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The fact that the Trump administration has not acted on its campaign promise to halt the DACA temporary amnesty has resulted in a resurgence of speculation that the administration may be amenable to adopting a full-scale amnesty. Some reports have identified DACA recipients and some other illegal aliens from Central America with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as candidates for legal status in exchange for some measures of increased enforcement against illegal immigration such as mandatory work eligibility verification (E-Verify) and border barrier construction.

What appears to be missing from this speculation is the underlying conviction held by most Americans that immigration is welcome only if it is moderate and within legal provisions. The lesson that must be remembered from the 1986 amnesty (IRCA) was that amnesty may have the effect of increasing illegal immigration especially when new measures that are supposed to counteract it are exposed as being toothless.

The only clear message that will deter illegal immigration is that it will not be tolerated and the government and the public have the will to enforce the law against it.

What is forgotten is that not only does an amnesty for illegal immigrants give them legal permanent residence, it also gives them the ability to sponsor their extended family members under our current immigration system.

Even if the president and the politicians do not have the political will to undo the years of coddling illegal aliens by ignoring them or by granting them some temporary legal status such as TPS or DACA any discussion of a full amnesty is likely to repeat the folly of the IRCA amnesty. Politicians continue to be attracted to negotiations where amnesty is on the table by the delusional expectation that the problem of illegal immigration can be solved by rewarding past lawbreakers and promising to be tough on future lawbreakers. Despite evidence that the IRCA amnesty fueled a new wave of illegal immigration, another massive amnesty would open a new flow of immigration of relatives who come from the same backgrounds.

If the objective of immigration reform against illegal immigration is to succeed, the pressure for adoption of an IRCA-style amnesty must be resisted.

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Growing Amnesty Speculation Could Lead to Repeating Past Follies - ImmigrationReform.com (blog)

The Trump administration last week floated an amnesty idea for potentially 1 million illegal immigrants, looking to find permanent solutions for some of the most sympathetic cases in the long-running immigration debate.

In two days of testimony to Congress, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said he doubts his ability to oust some 250,000 immigrants from Central American countries who have been in the U.S. for nearly two decades on a temporary humanitarian relief program.

He also signaled that he would keep protecting 780,000 Dreamers from deportation and hoped Congress would grant them permanent status.

Youve got to solve this problem, Mr. Kelly told the House Homeland Security Committee when members prodded him not to deport Dreamers.

He said he would not deport Dreamers but warned that the policy could change when someone else takes over his job, making the only solution congressional action. He said there is clear bipartisan support for some form of permanent legalization and urged lawmakers to take the opportunity that the Trump administration is giving.

Im not going to let the Congress off the hook. Youve got to solve it, he said.

If lawmakers wait, he warned, a future secretary might take a stricter line on Dreamers and fully cancel President Obamas 2012 amnesty, known in governmentspeak as DACA.

Under DACA, illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and who have kept a relatively clean record, were 30 or younger as of 2012 and who have worked toward a high school diploma are granted a renewable stay of deportation, along with a work permit entitling them to hold jobs, get a drivers license and obtain some taxpayer benefits.

Mr. Kelly also took a humanitarian view toward perhaps 250,000 migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua who have been protected from deportation for nearly two decades under temporary protected status, a program designed to make sure people dont have to go back home to countries suffering natural disasters.

The earthquakes and hurricanes that granted the protected status are well in the past, but the Bush and Obama administrations renewed the program.

All told, people from some 10 countries are covered by temporary protected status. Mr. Kelly recently renewed Haitis designation, stemming from the 2010 earthquake.

The secretary said he would try to encourage the Haitians to go back eventually. For the Central Americans, however, its kind of hard to root them out and send them back.

He suggested instead that Congress grant them a way toward citizenship.

The suggestions are splitting advocacy groups, some of which say they are willing to look at proposals as long as the deal is fair while others insist there is no room for negotiation.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports stricter limits on immigration, said the key is what kind of deal can be struck.

Those are the two groups of illegals who have been provisionally amnestied, but not permanently so. Turning those provisional amnesties into a permanent one in exchange for some kind of significant enforcement measures could make sense, he said.

He floated the idea of coupling a permanent amnesty for the roughly 1 million Dreamers and longtime temporary protected status recipients with an end to the Diversity Visa lottery, which gives away 55,000 immigration slots a year by random chance, and by imposing a mandatory requirement for all businesses to use E-Verify, the governments work-authorization system, to make sure their potential hires are legal.

If I were a congressman, yeah, Id probably vote for that, Mr. Krikorian said.

The Diversity Lottery has some supporters but for the most part is viewed as an out-of-date anachronism in the immigration system another program that allows immigrants to choose the U.S. rather than Americans to choose immigrants who meet the countrys needs.

Meanwhile, E-Verify has long been on the wish list for enforcement advocates, who believe that if businesses are forced to vet their employees, then the jobs magnet for illegal immigrants would dry up.

Cesar Vargas, a Dreamer and advocate for immigrant rights, said he would be open to hearing about a deal for Dreamers and didnt rule out E-Verify, but he added that supporters would have to prove it would be workable and wouldnt pose a major burden on small businesses.

Still, he said the immigration debate has been stalled for so long that he wants to see concrete proposals on the table.

Start holding hearings, start holding discussions on those significant issues, he urged Washington.

But Greisa Martinez, an advocacy director at United We Dream and another Dreamer, said Republicans have put their enforcement measures into this years spending bill, which allocated money for more Border Patrol agents and deportation officers, as well as for several dozen miles of border barrier.

She said there is no deal if Republicans demand more.

We will not negotiate on something that would add on enforcement to something that theyve been already been able to achieve, she said.

Matt OBrien, a former immigration official who is now with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said he fears Republicans who run Washington would leap at a deal that would grant a permanent amnesty to Dreamers though he said it would come with political peril.

FAIRs position has always been that we want to see the border secured and the rule of law enforced. Trump made a campaign promise that he was going to repeal DACA, and thats a promise I think he should keep if he wants to retain the support of those who put him in office, Mr. OBrien said.

The danger in an amnesty has always been the message it would send to potential migrants. The 1986 amnesty, far from solving the problem, paved the path for the current illegal immigrant population, which is estimated at 11 million.

The Trump administration has made some headway in tamping down the flow of border jumpers, but illegal immigration appears to have shifted instead to migrants who come legally on temporary visas but dont leave when their time expires.

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Homeland Security secretary suggests amnesty for Dreamers, implores Congress to solve problem - Washington Times

Honors student J.P. Krause won the election for senior class president at Vero Beach High School in Vero Beach, Fla. And then, all of a sudden, his victory was stripped from him.

Summarily, the high schools administrators stripped him of his new position, and, to add insult to injury, gave him detention. Why? Because Krause delivered a satirical campaign speech that channeled Donald Trumps presidential campaign rhetoric and, in jest, claimed his opponent was a Communist. It was harassment, the principal concluded.

After Krauses classmates chanted speech, speech, he gave an impromptu speech that kept his fellow classmates laughing for well over a minute. I am for freedom, equality, and liberty, he said. His opponent? Well, she wants to advance Communist ideals, he smirked. She will raise taxes to 80 percent!

Krause also suggested in jest that his opponent supports their rivals at the nearby high school, whereas he would build a wall between the two schools and make their rival pay for it.

No one thought Krause was serious. The room, full of honors students in U.S. History, seemed to be well aware of the parallels Krause was making between his campaign speech and Donald Trumps presidential campaign speeches. The teacher allowed the off-the-cuff speech to continue, and there wasnt any reaction by students inside the classroom but laughter.

Nevertheless, the speech not only disqualified Krause from taking up the reins as class president, it also added harassment to his school record. The administration took my speech out of context and said I was harassing a student, Krause tells National Review.

It was a joke the whole way through.

Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative public-interest law firm, is representing Krause in an attempt to remove the harassment claims from his school record. It also seeks to reinstate Krause as class president. It was pure political speech and obviously humorous, explains Mark Miller, Krauses attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, to National Review. Its clearly protected in First Amendment speech.

In a letter sent to Mark Rendell, the superintendent of the school district, Miller argued that if a student gives a speech that is lewd, vulgar, or profane, then the school can sanction him.

But that is not remotely the case here, Miller retorted. Satirically claiming that an opponent in a class election wants to raise taxes, advance Communism, and implement a dress code is certainly not lewd, vulgar, or profane its a joke.

Because the high school applied the same speech code that it would use to punish students who say lewd, vulgar, or profane comments to that of a satirical speech, Miller contests that it is violating the First Amendment. J.P.s speech in no way singled out his fellow student candidate for her appearance, abilities, gender, race, creed, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation, Miller wrote. Nor was it deeply offensive.

Schools such as Vero Beach High School are sending the message to students that only some political statements are tolerable. Thats exactly the wrong message to tell a young man like J.P, Miller says.

Excerpt from:
Violating the First Amendment, High School Punishes Student for Satirical Campaign Speech - National Review

Lawyers from Columbia Universitys Knight First Amendment Institute sent a letter last weekarguing that President Trumps blocking users on Twitter runs afoul of the First Amendment.

The presidents account recently blocked the two Twitter users being represented after they posted critical tweets in response to a couple of the presidents tweets.

Their lawyers argument is that the presidents blocking these users from seeing or responding to his tweets on Twitter impinges on their free-speech rights under the First Amendment; the idea is that Trump, in his capacity as a state actor, has violated the Constitution by blocking access to information in what should be considered a public forum.

Yet they fail to consider that (1) these citizens have other means of accessing his tweets, and (2) Trumps account (@real DonaldTrump) is hosted by a private company, which is free to set its own policies for how its users interact.

To the first point, the two people that were blocked can still access these tweets not only from the thousands of retweets they receive from countless other accounts or news publications, but by simply creating another account from which to follow Trump.

Secondly, Trumps Twitter account is not federally owned or operated and therefore should not be treated as a government-created forum obliged to provide access to all comers.

It should be obvious that, though blocking people on Twitter may seem beneath the presidents office or pointless considering the thousands of other tweets that are critical of him from accounts he didnt bother to block, it isnt unconstitutional. Whether a judge might hold otherwise in the current climate is less clear.

View original post here:
Is It Unconstitutional for Trump to Block Twitter Users? - National Review

Free speech and its limitations are on Americans' minds. In the past year we've seen Nazis and white supremacists rally in our cities, angry protesters chase provocateurs off of college campuses, a comedian wield a bloody effigy of the president's severed head, and slurs and overt racial animus made a staple of political discourse. Controversial speech has people talking about what restrictions, if any, society can enforce on words we despise.

That inquiry isn't inherently bad. It's good for citizens to want to learn more about the contours of our constitutional rights. The dilemma is that the public debate about free speech relies on useless cliches, not on accurate information about the law.

Here are some of the most popular misleading slogans:

"Not all speech is protected. There are limits to free speech."

This slogan is true, but rarely helpful. The Supreme Court has called the few exceptions to the First Amendment "well-defined and narrowly limited." They include obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, true threats and speech integral to already criminal conduct. First Amendment exceptions are not an open-ended category, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to add to them, especially in the last generation. Merely observing that some exceptions exist does not help anyone determine whether particular speech falls into one of those exceptions. It's a non sequitur.

Imagine you're bitten by a snake on a hike, and you want to know rather urgently whether the snake is venomous. You describe the snake to your doctor. "Well, not all snakes are venomous," your doctor responds. Not very helpful, is it?

"You can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theater."

Almost 100 years ago, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr. coined a version of this now-familiar metaphor. Holmes used it to explain why the Supreme Court was upholding the criminal conviction of Charles Schenck, who was jailed merely for distributing materials urging peaceful resistance to the draft in World War I. Fortunately, the Supreme Court often led by Holmes himself retreated from this terrible precedent, eventually ruling that speech can't be punished as "incitement" unless it is intended and likely to provoke imminent lawless action. In other words, this favorite rhetorical apologia for censorship was used in the course of a decision now universally recognized as bad law.

Holmes' usually misquoted slogan (he said that the law allows us to punish someone for falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater) is really just another way to observe that not all speech is protected and there are limits to First Amendment protections. As I said before, that's not in dispute, but invoking the truism does nothing to resolve whether any particular speech falls within the well-defined and narrow exceptions to the First Amendment.

"Hate speech is not free speech."

This popular saying reflects our contempt for bigotry, but it's not a correct statement of law. There is no general First Amendment exception allowing the government to punish "hate speech" that denigrates people based on their identity. Things we call "hate speech" might occasionally fall into an existing First Amendment exception: A racist speech might seek to incite imminent violence against a group, or might be reasonably interpreted as an immediate threat to do harm. But "hate speech," like other ugly types of speech we despise, is broadly protected.

"We must balance free speech and other interests."

Censorship advocates often tell us we need to balance the freedom to speak with the harm that speech does. This is arguable philosophically, but it is wrong legally. American courts don't decide whether to protect speech by balancing its harm against its benefit; they ask only if it falls into a specific First Amendment exception. As the Supreme Court recently put it, "the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits. The First Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the Government outweigh the costs."

"'Fighting words' are not protected under the First Amendment."

Years ago the Supreme Court recognized a very narrow First Amendment exception for "fighting words." If the exception still survives, it's limited to in-person face-to-face insults directed at a particular person and likely to provoke a violent response from that person. It doesn't apply broadly to offensive speech, even though it's often invoked to justify censoring such speech.

"Maybe this speech is protected now, but the law is always changing."

The Supreme Court's approach to constitutional rights can change very quickly. For instance, it took less than a generation for the court to reverse course on whether the government could punish gay sex. But for decades the court has been moving toward more vigorous protection of free speech, not less. Some of the most controversial and unpopular speech to come before the court like videos of animals being tortured, or incendiary Westboro Baptist Church protests at funerals have yielded solid 8-to-1 majorities in favor of protecting speech. There's no sign of a growing appetite for censorship on the court.

Even as a free speech advocate and critic of censorship, I'm happy to see a public debate about the limits of free speech. Any debate that raises consciousness about our rights can be productive. But the free speech debate should proceed based on facts and well-established law, not empty rhetoric. Familiarity with our rights and how they work is a civic obligation.

Ken White is a First Amendment litigator and criminal defense attorney at Brown White & Osborn LLP in Los Angeles. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

Originally posted here:
Ken White: Actually, hate speech is protected by First Amendment - Allentown Morning Call