Comments at the 05/06/2017 Immigration March, Modesto

My name is Mike Barkley.  I am a candidate for United States Congress in this District.  But today is not about me, today is about you.

In knocking on doors over the past 6 years and listening to you I have become puzzled at one aspect of immigration law.  It has seemed to me that if you are a citizen, you have certain rights, and when the government seizes your wife or mother or father and throws them out of the country, that's got to violate your rights as a citizen.

16 days ago at a forum held by Faith in Stanislaus the community challenged members of the Modesto City Council to declare Modesto a Sanctuary City.  That did not go well.  I came home angry and drafted a Resolution which I will get to in a moment, but first I want to get a bit lawyerly here.  After drafting it, I went looking for discussions of what are called penumbra or peripheral Constitutional rights, those are rights that are real but are not specifically stated in the Constitution.  They sort of hide in the shadows and exist by implication until the Supreme Court magically discovers them. 

One Supreme Court case quickly jumped out at me, the 1923 case Meyer v. Nebraska.  It is a landmark case that set up the argument for the right of privacy that supports the Griswold contraception case and later, Roe v. Wade, so it's a very important case.  Professor Laurence Tribe is a noted Constitutional scholar, and in his Constitutional Law treatise he twice quotes the majority opinion written by Justice McReynolds in Meyer v. Nebraska:

"'Without doubt,' he wrote, liberty 'denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.'"[9] [Tribe, 2d ed p. 1319 & 679]

That language is very important.  It is the Supreme Court stating that you, as a United States citizen, you have the right to form, protect and preserve your family, which must include your right to be in and be part of that family and your right to have other family members be in and be part of that family, and that when the government deports YOUR relatives, suggests that the government violates YOUR rights.  Immigration lawyers have been working hard to help your relatives with these problems, but what about working to protect YOUR right of family as a citizen?  Have we missed this opportunity, this obligation? 

So I drafted this Resolution for further consideration:

CIVIL RIGHTS

WHEREAS we hold these truths to be self-evident,

THEREFORE WE THE UNDERSIGNED RESOLVE that it is a penumbral or peripheral right under the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence 
Of every citizen of the United States to be able to guarantee, protect and preserve their family,
Including
Of those citizens
Spouses and living ancestors and descendants
And siblings and their spouses and descendants,
Against being seized off the streets or from their homes or anyplace else and thrown out of the country,
And that this right further extends to the right to have such family members who have been previously seized and ejected - or left the country out of fear of being seized and ejected - returned to this country forthwith
And no longer be discriminated against in the administration or enforcement of any law or regulation within these United States.
	
Respect Families.  Recognized by the Supreme Court.

Thank you.