Immigration Judges "Certainly Capable" of Learning How to Judge Immigration Cases

Kerry Howley | July 30, 2008

Reflecting upon Monica Goodling's quest to populate the Department of Justice with ass-kissing straight people, Tim Rutten writes: 

When the next administration and Congress begin the urgent work of sorting out precisely how and why the Bush-Cheney regime systematically undermined the rule of law, there are a couple of things that ought to be kept in mind.

One is that their efforts were essentially ideological rather than partisan. 

I'm not sure that analysis makes any sense after reading parts of the report (pdf) on hiring-related shenanigans. To what ideology does a potential U.S. attorney subscribe when he answers a question like: What about George Bush makes you want to serve him?  Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson also hired dozens of immigration judges, and there is no good evidence that they sought to hire judges based on anything but loyalty to the party. They simply transformed a civil service position into a political thank-you gift, giving men and women with little or no experience in immigration law the power to deport people and refuse asylum to potential refugees. (In defense of one hire with no immigraton-related experience, a former DOJ official reasoned "He is certainly capable of mastering immigration law." )

The only link among the newest crop of immigration judges is a lack of experience and a recommendation from a party member calling in a favor. Reading the report, I was afraid I'd find that Goodling had placed a bunch of restrictionists in positions of power over immigrants with few rights. She seems to have favored Republican lapdogs.

Comments

Episiarch|7.30.08 @ 3:36PM|#

cronyism > xenophobia

ktc2|7.30.08 @ 3:45PM|#

Grr...immigration.

My step kids were denied their entry visa to the US yesterday because "Their birth certificate isn't sufficient proof they are your wife's children."

WTF?!

Now they want us to pay thousands for special "international supervised DNA testing" which will take another year.

Maybe it is time to just bring them in through Mexico.

|7.30.08 @ 4:15PM|#

More than ideology or partisanship, it's about the Bush cult of personality.

Naga Sadow|7.30.08 @ 4:18PM|#

I want an appointed federal position too!!!

|7.30.08 @ 4:36PM|#

To be fair, if the immigration judges were actually chosen to be partisan matches for Bush, they may well be more liberal on immigration than one would expect.

Bush went into office more pro-immigrant than not and only got pushed toward enforcement in an attempt to parlay comprehensive immigration reform. It is to his discredit that he didn't back down from that stance when Congress failed to live up to their end of the deal.

But do I think that Goodling, et al., were that discriminating in the particulars of the partisan positions they were seeking? Uh, no.

Sandy|7.31.08 @ 1:23AM|#

To what ideology does a potential U.S. attorney subscribe when he answers a question like: What about George Bush makes you want to serve him?

Monarchism?