ll generally be able to go about your life relatively freely.  Under the feds’ new program, however, if you aren’t able to procure your license for reasons beyond your control, or if you’re actually denied a license you won’t be able to enter a federal building, board an airplane, open a bank account, buy a gun, vote, verify your identity when using a credit or debit card, or do anything else that’s significantly affiliated with the federal government.  Basically, the Real ID program will effectively strip anyone who doesn’t have a federally-issued ID card of their citizenship or ability to even function in everyday society.

Perhaps the people who oppose Real ID are being unfair and overly paranoid, but considering that the Bush’s new Czar of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, issues absolute gibberish like this…

“We worked very closely with the states in terms of developing a plan that I think will be inexpensive, reasonable to implement and produce the results,” he said. “This is a win-win. As long as people use driver’s licenses to identify themselves for whatever reason there’s no reason for those licenses to be easily counterfeited or tampered with.”

…to explain his position, somehow I don’t think that their fears are that insane, especially since the creation of an identification card that cannot be forged is about as likely as the ability to corporeally exist without occupying space.  And spending the better part of ten years watching my own little section of the federal government (the U.S. Army) screw up even the most basic of background checks has led me to believe that the feds are generally incapable of handling and should rarely, if ever, be entrusted with this sort of authority.

Update:  A commenter who expanded on this on his own site raised one very valid point that I think merits highlighting: 

It’s funny.  They keep calling it a “driver’s license,” but they never mention anything about driving.

Update 2:  Apparently 17 states have already objected to the Real ID plan. 

I Can’t Think Of A Catchy Title

I suppose the best way to describe myself would be to say that I have a problem with authority. I’ve always disliked when people told me what to do, even as a young child, and I’ve always preferred to find my own path through life and make my own decisions, even if it occasionally went against the conventional wisdom and sometimes worked to my short-term disadvantage. My dad said I inherited it from him, but that I’ve taken it to a whole new level. When I was young I wanted to be a journalist, until I got to college and realized that journalism was less about the search for objective truth than it was about writing the stories that best suited your employer’s interests, whether they were true or not (which didn’t sit well with me at all). So I drifted aimlessly through a couple of years of college as an indifferent (often drunk) student, unsure of what to do with myself until one of my fraternity brothers gave me a copy of “The Fountainhead” and I got hooked on the ideas that success and a refusal to conform to societal standards were not mutally exclusive, and that the greatest evil in the world was society and government’s failure to recognize or accept individuality and individual freedom as a strength, not a weakness. So I threw myself into studying politics and history, worked in a few political campaigns after college, had some success, and thought about doing a career in politics until I realized that most of the people I knew who had never had a career outside of politics had no comprehension of how the real world actually worked and tended to make a lot of bad, self-absorbed decisions that rarely helped the people they claimed to be representing.

That didn’t sit well with me either, so I decided to put any thoughts of going into politics on hold until I’d actually had a life and possibly a real career, and I spent the next couple of years drifting between a series of random yet educational jobs (debt collector, deliveryman, computer salesman, repo man, dairy worker) that taught me the value of hard work, personal responsibility and the financial benefits of dining at Taco John’s on Tuesday nights (2 tacos for a buck) when money got tight.

After awhile, however, the desire to see the world (and the need for a more consistent and slightly larger paycheck) convinced me to join the Army, where I spent ten years traveling around the world on the government dime working as an intelligence analyst. I generally enjoyed my time in the military, despite the aforementioned problem with authority (which wasn’t as much of an issue in the military as many people might think it would be), and I got to see that the decisions our political leaders make were sometimes frivolous, often ill-informed, and always had unforeseen repercussions down the road…especially on the soldiers tasked with implementing those decisions. I was fortunate enough to spend most of my 10 years in the military doing jobs I enjoyed, traveling to countries that I always wanted to see (Scotland is the greatest place in the world to hang out, Afghanistan is very underrated) and working with people I liked and respected, until I finally decided that at 35 it was time to move into a job where I didn’t have the threat of relocation lying over my head every two or three years, where I didn’t have to worry about my friends being blown up, and where I didn’t have to work in any capacity for George W. Bush.

I work now for a financial company in Kansas where I’m responsible for overseeing, pricing and maintaining farms, commercial and residential properties, mineral assets, insurance policies, annuities, etc. In my spare time I like to read books on economics, history, and politics (I’m preparing to tackle Murray Rothbard’s “Man, Economy & State” and Von Mises’ “Human Action”…should take me about a year at the rate I’m currently finishing books), watch movies, and destroy posers on “Halo 3” (where I’m signed in under “UCrawford” for anyone interested in taking a shot at me some time). I used to play rugby until age, inconsistent conditioning, and a string of gradually worsening injuries finally convinced me to quit. I’m a rabid fan of the Kansas Jayhawks in general and their basketball and football programs in particular and I’m also a devoted fan of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. I’m also fond of going online and debating/picking fights with people on the merits of the philosophy of individual freedom…sometimes to the point of being an asshole (but hopefully a reasonably well-informed asshole). I’ve been a big fan of The Liberty Papers ever since finding it online, I respect the body of work they’ve put out, and I’m honored that Brad Warbiany invited me to join his jolly band of freedom fighters. So cheers, Brad, and to everyone else I look forward to reaching consensus or locking horns with you in the near future.

The Border Fence And Property Rights

It seems that the push for a fence on the southern border of the United States is about to become a really big theft:

The government is readying 102 court cases against landowners in Arizona, California and Texas for blocking efforts to select sites for a fence along the Mexican border, a Department of Homeland Security official said yesterday.

With the lawsuits expected soon, the legal action would mark an escalation in the clash between the government and the property owners. The Bush administration wants to build 370 miles of fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers by the end of the year.

A number of property owners have granted the government access to their land, but others have refused. The agency sent letters to 135 of them last month, warning that they had 30 days to comply or face court action.

(…)

Some opponents of the fence say the government is violating the rights of indigenous landowners, descendants of American Indians and others who claim ancestral rights to the land or whose families were awarded property through Spanish land grants.

One holdout, Eloisa Garcia Tamez, 72, owns three acres in El Calaboz, Tex., about 12 miles west of Brownsville, a city at the state’s southernmost tip. Tamez said her property was part of a Spanish land grant and her grandfather was Lipan Apache, a tribe not officially recognized by Washington but known to have existed in Texas and Mexico.

“I’m waiting for whatever they’ve got coming and I’m not going to sign. I’m not,” Tamez said.

I’m not a border fence fan to begin with — to me it seems like more of a gimmick than a solution. But if the only way to build it is to violate people’s property rights, then I say scrap the whole thing.

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