Supreme cruelty

“The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court.”

Hemingway could not have written a shorter sentence of greater significance. With those nine words, four judges of the Supreme Court of the United States struck a body blow at millions of immigrants in the United States.

In affirming a lower court decision denying that President Barack Obama, lacking Congressional approval, could use his executive power to shield from deportation certain law abiding undocumented immigrants, the Court not only destroyed the hopes and aspirations of millions of young people (and their parents). It adversely affected their life chances, the odds that they will lead productive and successful lives.

Walter Dellinger, acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, quoted by The New York Times, said it best: “Seldom have the hopes of so many been crushed by so few words.”

Why did it happen? For decades, Republican presidents have been packing the Supreme Court and the lower courts with right-of-center ideologues. Even Clarence Thomas, undistinguished as a Constitutional scholar, with ethical questions involving a law professor, Anita Hill, who testified under oath that as his boss he sexually harassed, was confirmed.

In contrast, Republicans Senators are refusing to grant even a hearing to Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland. The Wall Street Journal reported that there was little doubt that [the-American Bar Association], which has reviewed the qualifications of federal judicial nominees since 1953, would give Judge Garland the highest of its three ratings, “well qualified.” But the 26-page report, produced by panels of practicing attorneys, law professors and others, was remarkable for the praise it showered on the 63-year-old judge President Barack Obama nominated to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia.”

Refusing to give a presidential nominee to the Supreme Court a hearing is unprecedented, according to a recent study. Republicans are not interested in even listening to judge Garland because if they did it would become clear they have no basis for rejecting him. Even as staunch a Republican as Utah Senator Orrin Hatch said the judge was eminently qualified when was confirmed to a lower court.

There are at least two reasons Republicans are playing the rejectionist card. They are hoping for a Republican president in 2017 who would nominate a more rightist jurist. That hope should already have begun to fade as the latest polls show Hillary Clinton now has a double-digit lead over Donald Trump.

The other reason is that, with the Supreme Court ideologically deadlocked 4-4, decisions of lower courts packed with conservatives are affirmed in case of a tie. That is what doomed Obama’s immigration initiative. A Texas judge, earlier had shot down Obama’s immigration policy. According to press accounts. Hanen, a federal district court judge in Brownville, Texas, has a long history of taking a conservative approach to immigration issues in his courtroom, which is located just over a mile from the Mexican border.

Somewhere in their subconscious, Texans who fear a Mexican takeover of the state by the weight of sheer population growth may be evoking a distant and repressed historical memory. Demographic takeover by Anglos who, in the mid-nineteenth century, came to have more numbers and power than Mexicans, is exactly how Texas, a Mexican territory, eventually became a U.S. state.

There is one important difference, however, between that nineteenth century scenario and current reality. The millions of people of Mexican origin who live in Texas—including undocumented immigrants—have no intention of annexing Texas to Mexico. The vast majority are, or hope to become, full-fledged American citizens, with all the rights of citizens, something even fourth and fifth generation Americans of Mexican origin in the state have never enjoyed.

This historical excursus is relevant because longstanding prejudice and discrimination is the subtext underlying the current, many-faceted offensive against Mexicans, Latinos and immigrants, including the Supreme Court’s very recent immigration decision.

Donald Trump kicked of his successful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a vicious, slanderous slam against Mexican immigrants. The attack put him on the map and attracted a large following of similarly-minded people. His campaign went from a joke to a juggernaut in a New York minute.

Trump’s ascent put Republican leaders between a rock and a hard place. They knew they were risking political suicide. Yet, after many futile attempts to deny Trump the nomination, Republican political leaders increasingly have been lining up behind his candidacy, albeit reluctantly and couching their support in cover-your-ass caveats.

Republicans realize that this is a major turning point for the party. Then GOP has effectively sealed its fate regarding the Latino vote. From here on in, Republicans can expect the Latino vote to look more and more like the black vote: unattainable.

That’s the result not only of Donald Trump’s insulting words but of the sticks and stones he has promised the community: mass deportation and an impregnable wall. And there is no way the GOP can insulate itself from Trump’s campaign of hate against Latinos.

The watershed came when House Speaker Paul Ryan, who for a long time had declined to endorse Trump, went ahead and expressed his backing. That was a couple of days after Ryan had called Trump’s questioning the fairness of an Indiana-born federal judge because of his Mexican ancestry “the textbook definition of racism.” The contradiction between the Republicans’ allegedly inclusive values and their political choices could not have been more stark.

Now, come the devastating consequences for millions of families, for the reputation of the United States internationally, for an economy undergirded by an immigrant labor force that performs the least enviable tasks, even for the comfort and lifestyle of the upper-middle-class, dependent on undocumented workers for services ranging from household maintenance to child and elder care.

The Republicans have shot themselves in a more tender place than the foot. In the bargain, they accomplished a long-cherished desire: destroying a significant part of Obama’s legacy. It will cost them dearly.