Defending illegal immigration, the Left repeatedly asked America, "How's it hurting you?" A year into the Trump administration's enforcement of immigration laws and the Left's histrionic resistance to it, it's time to put the question back to the Left: "How's it hurting you?"
Throughout the duration of illegal immigrants pouring into the country through the Biden administration's open border policy, America's Left goaded the nation with "How's it hurting you?" In other words, how do illegal immigrants adversely affect your life? The Left asserted that the asset of American citizenship was undiminished by the presence of illegal immigrants. You were still just as much here and held the same rights despite the presence of millions more being allowed in.
The question "How's it hurting you?" is an old ploy of the Left. They have regularly aimed it at those opposing their stances on moral, cultural, and lifestyle issues. Implicit in the question was the accusation: You have a privilege you do not want to share, despite your privilege being unharmed by sharing it.
That the harm of illegal immigration obviously existed was universally dismissed and ignored by the Left and the establishment media. The ignoring was so blatant that it did not end until Republican states on the frontline of the illegal immigration influx started sending illegal aliens to blue sanctuary cities and brought the harm of illegal immigration across their thresholds.
As the costs mounted and compounded, the Left's rhetorical question was swept away. Now, as new costs mount and compound—this time from the Left's increasingly aggressive agitation against the enforcement of immigration laws—the question needs to be revived.
We watch the prolonged insurgency in Minneapolis, egged on by elected officials there. We see refusals to cooperate with law enforcement being redoubled in sanctuary cities and states. We see ICE facilities being stormed by elected members of Congress—those entrusted to make the laws, instead of trying to stop the enforcement of existing laws. We see federal law enforcement agents being assaulted, harassed, followed, tracked in databases, and doxxed. We see leftist organizations funding these activities and agitators.
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To all, we pose the question to America's Left that they once asked America: How is enforcement of the law hurting you? You are not illegal immigrants. How does it hurt you that the law is being enforced and those here illegally are being deported?
The question is not simply a rhetorical device as it was when the Left wielded it to deflect attention from laws being broken. In this case of laws being enforced, the question is akin to the legal one of "standing" in judicial proceedings: What gives you the right to seek redress?
To bring a case before the courts, a plaintiff must first be determined to have a legitimate grievance. This determination ensures the court's time is not wasted on conceptual cases of mere theoretical harm. Further, does a connection exist between your claimed injury and a claimed defendant's action? And does a court have the authority to grant relief? In the case of the enforcement of immigration laws, to all these questions the Left's answers are "No," "No," and "No."
If these questions are of foundational importance in cases involving the law, how much more important are they for action being taken outside the law, as those on the Left are doing?
The fact is that the Left does not have "standing" for its insurgent histrionics. It has neither legitimate grievance nor a leg to stand on, only laws to be broken and the enforcement of laws to be obstructed.
What America's Left is saying is that it's entitled to unilaterally negate the nation's immigration laws that it disagrees with. And that, by their negation, leftists are thereby going to rewrite America's immigration laws singlehandedly and force the rest of the nation to adhere to their skewed sense of supposed justice.
This is not a new claim: Sanctuary city and state statutes have been around for decades. Only today, America's Left is asserting its claim with more vehemence and violence than ever before. However, all its vehemence and violence neither gives America's Left this right nor makes America's Left right.
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, "Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America's Socialist Left," from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.
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