What do the National Science Foundation and illegal immigration have in common?
American tax dollars.
If it’s not bad enough that the federal government is spending gobs of taxpayer cash on infrastructure for illegal aliens who cross the U.S. border (with things like a brand new $42 million detention facility, hormone medication for transgender aliens and about $19 billion in annual welfare costs, to name a few), the NSF just doled out $35,000 so researchers at American University can hold a workshop on unlawful immigrant asylum claims to “better to inform lawyers and other practitioners working with this population.”
The description of the grant, entitled “An Analysis of Country Conditions and Decision-Making on Asylum Claims,” alleges:
One especially challenging issue that arises from these cases is that the nature of the dangers cited by applicants as motivating them to flee their home countries do not fit easily into the categories of persecution that are established in asylum law and related jurisprudence. This conference brings together leading social scientists with expertise on the conditions driving the migration from and on the psycho-social impacts of the migration experience, with legal scholars who specialize on refugee and asylum law. The objective is to share insights across disciplinary perspectives in order to enhance scholarship, and better to inform lawyers and other practitioners working with this population.
The request adds, “In order to foster the cross-disciplinary collaboration that can inform the efficient, equitable adjudication of asylum cases submitted by newly arrived youth and families, this workshop will convene an international group of social scientists and legal scholars with expertise across three key priority areas: 1) country conditions; 2) psychological assessment of asylum seekers; and 3) asylum adjudication and evolving jurisprudence on asylum law in the U.S.”
The request claims researchers will also study the “applicability of refugee law to present-day humanitarian challenges and on refugee adjudication.”
So it’s now become necessary to study, at American taxpayer expense, how we can better legally assist people who violate federal law and enter the country illegally. It’s also apparently crucial that we study how to bend our own legal system to better suit the needs of folks who clearly don’t give a whit what the law actually says, considering their first act on U.S. soil was to violate it.
We have a better name for this auspicious workshop.
We’d call it “$35,000 Worth of Ways to Screw Ourselves.”