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NO, The Governor's cannot stop Syrian Refugees

12:50 PM Add Comment

Since the Paris attacks, thirty Governors have declared their opposition to resettling Syrian refugees within their states. New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Georgia’s Nathan Deal, Illinois’s Bruce Rauner, and several others have stated flatly that their states will not accept new Syrian refugees.
Politically, it’s a winning position with a lot of Americans right now: as presidential candidates whip up anti-immigrant sentiment, it plays on voters’ desire to be kept safe from what sounds like a dangerous wave of potential terrorists.

But legally speaking? The technical constitutional-law term for these declarations is “bluster.”
Here’s the fact about governors’ plans to block the entry of refugees or any other immigrants to their states: They can’t do it. The decision to admit a person to the United States belongs to the federal government exclusively. Once a person is legally admitted to the United States, she can live wherever she chooses. States don’t issue visas any more than they declare war. Indeed, putting foreign affairs under the firm control of one central government was one of the primary motivations of the Founders in creating the Constitution in the first place.

The governors probably know that they aren’t in the international visa business. That’s why some of them, like Michigan’s Rick Snyder, are taking a more nuanced line, saying not that the doors of their states are closed but that they want to persuade the federal government to slow or halt the nation’s acceptance of refugees. And of course bluster does have a power of its own: state governments are in general among the most powerful and effective interests groups in the national lawmaking process, and already yesterday the White House held a call with 34 Governors to discuss their concerns on this issue.

That’s not to say governors are totally powerless to shape the flow of refugees. There are things states can do to make themselves less attractive destinations. Most refugees need help getting their lives restarted—housing, language education, employment leads, and other social services. A fair amount of that resettlement work is run through state social-service agencies with the support of federal dollars. The states are the one with the boots on the ground in education, housing, and so forth—and they could simply decide not to take the federal money and not to provide resettlement services. Several governors have actually taken this line, saying that they’ll cease providing resettlement assistance. The problem, even with that idea, is that a state can’t just decide to discourage a certain kind of refugee—in this case, Syrians. Once the state starts trying to do that, it's making foreign policy rather than just delivering education or housing, and that it can’t do. Any governor who wants to push away Syrians away is going to have to push away everyone.

Laquan McDonald's Shooting Is Just The Latest Episode In Chicago Police's Brutal History

12:46 PM Add Comment
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The sight of a cop emptying 16 bullets into the body of a black teenager was one Chicago police likely hoped the public would never see. But after a year-long battle to get dashcam footage released, viewers around the world on Tuesday night watched video of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald take his last steps before officer Jason Van Dyke buried him in a haze of bullets and gun smoke. 
Viewers struggled to understand why the 14-year veteran cop would repeatedly shoot a teenager who, though armed with a small knife, was walking away. Still more wondered why a cop would continue to shoot -- and try to reload -- well after the teen was motionless on the ground. 
Van Dyke's actions were an outlier on the scene. Of the eight police officers present, he was the only one who had fired his weapon. He did so because he "feared for his life," his lawyer said. 
Though Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy lamented the tragedy, they painted it as the actions of one bad apple. But for Chicago police, the department's reputation of being "rotten to the core" -- marked by conspiracy, corruption, torture and racism -- stretches back nearly a century.