Harmeet Dhillon Appears on FNC’s ‘The Ingraham Angle’ To Discuss California Handing Cash to Illegals Amid Pandemic
According to Dhillon (Video Transcript):
Our state constitution bars cash handouts to anybody through non-government entities, so that is one violation that’s occurring. But on top of that, the governor made clear in his comments that he was basically giving this out in lieu of the unemployment benefits that state law bars and federal law bars as well from aliens who were not here legally cannot get those. And so I think there are a couple of basis here and on top of that there are no criteria, he has not gone through the normal process. We believe that’s a basis for a constitutional challenge and we’ll be filing that very shortly.
Last week, Laura, we filed on behalf of three churches and one parishioner down in Southern California because the various counties were barring people from doing drive-in religious services. We filed that lawsuit, we sought a TRO, the judge has set a hearing for tomorrow at 2:00 P.M. here Pacific time and will be arguing that by telephone but meanwhile the state came forward in its opposition brief and said actually the governor is now interpreting drive-in services as a form of technology, like streaming video. So it’s okay. They basically revised their order by reply brief and backtracked which is a victory for Californians but it doesn’t go far enough. We believe that religion should not be treated as a second class tier, a second level and that it is entitled to all of the same protections as any commercial endeavor, over a million people are out there every day running businesses in California. Religion is not secondary to commerce.
That’s an essential service, laundries, Walmart, Home Depot, and I like that because I need that to survive but too many people of faith, being able to go to their church, mosque, synagogue, sic temple is more important to them than many of the things that are being allowed by the governor.
I think it is a feel-good gesture that has no legal merit, frankly. I’m sorry to say and I understand the impulse, we are all very angry with China and there a number of things that our government can’t do but very briefly the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act I think clearly bars this and there’s a separate law that was meant to attack a state-sponsored terrorism called JASTA, that also does not apply in this circumstance. Now, Congress could pass a new law that would allow this, but that may not be the best thing to do. It’s going to be contentious. But right now our president is already restricting immigration, he could suspend student visas from China, every one of our top institutions are filled with people taking up slots that Americans could be taking, so he could do that immediately. He could aggressively crackdown on the espionage that’s happening, we should be treating China like we treated Russia during the Cold War.
We could up the tariffs and so many other things that the president can do right now.
Thank you Laura.
