The Obligatory Post about Immigration

It would be amiss not to discuss the move that President Barack Obama made this past week. So yeah, it shouldn't have happened because it is an overstretch of executive power.

Now onto topics that I actually want to talk about...

Just kidding.. I will actually spend some time analyzing the President's move.

First of all, the move will not solve the problem of the United States' immigration policy. Right now, the immigration policy is incredibly constrictive to those trying to enter the country. Immigration is valuable to all of America, and we should allow it to be more legal.

Yet President Obama's actual plan to simply extend deportation relief falls short of meaningful action to make immigration a simpler process. Indeed, it would be even more atrocious for the President to exercise that kind of power.

But the President is still not acting within his own proper authority. Extending deportation relief has long been a power that has been held by Congress under article 1, section 8 of the United States Constitution. (See DACA and TPS).

By doing this selfsame thing as an executive order, Obama has taken this power out of the hands of the legislative branch. Essentially, he has reformed laws that Congress passed in the name of "enforcement."

This is indeed an overstep, but it might not be quite as unique of an oversight as we might like. This has been a consistent trend over the last few decades, and focusing solely on this President's moves is probably not the answer to our problems.

Whatever Happened to Ukraine?

Let's face it. The world is a huge place and a significant amount of importance happens every single day. There is no way that a news source will cover everything that happens throughout the entire world.

That's all commonplace, but I think we all tend to think a little warped about the effect that this actually has on the news. 

Because here's the thing. We tend to believe that an event simply has resolved itself to a new equilibrium if the news stops reporting on the unrest in the area. For instance, there was a ceasefire agreement in the conflict of Ukraine and Russia, but we heard reports early on that tension still remained and that the ceasefire was extremely fragile. 

Then the IS story was stressed in the news because it's kinda a big deal, so we stopped hearing about the conflict along the border of Ukraine. As we stopped hearing about it, we obviously stopped thinking about it entirely, and may even believe that it has simply stopped being an issue. 

I have posted in the past about keeping up with secondary sources to discover the truth about the news stories that are being presented, but what about doing research on issues that were in the news, but now are no longer? Do we continue to follow them to the full resolution? Or do we just let the news tell us that this other story is more important because it is more immediately dangerous and we all know danger sells? 

Yeah, so I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think we should let the news determine what we are interested in from current events around the globe. Unfortunately, we can't know everything about every culture in the world, but we should ensure that our extensive knowledge is not dictated by the coverage news sources provides.

If you were interested in the Ukraine crisis and the plight of those people when the news was covering it, you should still be interested in it now, and be looking to see what is happening as that progresses.