Supreme Court OKs Deportation of Legal Migrant for Drug Convictions

Guatemalan immigrants deported from the United States, get on a bus as they leave the Air
JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Neil Munro

The Supreme Court voted 5:4 against immigration lawyers who argued their legal immigrant client should not be deported after a conviction on drug charges.

Reuters reported:

The court ruled 5-4, with the conservative justices in the majority, to uphold a lower court decision that found a legal permanent resident from Jamaica named Andre Martello Barton ineligible to have his deportation canceled under a U.S. law that lets some longtime legal residents avoid expulsion.

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Barton, a car repair shop manager and father of four, came to the United States as a teenager with his mother in 1989. He was convicted in Georgia in 1996 of assault and possession of a firearm in an incident in which his friend shot at a house from a car he was driving. Barton also was convicted of drug possession in 2007 and 2008.

The court’s decision in Barton v. Barr prevents the convicted immigrant from getting a “cancellation of [deportation] removal” order from a judge. The pending deportation order also bars the immigrant from converting his green card — which is held by Legal Permanent Residents — to full citizenship, which cannot be deported.

The decision likely means the immigrant will be sent home in 2020, 31 years after he arrived, and 24 years after his 1996 crimes.

The multi-decade delay spotlights the unwillingness of prior presidents to enforce immigration law and the numerous legal obstacles to deportation created by Congress and judges.

Those obstacles have allowed tens of millions of illegal migrants to live in the United States for years. They have allowed many illegals to quietly win personal amnesties via the “Adjustment of Status” process.

That migrant population forces down wages for Americans, forces up housing costs, shifts U.S. industries to adopt low-productivity, labor-intensive business strategies, and boosts the stock market.

Reuters reported:

There are more than 13 million lawful U.S. permanent residents, also known as “green card” holders, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Of the estimated 1.9 million non-citizens the government has deemed deportable based on a criminal convictions, most are legal residents or those in the country on temporary visas, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization.

In contrast to prior presidents, President Donald Trump has used a wide variety of tactics and regulations to gradually shut down the southern border to illegal immigration. That effort was fuelled by the public’s demand for border controls that will reduce the inflow of illegals and so force up wages for blue-collar Americans.

The public is now pressuring Trump to apply the same incremental strategy to reduce the huge legal inflow of white-collar visa workers. That task will be difficult, in large part because the white-collar visa workers provide a vast economic payoff to Fortune 500 companies and investors.

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