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The U.S. is the only member of the United Nations (UN) that did not participate in the entire 18-month process for the development of a Global Compact for Migration, which is supposed to be formally adopted in December.
The process began when the UN hosted a summit in New York on September 19, 2016, to discuss a more humane way to handle large movements of migrants. Barack Obama was the president then. At the end of the summit, all 193 member states signed the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, a 24-page document that provided a blueprint for the establishment of the compact for migrants (and a separate compact for refugees).
The declaration included numerous provisions that were inconsistent with U.S. immigration policy and the Trump administration’s immigration principles. Consequently, the Trump administration ended U.S. participation.
Ambassador Nikki Haley, the U.S. representative to the UN, explained in a press release that, “The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.” America decides how best to control its borders and who will be allowed to enter.
The Trump administration was right. The compact is a collective commitment to achieve 23 objectives for safe, orderly, and regular migration. Although it addresses problems that need to be resolved, some its proposed solutions would weaken U.S. border security and others would usurp congressional control over the nation’s immigration laws.
Read more at http://thehill.com/opinion/immigrati...s-and-migrants
Published originally on The Hill.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.
I don't understand that comparison. Trump is doing what he is supposed to be doing in a democracy to change the law. He is making his proposals to Congress, which has the authority to make the changes he is requesting.
And Roger asks why there should be an objection to considering the proposals in the UN compact as a basis for amending our immigration laws. The compact is a poorly written, sophomoric plan to revise the way the member nations secure their borders, issue immigrant visas, and so on.
As I said in my article, the compact identifies problems that need to be addressed, but it doesn't offer sensible solutions.
Moreover, even if Trump agreed with the compact, he wouldn't have the authority to comply with it.
The most he could do would be to encourage Congress to repeal the Immigration and Nationality Act and replace it with a new immigration bill that would please the UN.
Roger, I will only make one request. Read the compact before you make any more statements about Trump's decision not to follow it.
Nolan Rappaport
I will only repeat Nolan's own statement above that the Compact "addresses problems that need to be resolved."
By continuing to participate in the Compact drafting process the US might have been able to make a useful contribution to doing that.
However, Nolan is unquestionably right when he writes at the beginning of his article that the Compact is in many respects, "inconsistent with Trump administration immigration principles".
I certainly agree with Nolan about that statement. As to what the Trump administration immigration principles actually are, I have written numerous comments about that topic in my own Immigration Daily blogging posts, including the latest one which appears in the same July 20 issue as Nolan's comment does.
I am sure that the parents of the almost 3,000 forcibly separated children, including, according to one report, a 3-month old baby, who were torn away from their parents based on one of the Trump administration's immigration principles which Trump was forced to abandon by enormous public pressure across the political spectrum, including publicly announced disapproval by Trump's own First Lady, would have some comments to make about the Trump administration's immigration principles also.
However, following the UN Compact's humanistic immigration principles with regard to families, parents and their children- admittedly very different from the immigration principles of the Trump administration - would unquestionably have have avoided the disaster which took place at the Mexican border in May and June of this year - and which the administration is now making efforts to remedy -even though it will be known to future generations as one of the darkest moments in America's entire immigration history.
Following the Compact's humanistic family-centered immigration principles would also help to prevent another brewing Trump administration disaster - namely the virtual elimination of most family immigration visas by reported DHS plans to change its regulations regulations in order to distort and vastly inflate the meaning of the "Public Charge" grounds of inadmissibility- without consulting or getting any permission from Congress as a president is supposed to do - and as Nolan agrees the president is supposed to do.
In his above cited article, Nolan also warned against eliminating family immigration. Maybe the Compact contains a few immigration principles worth paying some attention to, even (or precisely because) they conflict with those of the Trump administration.
I have written about the DHS reported plans to destroy most of America's family immigration system (and the Diversity visa) by using "Public Charge" as a pretext in more detail in my own Immigration Daily blogging comments.
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law
I am not withdrawing from the comment I made in my article. The Compact addresses problems that need to be dealt with. But it fails to provide feasible solutions.
Nolan Rappaport