Linda Greenhouise says we're a nation of anti-immigrants

In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, Pulitzer Prize-winning Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse took recent SCOTUS decisions as meaning that America is anti-immigrant. The decisions involved immigrants and drugs.

My answer (which the NYT highlighted):

One could draw very different conclusions from the facts you lay out.

In my book you're blaming the Supreme Court for the sins of Congress. Many would agree that both Congress and many state legislatures take a draconian approach towards mind-altering substances (well, substances other than the ones the legislators themselves use regularly (i.e. alcohol, nicotine, and an ever-widening array of pills that legislators use via prescription)).

Some of the instances you cite--the poor shmoe with a tab of Xanax and a joint--are indeed ridiculous, but the laws about drug possession are also ridiculously harsh for native-born citizens.

OK, I agree. But the Supreme Court can't (or shouldn't) overturn laws just because they're stupid, too harsh, etc.; it gets to overturn them if they're unconstitutional. And you didn't make a clear case for that being the case. So it seems to me that your beef should be with our legislatures and their obsessions with sumptuary laws.

I use neither drugs nor alcohol nor tobacco--heck, I don't even drink coffee or cola drinks. So I have no ax to grind personally, except for being appalled at seeing our government spend billions to little effect on the hyperbolically misnamed "war on drugs"--and in the course of doing so, inadvertently financing criminal organizations including the Taliban.

But that "war on drugs" seems to be the culprit here, with the harsh treatment of immigrant drug offenders having more to do with the drug part than the immigrant part.

After all, it's a matter of record that this country welcomes more legal immigrants than any other nation on Earth. I've attended naturalization ceremonies for friends that included people from over 60 countries.

Personally I think we should make it a lot easier for skilled and/or rich people to immigrate and a lot harder for those without needed skills to come here--along with felons. And transporting half a ton of marijuana under our current laws sure qualifies someone as a felon. If it were up to me that would be legal, but at this time it isn't, and the guy knew it. So out he goes, and if you think the lawyer who advised him incorrectly messed up (and I agree he did), then sanction the lawyer. The felon didn't realize it would get him deported, but he obviously knew he was committing a felony.

Every infraction you listed concerned drugs. If you wanted me to think it was all about immigration you should have cited something besides drug offenses.

So yes, I do think you're indulging in hyperbole when you breathlessly intone that we're in danger of
"losing our moral center" for being anti-immigrant.

Anti-immigrant? Have looked at a ballot lately--available in how many dozens of languages? Have you looks at our immigration laws, that let one productive guy bring in a dozen freeloading family members in the name of "family reunification?" Have you looked at the sheer numbers of legal immigrants we choose to admit to this country? Have you looked at the amnesties we periodically grant to those who came illegally? Have you looked at the fact that a pregnant Panamanian can fly to Miami and have her child in an American hospital free of charge, and that baby is automatically an American citizen with full welfare rights? Have you looked at our hate crime laws that mandate bending over backwards to be courteous to every kind of immigrant, legal or not?

There are a variety of ways in which our country is less welcoming, and you've discussed some of them here. But to conclude that America is anti-immigrant by cherrypicking our laws fo the ones that support your generalization is laughable, given all the ways in which we do welcome immigrants. And even illegals. Illegal immigration is a felony in many countrie--such as Mexico, until recently. It's only a misdemeanor here.

All of which means I think you took the truth and lied with it, using selective citations and extreme examples that are emotionally appealing. I expect better from a Pulitzer winner.