Jezebel 
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New York, 1:07 PM
Tue Dec 22
61 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/09/09
Hear, hear. Well said.
And this, my friends, is why diversity matters. Why had it not occurred to the other Justices to rethink their use of language in matters like this? Sotomayor's background does make a difference, not to the law itself, but in how the law is interpreted, expressed, and applied to people's lives.
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I am so glad that you don't let your VALUES influence anything that you do.
From,
Anita Hill
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12/09/09
We should really let the guy get his shut-eye.
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Also, for anyone interested, The Nine by Jeffery Toobin creates a pretty damning portrait of Thomas.
I detest Scalia, but I'll admit to him being intelligent and well-acquainted with the law. I just never agree with him. My issue is that he decides his opinion about a case and then back-tracks his way to justify it in his decisions--when it should be the other way around. Thomas just seems perpetually out of his league when he's on the bench.
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But I agree, the struggles he overcame and the anecdote about the photo were definitely redeeming moments for me.
@burningdinner: I like to rationalize that their friendship is based on both being New Yorkers and opera afficionados. But I still loathe his opinions and his demeanor.
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Also, I forget which case it was, (the name escapes me but it was a strip club in Kansas that wanted to have strippers without pasties--a violation of local obscenity laws) but Scalia made a comment about 10,000 people being naked in the Hoosier Dome, and then Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connor kept his analogy in their rebuttal of his argument. The number of times "nipples," "pasties," and "nudity" appeared in the Supreme Court tanscripts was astounding and wildly amusing.
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I never thought I'd see Scalia come down on the side of criminal defendants and then he wrote opinions that re-invigorated the 6th Amendment's right to confrontation. Amazing!
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So shut yo face!
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Generally, concurrences are just a vehicle for jackass-ery. The problem is that even though the majority opinion is 'the law,' the lower courts may prefer to use the concurring opinion's rationale to justify certain rulings, leading to disagreements amongst the lower courts.
12/09/09
But yes. Most opinions often have several concurrences. Usually they are much more civil, save for Scalia who is a bombastic writer.
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(I know you weren't arguing that it was exclusively Scalia, but this thread has had a bit of pile-on against the conservative wing of the bench, and it seemed important to note that the lefties sometimes take the piss a bit as well.)
only tangentially related: I don't know that I've ever referred to a document from the Supreme Court as 'goofy' before. That may come back to bite me eventually.
12/09/09
Then again, I'm more fond of O'Connor because she is all about five parts tests and very helpful to establishing precedent that can actually be used by trial judges. But then again, she was one, too.
I seriously doubt the mess that is Iqbal would have been created if there were justices with trial court experience. The fetishization of the court of appeals as feeder grounds for the supreme court is troubling and has created this bizarre echo chamber where opinions are issued that don't work in a pragmatic sense.
But I digress.
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Next time read the quote more thoroughly. It explained why "illegal" was the improper term.
12/09/09
This also trickles down, meaning that a lot of people who are here legally or born in the US are treated poorly. My stepfather was born here and speaks next to no Spanish, but he's still been subject to racism and screamed at to, "Go back to Mexico" because he's Mexican-American.
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2) As the article stated, many of the people in question immigrated here legally on temporary or work visas. They then overstayed their visas. However, their initial act of immigration was perfectly legal. Claiming that they immigrated here illegally is inaccurate. It also provides a convenient way to ignore the fact that the immigration process is, as you've said, time-consuming and incredibly costly. Most Americans--especially those who rail against undocumented workers--have no idea how expensive or complicated it is. They can't wrap their heads around the idea that a person could have done everything right and paid every fee, but still be "illegal" because some dumbass at DHS wrote the date in the wrong format on a single form. (True story; happened to a postdoc in my department.)
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I only have my husband's experience to refer to, but it was very obvious when the visa expired, and now it is very obvious when his permanent residence expires and he is required to renew.
12/10/09
As for the difficulty of determining legal presence, while if your husband failed to renew his permanent residency he would be in violation of civil immigration regulations, he would NOT be a criminal nor should he be deported without a hearing, at which all you would have to do is prove your marriage was still valid and his deportation would be stayed and his status restored. There are various grounds to waive deportation and provide immigration status that do not get a day in court until a person is in deportation proceedings, and there are other people who have modes of legal immigration available to them and don't know it.
It is a strange but real function of immigration law that those who enter on a visa are considered in a different status than those who enter without papers, and a period of legal presence can mitigate deportability in some cases. Some categories of people exist under a legal fiction that they never "entered" the US (meaning they were never inspected at a port of entry) and therefore have fewer due process rights than those who enter legally and overstay or otherwise fall out of status and cannot be deported until they have their day in court.
The bottom line is that immigration law is second only to tax law in its complexity, and just like when you mess up your taxes, you can usually fix it without being convicted of tax evasion or having your property seized, you can often fix your immigration problems without
Deportation or denial of entitlements is a seriously heavy consequence to what is often only a technical administrative law breach. Painting everyone who has violated civil immigration provisions with the brush of criminality is inaccurate and lends itself to xenophobia.
12/10/09
I personally think that there should be a certain time that amnesty should be offered all of the undocumented people in the United States (who can prove they have been in the country for x amount of years) without fear of deportation and then once that time is over then it would be time to crack down, as there would be no excuse.
The problem with allowing immigrants in easier is they will then have access to the systems that they have never paid into. From talking with my Danish friends and family they are having a serious issue with this, and I have seen it happen in Canada with their healthcare and subsidized post secondary education.
I think that migrant labor should be available without the opportunity of status, and the identity cards should have heavy biometrics (the permanent residence card has it so why not?), and be easy for employers to check, and then hold the employers 100% responsible for the status of their workers. From what I understand talking to farm owner family and friends it is a challenge a worker's status which is crazy, imo.
I did the paperwork for our visa (I realize that it is the easiest) without a problem, all I had to do was dot all the i's and cross all the t's. I don't know how hard the paperwork is to do on different visa's, of course you would be an authority on that, but from my experience it really didn't require a lawyer.
Thanks for the info, as always you are a wealth of information!