At Illinois Policy Bryce Hill takes note of a sorry statistic:

Illinois lost three times as many residents as any other state during the past decade.

While total numbers for the decade were bad, the ongoing worry is because losses were accelerating.

Illinois recorded a seventh straight year of population loss from July 2019 to July 2020, but the year’s drop was historic – 79,487 residents, the most since World War II and the second largest of any state in raw numbers or percentage of population. Larger declines year over year have also caused Illinois to suffer the largest raw decline in population, and second largest on a percentage basis since 2010, shedding 253,015 people – triple any other state’s losses.

Population decline is even worse when you consider the experiences of nearby states last year and during the decade. The Midwest as a whole grew population by 1.34 million from 2010 to 2020, and Illinois was the only state in the entire region to experience population loss during the decade.

That statistic doesn’t really tell the whole story. The people who are leaving very much consist of those you might wish to stay: Asian/Pacific Islanders, people with college educations, and people who earn middle or higher incomes. It is not merely a case of retirees moving south for the weather as some might contend.

And saying they’re moving because of Illinois’s taxes is overly simplistic. They’re moving because of the taxes, for greater opportunities, and because of Illinois’s criminally bad political mismanagement. They’re moving because of crime and corruption and because there’s little likelihood of things improving.

William Galston, who generally can be relied on to support President Biden, in his most recent Wall Street Journal column muses over whether Mr. Biden wants his wish list of proposals to be enacted into law or have issues for Democrats to run on:

I think there’s another possibility. At this point the Congressional Democratic caucus is only unified on one subject: they don’t want a Republican to be president not just now but after the 2024 election. President Biden may want some protection from the more fractious members of his own caucus. That’s how I reconcile Mr. Biden’s history with the executive orders and legislative proposals he’s been issuing which differ in some dramatic ways from what he has supported historically.

Maybe the question now should be whether he wants a bill, an issue, or insurance?

In his latest Wall Street Journal column Jason Riley holds forth on President Biden’s plans to reform our immigration laws:

So, Joe Biden wants to give immigration reform a go. Good luck, Mr. President, but recent history is not on your side and the timing is questionable at best.

I write that as someone who has been calling for decades for immigration reform that includes both better border security and conditional legalization for people who sneaked in. Our immigration system was designed to accommodate the economic needs of the 19th century, not the 21st, and major revisions are long overdue. The past three administrations tried and failed to get the job done.

George W. Bush had planned to make comprehensive border reform a first-term priority. As a former governor of a border state, he knew the issue inside and out. But the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq war, and low job-approval ratings in his second term conspired against him. Barack Obama chose to undertake legally suspect executive actions on immigration instead of negotiating a deal with Republicans in Congress. Donald Trump spent four years touting his “beautiful wall” and thrilling his base with anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Mr. Biden’s immigration proposal prioritizes an eight-year pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented aliens currently living here. “Unlike previous compromise bills,” the Journal reports, “Mr. Biden’s proposal lacks the countermeasures of increased security or deterrence at the border that Republicans have asked for in exchange for legalization.” In other words, Mr. Biden is calling for amnesty now and more border security at some unspecified future date. This is like a boxer leading with his chin.

He goes on to suggest a different strategy:

The president would do better to go small. There is bipartisan support for legalizing immigrants who were brought here unlawfully as children, for instance. And there is legitimate and widespread concern among Republicans that our asylum system is being gamed by people pretending to be refugees. Why not come up with a legislative compromise limited to addressing those two problems?

Let’s start with that proposal first. As far as I can tell although there is bipartisan support for “legalizing immigrants who were brought here unlawfully as children” what has blocked that from becoming legislation is the desire on the part of immigration activists both in and out of Congress to extend that protection to their parents. I have argued against that on the grounds that although the children have no res mea their parents do and that such an action would merely be a stalking horse for complete amnesty or, indeed, open borders. President Biden has already telegraphed that is likely the case.

The available evidence suggests that amnesty looms much larger for those who will benefit from it, e.g. activists and politicians, rather than for the illegal immigrants themselves. After the Reagan era immigration reform granting amnesty to everyone who had arrived in the U. S. prior to 1982, sometimes referred to as Simpson-Mazzoli, was enacted only a minority of those eligible ever sought citizenship, indeed, relatively few even sought legal status. Apparently, their distrust of government exceeded their interest in gaining citizenship. My conclusion from that is what we really need is not amnesty, a path to citizenship, or much of anything other than a guest worker program.

Additionally, Simpson-Mazzoli’s main failing was that the enforcement promised to secure its passage never materialized. Does anyone really think that this time will be different?

Finally, I would genuinely like to see a plan for ending the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States without controlling our borders. Inoculating the U. S. population would not be enough. The entire world would need to be inoculated. That is a problem several orders of magnitude greater than present plans can handle.

or live by the Administrative Procedures Act, die by the Administrative Procedures Act. The editors of the Wall Street Journal react to the temporary restraining order blocking President Joe Biden’s executive order suspending deportations:

Donald Trump complained often about the frequency with which federal judges blocked his immigration orders, starting with his first sloppy travel ban in 2017. Now it’s President Biden’s turn, as a federal judge in Texas issued a temporary restraining order on Tuesday against Mr. Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deporting illegal aliens.

Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee, issued the two-week TRO that applies nationwide and said he is considering a permanent injunction that would extend longer. The judge ruled on a suit filed by the state of Texas arguing that the deportation pause violates federal law that obligates the government to police illegal entry to the U.S. Judge Tipton said Mr. Biden’s order violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which is the same law that liberal judges used to issue nationwide injunctions against Mr. Trump’s rules.

The Biden Administration may appeal the ruling, and it pays to be skeptical these days when a judge issues a nationwide injunction. Too many judges have grown fond of the power to stop policies they don’t like. The truth in this case will require a more careful view of the legal arguments.

Meanwhile, the ruling is a blow to Mr. Biden’s early government by pen and phone, to borrow one of Barack Obama’s famous boasts. Mr. Biden’s pace of executive orders far outpaces Mr. Trump’s in his first week. Maybe he should slow down and make sure his orders are legally buttoned up.

I thought that the judge’s order blocking President Trump’s suspension of DACA was wrong and I think this one is wrong, too. But I’m one of relatively few people who are consistent on the issue of executive orders because I care both about policies and processes.

IMO President Biden should tread carefully. It’s one thing to prioritize. That’s well within executive discretion. Blocking enforcement of the law is something else entirely and may well be an abuse of power. Or a breach of his oath of office. Or both.

The United States, along with other countries that were British colonies, operates under a common law system of justice. In a common law system the laws enacted by legislations are only the tip of the legal iceberg. The balance of law consists of lawyer-made law, previous judgments by judges. j Precedent is of vital importance in a common law system. In some cases the law simply does not apply and the case should be dismissed. Most European countries operate under a civil code system. In a civil code system the law always applies to the case and the role of a judge is to determine how it applies. Precedent is, therefore, less important.

I grew up in Missouri and my dad was a lawyer. As a consequence of that I may be more sensitive to this than others—Missouri and Louisiana are the two U. S. states in which civil code law is the most influential. Missouri at least has a sort of hybrid system.

The editors of the Washington Post disagree with the senators who believe that the Senate has no jurisdiction to impeach President Trump now that he’s left office:

HOUSE EMISSARIES delivered to the Senate on Monday an article of impeachment against former president Donald Trump, setting the stage for an unprecedented trial of an ex-chief executive. As they were sworn in as jurors on Tuesday, Republican senators appeared to be splitting into three groups: those arguing Mr. Trump’s actions do not warrant impeachment; those open to convicting him; and those claiming that the former president cannot be tried because he is no longer in office. It is with this last camp that Mr. Trump’s fate likely resides. Most GOP senators voted unsuccessfully on Tuesday to force a debate on the constitutionality of trying Mr. Trump.

Their theory — that impeachment applies only to sitting officials — is not beyond the pale. But it runs against the weight of scholarship, historical practice and common sense. Many Republicans may be embracing the theory nonetheless because it gives them an excuse to avoid any responsibility: They do not have to condone the former president’s incitement of the Jan. 6 Capitol invasion, but they also do not have to anger his supporters. Put briefly: They continue to indulge Mr. Trump’s toxic influence on their party.

They cite the case of William Belknap in 1876 but artfully elide over the fact that although the House impeached Mr. Belknap the Senate did not convict him and the reason given by many of the senators at the time was that although they believed Belknap was guilty of the offenses for which the House impeached him they also did not believe that the Senate had the constitutional authority to try him because he was then a private citizen and there is no authority to impeach private citizens.

I find the editors’ reaction a sort of mixed bag. They’re trying to find logic in the law which does not exist, assuming the law always applies to the case at hand, and ignoring the only precedent we have which acquitted, basically for lack of standing. The relevant passages are Article II, Section 4

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

and Article I, Section 3:

The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.

The present proceedings in which contrary to the Constitution another senator is presiding suggests to me that the members of the Senate are conflicted about their own authority in the matter. If they’re trying the president, the Chief Justice should preside. They have no authority to impeach private citizens. When the law doesn’t apply it doesn’t apply and such precedent as there is concurs with that. We do not have a civil code system. Basically, it’s a defect in the law which should be remedied.

In his column at the Wall Street Journal Walter Russell Mead outlines some of the incoming Biden Administration’s earliest steps:

Initiating his China policy with the most aggressive concatenation of moves against a foreign power that any peacetime U.S. administration has ever launched so early on, President Biden has thrown down a gauntlet that Beijing is unlikely to ignore. Besides issuing a formal invitation to Taiwan’s top Washington representative to attend the inauguration (the first such invitation since the U.S. established formal relations with Beijing in 1979), the incoming team has pledged to continue arms sales to Taiwan and indicated that it wants to delay high-level U.S.-China talks until it consults with close allies—a stand that China will interpret as a rebuff. As if this weren’t enough, Secretary of State-designate Antony Blinken announced that he concurs with his predecessor Mike Pompeo’s finding that China is engaged in a genocide against its mostly Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang province. Taken with the previously planned dispatch of a naval strike group to the South China Sea, it all amounts to a stern message to Beijing.

concluding:

All this may well be inevitable, and the U.S. cannot abandon either its strategic interests or its core values. But weaving those sometimes conflicting elements into a coherent foreign policy is never an easy task. The dramatic first steps of the Biden administration demonstrate how challenging American statecraft can be.

He missed a few including President Biden’s “Buy American” executive order. Maybe all of these steps are a prelude to a new round of engagement with China but it’s a bit hard to see how that will materialize. Alternatively, it may be that President Biden will share the experience of most of his predecessors in which foreign policy made them rather than the other way around.

At the National Bureau of Economic Research David Neumark and Peter Shirley weigh in on increasing the national minimum wage to $15:

Our key conclusions are: (i) there is a clear preponderance of negative estimates in the literature; (ii) this evidence is stronger for teens and young adults as well as the less-educated; (iii) the evidence from studies of directly-affected workers points even more strongly to negative employment effects; and (iv) the evidence from studies of low-wage industries is less one-sided.

That comports with the recent findings of the Congressional Budget Office which found that while raising the minimum wage to $15/hour would raise 1 million people out of poverty it would throw another 1.5 people out of work.

I believe the reasonable conclusion is that imposing a national $15 minimum wage is a triumph of politics over policy—part of a grab bag of progressive policies which sound good but will actually have adverse consequences.

As I have contended for years the strategy for increasing American wages should be restricting immigration, reining in on globalization, and encouraging the formation of jobs that are worth paying people more for doing.

Scott Sumner points out that the graph above, from this NYT article, illustrates a real life experiment of sorts.

Mary Anastasia O’Grady has thoughts about the “chaos on the border” and what the Biden Administration should do in her latest Wall Street Journal column:

Mr. Biden wants a more humane approach to immigration than either of his predecessors. Yet he avoided border bedlam this month only because Mexico and Guatemala did the dirty work. Unless he plans to rely on those tactics in the long term, he needs a plan to deal, in an orderly fashion, with the large numbers of Central Americans who are fleeing violence and poverty in search of a better life.

The only answer to this quandary is to open more legal pathways. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst at the Cato Institute, recommends an increase in the number of H-2 guest-worker visas for Central Americans since many asylum claimants are really migrants looking for work. When this was done for Mexico, Mr. Nowrasteh noted in July 2019, there was a corresponding drop in illegal immigration.

Greater opportunity to work legally would break the vicious circle behind the chaos, and calm the fears that arise from what looks like a threat to U.S. national security. As Mr. Nowrasteh told me last week, “You can only open if there is public confidence that things are under control. But you can only get things under control by opening.”

It is Mexico’s and Guatemala’s obligation as Westphalian states to control their own borders. We should expect them to do so but experience has taught us that we cannot rely on them to do so. We need to assume our own obligations at our borders.

I agree with Ms. O’Grady that we are in desperate need of an enhanced and enforced guest worker program covering Mexican and Central American people, one that would both make it easier for them to enter the country legally as well as leaving easily. Our present system probably does a better job of locking them in than locking them out.

I’m not nearly as convinced that we need a lot more workers with limited English and skills. If the demand for them were high, wouldn’t we expect their pay to be increasing? Without an increase in the national minimum wage I mean?