Whatever your position on immigration policy — build the wall, open the borders, or somewhere in the messy middle — this should concern you. Because here's what happens when courts lose judges: cases don't get resolved. Backlogs grow. People who should be deported aren't. People who deserve to stay live in limbo for years. The system grinds to a halt, and everyone loses.

This is what government dysfunction looks like in practice. It's not dramatic. It's not a cable news shouting match. It's a slow erosion of capacity that leaves thousands of cases sitting in administrative purgatory while taxpayers foot the bill for a system that isn't actually processing anything.

The reasons for the judicial exodus likely aren't mysterious. Immigration judges operate under enormous caseloads, intense political pressure from every direction, and compensation that doesn't exactly compete with Bay Area private practice. Burnout isn't a bug — it's a feature of a system that's been underfunded and over-politicized for decades.

As one SF resident put it, "We spend billions on enforcement but can't be bothered to fund the courts that actually adjudicate the cases. It's like hiring a hundred cops and firing all the judges."

That's the fundamental absurdity here. Both parties love to grandstand about immigration, but neither seems interested in the boring, unsexy work of making sure the legal system can actually function. You can have the toughest immigration laws on the books, and it won't matter if there's nobody on the bench to enforce them.

San Francisco leading the nation in judge losses isn't just a local embarrassment — it's a symptom of a federal government that's great at creating mandates and terrible at following through. The courts need judges, the judges need support, and the taxpayers deserve a system that actually works.

Until then, we're just paying for an expensive waiting room.