You wouldn’t know it from that amount of press coverage it receives, but Congress is still doing a little bit of legislating here and there. Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed the Community Safety and Security Act of 2018 on a largely partisan vote of 247-152. If you didn’t notice, it’s at least partly due to the fact that there wasn’t a single hearing held to consider the merits of the bill. There was therefore no markup or amendments offered or adopted and no input from any members of the relevant committees. It was introduced a mere week before the vote was held on the House floor. It’s a stretch to call this legislating at all.
The bill does address a somewhat pressing need. The best background I found on the bill was written by Eliot Kim at Lawfare. As Kim explains, the primary motivation for passing the Community Safety and Security Act last week was to fix a problem created by a ruling the Supreme Court issued in the Sessions v. Dimaya case on April 17, 2018. I’m not going to go into the legal controversy involved here in great detail. The simple version is that the SCOTUS found a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act to be impermissibly vague. It involved the definition of an “aggravated felony” and what constitutes “a crime of violence.” Would a lawful permanent resident be subject to deportation if they committed a couple of residential burglaries when no one was home?
James Dimaya is a native of the Philippines who was admitted into the United States in 1992 as a lawful permanent resident. In 2007 and again in 2009, Dimaya was convicted of first-degree residential burglary under California law. For each conviction, Dimaya was sentenced to two years in prison. Based on these two convictions, the Department of Homeland Security said Dimaya was removable because Dimaya had committed a “crime of violence … for which the term of imprisonment [was] at least one year,” which would be an “aggravated felony” under 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(43)(F).
After examining the language of the law, a 5-4 majority (including Neil Gorsuch) concluded that there was too much left to subjective judgment in determining whether an act constituted a legitimate risk of violence. The Court basically ruled that Congress, if it wants to deport people for burglaries, needs to tighten up the language so the application of the law isn’t overly capricious.
President Trump predictably reacted with anger when the ruling came down and called on Congress to fix the law:
Some seven and a half hours after the ruling came down, Trump offered his reaction on Twitter, overlooking — for the moment— his appointee’s role in the decision. Instead, the president, who was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for meetings with the Japanese prime minister, called for fast action by Congress to tighten the rules.
“Today’s Court decision means that Congress must close loopholes that block the removal of dangerous criminal aliens, including aggravated felons,” wrote Trump. “This is a public safety crisis that can only be fixed by…Congress – House and Senate must quickly pass a legislative fix to ensure violent criminal aliens can be removed from our society. Keep America Safe!”
The Community Safety and Security Act of 2018 is the response of the House of Representatives. Although only four Republicans voted against it, it had critics on both the right and left. They opposed both the substance and the rushed process. As the Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) advocacy group noted, when the House passed the prison reform FIRST STEP Act earlier this year, it was “the product of years of thought, deliberation, and bipartisan collaboration.”
A bill that would drastically reshape our definition of a violent crime should not receive a floor vote less than a week after introduction. Passing criminal justice legislation without due diligence was the preferred practice of the 1980s, and we are still cleaning up those messes today. We should not create more of them now.
The right-wing House Liberty Caucus and FreedomWorks also voiced their concerns:
VOTE ALERT: HLC statement on #HR6691, Community Safety and Security Act of 2018 pic.twitter.com/a8Ut2bbofL
— House Liberty Caucus (@libertycaucus) September 7, 2018
In my view, this is bill is mostly politics. I agree that Dimaya requires a fix, but this bill has flaws that could have, and should have, been worked out in committee markup. It’s shameful that this bill was handled this way.
— Jason Pye (@pye) September 7, 2018
Its primary sponsor, freshman Karen Handel of Georgia, argued during the brief debate in the House that the bill’s detractors are misguided:
“We don’t have the privilege to squabble over hypotheticals that have no bearing on the application of this law,” Handel said on the House floor. “I can assure my colleagues this bill is not overly broad. It’s not a dangerous overexpansion. Instead, it’s a carefully crafted response to the Supreme Court’s recommendations.”
Yet, looking at the actual text of the bill, it’s easy to see why people on both sides of the political divide are concerned. To give one example, they have defined “fleeing” as a violent crime.
“(13) The term ‘fleeing’ means knowingly operating a motor vehicle and, following a law enforcement officer’s signal to bring the motor vehicle to a stop—
“(A) failing or refusing to comply; or
“(B) fleeing or attempting to elude a law enforcement officer.
I’ll acknowledge that inviting the police to pursue you in a car chase can result in injury or death, but this seems like a very odd definition of violence. As for the subject that brought all this forth, the House now considers burglary to be a necessarily violent act.
“SEC. 16. CRIME OF VIOLENCE DEFINED.
“(a) The term ‘crime of violence’ means an offense—
“(1) (A) that—
“(i) is murder, voluntary manslaughter, assault, sexual abuse or aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact, child abuse, kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, firearms use, burglary, arson, extortion, communication of threats, coercion, fleeing, interference with flight crew members and attendants, domestic violence, hostage taking, stalking, human trafficking, piracy, or a terrorism offense as described in chapter 113B (other than in section 2332d); or
…
“(5) The term ‘burglary’ means an unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, including any nonpermanent or mobile structure that is adapted or used for overnight accommodation or for the ordinary carrying on of business, and, either before or after entering, the person—
“(A) forms the intent to commit a crime; or
“(B) commits or attempts to commit a crime.
Of course, no politician wants to be arguing the fine point that some burglaries are less serious than others and that non-citizens who break into homes should be protected against deportation. That’s why twenty-nine Democrats voted for this bill, including the Democratic Party’s nominees for Senate in Arizona (Kyrsten Sinema), Nevada (Jacky Rosen) and their nominee (Jared Polis) for governor of Colorado. They obviously didn’t want to create easy fodder for political ads that could be run against them.
The entire debate over this bill was deplorable on every level. It begins with a basic hostility to non-citizens and both legal and illegal immigration. It involves the worst kind of xenophobia, bigotry, fear-mongering, intolerance and demagoguery. It then proceeds to completely irresponsible legislating wherein everything is rushed, no experts are consulted, the committees of jurisdiction are bypassed, and the public has no opportunity to participate. The purpose is largely political–basically an effort to jam up Democrats by making them cast a hard to defend vote against over-criminalization just eight weeks before an election. Then, of course, you have a bunch of Democrats who are either savvy enough or spineless enough to vote for the thing despite knowing that it’s a despicable piece of work from start to finish.
Is it any wonder that the latest congressional approval poll shows that thirteen percent of the public is happy with how Congress is doing its job?
You ask:
No.
It’s no wonder whatsoever.
Of course, that 13%…or the 18.8% “average” in your second link or any other foolish poll guesses…is a percentage of whatever infinitesimal segments of this society each poll chooses to cover. It is also a product of the polling techniques that each poll uses, and then there is always the question of whether any particular poll is or isn’t jiggering its results to please whatever part(s) of the power structure that are paying it.
If there were a way to get a true answer from every inhabitant of the U.S., my own guess would be that 13% approval is way high, and that goes for “approval ratings” of any segment of government…federal, state or local. The bigger it gets, the less people will approve of it.
Why?
Because…the bigger it gets, the less well it works.
Duh.
And…the bigger it gets, the more corrupt it becomes.
Duh twice!!!
Why?
Because there is basically the same risk to corruptors no matter on what level of government they may prey, but since there is much more wealth and power to be gained at the top of the shitpile, that’s where the action is.
That’s where the pros go.
I’ll tell you one thing. In my own infinitesimal segment of society…my Bronx neighborhood, my travels aound the NYC metropolitan area to work and take care of other business, my friends and colleagues in the jazz and latin music world, the people to whom I relate in rural-ish areas like eastern PA, Central NY and coastal mid-Maine?
Probably more like 2% approval, truth told.
If that.
The U.S. is now the laughingstock of the world, Booman. Of course the laughter is tinged with real fear, but there it is. A few weeks ago, when the Venezuelan head of state was attacked by drones, the joke was:
But when some sort of skullduggery actually works? Like that recent Novichok attack near London? Almost everybody immediately assumes that it was a Russian deal, whether it was or it wasn’t. Of course, the NATO-allied government media complexes trumpeted that news, but it was an easy convince.
The same government media complexes have been trumpeting the Trump organization’s sole guilt in the Russiagate thing, but public disbelief in what the neocentrist forces say or do is so strong that the Trumpists…who are certainly guilty as hell of almost every level of criminality that can be imagined…actually maintain a substantially higher level of general support that does Congress!!!
Imagine that!!!
Trump-somewhere around +40% approval.
Congress-well less than -20% approval.
You could look it up.
We in trouble!!!
Bet on it.
AG
. . . and why! . . . scientific polling works is breathtaking. Which could not be better illustrated than by this “guess”, which is exactly, fundamentally wrong:
Scientific polling is, exactly “a way to get a [reasonable, reliable estimate of the] true answer from every inhabitant of the U.S.”
Your bolded “guess” above is exactly wrong. A random sample of just over 1,000 gets you 95% confidence that the “true” value for the population sampled (which is never “every inhabitant of the U.S.” cuz, duh, it’d be ridiculous to poll — or even census — the opinions of newborns!) falls within + or -3 percentage points of the reported estimate. This is, of course, why if you bother to look at the methodological details reported with any poll worth reporting, by far the most common sample size will be a little over 1,000 precisely because it gets the pollster that reasonably small MOE with reasonable confidence from a reasonably manageable sample size. It’s sort of a “sweet spot” for the tradeoff between cost and precision.
The statistical theoretical underpinnings of this are rock-solid, as demonstrated by their consistent reliability in mountains of actual data from their application in practice over many decades now of scientific polling. (Pre-empting an attempted invocation of ag’s law: if you wish to dispute this, link to a real-world example of a scientific poll being “wrong”, i.e., the actual result [e.g., election outcome] fell outside the reported MOE of the poll [e.g., final pre-election poll]. You won’t manage even that much, but even if you did, you’d then need to document that occurring more frequently than in 5% of scientific polls, since that’s how much reliability the “95% confidence-level” implies.)
What scientific pollsters and the folks commissioning polls get — that you don’t! — is that the relationship between sample size and precision is asymptotic, not linear. Which in plain language means the more you increase the sample size (and hence, cost) of the survey, the less improvement in precision you get for each increment of increase in sample size (and hence, cost). (Which again explains that 1,000+ sample-size, 95% confidence, + or -3 percentage-point MOE “sweet spot” being so common.)
Which relationship is very nicely illustrated here (among dozens, at least, of other sources — you could look it up!). Where anyone can see that more-than-doubling the sample size (and hence, cost) — i.e., to 2,500 — only gets you a single-point reduction in the MOE; and it takes quintupling the sample (to 5,000) to reduce MOE another point, to +/- 1. With every incremental sample-size increase beyond that bringing an ever-smaller fraction-of-a-point reduction in MOE. Which, for most practical purposes, comes with very little value-added, so it’s done only rarely, in circumstances where there is some reason why achieving that greater precision in the estimate is important.
Of course, we’ve been through this. For example, the 2016 polls were right! But the facts that comprise Reality didn’t penetrate your filtering of all Reality that does not confirm your ignorant biases then, so I see no reason to imagine they will this time, either. But perhaps someone open to Reality and understanding will gain a bit of insight or clarity from the above, in which case this won’t be a total loss.
I’d deport any felony, regardless if it were “aggravated” or not. “For burglary even if no one was home”. Hell, yes! Just harmless fun? No one was home, so what, just file an insurance ckaim? the “castle” was violated. Grounds for deadly force in quite a few states.
That goes for white collar felonies too. Maybe especially white collar felonies.
No debate because it’s a no-brainer. Dems opposed for fund raising purposes. If it were close, you can be sure, enough Dems would cross over so that it would still pass and the DNC could still use it for fund raising.
That’s why the public hates Congress. Not the actions so much as the hypocrisy and game playing.
That’s where I would have guessed you’d come down.
Do you happen to know any permanent legal residents? You know, people from say Australia who have lived her for thirty years and raised their kids here and who have, for one reason or another, never felt the need to become U.S. citizens?
This isn’t that unusual. Not everyone wants to renounce the citizenship of their birth. And 99% of the time, they have all the same protections under the law that a citizen has. But I guess if they don’t stop when a cop tells them to, they can go fuck themselves, amirite?
If they are down on their luck or have mental health issues and they commit some petty crime, I guess they should lose all due process and just get the fuck out.
Yes I do. My neighbors from the Philippines, my neighbors across the street from Poland. My former neighbors from Belize. My very good friends and colleagues from China, one a fine lady from Shanghai and the other a man from Nanjing. When the Belizan grandmother, a close friend of my wife’s, got her citizenship, I sponsored her as an election judge with my local Democratic Committeeman. I also was proud to register the Shanghai lady, a co-worker, when I worked on a registration drive sponsored by NARAL. She was very happy when I pointed to the block that requested that a Chinese language ballot be mailed to her. I’m pretty sure she voted for Hillary Clinton, but that’s her right. Just as it was my right to vote for Jill Stein.
I can’t imagine any of them being felons. They are much more law abiding than my native born neighbors. That may be because they are from very repressive countries (not sure if that’s true about Belize). Oh, I forgot another friend’s wife who is from Colombia. Tough country there. Her father, a factory owner, was stabbed to death in a bar fight. Lawyers ripped off her mother ( a woman is nothing in Colombia) and her mother now lives with them. I met her and had a pleasant conversation with her daughter translating as she knows no English and I only know insults in Spanish.
Ah! I see now that you are asking about non-citizens. Yes, two former managers from the UK. Also can’t imagine them committing felonies. Best people that I ever worked for. One was rather anti-Italian but tried to not let it affect his work. That was Okay with me. Better than the native born boss that called me a West Side Wop. He may have been thinking it and I’m pretty sure he was but die Gedanken sind frei and I can’t complain about our work relationship. The other was a very good friend to me and by the way had an Italian grandmother as well as a Jewish grandmother. His grandparents were London city English and country English. He assured me these were very distinct ethnic groups.
You have shifted the bar from felonies to petty crimes.
And I never said anything about short circuiting due process.
Let me ask YOU. Do you consider burglary and home invasion as petty crimes?
This is sad on many levels. Thanks for bringing it to everyone’s attention here & at WM.
Some of the problem is the obviously anti-functional Republican – controlled congress. Their “leadership”controls what happens in committee and what doesn’t.
Some of the problem is Mr Trump, who sucks up all the attention everywhere with his nonsense, self-aggrandizement, and endless legal and ethical problems.
For me, the dismay is personal. This is how I think the supreme court and congress should act. Instead of the SC acting like an untethered legislature (totally with some libertarians on this), the court and the congress did the right thing together. Well, it started out that way, then it went pear-shaped in congress. Maybe we need something more effective than the ballot to hold congress accountable.
…is nothing new. Congress has been operating like this for some time and, given that fact, doesn’t make this episode any more acceptable or less insidious.
The House has been referred to as “The People’s House,” and in theory congressional representatives should be more in tune to the wants and needs of their districts and therefore better able to craft legislative more meaningful to the every day needs of voters. Its because it hasn’t functioned this way is why Congress is not liked.
But it is another opportunity for democrats if the take the House in November.
. . . felony!
Hunh. How ’bout that!?
So if Cuban-born Eugenio Martínez and Virgilio Gonzalez were permanent residents instead of citizens, they would be eligible for deportation by that standard. Hmm.
. . . re-interpretation, at least.
. . . crimes to be violent crimes also reminded me of this.