"Laws Optional" in California

I know that California is the land of fruits and nuts, and where "creativity" takes on new meaning.  A lot of very nice people must live there, given that a lot of people live there and some reasonable percentage of them are decent folks.  Maybe even most of them.  We'll stipulate that for today.

But boy, do they have some strange habits when they go to the polls.  I'm sure of that, because not only did they just elect a certified oddball to the U.S. Senate, they've reached new heights with their president pro tem of their State Senate, a person named Kevin De Leon.  Because if he is to believed, obedience to the law is an optional exercise, perhaps depending on the way you feel when you wake up and have your grass smoothie.

De Leon was testifying this week before the state's Senate Public Safety Committee about something or other.  In the course of going on about the topic of services to illegal aliens, he made this remarkable statement:

"I can tell you half of my family would be eligible for deportation under [President Trump’s] executive order, because if they got a false Social Security card, if they got a false identification, if they got a false driver’s license prior to us passing [the state law letting illegals have driver's licenses], if they got a false green card, and anyone who has family members, you know, who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification. That’s what you need to survive, to work. They are eligible for massive deportation."

The next day, De Leon compounded the affront to actual taxpaying citizens by doubling down, commenting on the aspect of the president's executive order that made possession or purchase of a fake Social Security card by an illegal a deportable offense:

“Someone simply who received or purchased a [fraudulent] Social Security card down at McArthur Park, or elsewhere in my district would be eligible immediately for mass deportation ... He’s trying to deputize police officers, and with the suspicion of someone being a criminal or having a broken taillight, that they themselves, as a local police officer, could call the ICE agents immediately and have that person deported without even legal due process.”

I don't know how a "someone" can be subject to a "mass deportation", but let that ride for the nonce.

The host, shocked that De Leon thought that defrauding the USA by holding a fraudulent Social Security card was perfectly fine, asked him if he really thought it was perfectly OK to do so.  Incredibly, De Leon declared that it was open season on legal realities:

“The vast majority of immigrants — hard working immigrants — have done that.  I can tell you I have family members specifically who came here as undocumented immigrants, and they did the same thing. That’s what you need to do to survive in this economy.”  Challenged on that from the standpoint of it being often done through identity theft, De Leon declared that it was "not the same as Russian hacking."

This is the temporary leader of the California State Senate.  He declared in public that what "you need [to do] to survive in this economy" is to commit a felony, carrying a fraudulent Social Security card that often is done through identity theft, a second felony.

So here's what I think.  If immigrants, specifically illegal ones but not exclusively, have to commit felonies to "survive in this economy", then maybe the economy of the USA isn't the one they ought to be living in!  I'm sure they weren't coming from a real happy economy in Central America or wherever they're coming from, but if they have to commit a felony to live here, on top of the laws they broke by being here illegally in the first place, then why are we burdening American citizens by allowing them here?

As I write this, Sean Spicer, the president's press secretary, is using the term "people coming to do us harm" to describe those we are trying to keep from entering this country.  I have to tell you, people who come here and commit identity theft are coming here to do us harm, or at least needing to do us harm in order to stay here.

Where does it stop?  Listen to what De Leon was getting at, and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt by actually considering his words.  He is trying to make the case, though, that possession of a fraudulent Social Security card is not grounds for an illegal alien to be deported.

But being here illegally is already grounds for being deported.  It is only exacerbating the situation by having them defraud the citizenry by using fake documentation, whether identity theft or just made up from whole cloth.

Some strange views they have out there in California, I have to tell you.  They have to, if they're electing House members like Maxine Waters, who literally cannot tell Crimea from Korea.  Of course, they probably think that my view that "borders should be under the control of the Federal government" is strange, too.

Maybe they should secede.  Then they can open their borders like crazy until they go bankrupt.

Oops, too late.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.