Heather Mac Donald on open borders and indiscriminate immigration:
Demographics were now driving immigration policy, not vice versa. State and city jurisdictions with large numbers of illegal aliens passed law after law to minimise or eliminate the distinction between legal and illegal status. The most egregious of those policies — and the ones that jump-started Trump’s campaign — were so-called sanctuary laws. These rules forbid state and city employees to co-operate with the already listless efforts of federal officials to enforce the immigration laws, shielding even convicted criminals from any possible risk of deportation.
Although local activists had complained about sanctuary policies for years, no one with power paid attention — until a young woman was fatally shot in July 2015 on the San Francisco Embarcadero by a Mexican drug dealer with seven felony convictions and five previous deportations. Kate Steinle’s murderer had recently been released from jail back onto the streets by the San Francisco sheriff, despite a request from federal immigration agents to detain him for deportation proceedings. Yet despite the belated national outrage directed at San Francisco for its sanctuary ordinance, the city reaffirmed that ordinance in May 2016 in a breath-taking demonstration of the rule that immigration demographics are political destiny — at least until now.
