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OPINION
East Oregonian
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Publisher
Managing Editor
JENNINE PERKINSON
TIM TRAINOR
Advertising Director
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Congress makes it,
president enforces it
The Supreme Court last week
upheld the separation of powers as
provided by the Constitution, ending
President Barack Obama’s attempt to
change immigration law by iat.
Driven by crushing poverty illegal
immigrants have looded across
the border. They have found ready
employment, illing vital but tiring
manual labor jobs Americans shun.
But they have placed strains on
public education, health care and law
enforcement.
Late in 2014, the president issued
executive orders temporarily lifting
the threat of deportation for as many
as 5 million illegal immigrants who
have been in the country for ive
years and who have children born
in the United States, and to children
brought here by their parents prior to
Jan. 1, 2010.
His orders also granted these
immigrants temporary legal status
and work permits.
Twenty-six states sued, alleging
the action violated the president’s
constitutional duty to faithfully
execute laws passed by Congress,
and had not been carried out in
accordance with the Administrative
Procedures Act.
The district court in Texas and the
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
agreed. On a 4-4 vote due to the death
this year of Justice Antonin Scalia,
the Supreme Court leaves in place the
ruling by the federal appeals court in
New Orleans.
Article 1, Section 8 of the
Constitution gives Congress sole
power to “establish a uniform rule of
naturalization.” Congress has enacted
laws that outline the process for
immigrants to be granted legal status
in the United States.
In granting illegal immigrants
temporary legal status and work
permits contrary to those laws, the
president exceeded his constitutional
authority.
We concede that the president
and his law enforcement agencies
have great prosecutorial discretion
in pressing deportation cases, even if
applying such discretion so broadly
stretches the common exercise of the
authority.
We could argue that we have 12
million illegal immigrants and all
the issues inherent in their presence
in large part because presidents of
both parties have not, for a variety of
reasons practical and political, fully
enforced existing law.
While the president can within
legal boundaries enforce laws
as he sees it, he cannot make or
change those laws. That’s the job of
Congress. And for the sake of this
exercise, it matters not that Congress
has failed to address these issues with
changes to existing law despite nearly
universal dissatisfaction with the
status quo.
Last week’s ruling set no national
precedent and changes nothing
in practical terms. Few illegal
immigrants outside those convicted
of felonies will be repatriated. The
millions who, armed with fake
papers, hold jobs and live quietly
will continue to do so in the shadows
without legal status.
As we’ve said, the law should
be changed to provide a pathway
to permanent residency, but not
citizenship, to deserving illegal
immigrants living and working in
the United States who meet strict
requirements.
But whether we let illegal
immigrants stay or force them to go,
in the end it is most important that we
do so under laws passed by Congress
and enforced by the executive branch.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
Early childhood is public investment
By TIM MABRY AND MAX WILLIAMS
Oregon Community Foundation
e shouldn’t be pointing ingers;
we should be offering helping
hands.
This was the theme when New York
Times columnist Nicholas Kristof spoke
recently at The Oregon Community
Foundation annual meeting.
He was there to educate, support and
inspire us to do better in our efforts to give
all Oregon children the opportunity to
succeed in school and, ultimately, in life.
Although our state has many
accomplishments, our performance in
educational outcomes is considerably
below our aspirations. Many Oregon
children lack opportunities that
lead to economic prosperity — and
subsequently diminish our overall state
economic and social health as well.
At OCF, we strive to tackle these
issues with grant programs and
partnerships that target education,
parenting, children’s dental health, and
the economic strength of communities.
We focus on early childhood education
— including parenting — because that’s
where we can make the biggest impact.
Because brain architecture is 90
percent complete by age six, parents
play a deeply inluential role in early
childhood development. By age three,
children with college-educated parents
or primary caregivers have vocabularies
two to three times greater than those
whose parents did not complete high
school. By the time they start school,
children who have limited exposure
to vocabulary are already behind their
peers. Many never catch up.
Our concern at OCF is that this
opportunity gap for children and youth
is widening. We know that effective
parenting and early childhood reading
and vocabulary have a huge impact on
preparing children for kindergarten —
and that readiness affects their ability to
succeed later in life.
Here’s where the Oregon Parenting
Education Collaborative comes in. A
partnership between four of Oregon’s
largest foundations (OCF, The Ford
Family Foundation, Meyer Memorial
Trust and The Collins Foundation)
and Oregon State University, the
collaborative supports parenting
education programs. These combined
W
efforts have also resulted in the
development of regional “hubs” to
coordinate resources and make parenting
education easily accessible. These hubs
now operate in 29 counties, including
Union-Umatilla-Morrow (Morrow
County Head Start) and Wallowa-Baker-
Malheur (Building Healthy Families).
Eastern Oregon University is heading
in the right direction with construction of
an Early Childhood Development Center
to serve the communities of La Grande,
Elgin, Imbler and Union. With grant
funding from OCF, EOU will be offering
high-quality early childhood care and
education along with a training site for
professionals in the ield.
Beyond social equity concerns,
there are also economic issues at play.
Economists who have looked at the
cost-beneit equation say that there is no
question that dollars spent in the early
years pay off many times over. We can
save anywhere from $3 to $17 for every
$1 invested in early childhood programs
because of lower costs for remedial
education, lower crime and incarceration
costs and higher productivity over a
life-time.
The bottom line: Kids are a
worthwhile public investment. Oregon
is poised to play an important role in the
early childhood education discussion.
In 2015, the Oregon Legislature enacted
House Bill 3380, which created a new,
publicly funded, preschool system.
Called Preschool Promise, the system
leverages high-quality, local and
culturally-relevant early child care and
education programs, allowing families
with incomes up to 200 percent of the
poverty level to access and choose
the preschool program which best
meets their needs. This is a signiicant
milestone for the state and we need to
safeguard it.
Providing equal access at the starting
line is exactly what we need to do.
Kindergarten is too late. It is ultimately
only by closing what Kristof calls our
“collective effort gap” that Oregon
can — and will — be better than it is
today. And by not pointing ingers, but
by offering helping hands.
■
Tim Mabry of Hermiston is board chair
of the Oregon Community Foundation.
Max Williams is OCF’s president and
CEO.
OTHER VIEWS
Myth of cosmopolitanism
N
or eccentric or natural outsiders to
ow that populist rebellions
begin with — like a young writer I
are taking Britain out of the
knew who had traveled Africa and
European Union and the
Asia more or less on foot for years,
Republican Party out of contention
not for a book but just because, or the
for the presidency, perhaps we should
daughter of evangelical missionaries
speak no more of left and right,
who grew up in South Asia and lived
liberals and conservatives. From
in Washington, D.C., as a way station
now on the great political battles
before moving her own family to the
will be fought between nationalists
Ross
and internationalists, nativists
Douthat Middle East. They are not the people
who ascend to power, who become
and globalists. From now on the
Comment
the insiders against whom populists
loyalties that matter will be narrowly
revolt.
tribal — Make America Great Again;
In my own case — to speak as an insider
this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this
England — or multicultural and cosmopolitan. for a moment — my cosmopolitanism
probably peaked when I was about 11
Well, maybe. But describing the division
years old, when I was simultaneously
this way has one great law. It gives the elite
attending tongues-speaking Pentecostalist
side of the debate (the side that does most of
the describing) too much credit for being truly worship services, playing Little League in a
cosmopolitan.
working-class neighborhood, eating alongside
Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing.
aging hippies in macrobiotic restaurants on
It requires comfort with real difference, with
weekends, all the while attending a liberal
forms of life that are truly exotic relative to
Episcopalian parochial school. (It’s a long
one’s own. It takes its cue from a Roman
story.)
playwright’s line that “nothing human is
Whereas once I began attending a global
alien to me,” and goes outward ready to be
university, living in global cities, working
transformed by what it inds.
and traveling and socializing with my
The people who consider themselves
fellow global citizens, my experience of
“cosmopolitan” in today’s West, by contrast,
genuine cultural difference became far more
are part of a meritocratic order that transforms supericial.
difference into similarity, by plucking the
Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong
best and brightest from everywhere and
with this. Human beings seek community, and
homogenizing them into the peculiar species
permanent openness is hard to sustain.
that we call “global citizens.”
But it’s a problem that our tribe of self-
This species is racially diverse (within
styled cosmopolitans doesn’t see itself clearly
limits) and eager to assimilate the fun-seeming as a tribe: because that means our leaders
bits of foreign cultures — food, a touch of
can’t see themselves the way the Brexiteers
exotic spirituality. But no less than Brexit-
and Trumpistas and Marine Le Pen voters see
voting Cornish villagers, our global citizens
them.
think and act as members of a tribe.
They can’t see that what feels diverse on
They have their own distinctive worldview the inside can still seem like an aristocracy to
(basically liberal Christianity without Christ),
the excluded, who look at cities like London
their own common educational experience,
and see, as Peter Mandler wrote for Dissent
their own shared values and assumptions
after the Brexit vote, “a nearly hereditary
(social psychologists call these WEIRD — for professional caste of lawyers, journalists,
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich
publicists, and intellectuals, an increasingly
and Democratic), and of course their own
hereditary caste of politicians, tight coteries of
outgroups (evangelicals, Little Englanders)
cultural movers-and-shakers richly sponsored
to fear, pity and despise. And like any tribal
by multinational corporations.”
cohort they seek comfort and familiarity:
They can’t see that paeans to multicultural
From London to Paris to New York, each
openness can sound like self-serving cant
Western “global city” (like each “global
coming from open-borders Londoners who
university”) is increasingly interchangeable, so love Afghan restaurants but would never
that wherever the citizen of the world travels
live near an immigrant housing project,
he already feels at home.
or American liberals who hail the end of
Indeed elite tribalism is actively
whiteness while doing everything possible
encouraged by the technologies of
to keep their kids out of majority-minority
globalization, the ease of travel and
schools.
communication. Distance and separation
They can’t see that their vision of history’s
force encounter and immersion, which is
arc bending inexorably away from tribe and
why the age of empire made cosmopolitans
creed and nation-state looks to outsiders like
as well as chauvinists — sometimes out of
something familiar from eras past: A powerful
the same people. (There is more genuine
caste’s self-serving explanation for why it
cosmopolitanism in Rudyard Kipling and T.E. alone deserves to rule the world.
Lawrence and Richard Francis Burton than in
■
a hundred Davos sessions.)
Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as
It is still possible to disappear into
an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. His column
someone else’s culture, to leave the
appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Previ-
global-citizen bubble behind. But in my
ously, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic
experience the people who do are exceptional and a blogger for theatlantic.com.
Culture Corner
Life is full of small mysteries, odd
moments and curious coincidences that leave
you bafled.
Many people are good at dismissing and
forgetting such occurrences.
Starlee Kine is not.
Kine, an alum of public
radio’s “This American Life,”
just inished the irst season
of podcast “Mystery Show,”
where she solves real-life
minor mysteries for friends and
listeners. The only rule is that the
mystery can’t be solved on the
internet.
In one episode, a friend of Kine’s shows
her an intricately crafted belt buckle he was
given as a child by a boy who found it in
a gutter. The buckle is entirely unique and
features images of breakfast being cooked,
but contains few clues as to where it came
from.
As Kine follows leads on the trail of the
enigmatic cowboy chef, she meets
interesting people who share
small glimpses of his life, friends,
colleagues and former protégés.
The belt buckle becomes
secondary.
Each of the six episodes in the
irst season unfold this way, with
the initial mystery giving way to
Kine’s fascination with the lives
of each person she meets.
It’s also an entirely clean podcast, if you’re
looking for something to listen to on a family
road trip this summer.
— Daniel Wattenburger, managing editor
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues
and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper
reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and
products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must
be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number.
The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send
letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
or email editor@eastoregonian.com.