Chris Powell: Conn. deportation cases rife with cynicism; a portrait to take down

Most of Connecticut's recent heartbreaking deportation cases follow a pattern of cynicism on both sides.

That is, illegal entry for economic reasons is disguised by a claim for refugee status and asylum. There is a failure to appear at an immigration hearing, lest the refugee claim be scrutinized and disproved, a failure later represented as an accident or someone else's fault when it gets in the way of an appeal. There is issuance of a deportation order followed by multiple delays of enforcement over the course of many years as the executive branch of government declines to enforce the law, thereby allowing unskilled foreign labor to drive the national wage base down for the benefit of capital.

Meanwhile illegal immigrants build families in this country, with spouses and children to be used as hostages against enforcement.

Then there is the new national administration's refusal to delay deportation again, the setting of a deportation deadline, and an emergency appeal to an immigration court or the regular federal courts, making a claim of new evidence. At last there is still another stay of the deportation order, or else the illegal immigrant's relocation to a church purporting to provide "sanctuary."

This pattern demonstrates that the entire immigration system has been a racket in which the immigrants have been confident that the U.S. government was unlikely to enforce immigration law against them, and the government, through administrations of both political parties, prior to the current administration, indeed has declined to enforce the law as often as it has enforced it.

Since the government is as culpable as the illegal immigrants here, little good is likely to come from destroying families by deporting a father or mother who would leave citizen children here. But the country won't ever regain immigration law and control of its borders until deportation for illegal entry is swift and sure.


CLEAN UP THE CAUCUS ROOM: Before Connecticut commits itself to the cultural revolution that is toppling Confederate statues in the South, masking or breaking politically incorrect engravings and windows at Yale, and prompting New York City to contemplate renaming Columbus Circle for Hillary Clinton or Sacco and Vanzetti, Democrats in the state Senate might consider a more modest reform.

The walls of the Senate's Democratic caucus room at the state Capitol display portraits of past Democratic lieutenant governors, who presided over the Senate. Among those depicted is T. Frank Hayes, who was simultaneously lieutenant governor and mayor of Waterbury in the 1930s and who, in the latter position, looted the city, was convicted and sent to prison for it, and helped cause the defeat for re-election of his former ticket mate, Gov. Wilbur L. Cross, at once the most erudite and homespun governor the state ever had.

So if the walls of the Democratic Senate caucus room are to be places of honor, why is Hayes's portrait still hanging there?

Surely the Democrats could find a portrait of another prominent Democrat who did not disgrace himself and the state. A painting or poster of the Charter Oak is always appropriate to fill extra space in any official gallery in Connecticut. Hayes's portrait could be removed for storage at the archives at the State Library across the street from the Capitol.

Yes, Hayes didn't wage war against the United States, nor did he own slaves. Connecticut can be glad that, unlike some other states, it has few connections to such profound offenses. But Hayes's offense is bad enough and it shouldn't require a cultural revolution to take him down and replace him with someone or something better.


Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.