Tip for Public Officials: Thinking About Sanctuary Policies? Read the Warning Label First.
Everything it seems comes with detailed instructions, disclaimers, and warnings of adverse effects — often to comic extremes. Apple’s iPod shuffle had a warning label “Do not eat,” while the yellow sticker on Rowenta irons still cautions “Do not iron clothes on body.” Admittedly those are moronic examples, yet being properly informed of risks generally prevents things from being misused and avoids contraindications that can and do cause serious harm.
Thus, it’s too bad sanctuary policies don’t come with warning labels also because — as hard as it may be to imagine in the midst of Biden’s Border Crisis fueling chaos in major American cities — dozens of jurisdictions are still tinkering with the idea of implementing them. (Or even expanding them as California did this year by further restricting their state Department of Corrections from cooperating with federal immigration officials). But when it comes to sanctuary policies, there’s no official government agency that compels cautionary labels as does the Federal Products Safety Commission or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for most of what we buy.
As such, in the absence of any official warning label for these consequential policies, and in light of ample evidence of the harm they cause, public officials may want to review this “before using.”
- Use of product is illegal: 8 U.S.C. § 1373 prohibits sanctuary policies that impede cooperation between federal, state, and local officials when it comes to the sending, requesting, maintaining, or exchanging of information regarding immigration status.
- Use of product aids, abets, protects, and rewards illegal behavior, thus creating a magnet effect that attracts more illegal immigration. Use of product actually compounds your existing problems.
- Use of product may strain your budgets, reduce services for existing legal residents, create housing shortages, and even cause you to declare an emergency.
- Use of product decreases public safety. Sanctuary policies typically include anti-detainer provisions which prohibit local police from contacting federal immigration authorities when an illegal alien is released from jail or prison. The illegal alien who, under law, is subject to deportation will instead simply be released back onto the street.
- Use of product puts the legal immigrant community at greater risk. When criminal aliens are released back onto the street, there is a strong possibility that these criminals will reoffend in the very community in which they live — often the immigrant community.
- Use of product may…should…get you drummed out of town during the next election.
A pack of smokes has fewer warnings. Still interested? Caveat emptor.
Thoroughly understanding the risks — if not adherence to basic common sense — should dictate that state and local officials currently considering enacting sanctuary policies should deep-six any idea of doing so. And those jurisdictions with existing policies should reverse them immediately because, frankly, if the government treated sanctuary policies as objectively and aggressively as they do dangerous consumer products, those policies would be recalled instantly in the public interest.