This Issue: Supreme Court overturns injunction that halted new 'public charge' rules on green cards. But Dallas Federal Reserve encourages illegal hiring.

It can be easy to get frustrated with missed opportunities for immigration reform. Even "low-hanging fruit," like the implementation of mandatory E-Verify (recommended by the Jordan Commission in 1997!) , has been stymied by narrow special interests who profit from the status quo.

Consider this:

This week the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank released a working paper arguing that E-Verify makes it more difficult for criminal employers who hire illegal aliens to profit from their crimes. But because of that, the paper's authors wrote, mandating E-Verify would be a bad move in that it "would be incompatible with the current reliance on a large unauthorized workforce."

Liberal commentator Mickey Kaus reacted to the Dallas Fed paper by asking "ISN'T THAT THE POINT" of E-Verify?

Of course that's the point, and the authors of the Fed paper understand that. Their point is that the federal government should continue to allow employers to violate the law because hiring unauthorized workers is good for their -- the criminal employers'-- bottom line.

[E]mployers in industries that relied more on unauthorized workers, such as agriculture, construction, and accommodations and food services, appeared to be more reluctant to sign up [for E-Verify] than employers in industries where there were few such workers.... Employment and output growth would likely be slower in sectors and areas where unauthorized immigrants are concentrated, at least in the short run.

There you have it. The meaning is plain even if it is not written in plain English:

Employers who hire illegal workers don't want to be forced to use E-Verify because it will prevent them from breaking the law and will result in a short-term reduction in profit margins.

That's what's so frustrating about these kind of "elites" (we've got to come up with another word for these folks). They not only promote the displacement and impoverishment of American workers, they also brazenly advocate on behalf of criminal employers.

If there's one thing we've learned over the years (and this is a lesson that extends beyond the fight for immigration reform) is that frustration should not lead to defeatism. We've won a lot of battles over the years. Just think where we'd be if the Gang of Eight bill had passed in 2013.

One battle won this week, for the mean time at least, was the Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Trump Administration to implement its public charge rule. Public charge laws have been on the books for over a century, and the administration is seeking to bring the rule up to date to reduce the admittance of immigrants who will rely on taxpayer-funded public benefits -- 63% of foreign-born headed households use at least one welfare program, according to an analysis of Census Bureau date by the Center for Immigration Studies.

While the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the administration's public charge rule, it did lift a nation-wide injunction that had been imposed by a lower court. This is important because so many of the actions the Trump Administration has taken on immigration have been blocked by federal judges hostile to the President's polices -- and to the laws passed by Congress.

The President has a good track record at the Supreme Court, and that will likely continue with the cases still being contested. The strategy of the open borders lobby, however, is less to ultimately win the legal argument, but to block the Administration in court for as long as possible to try and hold out for an administration friendly to their goals.

Justice Gorsuch issued a scathing criticism of the practice of lower court judges issuing national injunctions on flimsy premises. Hopefully, this signals the Justices will be less tolerant of activist judges going forward.

In any event, the Trump Administration is now free to implement a policy that will protect American taxpayers.

Eric Ruark, Director of Research