National
Emergency? What National Emergency?
(Part Two)
By Hank
Silverberg
It has
happened. The President declared a “National Emergency”This past week, citing
illegal immigration on our southern border as the reason. But there is a serious constitutional
question that still needs to be dealt with before any implementation takes
place.
The declaration came after the Congress approved a new spending bill to keep the government open that included only $1.3 billion to partially fund some kind of barrier or fencing on the border. That fell short of the $5.7 billion Mr. Trump wanted to build his wall. He will use the “National Emergency” to transfer money from other parts of the budget to make up the difference, including about $3.6 billion from military construction projects. That is where the real battle could begin.
The declaration came after the Congress approved a new spending bill to keep the government open that included only $1.3 billion to partially fund some kind of barrier or fencing on the border. That fell short of the $5.7 billion Mr. Trump wanted to build his wall. He will use the “National Emergency” to transfer money from other parts of the budget to make up the difference, including about $3.6 billion from military construction projects. That is where the real battle could begin.
It is, of
course, NOT the first time a President has declared a “National Emergency.” But
this time the focus is different. The list below, provided by the Brennan
Center for Justice, shows all 59 National Emergencies declared since 1979.
(The law was revised in 1976.) Almost all of them have something to do with
foreign policy, an area specifically under the Constitutional purview of the
President. Only one is domestic in nature, issued by President Obama in 2009, to
deal with the swine flu epidemic.
Even the
President, in what can best be described as a rambling news conference,
admitted that he expects a legal challenge to his declaration. The reason?
There is a constitutional question on whether any President can circumvent
the decision of Congress on how and where to allocate money.
Article I
Section 7
1: All Bills for
raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate
may propose or concur with Amendments as on other bills.
The National Emergencies Act also allows
Congress to override a Presidential declaration the same way it overrides a
Presidential veto. That would require a large number of Republicans to go
against the President, the leader of their own party.
The bottom line: all this may end up in the
U.S. Supreme Court, which is now dominated by Conservatives.
The New
York Times described the declaration this way:
“...in a breathtaking display of executive disregard for the
separation of powers, the White House is thumbing its nose at Congress, the
Constitution and the will of the American people, the majority of who oppose a
border wall.”
Polls seem to back up that last assertion.
A recent CBS poll found eight in ten Republicans favor a border wall. But 59% of
the overall public oppose building a border wall on the U.S.- Mexico border, including
two thirds of the Independents and 84% of the Democrats.
Having written all this, let's look at
the reasons Mr.
Trump wants the wall.
 |
| (Part of the 654 miles of existing fencing) |
He says it’s to stop a massive influx of
illegal immigrants across the southern border, including more than four thousand
who have committed murders.
Government statistics just don’t back that
up. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection says 396,579 undocumented people
were caught entering the country in 2018. Another 124,511 presented themselves
at the border seeking asylum on humanitarian grounds, and were rejected. Compare
that to the 1.6 million border crossers who were apprehended in 2000 and the
1.3 million caught in 2001.
If you do the math, it means illegal
immigration on the border has been cut in half over the last 20 years. So why
an emergency now?
And what about the “four thousand” murderers the President says got in? The
government does not actually keep statistics on this, so the claim is dubious. Several
studies have indicated that immigrants as a whole, both legal and illegal,
commit crimes at a lower rate than native born Americans.
I wrote more about this in a previous posting of "Time to Think."
(See also:) https://hanksilverberg.blogspot.com/2019/01/national-emergency-whatemergency-by.html
Human trafficking is still a considerable
issue along the border, and so are illegal narcotics. But there’s no evidence a wall would stop either crime. In fact, the recent trial of convicted South American drug kingpin El
Chapo Guzman, revealed he used tunnels, speed boats and even a submarine to
smuggle drugs across the border, as well as vehicles at border crossings that had guards and fences.
What is the solution to illegal
immigration, human trafficking and drug smuggling? Numerous law enforcement
agencies and politicians have suggested a combination of increased border
patrols (more officers), new detection technology (including drones), and a
faster way to screen those seeking entry legally or caught entering illegally. That would include hundreds of new immigration judges. Those suggestions sound practical to me,
and I suspect millions of Americans would agree.
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