Immigration Rant

Please, please, please don't read this if your mind is already made up on the current situation regarding illegal immigration in America and if you're only looking for arguments to support your prima facie opinions.

According to recent Gallop polling, 24% of Americans strongly support construction of a border wall, while 40% strongly support DACA, or the Dreamers Act.  I presume there's not a lot of overlap between those two groups.  Everyone has strong opinions on this matter, and facts and editorials on this matter aren't likely to change anyone's intuitions about the issues.   

I've been trying to listen to both sides of this issue carefully, and as I understand it, there are several arguments in support of the U.S. government's current "zero tolerance" policy on illegal immigration.  First and most simply, I'm told, there's a crisis at the border. We have enough problems of our own, from opioid addiction to homeless vets, without illegal immigrants coming here and compounding things. 

While it's an unfortunate situation, it's the immigrant parents who brought this on themselves by choosing to break the law and coming here illicitly instead of applying for asylum at legal Points of Entry or other locations designated by the Attorney General. They were the ones who made the decision to take chances and to put themselves and their children in harm's way.  They could have stayed home and fixed their own countries, or those from Central America could have sought asylum in Mexico instead of the U.S.  They broke the law of the land, and we don't let other kinds of lawbreakers stay with their children.  If they had simply remained in their home counties, they would have gotten to stay with their own children.  

Besides, the government does other things that separate children from their parents. President Obama did much the same thing as is happening now, and we all remember those horrifying pictures of little Elian Gonzalez being abducted at gunpoint pursuant to orders from Bill Clinton and Janet Reno.  The Democrats created the law that resulted in this whole mess in the first place, and the government has no choice but to enforce the rules on the book.  It's the moral and ethical thing to do, and even the Bible requires that the laws of the land be obeyed. The Democrats could stop all of this with a new, better law, but they won't.

Do I have it right?  I'm aware of my liberal bias and want to make sure I have it right.  I deliberately omitted some of the more intolerant and racist arguments that I've heard, but even the remaining arguments presented above begin to fall apart on closer examination.   

Yes, the immigrant parents broke the law, specifically 8 USC 1325(b) which declares illegal entry to be a misdemeanor offense. The statute has been around for some 100 years now, and like most federal criminal statutes, is barely ever charged against first-time offenders.  Instead, according to immigration attorney Sarah Fo, border crossing has almost always been treated as a civil violation, not a criminal one.  What's more, per international law, asylum seekers are not supposed to be criminally prosecuted, even if they cross an invisible line on a map without permission.

You probably committed at least three misdemeanors today before lunch.  According to attorney Mic White, the California Labor Code alone has provisions for more than 100 criminal penalties. Did one of your employees miss a rest break? That's a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail. Did you interrupt one of your employees while they were eating lunch? Misdemeanor, year in jail. Did you lose one of your employees old time cards from two years ago? Misdemeanor, year in jail. Did you forget to put the address of your company's headquarters on one of your employees pay stubs? Misdemeanor, one year in jail, and a fine of $1,000.   I could go on and on and on. Those are all laws, on the books (see e.g., Cal. Lab. Code §§ 553, 226.6, 215, 1175, 1199, etc.) Those are all misdemeanors, the same as illegal entry by border crossing.

Do you know how many people are arrested and charged with those workplace violations? No one. Ever. Literally no one is ever charged with any of those crimes, even though they are committed in every workplace, every day.  Why aren't the same people so upset about border crossings out protesting in the streets demanding to know why every Chick Fil A manager isn't being lead away in handcuffs?  There are criminal penalties for literally everything.  The country is filled with law upon law upon law that is unenforced every single day, but suddenly this particular misdemeanor is so important, that we've decided it's worth setting up child concentration camps?

Prosecutorial discretion has always been the gatekeeper of the laws, and we as a society have generally decided that forgetting to pay Francine her share of the tips for Table 7 is probably not worth dragging a man off to jail and tearing away his family.  

Never before in U.S. history has illegal border crossing been prosecuted en masse as a criminal offense and the administration doesn't have to do anything now.  The government has decided to make an example of poor immigrant children as a warning to people fleeing other violence: "Our country will treat you worse than the violence you are fleeing. We will take your children away -  you might never see them again." That is literally the stated purpose of this abhorrent policy.

The United States seemingly imprisons everyone as the one-size-fits-all solution to everything from drug addiction to homicide.  This is not a good thing.  We have the largest percentage of our population incarcerated in the world, and a disproportionate number of those are people of color and other minorities.  There are alternatives to mass detention of immigrants, and they were working just fine before this.  But private prisons spent a lot on Trump's campaign, and their stock did very well after the inauguration. Just like "zero tolerance" policies on drug use, the new "zero tolerance" policy of border crossings is providing a very lucrative ROI to the incarceration industry.

The argument has been made that President Obama did this too, even though he didn't. To be sure, Obama did some pretty bad things, even to migrant kids, including a surge in deportations.  He was called "The Deporter In Chief" in some Latino circles, and his unpopularity regarding the deportations may be one of the reasons that the Latino community did not give Hillary Clinton more support and that Trump ultimately won the election. But even Obama did not break up families, but instead deported them in record numbers.  Deporting families whose visas had expired, or who never had visas in the first place, is not the same thing as mass incarceration, and trying to conflate the two is a desperate attempt to try and justify immoral actions.  There are other ways of dealing with the immigration issue rather than following the worst examples of your predecessor and it's even more ludicrous when those worst examples are fictitious in the first place.  

The argument, repeated countless times by Trump, that the Democrats created the law and that the administration has no choice but to enforce it, has absolutely no basis in truth (like much of what Trump says).  What law is he talking about?  Is he talking about Flores v. Reno?  Because that's not a law, but a judicial order issued to keep families together.  Is he talking about the Trafficking Victims Protections Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which requires DHS to screen Mexican children within 48 hours of apprehension to determine if the child is a victim of trafficking?  Because that was a George Bush law.  Or does he mean 8 USC 1325(b), the misdemeanor illegal entry statute that's been around for some 100 years but barely ever charged for first-time offenders?

Simply put, there simply isn't any "Democratic law" that needs to be fixed by the Democrats, and besides, not one Congressional Republican will agree to sign off on a simple fix which would keep these families together.  Instead, Trump is intent on blowing up the entire immigration system by ending nearly all family visas (along with other horrible stuff) and is literally holding children hostage to get what he wants.

Which brings us to that horrible Elian Gonzalez episode.  That was awful, but it was done in the name of keeping a family together (in case you forgot, federal agents were trying to reunite Elian with his natural father, not the anti-Castro Cuban immigrants who had custody).  It was a bad idea and terribly executed, and in no way justifies state-sponsored kidnapping and child concentration camps.  

"But the government does other things as well that separate people from their children," it's been argued.  Yes, and those things are bad, too, and no justification for other actions.

Neither are out-of-context biblical passages that allegedly require the U.S. Attorney General to obey the literal letter of the law.  In case you haven't noticed, we don't live in a theocracy, and Biblical law is as unconstitutional as Sharia law.  Besides, we can't help but notice that the oft-cited Romans 13:1 was also used by Nazi-sympathizing Germans and by Southern slave owners.  I'm told the rest of Romans 13 isn't very supportive for their arguments, but I couldn't be bothered to read it (tl;dr). 

After 150 years of military, economic, and political interference, the United States has a moral debt to Central America.  You may or  may not agree, but actions have consequences and many of those seeking asylum are now fleeing for their lives.  To those who say we already have enough problems of our own here at home ignore the fact that we're complicit in creating many of the problems abroad that created the current situation.  What's more, as a country we can aid refugee kids and take care of homeless vets at the same time.  We've capable or doing more than one thing at a time. What a country!

El Salvador and Honduras trade off each year as the world's murder capitals.  Being murdered separates parents from kids, so the argument that parents who stay in their home countries get to keep their children is dubious at best and heartless at worst. As for seeking asylum in Mexico, many do but the Mexican asylum system is overloaded right now.  What's more, the same gangs and cartels that are driving people out of El Salvador and Honduras also operate with impunity in Mexico, where it's easy for them to find anyone they want.  Mexico is not legally a "safe third country" for asylum purposes,

What would you do if you had to choose between watching your kids die and crossing an invisible line on a map?  Asylum claims at designated Points Of Entry are being intentionally limited to a point that people have no choice but to illegally cross the border.  This is an intentional tactic to manufacture a crisis and declare war on asylum seekers so that Trump and Congressional Republicans can justify pushing the worst possible legislation and call it "immigration reform."  Immigration attorney Sarah Fo points out that the hard-right populist government in Hungary did exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.

Yes, illegal immigration is a problem and has been for decades now.  However, despite a recent, mild uptick, border crossings are actually at their lowest level in 40 years, a relative trickle compared to previous rates.  In fact, it's no longer Mexicans that are coming across, most of what we're seeing now is direct result of the sociopolitical crisis in Central America for which our country bears direct moral responsibility. The only "crisis" is one the one that Trump and Sessions have intentionally manufactured.  

As a contemplative stoic, I ask myself what about this situation is within my power to do something and what isn't.  Knowing that thousands of children are being permanently traumatized and legally orphaned with my tax dollars just so that Trump can get $130 billion for an unnecessary and patently ridiculous border wall makes me angry.  Yeah, I'm upset and yeah, I going to vote my conscience on this issue at the ballot.  I doubt this rant will change anyone's mind, but it is within my power to use this blog as a pulpit to speak the truth in the face of injustice.