The Constitution itself, from which all federal powers derive, does not even delegate to the federal government any power over immigration — i.e., who can come here. It just gives it power over naturalization, i.e., who can become a citizen here.
The likely claim of the folks in the caravan will be political asylum. Political asylum requires the claimant to demonstrate an intolerable situation in the home country caused by the government — not by economic forces — and aimed at the person seeking asylum. Thus, the failure of the government in the country of origin to protect basic natural rights or to enforce basic criminal laws — for example, permitting criminal gangs to rule — is a valid basis for asylum, whereas loss of a job is not.
Once an asylum-seeker has so much as the tip of her shoe on American soil, she can file an asylum claim. The claim entitles her to a hearing before an immigration judge. Most of these hearings take six to eight months after the claim has been filed to reach a judge. In the Obama years, asylum claimants were set free until their hearings. The Trump administration has detained them and separated children from their parents. The detentions are lawful; the family separations are not.
Yet people who want to work should be allowed in. My colleagues at The Wall Street Journal have demonstrated indisputably that most of the work that immigrants will do is work most Americans eschew. Their work not only benefits them but also produces family stability and increases wealth, which finds its way into the stream of commerce.
The blanket rejection by force of everyone in the caravan violates the spirit and the intentions of the laws the president has sworn to uphold. Those laws mandate a careful examination of all who want to come here — on a neutral case-by-case basis — not a blanket prohibition.
We who call ourselves Americans are nearly all descended from immigrants. Yet when our forebears arrived here, they were met simply by prejudice and government indifference. The poor folks in the caravan are likely to be met by prejudice and government force.
From Judge Andrew Napolitano,
The Camp of the Saints
