Borders and Swarms

Quoting from the Epoch Times Morning Brief, March 30, 2024, in an article discussing the role of the Judicial Branch in our border policies:

"The U.S. Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority to create policies about the admissibility of individuals to the United States. 

At the same time, the legislative branch [Congress] delegates the power to implement those policies to the executive branch.

The doctrine is a judge-made exception to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a federal statute enacted in 1946 that governs administrative law procedures for federal executive departments and independent agencies. The late U.S. Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.) said the APA was “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the federal government.”

Decisions about who gets to enter the United States are vested in the legislative and the executive branches, not the judicial branch."

The article is essentially arguing, I think, against a Judicial Branch role in immigration.  (The Epoch Times is excellent for their news, opinions and informative movies.)

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Some observations:

1.  Congress has "exclusive authority” over who enters the country . . . however - as in so many areas - Congress delegated the power to implement their laws to the President and the Agencies, making them responsible for enforcing the laws.  Which the President and the bureaucrats then often interpret and administer as they see fit, too often unfairly and for political motives, regardless of the original Congressional intent.

Thus Biden’s arguments about Congress needing to "do something" about the border invasion is simply a political game; he is using misdirection while he keeps the border wide open, a border that he and his agencies were supposed to control.  The legislation - and the money - that he claims would solve the problem, and that he blames Congress for refusing to pass, is not a solution at all; as written, it would not stop the invasion, rather it would only formalize and legalize the admission of ever more illegal immigrants and make them easier to “process.”  That bill allows at least a quarter million more every year.  Swarms of them.

2.  According to that Epoch Times article, Senator McCarran wanted to "protect the rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the federal government.”  I see that as the kind of political pandering to “oppressed groups” - and the web of laws that follow - that is contributing to the destruction of America . . .

 . . .  because there is no one in America today - no group - whose affairs are NOT controlled or regulated by agencies of the federal government!  It’s no longer “hundreds of thousands” - it’s 330 million of us! 

Our Declaration of Independence lays out the reasons that we were seceding from the British Empire.  Among those, it states that the King “has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”

Isn’t it obvious that what the King did to us in the 1700’s pales in comparison to what our Federal Government does to us now?  Don’t those 500 ABC Agencies in the Executive Branch, with their millions of bureaucrats, control or regulate everything we do, in one way or another?  Yet in our “democracy” we only vote for two of them, the President and the Vice President?  How is that different?  Are we but electing a different kind of “king” - Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t matter - who sends forth swarms to harass us, to tax us, and to control us?

Can we not elect a President who will reform and defang those Agencies?  Even eliminate some of them?

Meanwhile Congress just keeps passing more laws.  Most of them to deal with the unintended consequences, blowback, and negative results of their previous laws.  So many laws that we can never know them all, or understand them.  And then they hand over the interpretation, implementation and enforcement of their swarms of laws to the unelected bureaucrats.  Over whom they have almost no real control.

Will our Representatives and Senators in D.C. - the people we elect to represent us - ever assume their responsibilities?  Take back control of lawmaking and spending?  Enforce the Rule of Law?  Hold the Executive Branch and its Agencies accountable?

It seems that money, power and hubris have prevented them from doing so.  At our expense.  But by failing in their obligations, they are also standing by and allowing the destruction of the Idea of America and the decimation of our Rights and our liberty.

Can we effect change, or is it too late?  Could constitutional amendments initiated and ratified by the States force Congress to be more responsible?  Would abolishing income taxes and the IRS, replacing them with a national consumption tax, eliminate some of the tools that enable lobbyists to influence our representatives?  And take away the ability of professional politicians to trade tax favors for votes?   

Do local grassroots movements have any hope against the Leviathan that our national government has become?

In the Farrelly brothers’ movie Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey's character was told by the girl he was smitten with that his chances with her were one in a million.  To which he joyously replied, “So you're telling me there’s a chance!”  

It seems pretty clear that there is zero chance if we do not try.  

The swarms of illegals across our borders is but one symptom of our declining national condition.  The swarms of unelected, powerful, secretive bureaucrats is another.  We also have inflation; crime; constant war; pollution; the transfer of wealth to the elite; chronic disease; increased spending and debt; corporatism and crony capitalism; agency capture; State capture; censorship of free speech; manipulation of our language; unauthorized surveillance of the citizens by the government with little or no transparency of their own . . . the list is long.  If we cannot see that our America is in trouble, then we are simply not looking.

Yet I refuse, so far, to be defeatist.  We are better than that!  I feel that there are still a majority of us that believe in the principles that guided our founding - hard working, moral, honest, generous folks that want to restore our country, not tear it down.  But we need to realize that we are not a minority, even though the media might give us that impression.  Coming together will give us hope.  A sense of humor will keep us sane.  There are growing grassroots movements gaining momentum.  Doesn’t it feel like the pendulum may be starting to swing the other way?

They say that freedom is not free.  That is true.  Our inalienable Rights come with responsibilities; if we do not participate in peaceful grassroots actions to defend our Constitutional Rights, then we will lose them. 

The Fairtax; Our Country Our Choice; and the Convention of States are all examples of non-partisan grassroots groups.  There are others, of course, but do check them out.  

And the effort to get Roberty Kennedy Jr. on the Presidential ballot is also non-Republican and non-Democrat;  it's an Independent movement to give us the choices we that we deserve and need in a democratic process.  Perhaps it is time to Declare our Independence, as our founders did.  And stop the swarms.