There have been several somewhat strange petitions on the White House petition website, some have even received enough digital signatures to warrant an official response, even if that response is “we can’t comment.” One of the most recent petitions to receive a “we can’t comment” response involved a petition to deport Justin Bieber, who apparently is Canadian.
The official response from the White House reads, “Sorry to disappoint, but we won’t be commenting on this one.
The We the People terms of participation state that, ‘to avoid the appearance of improper influence, the White House may decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local government in its response to a petition.’”
The response, however, did address some of the President’s plan for immigration reforms. The President wants to: continue to strengthen our border security, streamline legal immigration, provide a pathway to citizenship, crack down on employers hiring undocumented workers.
Of these four points, I can get behind exactly one of them! I agree with the President that “Legal immigration should be simple and efficient.” However, the President only wants to “streamline” the process for “foreign entrepreneurs looking to start businesses here,” and also seeks to retain “the most promising foreign graduate students in science and math [so that they] stay in this country after graduation, and [reunite] families in a timely and humane manner.”
I don’t know how that can be construed as streamlining the process, as it only makes it easier for certain people to move to the United States. Nor do I understand how such a system that treats some people as more equal than others is consistent with the federal governments own rules that say that Congress has the authority to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.”
The other points in the President’s immigration reform plan can be boiled down to the following: “The President wants to use force to keep people out of the country, unless those people can be exploited have a portion of the fruits of their labor taken from them via taxation.”
As a supporter of voluntary human interaction, I believe that people should be able to travel, live, and work wherever they wish. This includes the right of people to move from the country in which they were born to another country without the need to jump through legislative hoops and hurdles.